Page 89 of Viking
A beat passes.
“He didn’t make it,” I say, even though that’s not really the whole truth. What I mean is I did, and I shouldn’t have. Not with the way the missile tracked him. Not with the way I couldn’t get my shit together fast enough to do anything.
“How old were you?”
“Twenty-two.” I glance up. “First time I watched someone die in the air.” First. Not only.
“Does the guilt still feel fresh?”
I blink. Swallow. That’s not the guilt I’m drowning in.
But I nod anyway.
He leans forward, forearms resting on his thighs. “You can’t carry it all, Captain James.”
“Yeah, well.” I drag a hand down my face. “I don’t know how not to.” My voice isn’t my own.
“You start by letting some of it out,” he says. “Like this. You talk about it. You feel it, even when it tears you apart.”
I look away, blinking against the burn behind my eyes.
“I’m not a guy who talks about shit,” I grit out.
“You are today.”
I huff a humorless breath. “Only because I’m in this damn uniform and can’t do what I’m trained for.”
“Your body’s healing,” he says. “But so is your mind. And you don’t get a medal for pretending like this doesn’t hurt.”
“I don’t want a medal.”
He nods once. “What do you want?”
The question slams into me. I don’t know. I really don’t.
“I want to feel like I didn’t fail him,” I whisper. “Like I still deserve to fly.”
Sutton nods slowly. “Then we start there.”
His words stick with me, rattling around in my mind as I walk toward the briefing room after we finished my session. They replay over and over like some warped mantra I don’t know how to believe yet.
Because I do carry it.
I’ve carried it for years.
Not just Reaper and now Ryan.
Every order followed.
Every mission.
Every life lost.
FOB near the Spratly Islands
July 11, 2024
0410
