He gives a sad smile. “But I’m alive, Olivia. Don’t you get it? I’m alive and none of them are.”
“What happened…after?” I ask. I’m not sure that I want to know, but I do know that he needs to say it.
Paul swallows. “Alex died in front of me. He died with that gun in his hands, and I couldn’t even go to him. I tried.” His voice breaks now. “I pulled and pulled at the damned ropes, screaming his damned name, telling him to hold on, that I’d help him. But I didn’t help him. He just slumped to the ground, blood coming out of his mouth. He just stared at me.”
I’m full-on crying now. This is so much worse than I imagined, and I imagined a lot.
He keeps going. “You know how in the movies, you can always tell the second someone’s life fades away? Like their eyes just…change? I couldn’t tell. Alex lay there looking at me and I couldn’t even tell when he died.”
I hug him harder, even though I know it can’t take his pain away.
“They found us the next day. The fucking cavalry showed up too damned late. I guess I should be grateful they found me at all. In the hospital they told me that some kids had given them a tip about a couple ‘bloody dead white boys,’ but the truth is I don’t remember anything about the rescue mission, and I didn’t care enough to ask.”
Paul falls silent for a moment before continuing. “I didn’t care about anything for a long, long time. Not about the medical magic they worked to save my leg. Not about the plastic surgeon my father hired to do what he could with my face. The only time I felt anything was when Alex’s wife came to see me.”
My heart lodges in my throat. “He was married?”
Paul pulls back to look at me. “Amanda. They’d been together since they were fucking fifteen. I’d met her once, at the Marine Corps Ball, and she was perfect for him. Ballsy and sweet and gorgeous.”
I wipe my nose on my sleeve.
“He’s got a kid, Olivia. A little girl named Lily, and she’s fucking sick. Cancer, the kind with the shitty treatment options and the even shittier prognosis.”
He pulls back then to look at me, his eyes shining with tears. “I do what I can to help them. The checks I get from my dad…they’re not for me. They’ve never been for me. But the money doesn’t replace Alex. It doesn’t replace any of the people that die over there.”
“Paul—”
“I lied to her, Olivia. I told Amanda that Alex died admirably, and that much was true. But I also told her that it was over quickly and that he didn’t suffer. I think she knew I was lying about that, but she held my hand so tight and said thank you, even though it was me that was home instead of her husband. I…I told her that he said to say he loved her. He didn’t have the strength to have any last words, so I made them up. I made a up a man’s dying words, Olivia.”
My hands frame his face, my thumb gently rubbing against the scars. “You did good, Paul. You did right by your friend and his family. He’d have wanted his Amanda to have that small bit of kindness.”
He lets out a harsh laugh as though he doesn’t believe me. But he lets me hold him as he starts to cry.
And for now, that’s enough.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Paul
“I didn’t think this was possible, but your girlfriend is actually getting worse at darts the more she plays,” Kali says, setting another beer in front of me before plopping down in the seat beside me.
We’ve been at the bar for a couple of hours, and Kali alternates between tending the bar and coming to join us in the back of the room.
It takes me a full minute to realize that I didn’t recoil at the word girlfriend. Olivia’s not my girlfriend. She’s my…
Shit. I have no idea what she is, but girlfriend sounds like both an overstatement and an understatement. Olivia is more than that.