by Callie Hart
God.
Where did he get off, looking at me like that? His expression was confusing; he was either thinking about running his hands over my skin, pressing his teeth into the swell of my cleavage, digging his fingertips into the curvature of my ass, or he was thinking about murdering me where I stood. I couldn’t quite decide which was more likely. He blinked when he saw that I’d seen him, but he didn’t look away.
Slowly, he raised his beer bottle to his lips and he drank, the muscles in his throat working as he swallowed, his eyes locked onto me, as if he were incapable of looking anywhere else.
Such a strange, uncomfortable sensation, being observed that intensely. Out of the corner of my eye, Rose was blushing furiously, thanking everyone for coming out to celebrate her birthday. She blew out the candles on her cake, and the room was suddenly all long cast shadows and darkness in the corners. Sully’s face was transformed, severe, half eaten up by the dark, half highlighted by the light thrown off by a small lamp on top of the TV. He wanted to kill me after all. The savage, hard steel in his eyes told me so. I ducked my head, glancing away. He’d won. The bastard had won. He might have been able to stare me down until the sun came up, but I didn’t have it in me.
I turned my back on him, and did my best to put him out of my head. I drank more. I danced with old Mr. Sweetwater, who was unable to tear his eyes from my cleavage despite the Tit Tape that was covering my nipples so well. I ate and I laughed, and I made friends.
Everyone wanted to talk to me, to find out who the strange new Californian woman was living up at The Big House with Ronan Fletcher’s orphaned children.
No one brought up Sully. No one even seemed to notice he was there.
“So, you’re a teacher? You know, the high school on the other side of the island’s been looking for someone to teach the rest of the year. Once Connor and Amie are enrolled in the elementary school next month, maybe you should go work over there?” Michael, the stocky blond guy I was talking to, had been talking to for the last thirty minutes, leaned closer and smiled. He wasn’t a bad looking guy. He was well built and his button-down shirt strained over his chest, hinting at a wall of muscle underneath the cotton. “It’s a well-paid job, y’know? It’s hard for the school board to find good teachers who want to stay on the Causeway, so they keep on putting the salary up and up. Teachers here are paid better than anyone else, it seems.”
“Oh, I couldn’t. No way. I couldn’t work here fulltime.” Slinging back the remainder of my wine, I didn’t notice the hurt look Michael was wearing until I’d put my glass down on the table and turned back to him. Perfect. I’d offended him. Shit. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I just meant that I couldn’t stay here because I have responsibilities back in California. My parents need me to come back and help out with their restaurant, and—” And I couldn’t think of another single reason why I had to go back to L.A. Will was no longer a factor. I didn’t exactly have a career I needed to cultivate there. As far as friends were concerned, what few people I still kept in touch with were scattered all over the place—Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Austin, Washington D.C. As soon as college ended, everyone had gone their separate ways, off to work, or get married, or whatever, and I was the only one who’d gone back home.
Kind of pathetic when I thought about it.
“I wouldn’t believe a word of it if I were you, Mikey,” a clipped, cold voice said over my shoulder. The bare skin across my shoulder blades instantly broke out in goose bumps. I knew without a doubt who it was, and panic sang through my veins. Sully stepped into view, clapping a hand on Michael’s shoulder, who looked awkward and edgy all of a sudden. Sully was wearing a plain jet-black shirt, smarter than his usual plaid, though his black jeans were scruffy and worn. A clear foot shorter than him, Michael seemed to shrink even further as Sully massaged his fingers roughly into Michael’s shoulder. “This is not the kind of woman that hangs around an island like ours, Mikey,” Sully said. His tone was light, though there was an unpleasant edge to it that made me uneasy.
“Ophelia Lang from California is just chasing a pay check. Once her job here is over and my brother’s children are packed off back to New York, you won’t see her for dust. Trust me. And then, once she’s finally left, I might be able to sell that haunted old warehouse she’s currently squatting in, and then I’ll be able to leave, too.”
“What? Sell the house? You can’t.” Never mind the fact that he was being shitty and spiteful. That was to be expected. But what the hell was he talking about, selling the house?
Sully took a deep swig of his beer, and then arched an eyebrow. “Of course. Ronan left it to me, didn’t he? I can do what I want with it once you’re gone.”
“You grew up in that house, didn’t you? It was your parents’ house. It’s been in the Fletcher family for generations.”
“What the hell do you care about the Fletcher family home?” Sully asked, cocking his head to one side. “What does that damned pile of bricks and mortar mean to you?”
“Not to me,” I snapped. “To Connor and Amie. It’s their heritage. Their birthright. It’s their history.”
“Then my brother should have left it to them instead of me, shouldn’t he? He knew I was more likely to burn the place to the ground than ever live there, taking care of his kids.” Finishing his beer, Sully grabbed a fresh bottle from the box Jerry, the boat skipper, was carrying past us.
Michael winced. He looked like he wanted to back away slowly, one step at a time so as not to be noticed. God knows he couldn’t be blamed; I didn’t want to be a part of the conversation either.
“You’re heartless, you know that?” I shouldn’t be doing this. What good was arguing with him? Or name calling? Sully was the kind of guy who lived for bickering and mud slinging. He got off on it. Without a doubt he was far more accomplished at it, and I was only going to lose my temper if I engaged him the way he clearly wanted me to.
“Heartless? Yeah, I guess that’s a fairly accurate description. Vile. Repugnant. Selfish. Cruel. The list goes on.” He let go of Michael and shoved his hand in his pocket, then. Michael cleared his throat and made his escape.
“Excuse me, Ophelia. It was a pleasure to meet you. I’m sure I’ll find you again before Rose drinks too much and kicks everyone out later.” He gave me a small smile and hurried off without even casting a look in Sully’s direction.
“Why do you have to be so rude?” I hissed.
“To Michael? Psshhhh.” Sully knocked back another deep draught of his beer, draining nearly half the bottle. “I wasn’t rude to him.”
“You were. And you’re rude to me. You’re rude to everyone. Every time you open your mouth, you can’t help yourself. You have to be caustic or unkind to whoever happens to be standing in your direct line of fire.”
“Point of fact, that isn’t true,” Sully said, scowling. “I’m nice to some people.”
“Who?”
Sully rose up on his tiptoes, scanning the room, and then he pointed. “There. The redhead with the white shirt on? I plan on being very nice to her later.”
The redhead in question turned just as Sully pointed her out, as though she knew someone was talking about her. She saw Sully looking over and her cheeks flushed bright red. I got the feeling she and Sully had spent a lot of quality time together in the past. “You’re a pig. A grade A pig,” I informed him.
“Why? Because I plan on showing my girlfriend a good time?”
“She is not your girlfriend, Sully Fletcher.”
“Oh? And how are you so sure?”
“Because no woman could tolerate your attitude long enough to ever fall into a relationship with you.”
“Bullshit. You know she’s not my girlfriend because you’ve asked around.”
Now it was my turn for my cheeks to turn crimson. I had asked around, subtly or so I’d thought. Cara, Jerry’s daughter; Oliver, the guy who brought the papers in the morning; Jillian, Rose’s friend, who sometimes dropped her off at the ho
use: I’d asked them all delicate, indirect questions about Sully’s personal life that I hadn’t thought were all that obvious. I hadn’t asked because I was interested. God, no. I’d asked back when I thought the man standing in front of me might be capable of taking care of Amie and Connor. I’d wanted to make sure they were entering a safe and stable environment, the same way Sheryl had with me.
Sully was still looking at me, a lopsided, roguish smile spreading rapidly across his face, and I had the overwhelming urge to scream.
“You’re delusional if you think I’m interested in you, Sully James Fletcher. I’d rather become a Carmelite nun and never speak to another soul again for as long as I live than tangle myself up in any of your crap.”
Sully’s smile evaporated so quickly it almost happened between heartbeats. “Don’t do that. Do not call me that.”
“Call you what?”
“By my full name. You might have read Magda’s journal, you might know all of my personal shit, but you don’t get to talk to me like you know me. Like you’re fucking scolding me.” He made a guttural, angry sound low in his throat. He went to put his beer bottle down, then changed his mind, gripping onto it tighter. He lifted his free hand and pointed his index finger in my face. “The sooner you leave The Causeway, Lang, the better. For you. For me. For those kids. And when you go, make sure you take that damn journal with you, too. Toss it overboard and let the sea have it. I never want to see it again.”
The crowd of people behind Sully parted as if they were used to his stormy exits from conversations and they’d learned a long time ago to get out of the way as quickly as possible. He charged toward the door, shoulders locked and tense, and I caught sight of Rose on the other side of the room, a deflated expression etched into her face. Sully didn’t say goodbye to her, or to anyone else for that matter. He disappeared out of the front door, leaving it yawning wide open, and he vanished into the night.
I felt like rushing to the door and screaming after him, telling him I hadn’t read Magda’s journal, had no interest in reading it, but even the thought of expending that much energy on him exhausted me.
“Wow. He’s so…tormented,” a voice next to me sighed. Holly, in her Slipknot t-shirt, looked like she’d just fallen in love, and fallen hard at that. “He’s just like Heathcliffe. So romantic.”
I gave a sidelong look, shaking my head. “Have you read Wuthering Heights, Holly? Heathcliffe was a cold, controlling, miserable bastard. There was nothing romantic about him at all.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Afghanistan
2009
Sully
“Eight days. We’ve lost eight of our guys in eight days. That’s a guy a day. A guy with a family and loved ones back home. What the fuck are we doing here, man? Why the fuck are we fighting this war? It’s none of our damned business, anyway. We should be back at home, taking care of our own. We ain’t accomplishin’ nothin’. Dirt in our eyes. Dirt in our boots, under our damned fingernails. Nothing but dirt and mayhem all damned day long. Tell me…when is it gonna be done? When will it be enough? When the fuck can we go home, that’s what I want to know.” Rogers stabbed the sharp end of his throwing knife into the sole of his boot, squinting at the point where steel met rubber. No one said anything.
It was dark. The night out here in the desert was a lot like it was back on the island—very little light pollution meant stars for days. Stars, thick and clustered, brilliant and white for as far as the eye could see. The black mantle of the sky was different, too. Richer. Deeper somehow, like you could reach your hand into it, feel the texture of it against your fingertips, encompassing you.
Three clicks to the west, or there about, an orange flash popped against the shadow of the horizon, briefly throwing a ragged, broken skyline into view.
Kandahar.
Over there, in the torn out heart of the city, three of the units from our base were locked in a skirmish with local Taliban fighters. The insurgents had pinned them inside a building and were doggedly trying to get inside, to kill whoever they could find through the sights of the M4s they’d stolen from one of our envoys a little over a month ago.
Sound carried so well out here. A rattle of gunfire echoed over the scrubby plain between the hollow at the base of the hill where we were sitting, awaiting orders, and the outskirts of the city, reminding me of the Chinese firecrackers Ronan and I used to play with when we were kids. He was out there somewhere, on the other side of the city, waiting with his men just like I was, looking up at the same stars, probably bored out of his head. No doubt one of his guys was pissing and moaning, too. There was one in every unit these days, it seemed. Someone who finally wasn’t afraid to say what everyone else was thinking: why the fuck were we out here, playing cat and mouse games, theoretically protecting a country of people who didn’t even fucking want us here?
“Oil. It’s all about the oil,” Rogers hissed under his breath.
“Dumbass, it ain’t about the oil,” Daniels snapped back. “They ain’t got no oil in Afghanistan.”
“Then why? Why the fuck would the government of the United States of America waste billions of dollars coming out here? Huh? You tell me that, ’cause seems to me like this don’t make a lick of sense.”
“They sent us out here ’cause these motherfuckers attacked us, you fucking reject. What were they supposed to do? Isn’t that why you joined up in the first place?”
Rogers chose not to answer that. We should all have been waiting in silence for our orders to come in over the radio, but there was no point trying to kill this kind of talk once it got started. “S’why I joined up,” Daniels continued. “Collins and the captain, too. Ain’t that right, Captain?”
Last thing I wanted was to get drawn into the same existential “why are we even here?” argument that had already been the root cause of so many wars and genocides throughout the span of human history. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, leaning as much as I could against my rifle, stock planted in the ground, trying not to wince as the blood flowed more freely through my stiff joints. When it looked like the men weren’t going to continue on their banter without me, I cleared my throat and gave them what they needed to hear.
“Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die.” No one said a word. “You guys never heard of Tennyson?” I asked.
“No, sir,”
“Nope.”
“Wa’n’t he some kind of Victorian faggot?”
“No, he wasn’t some kind of Victorian faggot.” These guys had my back at every turn. They were my brothers, fierce and loyal to the end, but sometimes I just wanted to strangle them. “He was a poet.”
“That’s what I meant.”
I ignored the comment. “Tennyson wrote a poem called ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’ It was about men going into war and dying. And that line, Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die, basically sums up this whole thing. It’s not our job to ask questions. It’s not our job to revolt, or doubt the upper chain of command. It’s our job to do as we’re told and do it well. And if that means we go out and we die, a guy every day, five guys every day, ten…then that’s what we do. And we keep our mouths shut.”
Did I believe this? Absolutely fucking not. But admitting that to the guys would be fatal. They’d lose what little faith they had left in the idea of hierarchy and chaos would ensue.
Three more months. Three more months of this, and I’d be on a plane back to the States. Back to Magda. I’d given enough. Lost enough. Watched enough men die. No more tours for me. Three was plenty; it was time to go home.
More gunfire. More explosions in the distance. The long, whining sound of an RPG missile seeking its target. The men all flinched instinctively when the missile landed. The ground rumbled beneath us. A ball of fire leapt up at the sky, orange and white and angry, and someone sucked in a breath through their teeth.
Our orders finally came in: Stick to the outskirts of the city. Clear the buildings on the sou
thern side near the markets. Interview everyone. Arrest anyone who looks suspicious. Search for weapons.
Disappointment ran high.
“Why aren’t we coming up behind those bastards? Fucking them hard in the ass?”
“We’re the closest unit, Captain. It doesn’t make any sense.”
I picked up my gun and got to my feet. “Like I said, gentlemen. Ours is not to reason why…”
At least four or five of them finished off the quote for me, groaning out the words, “Ours is but to do and die.”
Hours whipped by fast enough for the sun to climb over the lip of the horizon. The ruined city’s buildings were a rats’ nest of Taliban fighters and families supporting the fighters, hiding them from us, hiding their guns and their food, and any other supplies they could stockpile. We hammered on doors, and kicked over rocks. Anyone who resisted or looked suspicious had their wrists zip tied behind their backs and were escorted back to the base in the back of a Humvee.
The gunfire never ceased. The ground continued to shake.
Must have been sometime after seven when the news was radioed through: the three units stuck inside the old, bombed out hospital were safe. Not a man had been lost. Rogers seemed almost disappointed.
“Captain! Captain Fletcher!” Out of the smoke and the dust choking the early morning air, a young private emerged like a ghost, his rifle, slung over his shoulder, bouncing up and down as he ran through the stacks of rubble and twisted prongs of steel. “Captain Fletcher, sir, you’re needed.” He was panting, gasping for breath. “It’s…it’s your brother, sir. The other Captain Fletcher.”
