The Brightest Stars

“He was in his front yard, waving a gun around in the air. He told me he didn’t deserve to live.” The words tore through Kael. I could feel it. I felt everything he felt on top of my own emotions. My back was close to breaking from the weight of it all.

“He told me he was a monster. A monster. Gabriel Mendoza thinks he’s a monster? If he is, we’re all fucking Satan himself.” Kael’s voice was creeping into the darkness that made me split in two. Half of me was terrified that this was going to swallow him whole. He needed me to pull him out of this quicksand, but how could I when I didn’t know who or what to believe. I knew both of them were pulling at me, using me as a pawn to hurt the other. Even if it wasn’t premeditated on Kael’s part—and I honestly couldn’t imagine it being true—I couldn’t completely dismiss it either. There were still lies. Lots of lies.

“Karina, honey. You know right from wrong. You may not think I’ve been the best father to you and your brother, but you know that I would do anything for you and for the soldiers under my command. I’ve dedicated my life to serving this country. I meant no harm when I tried to help them. Tell him that, Karina, if he doesn’t want a dishonorable discharge.” My dad held his hands up like he was praying.

I had only seen him do that once before when my mom was packing her bags, the first time. He followed her around the living room, telling her all the reasons their life was fine. Not good, but fine.

You’ll be fine, he told her.

Everything will be fine.

Between his begging hands and the almost believable devastation in his eyes now as he looked at me, I could see a flicker of what my mom saw in him all those years ago.

“Come on, Karina. You don’t want that for him. It will ruin his future.”

Kael was slipping away from my little living room. He was leaning against the drywall that he had patched up after I tried to hang up a clock and ripped half the wall down. My house, like my personal life, was becoming too much for me to repair.

“He can’t look at his kid’s face without seeing their faces. You know that? It’s eating him up. He’s not right in the head over it. None of us are.” Kael had torn me open, devoured my body and mind in such a short time. I would have done anything to heal his pain any other time since I met him, but not then, when everything was foggy.

“We’re all like that. We all have demons that keep us up at night. He can go in for PTSD if he needs to, but you have to stop poking a sleeping dragon. That’s the last warning. You’re putting us all in danger, even her.” He pointed at me, using me to chip away at Kael.

If my dad thought Kael was deceiving me, why would he think he cared that he was putting me in danger? My dad was a liar. The good kind. Not good for anyone but himself, but still the very, very good kind. My mom told tales about the man she met her senior year of high school and how he wooed her when she served him a stack of pancakes every Tuesday. That’s where the Fischer family tradition stemmed from.

The man she fell in love with had soft eyes and a thoughtful heart. Supposedly, he even called her sunshine, like she used to call me. That man had slowly disappeared, dissolving into a manipulative piece of havoc that I had stumbled in to.

“Think about it, Martin. Don’t jeopardize your future. I’ll make sure that medical discharge goes smoothly as long as you can promise me the same about my retirement.”

There he was scheming in front of me. Asking Kael to ignore the pain of his friend and make a selfish choice to appease my father.

“You’re disgusting,” I told my dad before Kael could agree or disagree to his deal.

“Stay out of this.” He brushed me off. There he was, diminishing my intelligence, my strength to make my own choices. He was feeding off of my insecurities. Was Kael too?

I looked at Kael, then my dad. “Both of you, get out.” My voice was shaky in its delivery, but the words made it to their ears.

“Martin, don’t be a fool and get yourself tied up in something you can’t handle. There will be no more lifelines after this,” my dad continued despite my very blatant request.

“Get out of my house,” I said, louder this time.

Kael begged with his eyes and my dad with his voice. “Get out. Now,” I said as Elodie stepped into the house. She took in the scene in front of her.

“Should I—” she began to ask.

“No. You stay. They were just leaving,” I told her.

My dad was the first to give. To not break character in front of Elodie, I was sure. I didn’t care what it was, only that he walked out of my living room and the door shut behind him.

Kael was harder. He was shaking. I could see his shoulders shaking under his ACUs and it took every last drop of ability within me to repeat it to him.

“Get out of my house,” I said with as much conviction as a broken voice and heart could manage.

“Karina, please listen to me.”

I held up my hand. “If you want me to ever speak to you again, get out of my house and let me breathe.” I refused to raise my eyes to him. I knew better.

I only had a few breaths left in me until I would collapse in his arms, healing us both. I could see the pain burning bright in his eyes as he turned and finally walked out of the door.

WHEN I WOKE UP THE next morning, my head was throbbing. My body ached. My heart was broken. It all came flooding back to me.

Kael.

My dad.

Their history.

My dad’s accusation that Kael was using me as a pawn in some revenge plot for what happened in Afghanistan. What they did there. What Kael had to go through. What Kael had covered up.

Part of me thought my dad was completely delusional, obsessively creating this entire thing in his head. It was a just a coincidence that Kael and my dad had ever known each another. A coincidence, like bumping into an old friend at the movies, or thinking about someone you haven’t heard from in a while and then seeing their name pop up next to a text. The fact that my dad and Kael were in the same Company was like that. a very extraordinary circumstance. But that they had actual contact while overseas at the same time. And the way Elodie’s husband just happened to be Kael’s close friend. That was pushing it even for someone who wanted to believe. The pain of it made me want to torment myself just to distract from the agony I was already feeling.

This was exactly what I had been avoiding with Kael.

I knew that, sooner or later, he would reveal himself to be exactly what he was, what we all are, the most selfish of creatures. I shouldn’t have ignored that little voice inside that told me we were headed for nowhere fast and running out of gas. I felt it, the way he withdrew from me the moment we were close. It was fucked up the way he cracked me open, turned me into a freaking Blossom Family maple tree, my deepest private thoughts pouring out of me and into him. He soaked them up, but kept the tap closed when it came to himself.

I got a line here or there, a little image of his former self lying in my bed in the middle of the night, wrapped in each other. Everything was different now, even if I did believe that our relationship wasn’t premeditated. He promised me, over and over, that he wanted to try this, whatever it was.

Was, was, was, I reminded myself.

While I got dressed I tried to think about something, anything other than Kael. Other than his brilliant deep mind. I could spend days inside, picking around his light. He was everything a man was supposed to be, the first one I had ever loved, and he turned out to be just another factory model.

Even so, my body clung to the hot flash that he was in my life. And then I thought about my own advice to Sammy after she and Austin broke up again, that he was only a teen tiny little part of her life, that in a year he wouldn’t matter. In five years, he’d barely exist in her memory. She said she’d never forget him because she’d always be around me, and that where I was, Austin wasn’t far behind, but things change. Obviously. I walked around my room and with each step I felt my body ache from last night. Every ounce of pain wa

s felt through my entire body.

Even so, my body didn’t get the memo that we hated Kael now.