Page 2 of Oblivion

Despite being in a similar situation, I let out a snicker. I didn’t bend to Sadie’s every beck and call like Tucker did for his missus. Although not married, Sadie and I had been comfortably sailing through life with me gone for six to eight months out of every year for the past four years. Our relationship had started after she began working at one of the bars on camp. I took her home one night, and she never really left. Before we knew it, we fell into a mutually beneficial relationship that, somewhere along the way, turned long-term.

Forrest and I entered the bar, ordered four double shots of bourbon, and a beer each, then settled at a table. I took a sip of beer while he tossed back one shot and hissed through his teeth.

After coughing slightly, he cleared his throat. “Aside from the court martial, you ever think about what happened in Mosul?”

“Every fucking time I see this.” I raised my left arm.

“Still gives me fucking nightmares, brother,” he confessed.

Forrest and I had always been close, but this shared experience had brought us closer. He was the only one of all my brothers I truly confided in. Told him shit I hadn’t told any other soul.

“The way the wife screamed…” He downed his second shot as I reached for my first.

“Chills me to the fucking core.”

And it did. I still wore the scars on my flesh from that day. The day our entire mission in Mosul, Iraq, turned into a big fucking pile of shit.

Our team had raided a local housing complex where the occupants were believed to be associated with ISIS. We raided with the sole purpose of capturing men to interrogate, and search the premises for smuggled weapons that were brought across the border via underground tunnels.

Things went according to plan until Ward took exception to a nursing woman huddled in the corner of a barren room, trying to protect the baby at her breast. He ripped the child from her arms, then set the woman in his sights. The memory sickened my stomach—it had all happened so fast, yet remained disturbingly vivid.

Him shoving her to the ground with the gun to her head. Me shouldering my rifle and trying to pull him off. The husband coming in welding a machete…

As it sliced through the air, I raised my arm out of instinct to protect my head. The blade glanced across the ulna bone of my left forearm, stripping away what little skin and muscle there was to remove.

With me ducking to the side, Ward shot the man, then forced the woman to watch as he executed her child. Forrest kicked his knees out and brought him to the ground, but the damage was done. We’d instigated a firefight that saw three of our team shot, and we swept that property until there wasn’t a living soul left.

“Still haunts me every damn night. Turns my gut whenever I hear Sadie crying. She has no fucking idea.” I tossed back my second shot, then chased it down with a long swig of beer. “How the fuck do you tell your girlfriend that you feel absolutely no desire to comfort her? That you’d rather tear your own fucking ears off than listen to her crying, or try to console her? I mean, the younger me would have. But I’m no longer that person. I no longer care about things like that… Not after seeing the shit we have overseas.”

Forrest hummed and picked at the label on his beer bottle. “Lack of empathy is how we cope, brother. Hell, we all have the same issue to varying degrees. You get angry with it?”

“Nah, not usually.”

He nodded. “Be grateful for that, Lote. Besides…” He pointed his beer at me and smirked. “Who knows? Maybe one day you’ll meet a woman that actuallymakesyou feel all those things, whether you want to or not. Maybe be grateful for small mercies while you have them.”

I scoffed and shrugged. “Nah, me and Sades have a thing going on. It’s…”

“Convenient,” he cut in, holding my gaze.

“And the fact I’m not offended by you saying that makes me an asshole.” I sighed and leaned back in the seat. “Fuck, I dunno. I should feel something more, right? We’ve been together for years now.”

Forrest pursed his lips. “Brother, I’m the wrong fucking person you should be asking advice. You know I don’t do relationships purely for those reasons. People like me aren’t cut out to be anything more than a good time. Sure, I treat a woman right when she’s with me, but I have zero desire to be someone’s entire world when I could get killed tomorrow. I don’t need the worry over leaving behind a wife and kids if I don’t come home one day.”

His words iced my chest. It was a confronting fact that sometimes, someone didn’t make it. It was also a thought I’d rather not dwell on.

I poised the beer at my lips. “I guess I’m just getting a little over it.”

Forrest’s eyes narrowed.“It,as in Sadie, or the Berets?”

Meeting his hardened eyes, I shut my emotions away. “The bullshit like this fucking court martial. We were meant to be back overseas right now, man. Instead, we’re sitting around waiting for a verdict that I fucking bet isn’t going to be good enough.”

“Time will tell. You know I’m itching to get my hands on him.” He smirked and flexed his fingers in and out.

I snorted. “Call me when it goes down. Might get in on the action.”

He sniggered. “Fuckin’ A, I will, brother.”

“I got your back.”

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