Beyond the Point(98)
Dani couldn’t remember how many soccer games she’d played after that. Five? Ten? The following year, she’d told her parents she didn’t want to play soccer anymore. She’d explained she wanted to try basketball instead.
The ceiling of Dani’s apartment in Notting Hill blurred, distorted by the hot tears in her eyes. At first, she didn’t know why that memory had come to her mind. But now, she knew.
Had those parents not singled her out—had they not shouted their hate—she would never have played basketball. And if she hadn’t played basketball, she would never have attended West Point.
The dominoes that put her on her back, grieving for Tim and for Hannah, had been put into play far before she’d ever signed some document for Coach Jankovich. For some people, that lack of control might have made them angry with God. But for Dani, she finally felt like she saw her life with clarity for the very first time.
What if the only reason she’d attended West Point was to be available for Hannah, when she needed a friend like Dani most? What if it took all the injuries and the pain and the sacrifices they’d made simply to forge a friendship that could withstand even this?
Dani had earned more frequent-flier miles in the last two years than she would ever know what to do with. But now, without thinking, Dani pulled up an airline website on her computer and cashed several thousand in.
She was going home.
26
November 16, 2006 // Fort Bragg, North Carolina
A week after she spoke to Noah’s fiancée, Avery still hadn’t gotten out of bed. A stomach bug was going around the unit, which had made it easier to call in sick, stay in bed, and throw up occasionally. It wasn’t a total lie; Noah was a virus and she had to get him out of her system.
Her room was a disaster area, covered in tissues and water glasses filled to varying levels—most of the contents dusty and undrinkable from sitting on the nightstand for three days’ time. Her cell phone sat in the corner, turned off, so she wouldn’t be tempted to call him. Laundry grew in piles around the room, stinking with dried sweat from the punishing ruck march she’d made her platoon complete for no other reason than she could. She had no energy left for running. No desire to take Bosco on a backwoods trail. All she could bring herself to do was sleep, wake up, remember that she’d wasted more than a year of her life on a liar, and then turn over and go back to sleep.
The puzzle pieces fell into place in Avery’s mind, each one a crude reminder that she was an idiot, unfit for love. Red flag number one: the first question out of his mouth had been whether or not she was married. Red flag number two: he rarely explained where he was going, or for how long, or why. Red flag number three: she’d never been to his apartment, never met his parents. Red flag number four: at Thanksgiving, she’d known he was lying about talking to his mother, and had looked up their flight online and seen it was not, in fact, delayed. Red flag number five: Did she need five red flags? Really?
If she was honest with herself, really honest—if she listened to her actual heart and not the heart that she wished existed—if she got in touch at that level, then she’d known all along he was lying, or at least that something was wrong. But even now, she preferred to live in a world where he wasn’t lying and did love her. That was her first question. Did he ever really love her?
Maybe he did. It was possible to love two people at the same time, Avery knew. But from the beginning, he had kept a part of himself hidden from her. For that reason, they’d never had a real chance. And the worst part about it, the part that made Avery pull the sheets up over her head and cry so hard she thought her eyes might fall out, was that he hadn’t really wanted them to have a chance. He’d just wanted . . . what?
That was her second question. How did he think it was going to end?
Noah’s fiancée hadn’t sounded angry or bitter on the phone. She hadn’t cussed or threatened. She’d just stated the facts.
“I know about you and Noah,” she’d said. “And it needs to stop.”
“I didn’t know,” Avery had said, her voice trembling. “I truly—truly—didn’t know.”
Avery wondered how Noah’s fiancée had found out. Was it the receipt for their hotel room in Napa last summer? Or the smell of her perfume on his clothes? The calmness of her voice, the reservation, had set Avery on edge. Had Noah done this before? Was this the cyclical pattern of their relationship—their engagement—with him constantly running, and her constantly bringing him home?
She got up from her bed and went to the toilet to throw up once more. Why did this keep happening to her? That was her third and final question.
Avery became her own judge and jury, and the conviction came swift. All the things John Collins’s lawyer had said during the court-martial came back to her mind. She’d worn her dress gray uniform for her testimony, as she’d been told to do, and tried to keep her eyes away from John Collins’s expressionless face as he sat next to his team of lawyers—four in total. His hair was cut short and tidy. And his eyes, bright green, followed the lead defense lawyer as he paced in front of the witness stand.
“Ms. Adams, you had a consensual sexual relationship with my client, isn’t that correct?” the lawyer began.
“Yes.”
“And you enjoyed these sexual liaisons?”