Epilogue: Taking A Chance
Chance
Istand in the hallway just out of view of the common area, watching Kane and Anjalee together.
First it was Rev. My brother, my best friend—there’s not a word in any language for the relationship between us, for the bond between us. I’m happy for him—really, fucking truly I am. Seeing him happy, seeing him so changed, it warms my cold dead heart. I mean, shit. Myka brought that man to life. I see the sweetness she gives him, and…fuck, I crave that.
Never had that kind of love, that kind of sweetness, and I crave it more than I need my next breath.
So yeah, I’m happy for him. Sincerely.
But I’m jealous.
Then, while that shit with Rev and Myka is still going down, Kane brings home a woman of his own. Motherfucker is gone a week and snags a tall, beautiful, classy Indian goddess. She’s sweet. She’s soft. She clearly loves the absolute shit outta Kane. And in return? Kane gets redemption.
Fuck.
No wonder he refused to share the first damn thing about himself—the heartbreak, my god. I get him. I get him hiding out here, refusing to face the past. Fuck, if anyone can get that, I can. Rev didn’t have to face his past, he just had to own it and open up, dare to let someone in. He did and it paid off, huge. Kane, though? When you have demons haunting your past, your present, and your future, when those vicious fuckers lurk around every corner, within every shadow, you see them everywhere. You can’t get away from them. Kane has demons. Or,had. Past tense. Anjalee swept into his life and lit up the shadows. She didn’t have to face his demons, she just had to give him the courage to do so his own damn self.
So there they are. Snuggled together on the couch, whispering, touching, kissing. Loving.
God, I’m sick with jealousy.
It burns in my stomach like acid.
So, I do the only thing I know, the only thing that ever comes even close to sating the need, to filling the hole—the only thing that feeds my addiction without leaving me dead on the floor in a pool of my own bloody vomit.
I lift.
Before Kane or Anjalee see or hear me, I creep past and into the gym.
Yeah, I can sneak. You wouldn’t think so, looking at me. Six feet eight inches and three hundred and fifty pounds, you’d think I’d be a slow, lumbering behemoth. Well, I’m a behemoth, all right, but I’m light on my feet. I’ve worked hard to stay that way, despite putting on at least fifty pounds since leaving the Corps. I’ve always been a lot quicker than I look. When I joined the Corps at eighteen, I was six-six and barely over two hundred pounds—on my frame, that was skinny. But I was strong as hell, and I was fast. Light on my feet, yet strong enough to do the work of two men. Basic training put some meat on my bones, and the lifestyle of an active-duty combat soldier kept putting it on: when we weren’t on patrol or on a mission, we were eating, sleeping, or lifting. This means I ate a lot, I lifted a lot, and, incidentally, I grew two more inches vertically. By the time I was a civilian, I weighed just over three hundred, but that was lean, dense muscle, and I was not only strong, I had stamina for days and could move on catlike feet, quick and quiet and lithe, despite my colossal size. I’m not as lean as I was then, since I’m not exactly clean bulking nor am I a Special Forces operator anymore. Now, I just eat, lift, and work, and sure, I’ve got some extra padding over my muscle.
Barefoot, wearing nothing but my usual basketball shorts, I slide a couple 45-plates on a bar and warm up my deadlift. After a few warm-up reps, I pile on the plates and start pulling. The more weight I pull, the more I have to concentrate. The more concentration that’s required, the less mental space there is for me to waste on jealousy.
Or jonesing.
You’d think I’d move past the urge. The need. It’s as much mental as it is physical—or, really, if I’m being honest, it’s almost entirely mental. I’ve been clean for over two years now, so I’m detoxed and no longer actively, physically craving the shit anymore. What I crave, now, is the escape. The momentary high of forgetting.
The buddies lost. The shit I saw, over there. The shit Idid.
You don’t forget. You never forget. Even asleep, you don’t forget.
Rev is different. He always had a way of compartmentalizing. I don’t think he even realized what he was doing, but he could just put the awful evil shit we did and saw into a box inside himself and he locked it away and never opened the box again. It doesn’t seem to touch him. The life we lived before joining wasn’t exactly cushy, obviously. So it’s not like we were soft suburban children. At eighteen we’d both seen bloodshed and violence and death—we’d dealt it with our own hands. We’d already seen the worst humanity has to offer, and survived it. War, in an official sense, was almost a relief. We were gettingpaidto do that shit. We were given food, clothing, transportation, and a brotherhood. In return, we perpetrated violence. It’s all other of us ever knew, so it was easy.
But Rev, he could just put it away.
I can’t.
I cope.
Now, I cope, at least. When I first got out, I didn’t cope, and that’s how I landed here.
But that’s a story for a different day—as in, never.
I lift until I’m jelly. Deadlift, bench press, bent rows, set after set of heavy weight, low rep punishment. I power down a pound of browned, seasoned ground turkey, two cups of brown rice, two cups of black beans, and a whole fresh avocado, washed down with fifty grams of protein powder in almond milk.
And then, I go to work.
