Page 17 of Heart of a Rebel

She should have never been there.

You should have talked her out of it.

Guilt does nothing to erase what happened, but I can’t help but drown in it anyway.

I shake my head. “Those are yours.”

He sets them down on the bar between us and they feel like a bad omen. All my regrets boiled down to two pieces of silver. It’s strange to think how a person can be reduced to nothing but ash and a few numbers.

I remember the first time Sam slipped those around her neck. A grin stretched her cheeks, and it was so bright it should have burned me on the spot. She stood tall and proud and said this was what she was meant to do with her life. She said in that moment she’d never felt stronger. After all, between the two of us, I might have been double her size, but she was always the more resilient. The better of us. The tougher of us.

Not that it made a difference.

When I got the call that she was gone, I was halfway across the world from that particular bomb exploding, but I felt it in my chest like I was right there, standing in the heat of the aftermath. Shrapnel lodging in my bones.

The sleepless nights that followed were the worst. Bargaining with the universe in my head. Cursing whatever was out there that it should have taken me instead. Shouting into a void when I knew it would make no difference.

But that’s the problem with pain. The longer it lives, the deeper it roots. And the poison spreads.

It spreads.

And spreads.

Marcus pushes the dog tags in my direction. “She would have wanted you to have them.”

“She wouldn’t have even been there if it wasn’t for me.” I shake my head.

“Don’t tell me you got smacked upside the fuckin’ head with something when you were overseas.” Marcus narrows his gaze at me. “Because that there is the dumbest shit you’ve ever said.”

“Sam—”

“Made the decision to enlist her damn self.” Marcus rests his forehead on his fingers and rubs. His eyes pinch.

“I should have tried to convince her to just let me go.” The ever-present knot tightens in my throat.

“You were two peas in a pod from the day y’all met.” Marcus sets his hand on the bar top and something resembling a ghost of a smile forms. “Always on an adventure, looking for trouble. Y’all were always going to do something big. Your dad and I knew that. Neither of you settled for anything less.”

I rub my temples with my thumbs and lean back in my chair, feeling the pounding starting in my head.

“Yes, Sam got the idea to enlist from you, but that’s not why she signed up.” Marcus smiles. “She was always a fighter, sticking up for those around her. Always so strong, whether she realized it or not. She went out there doing what she was meant to. Fighting for something.”

The problem with missions like the one Sam was on, is that you don’t get many details about what happened. The official line wasshe died fighting for her country. If I didn’t have a buddy who was with her, that would be that. But I know the truth and her dad is right. Sam died doing what she always did—protecting people.

There were three men with her on the mission and they got ambushed during an extraction at an orphanage. None of them should have gotten out the way it went down. But they did because of the sacrifice she made.

“Take them, Adrian.” Marcus places her dog tags in my hand.

“Why?”

“I see what you’re doing, coming back here and trying to make sense of shit that’s never going to.” Marcus shakes his head and rests his hand over mine. “They’re gone—Sam, your dad. This place is fuckin’ purgatory, and I can’t stand by and watch you sit in it. I’m selling the house, getting out, and I suggest you do the same. Sitting here drowning in the past isn’t going to do anyone any good. Sam wouldn’t want that for you.”

He clasps my hand with the dog tags between them.

“You were always like a son to me, and losing her, you’re all the family I’ve got left.” Marcus sighs. “Take these and remember to be strong like she was. Don’t plant yourself and rot. For me, for her, yourself. You’ve got to be better.”

He gives my hands a firm shake, and I nod, taking the dog tags from him as he pulls away.

“Thank you, son.” He slides off his barstool and throws on his jacket. “Keep in touch, will ya?”

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