Rome (Marked Men #3)(43)
Author: Jay Crownover

Between one breath and the next, I was zoned out somewhere between being all the way asleep and awake. I couldn’t concentrate on the stupid movie and my mind just took a detour down a path I wished it hadn’t. Everything sort of just faded away and I was back to a day I relived over and over, it was a waking nightmare and I couldn’t stop the avalanche of memories as they free-falled on top of each other. I would have given everything I possessed to make it stop, to keep that particular day locked in a box where it couldn’t get to me anymore.

I had only been back from Pakistan for a few months, the twins were barely in their twenties, and I got word I was headed to Iraq. My folks were freaking out, everyone wanted me to leave the army after this deployment was over, but I was excited to go. Rule and Remy had moved out, Shaw was almost ready to graduate, and being at home alone with my folks was boring. There was only so much of “Rule is terrible, Remy is perfect, you’re a fool and could be doing something more important with your life” I could take.

I liked being in the army. I moved up the ranks fast. I was good with the other soldiers and had a natural talent for taking the lead. When I was home I was just the oldest brother of the twins. It was all always about the twins. Not that I didn’t love my brothers. Hell, I went to war to make sure they had a safe and secure world to live in, but it got old just being the guy whose job it was to keep Rule in check and to let Remy’s light shine. In the army I was Sergeant Archer. I was the one calling the shots. I was the one running missions and I had an entire platoon of men and women to keep safe, not just two boys who were opposite sides of the same troublemaking coin.

Mom insisted on a family dinner on my last night. I didn’t want to do it. Rule was always an ass to everyone, and something was going on between Remy and Shaw. They had an odd relationship anyway. They hardly ever touched, they acted more like girlfriends than a couple, and no matter how much they said they were just best friends, there was something more going on there, I just knew it. I also couldn’t figure out why when she thought no one was looking, Shaw was making goo-goo eyes at the wrong twin. It all seemed complicated and trivial compared to what I had been dealing with day in and day out, so I was not looking forward to it.

Dinner was as expected. Rule showed up with blue hair spiked up in every direction and sporting a black eye. Remy was distracted and evasive, while Shaw seemed sullen and out of sorts. I did what I always did and tried to play the middleman. I asked about Rule’s apprenticeship at the tattoo shop, I talked to Remy about his new job, and grilled Shaw about getting ready to start her freshman year at college. My folks let me be the intermediary, like they always did, while dropping not so subtle hints about how much I was missed around the homestead. It was irritating and annoying, but I powered through knowing I would be halfway around the world the same time tomorrow. We struggled through dinner and then Remy made excuses for him and Shaw to go. Something was happening there but neither of them seemed like they were in any hurry to share. The four of us walked outside after saying good night to my parents and stood in the driveway. Rule gave me a hug and then punched me in the gut.

“Be safe. I’ll miss your grouchy ass. Check your e-mail more this time when you’re gone.”

I ruffled his stupid hair and punched him back. “Try and stay out of jail while I’m gone.”

He snorted. “What’s the fun in that?”

Shaw rolled her eyes and hugged me.

“I love you. Please come home in one piece. I’ll send you a million care packages.”

Rule drawled, “Send him  p**n .” Which made her glare at him and started them off on a childish round of bickering.

Remy shook my hand and pounded me on the back. When he pulled back I swear I saw something move across those pale eyes. I wanted to sit on him and make him talk to me, but there wasn’t any time.

“Be safe. Take care of yourself, Rome. This family couldn’t function without you.”

I laughed it off because he was the golden son. He was the one we all wanted to be like. I inclined my head toward where Rule and Shaw were standing and arguing still.

“I’ll take care of me, you take care of them. Try and keep your idiot other half out of trouble.”

He just smiled somewhat sadly. “Which one?”

“Both of them.”

We all hugged again and I went back inside. The next morning I was back on my way to a different desert and all of it was just mindless chatter that I forgot all about. I hit the ground running, went into mission-critical mode and under total blackout as soon as I landed. I was doing reconnaissance with a spec ops team for nearly two weeks before I had any kind of contact with the base.

They had been trying to reach me out in the field for three days before they managed to find someone that could relay a critical message from home.

Remy was dead.

There was an accident. He crashed his car on the interstate and hadn’t made it. I was being granted only a few days’ leave to get home for the funeral and then was expected back in proper fighting condition.

I felt like someone had stuck a serrated knife right through the center of my chest.

Remy was the good one, the best of the three of us. He was kind, he was loving, he was careful, and there was no way he was the one of us that was going to die before his time. Rule was going to get shot by an angry boyfriend or piss off the wrong meat head at a bar. I was going to step on a land mine or get taken out by enemy fire. There was no way it was Remy’s time.

I flew back in a daze. I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. I was numb. I think that was how I missed my mom going from being just distant and snappy to Rule into totally arctic freeze-out mode. We were all sinking into a well of grief and despair for our own reasons and there was no way any of us could offer the others a hand out.

All I could think was that I hadn’t even told him how much I loved him before I left. I had ordered him to take care of Rule, always told him to watch out for his more difficult brother, but never said anything about how amazing and impressed I was with the man he had become. I never let him know I might have been his hero, but he was mine. The regret that I squandered the last minutes I had with him was a bitter pill that I never managed to swallow. Add in the fact that I knew something was going on with him, something I needed to make him talk to me about, and a chunk of my heart, a part of my soul, went into the ground with him.

I went back to the desert without talking to my parents, without being able to look Rule in the eye because it hurt too bad to see Remy’s eyes looking back at me. Every night for the next year, no matter what mission I was on, no matter what barracks I was in, no matter what part of the sandbox they sent me to, I went to bed at night thinking about everything I would do over again if I could. I had seen a lot of death in my line of work; it always sucked and it was always hard to forget, but nothing woke me up in the middle of the night with tears running down my face like the memory of those last wasted seconds with my brother.