“What are you going to post?”
“I have no idea. I think I’ll follow a few interesting people first, you know, get a feel for things first.”
“I let Jack die,” he blurted out, the words having been waiting until he wasn’t holding them back.
“What? No you didn’t. You were there when he died. They couldn’t revive him.”
“Before that. I knew something was up. But we left him.”
“You couldn’t have known what would happen.”
“Logically, I know you’re right. By some miracle, he made it out of there. But he never got over it. Never walked again. So damn many surgeries. I should have been there with him. I was trying to hurry my ass out of the Navy and get out of the shitshow it had become without Asher and Jack… and I watched him slip away. Too many pain pills. Then harder stuff when he couldn’t make the pain go away.”
“He was a lucky guy.”
What?
“To have you worry about him. To regret that you couldn’t save him. I know you left the Navy to take care of him. He knew you were coming for him.”
“I wasn’t fast enough.”
“He would have held on if he could. He waited for you and Asher in the end. He didn't die alone.”
Rubbing a hand over his face Zane let the image of Jack lying motionless in the hospital bed, so many tubes and wires. His ears still rang with the flatline alarm.
“What would he say, if he saw you in this holding pattern, refusing to move on? It’s not that you don’t have a dream, it’s that you won’t let yourself.”
He chuckled under his breath, a burning behind his eyes at the absurdity, “Jack didn’t like to word things pretty. He’d tell me to shit or get off the pot.”
Her smile resonated in her voice, “He’s lucky to have friends that will be sure he’s remembered. Tell me something crazy about him.”
Dropping back on the bed, his throat threatened to close at the barrage of memories flooding in. “He was afraid of heights.”
“Seriously? He was a Navy SEAL.”
“I know, right? He’d get to the door of the plane, and he’d grip the sides and whisper so the other guys couldn’t hear, ‘I can’t. Just push me out before I start bawling like a baby.’”
“Did you?”
“Fuck yeah. Kept his trap shut the entire fall, but the second we hit the water, he was the first to the surface so he could dunk me the moment I came up for air and promise to kick my ass if we survived the op.”
“And when you got home?”
“By then he was thankful. Until Asher and I took him on a surprise trip to the Grand Canyon.”
“You guys had some good times.”
“Yeah, yeah we did.”
“Sounds like a good friend. Would he blame you?”
Shit. “Of course not. It’s the job. Always a risk.”
“I wish I’d known about you while you were in. I was already worrying about Asher; I could have worried about you too.”
“And sent me care packages? His parents would send me the best stuff. Fancy chocolate and magazines with sports updates and Paul even snuck in a Playboy when Asher hinted that we were going stir-crazy overseas.”
“Maybe I would have sent you some naked pics.”
