Page 122 of Mariposa
I palm my belly, gripping the hospital gown, wishing I’d be swollen with his baby and not another man’s.
“Do you want us to leave?” Isabella asks.
I blow out air like I would with a cigarette. Opening my sore eyes, I meet their reddened, swollen ones. I ride the wave of grief within me enough to be able to shake my head.
I lost my soldier.
Is this why Grandma kept warning me to stay away from this life?
“Abuelita. How’s Grandma? Mom, I lost the bear she sent me. Damnit!” I shriek, panicking. “It was on the helicopter with me, but I lost it when we went down. How is she? Is she okay?”
“Violet, she’s still alive, and we can get into those details later. We don’t have to talk about anything else at this moment. I want to look at my youngest daughter and tell her that I love her,” she chokes out a sob, running her hands through my hair. “And that I’m proud of her.”
Sniffling, I weep with her quietly. I had already swallowed the hope of my mother’s acceptance long ago. This one sentence revives our troubled relationship from the ashes.
“Papá estaría orgulloso de ti.”
Dad would have been proud of you.
There it goes. The familiar storm comes back and whirls into my heart. As I settle into their arms, I let the dread take over me. In this hospital room, my mother and sister surround me with their embraces.
Kade, Booker, and Castle cross my mind. Their once beautiful, lively smiles turn into bloody darkness. Fisting the hospital sheets, I shut my eyes as my chest tightens. Somber tremors vibrate my body because I’ve crossed my limit—my endpoint.
“I know how you feel now, Mom,” I croak into her shoulder.
“What do you mean?”
“I loved him,” I confess. “I loved him with everything that I am, and now he’s gone.”
“Who,mija?”
I can’t answer her. My mother lost the love of her life, and so did I.
As I fall apart again, I retire the nickname, The Unbreakable Soldier.
48
VIOLET
Morning comes after a heavy night of tears and disbelief. This time, when I wake, Adam stands at the corner of the room. I take him in, noticing how he still wears the same outfit from last night. How long has he been here?
“I told your mom and sister to go home and shower. So, it’s just me here.” Adam strolls toward me. His voice is the gentlest I’ve ever heard him speak. This is a side of him he’s never shown me. He’s usually a selfish, non-empathetic ass, but right now, he’s someone who has lost his father. I know that feeling all too well. His life has changed forever because he lost someone he constantly pushed away. I’m sure it’s eating him alive.
“May I sit next to you?” He points to the chair my mother slept in.
I nod.
We sit in tense silence. The sound of nurses and doctors walking back and forth, the ICU phone ringing, and my heartbeat monitor becomes our white noise. We watch each other silently, like we’re both trying to find our words while battling our grief.
“I’m happy you’re back home and you’re okay. The doctor already performed surgery on your foot when you were in Germany. They were going to amputate, but your mother and Slater pushed them into saving it.” He glances at my ankle and trails the pad of his finger on the bedsheets. “Are you in any pain?”
“Yes…” The familiar knife in my heart twists in my chest. “But not physically.” I can’t hide the numbness in my tone. I swallow hard and massage my sore temples as he closes the distance. Sighing heavily, he clears his throat. Red covers the whites in his eyes.
“What happened out there? If you’re not ready to share, I understand. I just want to know, h-how…h-he…” Adam chokes up. He brings his fist to his mouth as though ashamed to break. Guilt is riddled between each syllable. He doesn’t need to say it. I cut him off.
I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to share this story with need-to-know personnel, but Adam deserves to know.
“Intelligence found a high-value target’s location. Everyone has been searching for him—multiple countries are after him, not only the United States. Our team took on the mission led by your father. We’ve been preparing for this moment for months, getting closer and closer. Everything we’d been working for led to this moment. We loaded up in the bird in minutes. As we were a few minutes out from our destination, we came under fire from insurgents. They were throwing everything they had to take us down, so the pilots did what they had to do. They tried to get us to safety, dodging the missiles and bullets, but one wrong turn had us crashing in the mountains.”
