"You're as safe as a mountain,
But know that I am dynamite"
- Sigrid, "Dynamite"
Chapter Twenty-Four
I'd been so sure his walls were indestructible—but I was wrong. Stone barriers came crashing down, burying me in rubble as I tried to get my bearings. He'd actually answered.
Who was this stranger in the driver's seat, his voice thick with emotion?
This wasn't Sterling, who stood with walls higher than I could climb; who'd let me steal glimpses of his real self on rare occasions the barricade was slightly lowered.
This wasn't Reed, who'd sat in dauntingly thoughtful silence across from me and worked on a puzzle, who'd made me coffee and dinner, who'd played with my dog and argued with me over the answers to crossword puzzles.
This was someone in the middle—someone forced into the gap between the two, a vulnerable area of clashing polarities. The place where oil and water greeted each other like old friends and agreed to bend the laws keeping them apart.
I don't know if I can meet you there, but I want to. I think I'd like who I was in that space between.
I couldn't believe he was willing to admit there was something more behind his hesitation; something more than a doubt in quality or a doubt of intentions.
My voice rose as I offered to meet him in the middle. "I'm trying to understand."
His eyes refused to look at me, refused to invite me any further. My heart threatened to ache as much as my bones.
"I can't always protect the people I help," he quietly clarified.
"You're afraid of losing someone."
Pieces were clicking together, and I was getting a better picture of the man beside me. Our past conversations were expanding as clarity cast them in a new light.
He tried to retreat. It was expected, but still hurtful. "It's unprofessional to get close."
I wasn't going to let him slither out of this; he didn't get to brush me off. I'd realized there was a final piece missing, like the one still in my pocket. "No, it's not just clients. You don't get close to anyone. Something happened, didn't it?"
He didn't answer.
"What happened?" I continued in his silence.
Something had happened to him—I felt it in every structured cell still singing with pain, right down to every molecule that composed my being. I saw it in his face. "You said I deserve answers."
He grappled with his truth, but he relented, turning the hazards on and pulling the car off the empty, soaked road. I stilled in my seat, waiting in trepidation for an explanation.
Something, anything to explain him. Explain that crease in his brow that never smooths, the eyes that never stop watching. The heart that never welcomes another.
"I was new," he began, his fingers tight, and body stiff. "I was recruited for Greystone right out of college, but I hadn't even wanted the job. I was just boots on the ground."
My eyebrows rose in surprise, creasing my own forehead as shock settled in. My voice reflected my incredulity. "You didn't want to work for Greystone?"
"We all have dreams," he reminded. His face twisted in a wry smile, but he didn't offer any more information. I didn't ask; it was a conversation for another day.
"My first assignment was with Alpha team. It was a high-profile international job, a foreign politician wanting American security on top of his existing teams. It was a short assignment, forty-eight hours max. Get in, do the job, get out."
The rain was still pounding, but it felt like white noise as I listened to him. He was slipping into his stony, factual persona, but I let him. I watched him try to distance himself from the pain by twisting into the militant man he was when we'd first met. It was easier to recount a mission summary than admit awfulness was a personal experience.
"What was the job?"
One of his hands released its iron grip on the wheel and fell to his knee. He rubbed his leg absentmindedly; I scolded my twitching fingers for wanting to reach out and soothe.
"A birthday party." His voice fell quiet. "His son's fourth birthday party."
My breath caught as dread settled. I knew where this story could lead; I knew his eyes told me there wasn't a happy ending, whatever it was. I wasn't sure I wanted to hear the rest, but I would — I would hear it for him. We all had stories that demanded to be heard sooner or later; we all had stories we could bury, but would eventually deteriorate our wellbeing, festering deep inside. Deeper than we could erase.
"Alexei's dad wasn't a well-liked person. He was a controversial politician, but we'd known that, and we'd prepared for it. We'd locked everything down, searched every guest, examined every gift." His hand pressed into his leg, pushing hard on a specific spot. "Or we thought we did."
"Reed."
His name was a wisp of air as it fell softly from my lips. He kept going, his fingers digging into his leg.
"I was patrolling the grounds, and I knew something was off when I saw him. He didn't look like any of the other parents."
"What happened?"
"I confronted him, but it was too late. We ended up in the courtyard, and he got a round off before I took him down."
"He shot someone?" I gasped.
"I don't know how he got on the grounds, we had everything secured. And I was lucky I saw him at all. I'd been patrolling the south perimeter, and he came from the west. It hadn't made sense. He couldn't have gotten in that way, the west side had monitored security fences, and Alpha team was stationed on all sides. But no one saw a thing. It was like he was a ghost."
Reed's focus drifted as he spoke. It was obvious he was slipping into a familiar space, a memory he revisited often, driven by a lack of answers and still haunting him all these years later.
"What happened?" I asked urgently. Reed blinked and turned, looking dazed. He didn't answer the question, but instead kept going further into his spiraling guilt.
"And then it happened again, two weeks ago. No one saw a thing, yet somehow someone got through us. You almost got hurt. I thought it was a one-off all those years ago, a fluke due to glitchy cameras, or a fault of the politician's independent security. Something like that," he admitted hoarsely. "I thought Greystone was the best."
"Reed," I breathed. He didn't let me finish, the walls still tumbling down, the cracks spreading faster than I could keep up with.
"I couldn't protect Alexei, and I couldn't protect you."
"Alexei?" I asked sharply, drawn back to his story. "What happened to Alexei?"
"I took the target down, but Alexei saw everything. I couldn't protect him from what he saw. I didn't know he'd come outside, he was looking for some toy to show his friends, I didn't know," he begged me to understand.
Help me see.
"I don't understand. What did Alexei see? Did someone get shot?"
"A little kid should never see someone get shot," he continued, still a million miles away. "I should've protected him from that."
"You said the target fired before you took him down," I said slowly, waiting for him to fill in the blanks. I didn't want to rush him, but I was missing something, and it felt important. "Who'd he shoot?"
Reed didn't answer. My eyes lowered to where he rubbed and gripped his leg subconsciously, like rubbing an old wound.
"Reed Sterling, are you telling me you got shot?" I burst, the pieces clicking.
"Leg wound. Through and through, but Alexei saw everything. A four-year-old kid celebrating his birthday, and I couldn't protect him from having to see that. No one should ever have to see that."
"You took down the target after getting shot?" It was my turn to be dazed. Reed was focusing on all the wrong things. "You were only what... twenty-two?"
"He never should've seen any of it. He was four years old," Reed repeated. "I couldn't protect him from what he saw, and one day I might not be able to protect somebody from something much worse. It was a paycheck, and then suddenly it was real — there was a bullet in my leg and a four-year-old in therapy."
I didn't know that version of him, the one sitting next to me in the middle of nowhere, afraid of who else might get a bullet. Or maybe I was wrong, and the shades all belonged to the same color.
"You did your job," I insisted. I hoped to ground him back to reality. His perspective was terribly flawed. "You took the target down before he could hurt Alexei. You got freaking shot to protect him and his family. You did protect him."
Reed shook his head. "I still don't know how he got through that day, and then it happened again. I failed again. I failed you and everyone else at Mr. Cruz's party. It was my job to keep the guests safe — to keep you safe."
He was back in that courtyard, drowning in guilt when he did nothing wrong. He was back at Cruz's house, grappling with the crippling familiarity of a party gone wrong. He wasn't in the car with me anymore; he was buried under the remains of his walls, and I wasn't going to let him suffocate.
"Look at me."
"I might not always be able to protect who I need to. So I keep my distance." He stared blankly out the windshield. "I can't let myself be compromised. If I get too close, I risk my focus... I risk their safety."
It was all starting to make sense. I'd been feeling on edge, alert, paranoid, and so much more since the party — but he felt those all the time. It was his job to feel that. I'd spent a few weeks buckling under the pressure, but he'd spent years. He was Atlas holding the weight of the world, afraid what would happen if he surrendered.
"Look at me," I demanded louder. My hand grasped his on its own accord, forcing his fingers to let go of the wheel and wrap around mine instead. His hand gripped instinctually.
"I am afraid," he breathed, eyes flooded with an overwhelming fear. I'd had my breakdown in a driveway, but Reed was having his right there. "I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you. I'm sorry I let myself get too close."
"Look at me, Reed."
"I can't be distracted. I can't do it."
My fingers wrapped around his jaw, gently forcing his head to turn. His eyes finally found mine.
I saw the hurt, the freshly reopened wound from all those years ago. I saw the jagged edges that'd been ripped open again, Cruz's party having triggered a memory he'd tried so hard to forget. A memory of a perceived failing, of a terrible burden he'd forced himself to shoulder alone. He'd been chased by that event for years, then forced to face it again, to look for answers just out of his reach in a rinse-and-repeat cycle of agonizing dissatisfaction.
It made sense why he didn't want to get close to me, why he didn't trust me, why he was so focused on the job. He thought he'd failed to protect Alexei from the world, then felt he'd failed me. He didn't want to get hurt if something happened.
If someone got hurt. If I got hurt.
"You can't avoid getting close to someone because you're afraid of what might happen. It's not your job to protect me from everything. If you don't get close to me because I'm a client, fine. If it's truly because it's unprofessional, then fine!" I spoke low and firm, unflinchingly holding his eyes. "But don't hide because you're afraid of something that hasn't even happened yet."
I said yet. Do I believe something will happen?
"You don't get to feel guilty about things out of your control," I continued. "You had no control over what happened today — because you are not responsible for my actions."
His eyes dilated as they stared back, stunned, but I wasn't finished.
"You don't get to apologize for the past week. I wouldn't trade a single minute I spent with you, no matter how much danger you think you put me in, because I know you didn't. You kept me safe, and you did it even when I treated you like crap. So no, you don't get to apologize for showing me who you are."
We sat, frozen, holding the other's eyes. He didn't respond.
"Do you understand?" My thumb rubbed his jaw ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly. I hardly noticed I still held him.
"Yes," he breathed.
Our roles had been reversed; his vulnerability crashed over us as my unyielding determination kept us from drowning. Previously buried parts of ourselves were being simultaneously exposed to the other person in a show of trust neither of us probably deserved yet. His chest was rapidly rising and falling, filling the space between us; my heart was beating way too fast. My hand didn't move. It couldn't move.
Do you understand what I'm trying to say?
My name tumbled from his lips.
"You don't have to be strong all the time," my own murmured.
I don't know what I'm doing, but I won't let myself ruin this. I don't know where this is coming from, but I won't stop.
"Your life depends on it," he reminded. His eyes flickered dangerously. I smiled; I'd heard the unspoken words in his reminder.
"Maybe... but you're more than a job."
The original title of the giant chapter was "You Don't Get to Apologize", which was given to chapter twenty-four when it was split. Twenty-three got a new title that is parallel to an earlier chapter!
When I was writing this, I wondered how many people were going to think I was foreshadowing a car crash in the rain. Sorry, my foreshadowing is a little more subtle! (But it's definitely there... hiding in plain sight).
Also, how many thought the kid was done for? Come on, that's too predictable. Trauma and PTSD do not require death either. Not to mention the haunting what-ifs that can inflict as much damage as the event. On a related note, wow, these two have had a day. Can't blame either of them for their break downs/throughs. And the big revelation that it's happened before! Drop your theories below, I love hearing them.
I'm realizing music has such a large impact on my writing (as if I don't attach songs and song lyrics to every chapter). I write while listening to playlists (including an ILAD one), and I do think the songs make a difference! Maybe it's time to turn up the Taylor Swift for a little bit, especially after that ending... would you agree?
Please vote, share, and comment!
- H