But she and I both know it’s a ploy, so I ignore it. “Goodbye, you nut.”
Ben throws an arm around Livvie’s shoulders and pulls her into his side. I can hear peels of Cole’s laughter as they head through the double doors that lead into the parking lot. A lot of happy memories were made in this place. A lot of memories like these.
My smile falls as their shadows disappear around the corner of the building. Alone now, the rest of the gym empty of members except for a couple in the locker rooms, all those thoughts I’d pushed away while in the ring with Ben come flooding back.
The thought of her being so close shouldn’t affect me the way it does. My fingers shouldn’t itch to grab my keys and speed over to her place. I shouldn’t ache to pull her in my arms or want to crack a joke just to see her face brighten with a smile.
Nassau never seemed like the small town that it is, at least not to me. It’s always been home base, the place that I go to chill out—or used to between deployments. Now it feels like a weight around my neck. The business that I can’t seem to get on track no matter how many promotions or reduced memberships I offer. The girl who I planned to marry, but haven’t really spoken to in years. But most of all, the itch beneath my skin telling me it’s time to leave, time to move, do something where I’m needed, something meaningful.
The gym grows quiet as a couple of my regulars shout goodbyes from the locker rooms and then follow Ben and Livvie out the door. This gym had been in my family for decades—it was my father’s dream when he retired from the Marines. After my mother died, it became his baby. If he wasn’t at the cabin or fishing on the lake, he was here, shaping up-and-coming mixed martial arts talent or teaching a kid’s class. This place breathed life back into him after my mother’s death nearly killed him.
When he had a stroke a few years back and my contract came back up for reenlistment, I couldn’t find it in me to leave him here alone. Livvie was still away at college and there would be no one to take care of the gym with him so sick. Leaving my guys, my brothers, hadn’t been an easy decision, but they understood. Even though it killed me to leave them behind, I moved back home to help Dad out while he recuperated. Then, after he died, the responsibility to keep it running fell to me and I didn’t want to let him down.
I worried about it, though. Even now, as I flick the lights for the main room and lock the front doors, I worry about it. The walls of my office are plastered with pictures of my team, of my graduating class from boot. There’s even a photo of Sofie mixed in, though I do my best to avert my eyes as I settle in my dad’s old scarred up desk.
As I pull out the medical kit from the bottom drawer to doctor my nose, I think about my unit. They’ve deployed recently and I need to email one of those bastards to see how they’re doing. It’s always with a mix of anxiety, though, because there are times when those emails hold the things my nightmares are made of. Someone’s been hurt. Someone’s been killed.
Someone who could have lived if I had stayed.
I open my laptop as a reminder to get on that shit before I forget, then open the handheld mirror from the kit and prop it up on my laptop screen to examine the damage. It’s swollen and blood has already pooled and hardened on my upper lip. My nose has been broken multiple times so I’ve given up going to the emergency room to treat it. There’s nothing I can do until the swelling goes down anyway. I open an antibiotic wipe and clean up the blood, grimacing through the sharp bite of pain.
That done, I clean up a couple other cuts I’d gotten from one round or another. I throw the used wipes in the bin and pack the kit away for the next time Ben gets up the sack to break my nose.
I close the drawer and my phone rings. “This is Jack,” I answer.
“Yo, bromigo. How’s it hangin’?” comes the response.
“Grady Williams, you sonofabitch. How the hell are you?”
Grady and I had deployed a couple times, until he jumped on a fucking grenade to save my life and the lives of our team members. The resulting injuries meant a brutal recovery, but he was making it day to day. Like so many other Marines that had fought and bled for their country.
Or died for it.
“PT is a bitch, man, but I have the hottest therapist. An ass like you wouldn’t believe.” He chuckles over the line and I have no doubt what’s on his mind. “Anyway, what about you?”
“Oh you know,” I reply, rifling through the mail on my desk. “Same old.”
“So listen,” he says, “I just got an email from one of the guys and before you give me shit, I think you should seriously consider it.”
Bright red ink catches my eye and I pull out a letter from our mortgage company. The word overdue burns itself into my retinas.
“They haven’t announced it yet, but one of my old higher ups forwarded the info to me.”