“Goddammit, Juliett! You had one fucking job!” Logan yells.

I shake my head and ignore how ridiculous they are. “What the fuck are you assholes doing?”

They stand quickly, brushing down their clothes. Then in unison, they grin from ear to ear.

“We’re busting you out,” Jake states.

Logan rolls his eyes. “Obviously.”

“I’ve already been discharged.”

The height of Logan’s repeated eye roll forces his head to roll back. “Obviously,” he says again.

“You know the rules, boys,” Sydney says, moving around me. “He stays in the chair until he’s off hospital property.”

Their cocky smiles drop as they stand straighter, puffing their chests. They salute her, followed by a united, “Sir. Yes, Sir!”

Sydney shakes her head. “Your friends are idiots, Dylan.”

Logan waits until she’s left the room before offering his fist for a bump that I return. He asks, “How you feeling, bro?”

Jake’s behind me now, slowly rolling me forward. I shrug. “Could always be worse, right?”

Logan grabs my bag off the bed and the crutches leaning against the wall. Six more weeks I’ll be using them while the cast is on my leg. “You ready?”

I nod.

Logan walks.

Jakes pushes.

I expect them to drive me straight home. They don’t. Instead, they take me to the garage where my car was towed. “What are we doing here?”

Logan turns to me. “Perspective.”

The physical details of what my truck looks like are irrelevant. But the visions, the memories of what happened that link to the damage—that’s why they brought me here.

“Poor Bessie,” Jake mumbles, standing beside me, hands in his pockets.

On the other side, Logan speaks up. “You’re kind of lucky to be alive.”

I look away from the truck, adjusting the crutches beneath my shoulders and face him. “You mean she’s lucky I didn’t fucking kill her?”

Logan’s gaze drops, his foot kicking the dirt we’re standing on. For a moment, I think about Afghanistan, about the seconds right before we entered the house of hell. The seed that planted the events that brought me to her. “I know it’s not the same,” Logan says. “But I get where you’re coming from. I understand the guilt. Your girl’s hurt, you think it’s your fault.” He removes his beanie, running his hands through his hair before adding, “I’ve been where you were man, sitting in a hospital room, drowning in guilt, the realization of your lack of self-worth eating away at you until you feel like it’s on you to save her from the pain you created.”

I listen to his words, each one meaning more than the last.

“So you feel like you need to run away to save her. You block her and everyone out to save them all from the destruction you’ll cause.” He sniffs once, his eyes lifting and locking with mine. “It doesn’t work though, D. I spent a year running away and the guilt is a thousand times worse when you’re doing it alone.”

“I don’t plan on running away,” I tell him.

“Maybe not physically, but emotionally.”

I stay silent.

Jake says, “Obviously something happened, man. From the time you came back for Riley’s birthday to now. And we’re not here to get you to bare your soul to us so please don’t think that. We’re just here to let you know that no matter what it is, we’re here.” He picks up a few rocks from the ground and starts pitching them at the truck. “I didn’t want to wait until it was too late like I did with Logan.”

“Shut up,” Logan snaps.

“I’m serious.”

“There’s no way you could’ve known. I didn’t even fucking know,” Logan says.

For a few moments, we stand in silence.

“Is it like…” Jake hesitates. “PTS—”

“No,” I snap. “Don’t fucking say it.”

Logan stands in front of me, his hands on his hips. “There’s nothing wrong with—”

“Shut up!”

I turn swiftly and hobble back to the car. I don’t wait for them to follow me before throwing my crutches in the back seat and getting in. I stare at the clock on the dash, watching the minutes tick by until I can be alone again. So I can drown myself in the guilt and the hate that make it impossibly easy not to see her.

Not to hold her.

Not to tell her that I’m sorry.

So fucking sorry.

But it doesn’t matter that I love her and I miss her and I’d do anything if she would just get in my truck that’s no longer drivable and sit next to me while we drove to the calm of the horizon.

After a few minutes, they both join me. I don’t know what they had to say to each other. I don’t care.

“Take me home,” I tell them.

“All right, man,” Jake says, turning the car over.

It doesn’t take long before they start talking again.

“I used to see my dad,” Logan says. “My real dad. In my nightmares. He’d come and beat the shit out of me and I’d wake up in a pool of sweat and sometimes piss, and I’m not talking when I was a kid, man, I’m talking two fucking years ago. I had a break down when I was with Doctors Without Borders and a psych diagnosed me with PTSD. I was on meds for a long time. And then I came home and Amanda—”