“Who cares? The dude’s dead!” Geo had wanted to shout. “We’re the ones who need help now!” But he didn’t shout it. Instead, he’d clamped his lips shut and stared at the toes of his boots. Afterward, when the guy tried to set up one-on-one appointments with the platoon, Geo had refused to go.
He glanced over at Alex in time to see his face soften.
“Look, I get it. Guys like us aren’t programmed to ask for help. I’m not saying it’s easy, or that I’d be first in line myself. But I want you to know that the leadership of this task unit is as committed to your mental health as we are to the physical side. We’re here for you, George, so come to us.”
Yeah, right. Sure. And have the guys think he was weak, or that he considered himself worse off than anyone else. They all had shit to deal with. He wasn’t special.
“Thanks, Master Chief,” Geo managed. He paused. “Am I, uh, still getting on the plane?”
Alex nodded as he clapped him on the shoulder. “You’d better be on that fuckin’ plane. See you in a few hours.”
After he’d driven off, Geo leaned against the bed of his truck, hands stuffed in his pockets. He shivered in the cool night air, jaw throbbing, his head aching from the effects of too much alcohol and too little sleep. God, what a fucking mess.
Tilting his head back, he stared at the predawn sky. His life choices really sucked ass. If he’d accepted Lani’s invitation, none of this would be happening. Instead, he was hung over, beat up and lurking in a deserted parking lot at four in the morning.
At least the bar had declined to press charges, since there hadn’t been any damage done and he’d been the only one injured. He reached up to probe the bruise on his jaw, wincing in both pain and shame.
Tonight he’d acted like the worst kind of thug, accosting and intimidating someone who clearly wasn’t a threat. A douche and a liar, for sure, but not a threat. In that moment, with his anger raging out of control, he’d thought it okay to set Tariq’s safety aside in order to “expose” an asshole and “save” a woman who hadn’t asked to be saved.
All because he’d been looking for a fight. Any fight.
I’m sorry, Tariq. I’m sorry, Lani.
On a tidal wave of remorse, Geo texted them both. He stuck his phone in his pocket not expecting any reply, and when it buzzed loudly, it startled him so much he jumped. Heart pounding, he pulled it back out and stared at the screen.
Believe me, I’ve my share of ambush moments. No apology necessary.
Geo pinched the bridge of his nose, Lani’s gentle understanding making his tired eyes burn. Then he sucked in a deep breath and typed, I don’t know how to deal with them. How the fuck do you deal with them?
A pause. By letting them happen. There’s no cure, no way to avoid them, so instead of seeing them as something to run from, I’m learning how to just let them happen.
“Goddammit,” Geo ground out, suddenly wishing he hadn’t started this. He didn’t want to let them happen, he wanted them to leave him alone, to stop making him angry, to stop hurting.
Before he could figure out a way to put a breezy end to the conversation, his phone buzzed again. Since Tyler’s death, even the smell of hot chocolate makes me cry. The other day I was getting a tea at Starbucks when the girl in front of me ordered some. I immediately teared up, and then it hit me. What if my child wants it someday? Am I going to cry every time? Refuse to make it? Fall apart? So I made myself stay in line, made myself smell it. Made myself remember.
A giant fist squeezed his chest.
Tyler fixed it so carefully that day, just the way I liked it. That whole last hour of his life, even as he planned to end it, he took care of me. He made sure I felt loved, and with that hot chocolate, he was also saying goodbye.
A ragged sob escaped from his lips, a single tear tracking its way down his cheek. “Dammit, asshole,” he berated himself, dashing the back of his hand over his face. “You will not do this.”
Choosing to see hot chocolate as love instead of the precursor to horror is helping me and honoring my brother. Does that make sense?
Geo wanted to reply, but his fingers were shaking so badly he couldn’t type. He was about to put his phone away when it buzzed one last time. I know it’s not easy. I know I’m at a different point in my grief journey than you are, but if you want to talk, I’m here, okay? Always.
Lani followed up the text with a heart emoji, and a sudden warmth cut through Geo’s numbness. Thank you.
He slipped his phone in his pocket and swung up into the truck, then dropped his forehead to the steering wheel. Fuck. Once again, he’d managed to spew all over this amazing woman he was coming to admire more and more each day.
With a long exhale, he sat up to turn on the engine. He did have to admit he felt better, though, stronger, less brittle, as if a valve had been opened to release some of the pressure building inside him. What the fight hadn’t managed to do, a simple understanding conversation had.
You shouldn’t dump on her, though. You should find a professional.
Geo’s jaw tightened as all of his tension came roaring back. Right. No matter what Alex said about support, anyone in the teams who openly sought mental health services would immediately be taken out of the deployment rotation. He’d be sidelined and forced to watch his brothers go to war without him.
Hard-earned trust would be lost. He’d have to prove himself again, prove that he wasn’t gonna crack under the strain. They’d all be watching him, waiting for him to fuck up, scrutinizing every move he made, because if he made a wrong one, people could die. In a high-risk, high-consequence environment like special operations, any sign of weakness was taken seriously and dealt with accordingly.
Geo firmed his lips. He wouldn’t let his teammates down. He wouldn’t let himself down. No way. It all ended here.
Time to get a motherfucking grip once and for all.
Chapter Eleven
Beep, beep, beep!
Lani dragged her eyes open and stared at the bedside clock. Ugh. Much too early. Slapping the snooze button, she pulled her pillow over her head. Getting up at ten in the morning after working the closing shift at the bar was nothing but pure torture.
“My bed, too comfortable,” she grumbled. “Me, too tired. Verdict? Just stay home.”
Flopping out her hand, she located the phone tangled up in the covers and pulled it to her. She peered blearily at it for a few seconds before scrolling in search of Maura’s number, thinking she’d just text her with some excuse.
The effort proved too much in the moment, and closing her eyes again, she laid her phone on her chest. “In a minute,” she mumbled. “I’ll do it in a minute.”
Drifting in a most pleasant haze, she yelped as the buzz of a new notification startled her awake again. “Huh?” she gasped. “What?” She fumbled for the phone and forced herself to focus on the message.
The name on it said Geo.
Completely awake in an instant, Lani pushed to sitting and plumped her pillows up behind her, heart thudding painfully. Geo was contacting her? In the weeks since their impromptu text therapy session, she hadn’t heard one word from him. She’d agonized over it, considered calling him, but something deep down told her not to push it.
Why the text now? She took a deep breath. Well, there was only one way to find out.
“Oh, my God!”
It was a picture of Bosch, a soaking wet and sudsy Bosch. He gazed directly into the camera, the accompanying text reading, Bath day for me, meeting day for you. If I can do it...
She clapped her hand over her mouth, a delighted giggle welling up in her throat. The dog’s expression was one of a long-suffering stoicism, his dark eyes stony, frothy white suds piled high between his ears like a unicorn horn.
The incongruity of Bosch’s toughness with the playful suds had her full-on laughing, and before she knew it, she w
as swinging her legs over the side of the bed and heading for the shower.
She found herself grinning through the whole of her morning routine. Geo hadn’t forgotten. He’d promised her an accountability call, and he’d delivered, in a way that still managed to respect the boundaries he’d needed to set. With one silly picture, he’d made her laugh, and most importantly of all...she was up and out of bed.
An hour later, juggling a plate of raw veggies with the shishito pepper dip she’d made the day before, Lani slipped behind the wheel of her car. She set the plate on the passenger seat and snapped a pic of it, texting it to “Bosch” with the words, On my way to the meeting with goodies!
A few seconds later, a string of paw print emojis popped up, followed by one of a fist. The canine version of a knuckle bump? Well, she’d take it.
Her good mood lasted all through the drive to Coronado, only to evaporate as she parked and lingered in her car, tempted to turn around and take her ass right back home. Getting out of the car took a monumental effort, and the walk to the door seemed to take forever, every step leaden, like slogging through quicksand. As she reached for the pull handle, the door swung open to admit her.
“Hello, my dear.” Maura’s face held a reassuring smile. “Welcome.”
Clutching the hors d’oeuvres in front of her, Lani burst out, “But I don’t want to be here.”
She’d tried a grief group not long after Tyler’s funeral, and all it’d managed to do was re-traumatize her all over again. A light touch on her arm cut through the roaring in her ears.
“This will be a much different experience than the one you told me about,” Maura said, her tone soft. “And I’m so glad you’re giving us a chance. Please, come in and join us.”
The room was bright and airy, with floor-to-ceiling glass panels that could be opened to let in the breeze and the roar of the ocean. A small group of people milled around a long table set up against one wall. Various crockpots emitted mouthwatering smells, and the delicious-looking selection of appetizers and desserts made Lani’s empty tummy rumble despite herself.
Shyly, she approached the table and put her plate down next to where a white woman fussed with some crackers and a cheese ball.
“It turned out so lumpy,” she complained, then caught sight of Lani’s pepper dip. “Ooh, that looks scrumptious! Is it spicy?”
“Maybe a tad. Not like jalapeños, though.” Already a little more at ease, Lani took the plastic wrap off the plate and arranged the cauliflower, carrots, snap peas and broccoli into a colorful, eye-catching pinwheel around the bowl of dip.
“All right, everybody.” Maura raised her voice to be heard over the laughter and conversation. “Let me get this introduction out of the way, and then we can all dig in to our delicious food while we chat.”
Lani stiffened as Maura stepped over to her and took her hand between both her own. “Friends, this is Lani, who’s ten years out from the firearm suicide of her older brother, Tyler. After Tyler’s death, she received no therapy, except for one generalized grief group session—” Maura paused “—that was held at a church with a clergy person facilitating. I think we all know how that turned out.”
Soft exclamations went around the group as Lani was catapulted back in time to a room smelling of stale coffee and the sickly-sweet aroma of donuts.
“Suicide? That’s a mortal sin!”
The young woman who’d been crying about losing her eighty-year-old grandmother to cancer glared at Lani in disgust, then moved her chair away.
“Suicide isn’t catching, bitch,” Lani snapped, her hands balling into fists. “Fuck off.”
The woman flinched, and the minister broke in. “Tyler’s soul is lost to God’s mercy through his sinful act, but we can still pray for your salvation.” He stretched out his hand as if to put it on Lani’s head, and with a sob, she pushed it away and shouted, “Assholes! My brother is not in hell!”
She clattered up the stairs into the frigid night air, every gasping breath stabbing her lungs like a thousand knives.
Lani opened tear-filled eyes to see sorrow, as well as empathy, on every single face looking back at her. The words welled up and spilled out. “I stood outside that church and screamed, ‘Fuck you, God’ until the preacher came out and told me to go home before he called the police.”
The woman with the cheese ball nodded. “I flipped God off at my son’s viewing when someone came up and said his suicide must be part of God’s plan. I said, ‘Well, his plan sucks,’ and stuck both middle fingers up at the ceiling.”
Lani tried to hold in a laugh, but it came out through her nose as a loud snort. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry,” she gasped.
Maura chuckled. “No need to be sorry. In our group, you can say, think and feel any way you want. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry. We get angry, too, a lot, and above all, nobody judges anyone else for anything.”
“During my daughter’s wedding rehearsal,” a different woman said, “I got so angry at my husband for killing himself and missing out on walking our girl down the aisle that I kicked over the guest book stand. A couple of people tried to intervene, and my son-in-law told them to leave me alone.”
Lani blinked back tears. “Well, I’m going to have a baby, and sometimes I feel so cheated over not having Tyler here, so angry at him. It doesn’t feel right to be angry at him, but how could he leave me? Why wasn’t I enough?”
“Ah, Lani. These are questions we’ve all wrestled with in regards to our loved ones’ suicides,” Maura said softly. “But the truth is, we’re in a club that nobody wants to be in, and we’re going to get through it together.”
After that, everyone headed for the potluck table, and balancing their plates on their laps, they sat around in a circle, the smell and sound of the ocean backdrop soothing.
“This is beautiful,” Lani ventured. “I was afraid it’d be another church basement.”
Maura smiled. “I had a client once who lived in a condo in this building. He arranged for us to use this room at no cost, because what suicide survivor wants to meet in a church basement, or a conference room in a hospital? That implies there was something wrong with our loved one, or with us, when instead we’re simply friends, sharing food, drink and conversation.” She took a sip of her iced tea. “So, my dears, how has your story changed since we last met?”
The discussion flowed easily, and just like Maura promised, there was plenty of laughter to go along with the tears.
“As your homework assignment until we meet again,” Maura said at last, “I’d like you to think about the word acceptance and what it means to you.”
“What does it mean to you?” This came from a man whose twenty-year-old daughter jumped off the Coronado Bay Bridge the morning after they’d had a bitter argument.
“Well, for me it means making peace with the unknown and accepting that I’ll never know the why of Vincent’s suicide. Ending his life was a decision Vincent made, and even if I don’t agree with it, I must respect it the same way I respected the decisions he made while he was alive.”
When the man’s face crumpled, Maura went on gently, “But acceptance is going to look very different for you, Bruce. Maybe it’s forgiving yourself for the words you said to Christie the night before she died. Maybe it’s forgiving her for—”
“For not giving me a chance to fix it?” Bruce’s voice was ragged. “For dying without letting me say, ‘I’m sorry’?”
Someone handed him a tissue as Maura nodded. “Yes. Maybe that’s what acceptance will mean to you, that you forgive yourself for not realizing mental illness might’ve been the reason for Christie’s erratic behavior and drug use. That by confronting her about it that night, you were only doing what you thought was right at the time.”
As Bruce sobbed, Maura glanced around the room. “For others of you, acceptance might simply be conceding that even though your loved o
ne’s life ended, yours goes on. There’s no right or wrong answer here, but I can tell you firsthand, there is a measure of peace that comes along with identifying it.”
A little while later, as Lani slipped her empty plate and dip bowl into a plastic bag to take home, Maura approached her. “How are you feeling?”
“Drained,” she admitted. “But a little more grounded, I think. It does help to know I’m not alone, and I’m grateful that at least my last memories of Tyler are good ones. We didn’t argue, or say awful things to each other, things that I have to try and live with now.”
“Yes. I think we could all look around and very easily say to one another, ‘I’m so glad I’m not you.’” Maura smiled. “But out of that realization grows the gift of empathy, of compassion, too. Gifts we can then use to help others, especially other suicide survivors.”
She walked Lani to the door.
“As always, my dear, be a little extra good to yourself today.”
Instead of heading to her car, Lani walked along the narrow path to the beach. She slipped off her sandals, relishing the cool sand between her toes.
The roar of the ocean wrapped itself around her, the thundering power behind it making her feel insignificant, yet so profoundly glad to be alive. She took deep breaths of the salty air.
“You know what I’m finally realizing, Ty? That I can miss you, and still be grateful for the path my life has taken.” She closed her eyes briefly. “It’s so weird to think that I’m standing here, in this moment, in this place, only because you’re not.”
Rhys. The military. Her baby. All of these ripple effects.
“In so many ways I love my life, too. I got to be with Rhys, and watch him grow up and become the wonderful, caring man he is now. Would he be that man today if it wasn’t for you? I’m not sure.”
With a sigh, she dropped to sitting in the sand and leaned back on her hands to watch the frothing waves.
Trusting a Warrior Page 14
