Back to You

by Jessica Scott

  Back to You

  Jessica Scott

  Forever

  New York Boston

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  A Preview of All for You

  An Excerpt from I’ll Be Home For Christmas

  Newsletters

  Copyright Page

  In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  To Fluffy and Hammy

  The original escape artists

  Acknowledgments

  Dear Reader,

  This is the most difficult book I’ve ever written. It’s also the one that taught me the value of strong friends to lean on when the going gets really, really rough. I’ve been working on Laura and Trent’s story since 2008 so I’ll probably screw this up, but anyway, here goes.

  Julie Kenner, you kept me sane through long rewrites and many, many rounds of edits and revisions. You always gave me straight advice and let me call you in absolute panic. Thanks for being a great mentor and friend. Allison Brennan and Roxanne St Claire, thanks for letting me lean on you when I wanted to quit. Ruthie Knox and Elisabeth Barrett, you are both amazing writers and I am lucky to call you both friend. Not too many folks will come running to a hotel room when there’s epic flail going on. Thanks for letting me not have my stuff together all the time. My agent, Donna Bagdasarian, thank you. You know all the thousand reasons why but mostly thanks for believing in me, especially when I don’t. And finally to my amazing and talented editor, Michele Bidelspach: Thank you for pushing me to write this book the way it needed to be written and for having the faith in this story that I sometimes lacked.

  Prologue

  Fort Hood, 2007

  “I put your checkbook in the front pocket of your rucksack. Did you find the sleep medication? You’ll need to sleep on the plane so that you’re rested when you land. And I put your calling card—”

  Captain Trent Davila looked up from where he sat on the edge of their bathtub. He held a tiny folded flag in his hands. For a moment, he’d been somewhere else. Sulfur scorched the inside of his nose. The thunder of the fifty cal reverberated off his breastbone.

  “What’s that?” she asked softly, watching him from the bathroom door.

  He held out his palm so she could see the little flag. “Good luck charm. I can’t deploy without it.”

  A thousand questions flickered over her face as her gaze fell onto that tiny flag. She bit her lip and turned away, but not before he saw the naked fear looking back at him.

  He moved, stepping in front of his wife and capturing her face in his palms. Her skin was smooth and soft and achingly familiar, and a deep part of his soul missed her already.

  But that part of his soul wasn’t in control right now. The moment she touched him, his soul recoiled, refusing to let him take even the simplest pleasure in her touch.

  He’d cheated death and he knew, knew he didn’t deserve to be there with his wife when so many of his men had died.

  That’s why he had to leave. Again. It didn’t matter to where. It didn’t matter if it was the war in Iraq or a transition team somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan. He needed to get away. To get back into the fight.

  And pray that his wife would understand why he had to go.

  “Laura.” He whispered her name, capturing her attention.

  She tried to look away, to pretend that today was just another day. But Trent knew her too well. He saw the doubt and the fear that she tried to hide. Her eyes, though, her eyes always gave her away. He stroked an errant strand of copper hair away from her forehead, meeting her golden eyes, unable to speak any words of comfort. He knew they’d just be more empty lies.

  She offered a watery smile. “I’m terrified of losing you again,” she whispered.

  “I’ve deployed since I got hurt. This time is no different.”

  “You didn’t get hurt.” She refused to meet his gaze. “You died. Your heart actually stopped beating. And this time is worse. This is the Surge.” Her voice broke. “I can’t lose you again,” she whispered. Her voice cracked as the tears tumbled down her cheeks.

  He hated to see her cry. Worse, he knew he could prevent those tears.

  He pulled her close and simply held her, wishing he could feel as alive with his wife and family as he did when he was at war. Maybe someday, when the war was over, he could figure out what had broken inside him and how to fix it.

  He stroked his thumbs over her cheeks as the kids shrieked in Ethan’s bedroom. The sound sent a spike of anxiety through Trent’s heart, but he smiled, hoping to cheer her up. “Sounds like someone just lost a Lego.”

  “Daddy!”

  “He’s probably going to beg you for a hamster again,” she said. Laura swiped at her eyes, blinking rapidly. “Can’t let them see me like this.”

  He slid from her embrace, regret sealing the walls that four deployments had erected around his heart. Trent tried not to notice how intently Laura watched him, her gaze sweeping over the scars on his body as he finished getting dressed. His dog tags banged against his ribs as he dragged his t-shirt over his head and pulled on the rest of his uniform and then his boots.

  “Well, you could get one,” Trent said, needing the distraction of simple conversation.

  “Or,” Laura said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, “you could promise him one when you get home. It’ll give him something to look forward to.”

  Trent frowned at the odd note in Laura’s voice and focused on tying his boots and tucking the laces beneath the cuffs of his pants. “He won’t even notice I’m gone. They’re both too little.”

  Trent straightened as Laura approached, placing her palm over the scar on his heart. It burned where she touched him. It took everything he had not to flinch away from the gentleness in that touch. “Keep telling yourself that,” she said with a soft kiss. “They miss you when you’re gone. We all do.”

  He sighed quietly and glanced at her, resting his hands gently on her hips. “Laura, you know I have to go.”

  He couldn’t explain it. Didn’t have the words to explain the emptiness inside him that consumed every waking moment when he wasn’t over there. And worse, he didn’t ever want her to see the emptiness he tried so hard to hide from her.

  She believed he’d come home. As long as she continued to believe that, his world would continue to exist.

  She brushed her thumb over his bottom lip. She blinked rapidly and the sight of her tears almost penetrated the cold empty space where his heart had been. “I just wish it got a little easier waiting for you, that’s all.” Her fingers wrapped around his dog tags, her thumb sliding along the chain. “But we’ll be here when you get back. We always are.”

  He ran his fingers lightly over her face. The lie he’d told his wife so often sat like a concrete wall between them. She didn’t know that he’d volunteered for this deployment, for so many others, and he had no way of killing the lie without killing their marriage. “Don’t go getting a deployment boyfriend while I’m gone.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that.” Laura wrapped her arms around him, nuzzling his neck. They stood for a long moment before Laura eased away.

  Trent swallowed and let her go. Again.

  * * *

  Five hours later, Trent kissed his wife good-bye for the fourth time in six years. His four-year-old son and two-year-old daughter were getting ant
sy, climbing up and down the bleachers nonstop. As he walked away from the gym where he and the rest of his unit had checked in for the deployment, he glanced up at her in the stands. She was steady. Stoic. Trying valiantly not to join the ranks of the wives and children who were crying as their soldiers left them, assault packs and weapons in hand. God but he wished he didn’t have to go. That he was man enough to stay home and fix whatever was broken inside him. Wished that he was man enough to need her more than the heady, uncertain terror of war.

  “You ready, sir?”

  Trent glanced over at First Sarn’t Roy Story, a man who’d taught Trent the right way to kick in doors and the difference between knowing when to wipe a nose or whip an ass. The war was lined into Story’s leathery face. Fifteen years as an infantryman that had started in Mogadishu and continued with the long slog through Iraq.

  “Are we ever really ready for this?” Trent asked, taking one more long look at his wife and kids. And then he turned away, needing to harden his heart for the battles to come.

  Outside, Trent climbed aboard the bus that would take them to the airfield. Spouses filed out from the gym along the sidewalk. In the seat behind him, Sergeant Vic Carponti was harassing one of Trent’s platoon sergeants, Sergeant First Class Shane Garrison. He almost smiled. With those two around, things would never be dull.

  He scanned the crowd, searching for his wife amongst the blurry faces of other people’s spouses lining the sidewalk. There. She held her vigil in front of a light pole, a tiny hand in each of hers. Beside her, Ethan stood bravely, tears streaming down his face. He held a tiny salute, his mouth pressed into a flat line as he tried to be a tough little man. Emma waved brightly at the bus, still too little to fully understand that Daddy was leaving for longer than a trip to the grocery store.

  He looked away but it was far, far too late. When he closed his eyes, the image of his small family was seared onto his retinas as the bus pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the airfield.

  “Never gets any easier, does it?” Story asked quietly, sucking on the end of an unlit cigar while he fiddled with a light on his helmet. There was little love left between Story and his wife. Story deployed to avoid his wife.

  But Trent deployed to avoid his life. Because life back in the rear was too complicated, too loud, too chaotic. War was simpler.

  The scar on his chest ached and he rubbed it, wishing he could forget the way his family looked as the bus pulled away.

  He closed his eyes, trying to put them out of his mind. He didn’t want to remember his wife with her cheeks streaked with tears or the raw grief in her eyes. He wanted to remember her face as she slept curled into his side. Or laughing with their kids. He needed to carry those memories into war with him. Because that was all that would steel him against the long hours and bone-crushing fatigue to come.

  He had soldiers to command. His family would be there when he came home.

  He hoped.

  Chapter One

  Fort Irwin, California 2008

  One year later…

  Trent walked out of the ops tent, needing a few minutes to himself. They’d just sent word that the wife of a kid in one of the companies was in the hospital. She was going into labor while her husband was enjoying the fun and sun of the National Training Center.

  At least the kid wasn’t deployed. He’d be able to get home quickly. Sure, not as quickly as if he was back at Fort Hood, but still. It beat the hell out of trying to get home from Iraq.

  The notification was something simple, and yet it had struck Trent that yet another soldier was going to miss the birth of his child because of the army.

  He knew exactly how that felt, and right then a thousand bitter memories rose up, reminding him of everything he’d willingly squandered. The resurrected hurt was so raw, the regret so powerful, he nearly choked on it.

  He should have been used to the hurt by now, but lately it seemed to be getting worse. It overwhelmed the dead space inside him, forcing him to feel things he didn’t want—and wasn’t ready to feel.

  He didn’t know how to feel them, how to deal with them. So for the moment he sat outside the ops tent and let the raging emotions storm inside him. Until he could get them under control. Until he could function again.

  It had been happening more and more this year. The things he’d stuffed away had started having a nasty habit of reappearing when he least expected them.

  He was starting to get comfortable with the crazy, but at least now he was starting to recognize the warning signs. Which was why he was sitting outside the ops tent.

  “So your BFF Marshall is looking for you.” Story walked out of the ops tent, a smirk on his face that only meant bad things for Trent. It was so strange calling him “master sergeant” instead of “first sergeant,” but Story wasn’t a first sergeant anymore. Just like Trent was no longer a commander.

  Trent sat on the hood of a Humvee, smoking a cigar and contemplating his sixth cup of coffee since he’d come on shift twelve hours ago. He pushed his glasses up higher on his nose then glanced over as Story hopped up next to him.

  Since they’d both been fired more than a year ago, they’d been hanging out on the staff together, responsible for nothing but PowerPoint slides. Funny how getting fired meant giving up the hard jobs in the army. You still got to stay in the army, but you just weren’t trusted with taking care of soldiers anymore. It was a punishment, being put in the easy jobs. Trent would have given anything to get his old job as a company commander back, but that wasn’t going to happen so he and Story and Iaconelli kept each other sane and avoided the new commander. Captain James T. Marshall the Third drove everyone fucking crazy.

  “Should I be worried?” Trent asked dryly, adjusting his glasses again. He’d long ago given up getting upset when Marshall attempted to piss in his cornflakes. Marshall had been tapped to take over Trent’s company when he’d gotten himself fired and Marshall took great pleasure in reminding everyone that he was fixing all the things that Trent had screwed up. It grated on Trent’s last nerve every time the words, “Well sir, I’m still fixing the mess I was left when I took over” came out of Marshall’s mouth at staff meetings, but what could Trent say? He had gotten fired. It didn’t matter why. He supposed part of his penance for being a shitty commander was having to listen to Marshall without knocking his teeth out. He’d leave that for Story and a few of the captains like Ben Teague who were leading the insurgency on the staff. Trent had other things on his mind.

  Like his wife. His two kids. The house that was no longer his.

  He cleared his throat and tried to listen to Story.

  “I don’t know,” Story said. “Marshall wasn’t screaming so I think maybe you should be okay?”

  Sergeant First Class Reza Iaconelli, one of Trent’s former platoon sergeants, stepped out of the ops tent. “No, you should definitely hide,” he said, interrupting the conversation. “He’s bitching about having to transport you back to the rear early and he’s pretty cranky.”

  Iaconelli was a big man: broad shoulders and built like an ox. He was steadfast and solid downrange but when they got home? Yeah, that’s when things went to shit for Iaconelli. He’d never met a bottle of alcohol that he didn’t like. He was lucky he still had a career but the sergeant major liked him. Trent respected his ability in combat enough to overlook any personal failings. Trent was the last one to judge someone’s personal failings.

  He reined his thoughts back to the present and the feeling that flittered in the dead space around his heart. “I’m getting sent back?”

  Iaconelli shrugged. “Maybe they’re finally going to court-martial your sorry ass,” he said lightly.

  Trent flipped him off. “That would be nice, actually. If they’d at least get the damn thing over with. If I never see Lieutenant Jason Randall ever again, it will be too soon.”

  “He is a special little fuckstick, that is for certain,” Iaconelli said, staring at the end of his cigar for a moment.


  Iaconelli may or may not have threatened to kill LT Randall downrange. Twice. But all of Randall’s interpersonal hostility had been a sideshow, a distraction to keep Trent or anyone else from figuring out that he had been selling sensitive items and funneling the money to bribe the Iraqis to stop blowing their boys up. Randall had finally gotten caught and now was determined to take down Trent and anyone else he could with him. Iaconelli chopped the tip off his cigar and sucked on the end while he tried to light it.

  “Too bad I won’t be around for his court-martial,” Story said.

  “Did you get reassigned?” Iaconelli asked Story.

  “Yeah. I’m deploying again in about two weeks. As soon as we get back from here,” he said.

  “Your wife isn’t going to be happy,” Trent said quietly.

  “Actually, she’s going to be thrilled. It’ll give her a chance to find her some twenty-year-old boy toy to keep her busy while I’m gone.” Story spat into the dust.

  “So you’re still married because…?” Iaconelli sucked on the end of his cigar.

  “Because it’s too fucking expensive to get divorced,” Story said. “I’ll take care of it after this next deployment. I’ll save up some money first, though.”

  “Sure you will,” Trent said. “You’ve been saying that since ’04.”

  It was Story’s turn to flip Trent off. “At least I’m willing to accept my marriage is over.”

  Trent rubbed his heart, knowing his first sergeant hadn’t meant to score such a direct hit. At least not with malice. “Yeah well, my divorce is complicated.”

  “These things always are.” Iaconelli leaned against the truck. “Which is why I’ve never gotten married.”

  Trent snorted and was going to make a crack but Marshall took that opportunity to step into the darkness outside the ops tent. “Davila, you’re going back to Fort Hood.”

  Trent glanced at his watch. “It’s four-thirty in the morning.”