Page 56 of Thick & Thin

Fuck the rest.

I would show them all.

18

Josh

Hurting Jenny was killing me—tearing me apart worse than the shrapnel from the IED blowback. The look in her eyes when I screamed at her. The way her lip trembled when I lied and said I wanted nothing with her. It was destroying me.

I was hurting her by refusing to see her, but she wouldn’t understand. She would push, and I was too afraid to be pushed by anyone anymore. I didn’t trust myself not to flip the switch, and knowing I no longer trusted myself with the girl I loved was the thing that pushed me to take my next step.

I was only home a few days before I found myself on a plane yet again and headed to Texas to enter the Warrior Transition Unit. That fact was, I had a severe case of post-traumatic stress and a possible Traumatic Brain Injury. Until I was better, I couldn’t bring myself to pull Jenny down with me. Her future was too bright. She had too much to experience, and I loved her enough to make sure she would get those experiences. Even if I had to disappear from her life.

Which was what I did.

I did it for her even though it killed me and hurt me far worse than any injury I had ever received.

I was in the Warrior Transition Unit for three months before they medically turned me out. I was no longer a soldier. I had a brief stint doing the one thing I was most passionate about, and that was all I got. I couldn’t find it in myself to go home, and since the only thing I really knew was football and farming, I found myself a job on a local dairy farm in Waco, Texas.

The good news about working on a farm in Waco was that it was less than two hours away from Texas A&M. Sometimes after a hard day’s work, I would find myself in my work truck and making my way to her. I would park out front, watching the college students and hoping that I would get just a tiny glimpse of her.

And then one day I did.

She was walking across the courtyard with a guy, and the smile on her face was so brilliant it sucked the oxygen from my body. I gripped the steering wheel and watched as they talked and walked toward the front office building.

She was wearing a pair of sweats and a large T-shirt. She looked different. Fuller in her face and she was glowing. I smiled, glad she seemed to be happy without me, yet burning inside to be close to her.

She looked toward the farm truck I was driving, and I paused, worried that she might have seen me, but she turned away yet again when the guy she was walking with started to talk.

He was tall. Probably a bit taller than me, and he wasn’t a bad looking guy. Jealousy burst through me, ripping at my skin and making me feel irrational. I could feel the anxiety rushing against my spine, working its way into my brain to send me over the edge.

Like they had taught me at rehab, I took several deep breaths and tried to focus on five things. I took my attention away from Jenny for just a second to gather myself, and when I looked back, she was gone.

That night, I drove through my new town, taking in the views and missing home so fucking much my chest ached. I was afraid and nervous everywhere I went, but I had no one I could turn to.

Pulling out my cell, I called Ashley so she could talk me down. She understood. We had gone through the same thing. Hell, she had been right beside me in the convoy. Her injuries had been mostly mental, but still, an injury was an injury. She answered on the second ring.

“What’s up, Black?” Every time she called me Black, it made me think of Jenny and the guys on my old football team.

“I need to talk.”

I heard her shuffling around in the background.

“Can you talk, or is a bad time?” I asked.

“Yeah, I can. Tell me what’s going on?”

Without giving too many details about Jenny, I told her someone from my past had triggered an anxiety attack, and I was having a hard time shaking it.

“Just breathe. Do you want to come over?”

“No. I think I’m good enough to go home.”

Even though going home to my empty apartment was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. If I was being honest, I just wanted to go home and be with my family. I should have been working my family farm, not making some other man rich with my time and experience.

But going home wasn’t an option. I couldn’t find it in myself to leave Jenny. Even if she had no clue I was lingering around her.

“Are you sure? I’m just hanging out here at my place. I could use the company. Trevor is at work, so I’m kind of bored.”

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