With the knockout blow delivered, Tucker turned and jogged to his truck. The implication was clear. He'd be here when she got back, and I wouldn't. But I wasn't leaving anything to chance. I sprinted to Bo's car and jumped in. Bo stood in front of the car, allowing Tucker to leave first.
"Goddammit, get out of my way," I screamed at Bo. He wrenched open the driver's door and shook his head. "Move over, I'm not letting you drive in that condition."
I didn't care who was driving as long as we got to Sam's condo in the next five minutes. It took twenty, and I cursed Bo the entire way. His patience was at an end because he bit out, "If you open your mouth one more time, I'm turning the car around and driving us both into the nearest lake." I shut up promptly after that.
At the condo complex, I jimmied the outdoor lock, not wasting time getting someone to buzz me in. Bo was following hot on my heels. I ran up the three flights of stairs and down to Sam's condo. "Sam, let me in." I pounded on the door. I hit it repeatedly, yelling her name. I kept pounding even after my hand started bleeding so I switched to my other hand. Finally a door opened but it wasn't Sam's door. It was her neighbor's door. I leaned against the metal door, and waited to for the words I didn't want to hear. "She's not here, asshole. She left about fifteen minutes ago with her family and a big suitcase."
I swallowed back the bile at those words, but I wasn't ready to give up yet.
"Back to the Woodlands. To her house."
We raced back to the Woodlands. I wisely kept my mouth shut and so did Bo. I cradled my bloody right hand in my lap, trying not to get blood all over the interior of Bo's sports car. We drove up to Sam's house but it was empty. The lights were off and the house looked still. I still got out and looked in every window and door I could, pounding on the door with my left hand and yelling for Sam. But she was gone. They'd taken her away from me. I sunk down on her back porch. I hadn't even had the opportunity to make it right, and by the time she’d be back, I'd have to be back at Pendleton.
"I'll stay here, then,” I decided.
Bo knocked me on the back of the head. "So you'll be dishonorably discharged or thrown in the brig? That's going to win her back?" He hit me again. "Use your fucking head."
"All my ideas are shit." Bo opened his mouth and I threatened him, "Don't fucking say I told you so or it'll be on right now."
He closed his mouth then and then said, "I'm only standing down because I think the squirrel over there is stronger than you at the moment."
"I don't know how Sam got up and lived again after losing her husband because right now the pain is fucking unbearable,” I choked out.
Bo drew me against his side, a hand on the top of my head and I allowed myself to lean into him, like we were out in the desert and too tired to stand up after a thirty-mile hike through the hills of Afghanistan. "You gotta go home, get your head together, and plan an assault. There is no citadel, human or natural, that can withstand a siege from a Marine."
"I hope you're right."
They took me to the airport the next day. Silence was our fourth companion, so heavy and weighty it could have been another passenger.
When we arrived at the gate, Noah and Bo both got out of Noah’s truck. Bo had felt so sorry for me, he gave me shotgun even though I hadn’t called it.
“You look like hell,” Noah commented.
“Thanks, man.” I shouldered my seabag and rucksack. “It was real fun.”
Any moment the police would come and boot them out of the drop off lane but neither of them seemed to care. Noah grabbed me and pulled me in for a long hug. "You know we love you, man."
I nodded, the emotions of the last few days riding so close to the surface that I couldn't speak. He shoved me away then and grabbed me around my neck so I'd look straight at him. "You love her enough, you never stop fighting for her. Never stop showing her how much she matters. You give it your all, and even if she doesn't accept it, you lived up to your own standards and you can walk away with no regrets. But I'm telling you, Gray, that if you love her, she's going love you back. I know it."
I think it was the most words I’d ever heard Noah string together.
"Do you now?" I snorted.
"I do." He let go and said, "Semper Fi, Marine."
Always faithful.
Noah was right in one sense. I wondered a lot after Carrie had cheated on me if I'd given it my all. Maybe I hadn't. Probably I hadn't. I loved having sex with her, but I loved playtime with my boys just as much. And that had sat uncomfortably on my shoulders. Deployment had been a relief from the constant emotional upheaval.