Damnable Grace
Page 67

The door to the bedroom flew open and Phebe came running in. “AK?” She looked about the room in panic.
“Take them away.” I pointed at the end of the bed. “Make them go away. Please . . .”
“Who?” she said softly.
“Them.” I pointed at each of their fucked-up faces. “The blood is all over the floor.”
“AK,” she whispered, then carefully climbed into bed.
“Where were you?” I asked as her hand came to my face.
“I was getting some water. I had only just left the room. But I am here now. Calm . . .”
I looked into her blue eyes, and confessed, “I killed them.” Phebe tensed beside me.
“Who?”
“Them,” I said and pointed at the end of my bed. “They hurt my brother. They nearly killed him, so I killed them too. I killed them like they deserved. But now they won’t go away. They never leave. Neither do they . . .” I pointed my shaking hand at the two people that haunted me most.
“AK, you are not making sense.” She moved closer to my side. She took my hand and squeezed it tightly. I looked down at her slim fingers in mine.
“He had PTSD,” I said, my voice barely loud enough to hear. “They took him to a hospital in the months I was still serving out the rest of my tour. I couldn’t see him—he was brought back to Texas. I didn’t know how bad it was until I got back home. And I came back to find my brother was fucked up . . . beyond fucked up.”
Phebe kissed my hand, and I looked up into her face. “I didn’t know what to do. He was there in body, but he wasn’t there in his head. He drank, but worse . . . he was on heroin. I came home to find my brother was a junkie, had been for fucking months and no one had told me shit. He was still living in Iraq in his head. Still in that fucking room, losing his mind. Living the torture day by day. It never ended for him.”
“I do not understand,” Phebe said.
“My brother.” I felt the pain from simply saying that word. “I killed my brother, Phebe. The boots . . . his boots are by the door, his guns are in the trunk. This is his cabin, the one he brought me to as a kid. He’s dead, and it’s all my fault,”
I cast a glance to him standing at the bottom of my bed, his wrists and throat dripping with blood, his body too thin and frame weak. His hand was held out for me to take, but no matter how many times I tried to take it, to keep him safe, my hand just fell through thin air. I couldn’t reach him.
“It was all my fault,” I said again. “I fucked up. I lost everything because I fucked up.”
Phebe’s hands tightened in mine. “Then tell me. Tell me what happened. You need to, AK. I am here. And I will not let you fall. I will not let them hurt you.”
I stared into her eyes and, having no more strength left to fight, told her it all. For the first time in my life, I told someone.
I told it all—joining the Marines, the kidnap, the torture.
What I did.
And then . . .
She waved at me as I came through the airport. I shifted my bag higher on my shoulder and smiled when I saw the little man break away from Tina’s legs. Zane darted through the crowd and threw himself into my arms.
“Zane!” I hugged him tightly to my chest. “I missed you, buddy!” Zane squeezed me back.
“I missed you too,” Zane said.
I drew back my head to look at him. “Shit! How big have you gotten?”
He shrugged. “Pretty big.” The kid wasn’t kidding. I couldn’t believe how much he’d changed in nine months.
“Hey stranger.” I turned to see Tina standing beside us. I smiled at my sister-in-law, but quickly lost my smile when I really looked at her. She was thin. Her face was drawn, and fuck, she looked tired.
“Hey.” I looked around the airport for Devin. “Where is he?”
Tina looked away. When she looked back, her eyes were filled with tears. My heart sank. “Daddy’s in the hospital,” Zane said, and I froze.
“What?” I asked Tina.
She took hold of my arm. “Come home. I’ll explain everything there.” I followed her through the airport. We stayed silent in the car, letting Zane tell me about the last nine months and what I’d missed. But all I could hear was “Daddy’s in the hospital.”
When we got home, Tina sent Zane into his room. I sat down in the kitchen, and Tina made coffee. She leaned against the counter, and it wasn’t until I saw her back shaking that I knew she was crying.
I jumped from my seat, still dressed in my fatigues, and spun her around. I towered above her, but her tiny body leaned into my chest. And she fucking broke her heart. She sobbed and sobbed until she was able to breathe enough to say, “He never came back, Xavier. The man who returned was not my husband. He was not your brother.”
I clenched my eyes shut, remembering him on that floor in the back room of the insurgents’ building. “What happened?”
“He came home, but he would sit at our door every night with a rifle in his hand. He said he knew they would be coming back for him. He said he was gonna kill them before they got to us.”
“Fuck,” I said and heard my own voice crack.
“It got too much. I had to take Zane to my sister’s. I had no choice. Dev was making our boy too scared to come home, so I sent him to Claire. I tried, X. I tried to help him, but it became too much.”
“So they locked him up?” I asked through clenched teeth.
“Claire and Tom had him evaluated. He was put in a hospital. He’s been there ever since.”
“Which hospital?”
Tina told me. I jumped on my Harley, and I tore out onto the road from the house to the hospital. Hospital staff thanked me for my service as I ran through the hallways of the wards, still dressed in my fatigues. I wasn’t supposed to visit, but when I told the nurses I’d just got back from Iraq, they let me in.
The smell of bleach hit me as I pushed through the door of the room. Everything was white and cold-looking. Devin was in the nearest bed. My heart fucking broke when I saw his lifeless eyes just staring up at the ceiling. “Dev?” Slowly, I approached the bed.
His head rolled to the side. His hair was still cut short, but that was all that was normal. My brother was half the size he’d been when he was healthy. Scars marred his skin, but worse, the life was gone from his eyes.