Beyond the Point(57)
In that way, Major Gaines’s top-secret project had come at the exact right time. She needed a distraction from normalcy because normal—in the real world—sucked. Josh hadn’t called. He hadn’t written. Not even an e-mail. Not even a text message. But for months, she’d checked the mailbox extra carefully, imagining he might drop a love note in the mail in some grand romantic gesture to win her back. As if guys did shit like that anymore.
Every time, the stack of mail looked exactly the same—coupons, advertisements, People magazine. Her life had become like that pile of junk mail. Perfectly, absolutely unremarkable. It made her itch. And it made her run.
In addition to the PT workouts she did with her soldiers on post, Avery had taken up running again, nearly as intensely as she’d trained in high school. She logged fifteen, twenty, sometimes thirty miles a week, at night and on the weekends. She needed to sign up for a race, because at least then she could justify the amount of time she was spending in her running shoes. It was better to have a goal than to run with no destination. And that’s how it had felt to Avery lately—like she was running fast with nowhere to go.
IN THEIR LAST meeting, Major Gaines had looked over Avery’s final binder of plans with a surprised nod of approval and handed it back to her.
“The fact that I’m entrusting this to someone so junior should feel really good, Lieutenant Adams,” he’d said. “This could be big for your career.”
She knew he was probably full of shit—just trying to psych her up for a job that was going to dominate her life. But she’d taken his words to heart. Achievement in the Army was about all she could take home to impress her parents at the moment. When she’d explained how she’d be spending the New Year at Christmas, her father had grunted.
“As long as you’re not deploying for Bush’s ridiculous personal vendetta in Iraq,” he’d said. “Fine by me.”
“It’s not a vendetta, Dad,” Avery had said, surprised that she was taking up for a president who’d never earned her vote. “Saddam Hussein is a horrible guy.”
“The world is full of horrible guys, Avery,” her father had replied.
She hated to admit it, but every day, as men came home from deployments with combat patches stuck to their uniforms, Avery had started to worry that her empty sleeve looked weak in the hallways of their offices. More than a year had passed since she’d graduated from West Point, and most of her classmates had deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, or, like Hannah and Tim, at least had a date on the calendar. With every passing month, the fuzzy square on Avery’s uniform sleeve felt more and more like a barren garden plot: no fruit to show for her labor.
Shaking that thought from her mind, Avery marched diagonally across a field of grass, toward the tool shed.
“One, two, three, one!”
“One, two, three, two!”
Her eyes roamed from the ground in front of her to the bearded men finishing a training workout to her right. Eight men in a semicircle had dropped to the ground to complete a round of push-ups.
Gaines had been pretty clear with his instructions: get in, get out, and don’t let anyone know you were there. It had taken Avery about 3.4 seconds to break those rules.
The lean, blond-haired man leading the workout wasn’t tall—five foot nine at best. But he was barrel chested, with a gold beard and calf muscles that looked like steaks. Sweat glistened on his bare shoulders as he pressed into the ground, like someone had oiled him up for a photo shoot. He had a sleeve of tattoos on his right arm that spilled onto his chest. His face attracted the sun and shadows in a way that accentuated his beard, his straight nose, his gray eyes. Avery felt her insides go weak as he stood, hands on hips, and locked his eyes on hers.
They’d been doing this every day now for a week.
Avery quickly ducked into the tool shed, closed the door behind her, and tried to catch her breath. Holy shit, she laughed to herself. She stared at a wall of wrenches, wires, and cables. What was it she needed, again?
The one thing she didn’t need was another failed attraction. Heartbreak always pushed Avery into a cave of isolation, and after the whole debacle with Josh had imploded, she’d vowed to be single forever. Relationships didn’t work for her the way they did for everyone else. She was either too trusting and got burned, or too suspicious and exhausted the guy’s patience. She either acted too serious and scared the guy away, or acted too cool, leaving the guy confused about her commitment.
At times, the psychologist in Avery wondered if her issues stemmed back to high school. She’d been just fourteen years old when Matt Maloney, a senior, had spotted her in the high school cafeteria. After a few weeks of flirtation, he’d invited her to his house, where he’d carefully and patiently taught her how their bodies were designed to fit together. And then, two months later, Avery had crawled broken into her bed, the physical pain of his betrayal and disregard too heavy for her to stand up straight. Days later, her mother sat on the edge of her bed, stroking her daughter’s cheek until she’d finally stopped crying.
“Don’t you ever let a little shit do that to you again,” her mother had said.
It was the most profound profanity her mother had ever spoken. And it was what Avery had repeated to Hannah when Tim cheated—only Hannah ended up marrying the little shit. Hannah may have forgiven Tim for his unfaithfulness, but Avery never would.