Warrior (First to Fight #1)(17)

I shake my head at the both of them. “There’s no way in hell I’m naming him Arthur, Dad. And I only promised her that because she said she would get me a convertible for my sixteenth birthday. Considering I got a ten-year-old sedan, I believe that promise is null and void.”

“The hell it is,” Dad sputters. “I won’t have any grandson of mine named some frou-frou name.”

“It won’t be a frou-frou name, Dad.”

“Damn right it won’t.”

“Because she’s going to name him Jack.”

I sigh. “I’m not naming him Jack or Arthur, so get it out of your heads right now.”

“Then what are you going to name him?”

I blush furiously and stare at my toes.

“Oh God,” Jack scoffs, giving me a disgusted look. “You’re going to name him after Ben aren’t you?”

When I don’t respond, both my dad and Jack groan.

“I can’t believe you’d name him after that dick face and not your own brother!”

“Hey!” I say. “He’s your friend!”

“Which gives me the right to tell you he’s a dick face and that Ben is a shitty name.”

“It is not. Stop being an ass.”

“Hmmm,” Dad says. “Benjamin. Benny. I like that.”

“I was thinking something like Benjamin Cole. Maybe call him Cole?”

Dad smiles at me and throws an arm around my shoulders. “Benjamin Cole it is. God help us all if your mother kicks all of our asses when we join her in heaven.”

After they leave, the lighthearted feeling goes with them. The darkness and uncertainty presses around me like a thick noxious cloud. Doubt and fear crowd the bed as I lay my head down to sleep. I wrap myself in second guesses and what ifs.

What I didn’t tell my Dad was that there is a one in five chance the baby won’t survive the first procedure. That there’s a chance the three surgeries won’t make a difference and he’ll still require a heart transplant before his fifth birthday. After the transplant, he’ll still have to be on preventative medicine to make sure that his little body doesn’t reject the new heart.

The first procedure will have to be done before he’s two weeks old. Two weeks and he’ll have to have heart surgery. How am I going to deal with that? How does any mother deal with that?

Hot tears seep from my eyes and soak my pillow. I grab my phone and the glow lights up my bedroom. I tap out a desperate email to Ben, hoping for some kind of connection. Any kind of connection that will pull me from the hole I’m sinking into.

I hit send, but I fall asleep while waiting for the reply I’m afraid will never come.





THE FRIGID COLD seeps through the material of my gear, no matter how many layers I wrap myself in. I fumble in my pocket for the only thing that’s kept me sane the last four months. The photo is beyond crumpled now, with a smattering of age lines snaking over its surface. Despite the tattered quality, it doesn’t diminish the immediate calming effect its subject has on me.

My gloved finger traces over the miniature of Olivia’s smile and it warms me from the inside out. Soon. Only five more months and then a year at my last duty station and I’ll be back home. This time for good. And this time I won’t be leaving until Olivia is a permanent fixture in my bed. And in my life.

I fold the picture along the deep grooves and tuck it safely away, both literally and figuratively.

I readjust my legs and hope that my socks weren’t completely soaked through from the ruck across the stream. The last thing I need is a case of foot funk to accompany the raging headache from the two days without sleep and the frozen ass thing I’ve got going on. The only food I’ve got left in my pack is an MRE, one that I’ve been putting off eating because I’d almost rather die than eat the beans and 4 Dicks of Death. They’ve long since stopped looking like beef links and smell like someone’s junk that hasn’t had a shower in weeks. Maybe years. I inhale them, chewing quickly so it spends the least amount of time near my taste buds. It doesn’t help. They really do taste like death. And janky dicks.

The wind howls in the distance and I hope we aren’t assaulted by yet another dust storm. The beard I’ve grown and the cloth across my face protects me somewhat, but that shit gets into everything.

“Hey, No-Heart!” comes a call from a ditch on the other side of the hillside where we’re camped out for the foreseeable future.

“The f*ck you want?” I answer through a smile.

Scott Greene was attached to our unit with the local group of Marines. And his name suited him in every way because he’s fresh out of boot camp. It always surprises me to see kids barely out of high school out here. I’d saved his ass on more than one occasion yet the younger guys had taken to calling me No-Heart because of my so-called “ruthless nature.”

“Got anything left in that MRE?” Greene asks.

I smile and wave a packet at him. “Sure do. I got some crackers if you want ‘em.”

The other guys start smirking and laughing, but Greene is too busy belly-crawling up the hill. “Fuck, I’m hungry. Toss ‘em up, would ya?”

“Sure,” I tell him and pretend to toss the packet before stopping. “But, you can only have them under one condition.”