*Trigger warning: mention of suicide present.

Soundtrack for this chapter:
Hallelujah—Leonard Cohen*
In The End—Linkin Park
Lay it on Me—Vance Joy

17

Jules

Everything fell into place. Without intending it, Theo had given me the key to his mind, and unlocking that door allowed everything to make sense. His need to save people. His nightmares. His momentary hesitation when he saw that Katie overdosed. His comment that sometimes people just break.

The second I could catch my breath, I called Dan and told him he had to come get Aiden. Aiden couldn't be there when Theo came back; it wouldn't be good for either of them.

Once I was the only person left in Theo's house, his words wouldn't stop echoing in my head, and each time I felt the full force of pain that they carried. Aiden's shock at Theo's revelation made me wonder if anyone in his family knew what really happened to him. To carry that secret for seven years would be enough to drive anyone to the brink of insanity.

When I couldn't get Theo's pained voice to cease its repetitions in my head, I found my feet pulling me towards his piano, my hands depressing the keys of their own volition. Without a plan in mind, my fingers began pressing out the sad and mournful notes of "Hallelujah."

Less than halfway through the song, I felt Theo's presence behind me. When his hand rested on my shoulder, my fingers lifted from the keys.

"Keep playing." His voice was the contradictory combination of soft and raw; it was almost lost between us.

I set my hands back on the keys as he sat next to me on the bench, his back to the piano. I didn't need to look at him to know his elbows rested on his knees and his head was in his hands.

"Will you sing it?"

I'd sing anything to him. I started the song over, played it as well as my shaking hands could play it, and sang it as well as my shaking voice would allow. When my fingers pressed out the final notes, I found myself turning to him just as he slumped into my side.

"I'm sorry you had to hear that."

"No apologies, Theo." My arms wrapped around him, holding him as close to me as possible.

He pulled out of my hold and stared at me with eyes rimmed in red.

"Is anyone else here?"

I shook my head at him.

"Will you come upstairs with me?"

"Of course."

He stood from the bench and held out his hand. In his room, he stopped at his bed and motioned for me to sit down. I watched him walk over to the picture of him and his two friends from his deployment. He picked it up, then came back over to his bed, sat next to me, and put the frame in my hands.

"Gabe, on the left. Jake on the right. They were in my unit in South Carolina before we were deployed to Afghanistan."

I stared at the picture of young Theo in my hands. I didn't want to say anything; I didn't want to disrupt his process of how he was going to tell me his story.

"I'd wanted to be in the military for as long as I could remember because being in the military meant that I could make a difference, that I could save someone, that I could protect someone. Growing up, every Halloween I dressed up in some sort of life saving job: a firefighter, a doctor, a soldier. When I was finally old enough to enlist, I did. Mom and dad weren't thrilled; they worried all the time that I would get deployed, but that was what I wanted. I wanted to be deployed. I wanted to fight for my country. I didn't enlist to serve my country by sitting around on a US base for my entire commitment."

He stopped and took a breath. I turned to him to see if he needed something from me, a touch, words of comfort, anything. But he just took another breath and kept going.

"I'd been on base for four years, and finally, finally, we got the notice that we were going overseas for a ten-month deployment. My entire reason for existence seemed to be happening. My parents were terrified. I understood that, but I was twenty-two. I was invincible. I was getting to live out my purpose."

There was the slightest twitch happening in his hands, which were knotting themselves over and over in his lap. I reached over and set one of my hands on top of his.

"The day came that we were shipping out. A lot of the other guys were nervous, but not me and Gabe and Jake. It was what we'd been waiting for, and it was happening. The first few weeks were some of the hardest of my life. Getting acclimated to the climate alone was exhausting. But things were quiet, and we were the freshest band of troops to be sent over. If something was happening, we were the last line of defense to be pulled in. The first six months we spent there, we did nothing more than drills and patrol duty. It hardly felt any different than being back in South Carolina. The other guys in my unit started to get comfortable. Too comfortable. So when we were told we were going to be leading a raid, when we were told we were going to be put into our first combat experience, the mood in our unit changed. Even with Jake and Gabe. They had gotten comfortable too."

I felt a chill work its way over him, and I felt like it was time for me to relieve him.

"Theo, you don't need to do this all at once. If you need time—"

"No. I want to explain what happened. I've held this in for too long."

I gave his hands a reassuring squeeze, and he continued with his story.

"One day, after breakfast, we were told of these plans. The lieutenants on the base told us to mentally prepare, to write letters to our families, just in case. They don't sugarcoat anything, and that really scared the shit out of some of the guys. Some of them had gotten so comfortable in those six months that they thought they'd never have to see combat while we were over there. But then we knew some of our men were going to die. We knew some of them were going to be wounded. You understand the risks when you enlist, but you never think something's going to happen to you."

He unknotted his hands, and I removed mine from his. When his hands reached around to the back of his neck, I placed one of mine on his back, trying to push all of the love I felt for him through that hand.

He turned to me. "You have to understand this: everyone carries a weapon on the base. It's standard procedure. What if the base was to be infiltrated? You'd need a way to protect yourself. Some of them are stored in the armory, but everyone still carries something. It was standard procedure. You understand that?"

I nodded to him.

"And once we'd been done with our jobs for the day we'd shower and change out of our ACUs—our uniforms—into t-shirts and pants. We did that every day. It was our routine. No one wears a bulletproof vest to dinner. Why would they? It's just dinner and then going to bed." His eyes searched mine.

"I understand."

"The night before the raid, after showering, I made my way to the mess hall, and I sat in my usual spot, waiting for Gabe and Jake. Jake showed up a few minutes later, but even by the time we'd sat down with our meals, Gabe still wasn't there. That wasn't right. Something wasn't right."

He closed his eyes, sending himself back seven years.

"I asked Jake if he knew where Gabe was. When he said he didn't, I left my plate and said I'd go check our barracks. When I got there, it was completely empty, except for Gabe's bed. He'd never showered. Never even changed out of his uniform. I thought maybe he was sick, maybe he wasn't feeling well. When I called out to him, he told me to leave, said he wasn't coming to dinner. I should have left, Jules. I should have listened to him but he was my friend and I knew something wasn't right. I took a step closer to his bed, and that was when I saw his gun, unholstered, resting on his chest."

I felt the tears welling in my eyes, I felt my skin crawling with fear, I felt completely incapable of offering Theo any sort of comfort knowing what he was about to tell me.

"When I took another step closer, he jumped from his bed and pointed it at me, but I didn't feel scared. He wasn't going to shoot me. It was Gabe. He was my friend. I asked him what he was doing. I started to think it was all some elaborate prank he and Jake devised. Jokingly, I told him to put his gun down, but he kept it raised. 'Please, just go back to dinner,' he said. There was an instant change in the atmosphere. Somehow, I suddenly realized it was no prank he was trying to pull. I asked him, gently that time, to lower his weapon, to talk to me. Instead, he kept it raised. His words and his voice clear in my head, they still do: 'I can't do it. I can't go out there tomorrow. I know what I'll have to do and I can't do it. I'm not cut out for this, T.' His voice shook as he spoke. He was scared, terrified of entering combat, terrified of the actions he knew he'd have to take."

Theo ran his hands over his face and then through his hair.

"'None of us are ready, but we'll get through it together. Just like basic training, just like everything else we've done.' But he just kept shaking his head at me."

At that point, Theo stood from his bed and began pacing back and forth in front of me, at times adding gestures to accompany his story.

"He finally turned his gun away from me, but instead of holstering it, he set the muzzle under his chin. I couldn't let him pull the trigger, Jules. All my brain could think to do was to  get the gun as far away from him as possible, to try to stop him in any way. My head told me to lunge towards him to try to take the gun, but when I did...when I did..." He stopped in his tracks, and his eyes snapped shut.

"When I did, he pointed the gun back at me. It happened so quickly, Jules. I heard the crack of the gun, and before I could fully understand what happened, I felt a pain rip through my chest that I didn't think was possible. I felt myself gasping for breath, like I couldn't get any air into my lungs. A warm pool of blood formed around me on the floor of our barracks, and before I could even attempt to call for help, I pried my eyes from my blood soaked hands in time to see him pull the trigger with the gun back under his chin. I didn't think it was possible to scream as loudly as I did, or maybe I was screaming in my head; everything went dark so quickly. The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital in Berlin."

What's the appropriate response to hearing someone divulge the darkest part of their history to you? I can assure that whatever it is, it wasn't what I was able to give Theo. All I was able to give him was silence; any words I wanted to say remained stuck in my throat.

Theo took the picture out of my lap, and took my hands to pull me up with him. He removed his shirt, grabbed my right hand, and set it on the patch of indented skin and scar tissue on his chest, just below his heart.

"This is where the bullet entered, by an act of God it missed my heart. If it had hit there, I wouldn't be standing here." He took my hand and placed it on the long incision line that wrapped around his ribs. He moved my hand along it until he had to turn his body. It was the first time I'd seen his bare back; the scar wrapped all the way to the middle of it, but there was no identical circular patch of damaged skin as there was on his chest.

"The bullet ripped through my lung, then got lodged in one of my ribs. They had to cut between two of them to remove both the bullet and an entire lobe of my left lung. I had to go through weeks of rehab after the surgery. They promised that so long as I worked hard, I'd feel as good as new, as if nothing ever happened. When I was finally able to take the physical test to rejoin the army, I couldn't pass it. The removal of part of my lung left me with a decreased breathing capacity. I couldn't prove that I could carry the weight I'd need to carry in the field and exert the level of physicality I'd need to keep up with everyone else. They told me I'd never be able to fill a combat position again. But that was just it; I'd never gotten to fill a combat position in the first place. It was all for nothing. I couldn't save Gabe and I couldn't serve my county. All of it, for nothing."

And that was when he broke down. His hands flew to cover his face, his body slumped into mine, and it was all I could do to hold his weight up and keep us both from crashing to the floor. I pulled him into his bed, held onto him with everything I had, and let the wave of emotion he was feeling pass over him.

When his body stopped shaking, when his breath stopped shuddering, when he finally became still, I slipped down in his bed so I'd be level with him.

"There was nothing you could have done differently, Theo. You have to accept that. You can't carry this unwarranted guilt around for the rest of your life."

"Aiden was right."

"What?"

"Aiden was right about me. When I came back, I soaked up everyone's time and attention because they were so worried about me. It makes sense that he felt left behind."

I wanted to strangle Aiden for saying the things he said. "No, Theo. You cannot take the blame for that. You don't control what other people do, what other people choose to spend their time worrying about. Your family was right to be concerned about you, Aiden needs to understand that."

"He didn't know what happened. Dad told him I was hit in the field. They told my younger sister that, too. Both of them were so young when it happened. They tried to shelter them. I've never had it in me to tell them the truth."

"That doesn't excuse Aiden for the words he used against you tonight. Theo, I know you hate this, but you need to talk to someone about these things. You need to work through them."

"I can talk to you." His voice took on a childlike quality that I'd never heard from him before.

"Of course you can, but I'm just a counselor, Theo. I'm not trained to help someone with—"

"I don't have PTSD."

"Theo—"

"No, Jules. I don't deserve that label, that diagnosis. I've never seen combat. I have no reason to claim it."

I grabbed his face with my hands and stared into his eyes. "What does combat have to do with anything? You were shot in the chest by your friend, you watched him kill himself, your life aspirations were ripped from you. You have to accept this, Theo. You have to accept this so you can get better."

"I'm fine, Jules. I just—"

"You're not fine. After what you've just told me, you think you're okay? When you've never talked about all of this to someone before, you think you're over it? I won't let you torment yourself with this for the rest of your life. I love you too much to allow you to do that."

"You...what?"

I hadn't meant to blurt it out in that moment, but I was done hiding my feelings for him. And for some reason, my body decided that the appropriate physical response was to start crying. "I love you, Theo, and I won't let you torture yourself with this. I won't let you suffer through these memories alone."

His thumbs worked tirelessly to swipe the tears falling from my eyes. "I love you, too, Jules." And as soon as my name left his lips, they were on mine. He didn't shower me with rushed or hungry kisses. Instead, his hands held both sides of my face as his lips rested firmly against mine.

And I felt more love for him than anyone else in my life. And I wanted to come clean about everything I'd been hiding from him, but the weight of his story was too heavy. How could I add the fact that I was still married to everything else he had swimming around in his brain? It had to wait, whether I wanted it to or not. I wouldn't add to his mental stress.

He pried his lips from mine and stared deeply into my eyes. His blue ones were so peaceful, so gentle, regardless of the horrors they had seen. In my heart I felt like he was too good for me, like I didn't deserve someone like him. I hoped he'd never make that realization.

"Thank you for listening to me."

"I'd do anything for you. I want you to be at peace."

"You're my peace, Jules." He pulled me into him, and my cheek rested against his bare chest. I let the sound of his heart lull me to sleep.

***

In the morning, things were quiet. Theo was quiet. It didn't take much for me to recognize that he was feeling unsettled about Aiden.

When he came back into his room from showering, he changed the sweater he was wearing three times. When he started to pull off the third one, I walked up to him and pulled the hem back down.

"Relax. You don't need to work things out with Aiden right when we get there. It'll be fine."

"I can't go through the entire day with some awkward tension between us. It needs to happen when we get there."

"Do you want to talk about what you want to say?"

Theo shook his head. "No. I'll figure it out. I don't want to sound rehearsed. It'll be better if we can manage something sincere." He bent down and left a kiss on my forehead. "You look beautiful, Jules."

I couldn't stop the small smile that formed on my lips. "Thanks. I'm not used to wearing something so causal for Thanksgiving dinner. You're sure it's okay?"

"You're wearing a dress. How is that causal?"

I starting picking at the hem of my own dress. "Well, yeah, I mean, it's a dress, but it's not a formal dress, like a gown or something."

"You used to wear gowns on Thanksgiving?" His eyebrows furrowed together.

"Thanksgiving for the Calhouns was basically a formal business dinner."

"That sounds fucking awful and like the complete opposite of what Thanksgiving is supposed to be."

I just shrugged my shoulders at him. "It's all I know."

Theo moved forward and tucked one of the waves of my hair behind my ear. "I love you."

I rested my cheek against his palm. "I love you, too."

***

The ride to Theo's parents' house was also silent. Regardless of him saying he didn't want to think about what he was going to say to Aiden, I knew Theo was running through different things to say to him in his head.

With a pumpkin pie in each of our hands (as the apples never even made it out of the grocery bag), we entered his parents' house, the scents of a festive feast greeting us at the door.

I followed Theo into the kitchen to set down the pies, and the moment the refrigerator door shut, there was a new presence in the room.

Aiden stood in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room. He looked tired, but not hungover at all. I guessed Dan had kept him from going out, too. I felt anger at him as he looked at us, and I knew I shouldn't, but he said terrible things to Theo, and I wasn't ready to forgive him.

The longer we all stood there in silence, the greater the level of awkwardness grew. Then, Aiden took the plunge.

"Um, T, can I talk to you out back?" One of his hands gripped the back of his neck; that nervous gesture must've run in the family.

Theo looked at me, and I took that as my cue that he was okay.

"Course."

I watched them walk out of the kitchen, Theo following Aiden, and prayed that the conversation would do more good than harm to their already tenuous relationship.

A/N: Please read this one.

1. I think the sacrifices our armed forces make are often overlooked. Can you imagine what it's like to literally have to fight for your life because you're defending the lives of others? I have the utmost respect for our soldiers, and when they come home, they often have an incredibly hard time getting the help they need, both physically and mentally, and I hope that changes in our imminent future.

2. I'd be willing to bet that everyone who is reading this has dealt with suicide in some way. Maybe it was a relative of yours, a friend, a coworker, possibly even someone at school who you may not have known, but was someone in your community. Maybe you've had suicidal thoughts yourself. If you suspect something, say something. If you are struggling yourself, reach out to someone. You are not alone, and there are people who want to help you, even if you don't believe that in the moment. Make the call: 1-800-273-8255. Save a life; even your own.

You know what my life source has been for the past few weeks? Coffee. So much coffee. All the coffee.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I hope I did Theo and others like him justice.

While this one aspect of the story may be mostly resolved, we've still got quite a few other issues to deal with 😬

Please vote and comment and chat with me! I hope you have a lovely week ❤️

-L