Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
I didn’t feel it because all I ever felt was pain. Pure, agonizing guilt stripped me limb from limb with every undeserved breath I took.
I couldn’t do it anymore.
It had to end.
My existence was nothing but an insult to their memory.
I wanted somebody to yell. To berate me for all the ways I’d failed. I needed somebody—anybody—to hate me as much as I hated myself. Instead, I got pats on the back and a chain of command who called me a hero.
A hero. Imagine that. I’d all but killed four men who would have died to protect me, and I was a hero for what? Surviving?
Friends and family gave me hugs, tears filling their eyes as they droned on about how thankful they were that I’d come home. Bullshit. I shouldn’t have come home at all. That support team should have left me buried in the rubble of that building, letting the birds pick away at my carcass as death took its time draining the life from my body.
The doctors called it survivor’s guilt. The loss of purpose, the constant replaying of events, the detachment, and isolation. They were probably right. But I couldn’t feel anything else.
It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I’d filed for divorce. Letting Gwen go had felt like ripping away the fibers that connected my body to my soul. But when she was with me, when she touched me, it seared like a branding iron, scarring me from the inside out, because in those moments, with her holding me as though she could keep me from falling apart, nothing actually hurt at all. And that was wrong on levels outsiders couldn’t even pretend to comprehend.
I didn’t deserve a reprieve.
I didn’t deserve her.
I didn’t even deserve a final escape, either, but I couldn’t take it anymore.
I stared down at the pills, a concoction that would finally make the world right again—a world without me in it. I waved at myself—one last goodbye for the road—and then lifted the pills to my mouth, ready and eager.
Only death never showed. It sent something far more frightening in its place—reality.
“Daddy,” she called from somewhere in the distance.
My whole body jolted, a wave of panic consuming me as my vision snapped into clarity, bringing the world outside of my mind into sharp focus.
Kaitlyn?
Oh, God.
Kaitlyn.
What day was it? Tuesday? Shit. No. I looked down at my watch. Jesus, how long had I been standing there?
It was Wednesday. My Wednesday. Six p.m. to be exact.
I was supposed to be watching our daughter.
I was supposed to be keeping her safe.
Bile crawled up the back of my throat as I thought about what she would have found if I’d convinced myself to take those pills just a few hours earlier.
Shame sliced through me like a jagged knife, leaving wounds so deep they throbbed with every heartbeat. I looked back at the mirror, finding the same hollow eyes, the same unkept beard, the same question rolling from my tongue. “Who the fuck are you?”
That selfish bastard didn’t bother to reply.
“Daddy?” she repeated.
Glancing around the bathroom, I frantically tried to find somewhere to hide the pills while using my free hand to dry my eyes. “Hey, baby. I’m in here,” I called.
In the distance, I heard her yell. “He’s here! Bye, Mom. I love you.”
I couldn’t hear Gwen’s reply, but that was probably for the best. No use in adding salt to the gaping wound I carried in my chest.
I dumped the trail mix of narcotics into the toilet, flushing just before sprinting from the room.
Pausing in the hallway, I shook my arms out, trying to quit trembling. I cleared my throat, plastered on a smile as if I hadn’t just been ready to end my life, and stepped around the corner. “Hey, pretty girl!”
She was still in the process of kicking her shoes off and shedding her backpack, ready for school the next day. When her gaze finally made it to mine, she stilled. “Were you crying?”
I chuckled, praying it sounded more genuine than it felt. “Who? Me? No way.”
She watched me from across the room, not running to me like she would have only a few months earlier. But things had changed. I’d changed. Her life had changed. She’d lost her beloved uncle. Her parents were in the middle of a divorce. She’d been ripped away from her home and moved to an apartment a few towns over.
And what? I was going to make her life harder by adding the loss of her father to that list?
Take my pain and transfer it to her? Saddle her with the childhood trauma I’d vowed to protect her from?
The day she was born, I’d sworn to be a better father to her than my own had been to me. He’d been shit at the whole fatherhood thing, but at least he was alive. Jesus, what the hell was wrong with me? I’d been so damn focused on what I didn’t deserve that I’d lost sight of what she did deserve—everything.