Purple Hearts(80)

Okay. I took a deep breath. Up the stairs we go. Here we go. This is us going.

By the time I made it through the door, I was digging in my purse for the granola bar, my knees shaking.

Luke was still up.

“Are you okay?”

I flopped on the couch next to him, still digging. “Fucking purse,” I muttered. “It’s a health hazard.”

The shivers were getting bigger. Black started to rim my vision. I’ve been so good at keeping it level, I told my gut. Come on.

“Goddammit.” I hadn’t realized my hands had stopped digging. They were just hanging limp in the purse, cold.

“Cassie?”

My head was getting too heavy. It dropped forward. I picked it up. It dropped backward. I picked it up.

Luke got up. I heard him digging in the bathroom.

Then I didn’t hear anything.

Blackness.

I felt a glucose pack on my lips.

“There you go,” Luke was saying. “It’s on your tongue. Move your tongue, Cass. There you go.”

I felt the cool gel fall into my throat. I swallowed, involuntarily. The ceiling came into view.

“That’s it,” he said. “Stay with me.”

“I’m here,” I said, and moved my head to a more comfortable surface, which happened to be Luke’s shoulder. Mittens licked my hand, warm and sticky.

“How long does it take to work?”

“About twenty minutes. I’m just going to rest here. Is that okay?”

“Absolutely. It’s your couch.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, and let out something like a laugh. His heart was pounding, rapid fire. “You okay?”

“Your face was just sort of . . . gone. Blank. Scared the shit out of me.” He touched my head with his hands, moved them to my cheek.

I sat up to look at him.

The fear in his eyes was attached to something else, something deeper—the feeling that needs to be there in order for someone to be scared of losing someone else.

I recognized it. I had felt it that day when he left my car and went walking the first time. Fear of losing him attached to—what? Attached to what?

I laid my head back on his chest and went toward the fear. We were already there, in a way, and when you get near death twice in one night, once in fear for my mother, once in fear for myself, you don’t feel like you have much to lose.

“Were you there when Frankie died?”

Luke was quiet. Mittens put her head on Luke’s thigh.

“Yes.”

He’d told me that Frankie’d gotten hit, that they were on the same mission, but I wasn’t sure how close. I wasn’t sure if it had been news, or firsthand knowledge.

Luke continued, “I guess, you mean, did I see his body?”

“Yes. That’s what I mean. Is that too morbid? You don’t have to talk about it.” I wasn’t sure why I was so curious, but I supposed there was some part of me that was still in denial, the part that saw him among faces in the street sometimes. Are we sure he didn’t just run away and find another way home?

“It was so quiet. We were talking about fucking Pokémon cards.” He paused. “Wow, I’ve never been able to remember what we were talking about.”

“Pokémon? Really?”

“Yeah. We were riding in the jeep, routine scouting near the dam. Rooster was saying that Charizard was the best, and Frankie was arguing with him. He was saying Lugia was the best Pokémon because it was the guardian of the sea. And then bullets started to hit, and someone, I can’t remember who, signaled for us to get out. Which was so stupid. We shouldn’t have gotten out.”

Luke’s voice was passing through his chest as he spoke, to my cheek. I could almost hear the words before they came out of his mouth. “Then what?” I asked.

“Then, well. I was at the end of the jeep, toward the headlights, and Frankie and Rooster were on the sides, and I got hit in the leg, and both of them got hit.”

I felt a wetness in my hair. He wiped his nose. I stayed quiet.

“I got down and pulled Frankie’s body toward me to make sure. Checked his pulse. Closed his eyes for him.”

I felt lucky to have last seen Frankie laughing, blowing a kiss. That I didn’t have to see him that way. “That was good of you.”

“Yeah. But, you know.” His chest expanded as he laughed. “Those were his last words. ‘Lugia is the best Pokémon because it’s the guardian of the sea.’?”

I laughed with him, fuller this time, now that more of my energy was coming back. “That’s so Frankie. It’s perfect.”

“It is. It is.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “I just wish that I had told everyone not to get out. But I was a private, you know? You were supposed to trust your captain.”

I lifted my chin, looking at him. “You did the only thing you could have done.”

“Maybe.” His eyes had become more silver, the traces of tears still attached to the lashes. I wondered if his irises always did that when he cried.

He leaned closer. I knew why, and I knew what was unsaid. His lips found mine, soft and slow. I closed my eyes. Safe, I remember thinking. I feel safe.

Then a hunger burst through it, and I took his shoulders, pulling him closer. He didn’t resist, putting his hands around my waist, pressing, pulling the fabric of my shirt into his fists.