“Yeah,” Christopher responded solemnly. “I know.”
That comment would definitely need some following up.
“So you were afraid you were going to die,” Christopher murmured.
“Yes, but I think that’s pretty much a given for most people.”
“Then why did you call yourself a… that.”
The fact that he couldn’t refer to me as a coward in any way would have made me smile if the conversation wasn’t so serious to begin with.
“From the second you step off that bus for boot camp, you have to give yourself over entirely. The army becomes your mother and father, your unit your brothers. Orders don’t get questioned. Ever. Doesn’t matter if you know it’s some clueless bureaucrat handing them down or if command doesn’t have all of the intel or even the right intel… you get the order to pull that trigger or call in a drone strike or whatever, you do it. No questions asked. You have to assume whoever is giving you that command knows something you don’t. If they tell you a woman is carrying a bomb under her robes, you aren’t allowed to see the baby she’s carrying in her arms. You put a bullet through that kid’s brain to get to hers if that’s your only shot. You don’t worry about that kid hitting the ground headfirst when its mother drops from your kill shot. You pull the trigger.”
“Did that happen to you?” Christopher asked.
“No,” I said with a shake of the head. “But I saw it happen to a buddy. Only he didn’t pull the trigger like he was ordered to, and the woman detonated a bomb that killed over thirty people, including seven men from our unit and her own little girl. My buddy took his own life as soon as he returned stateside.”
“I’m sorry,” Christopher said softly. I could feel his eyes on me.
“I couldn’t do it,” I admitted. I was surprised by the emotion that came over me. “I couldn’t end one life without knowing in my gut that doing so would save another.”
“So you didn’t re-enlist,” Christopher offered. “You started working with Uncle King instead. Saving kids.”
I shot Christopher a glance. He’d turned in his seat a bit so he could look at me rather than through the windshield. His tousled dark blond hair made his skin look even paler, but there was no doubting he was completely engaged in the conversation. He really did want to know this stuff about me. I tried to ignore the sparks of excitement in my belly as I wondered what that meant.
“Rush?”
Christopher’s quiet, worried voice broke through my own confusing thoughts.
“Sorry,” I responded. “So you know about all that?”
“About the kids and what my family does for them?”
“Yeah.”
Christopher nodded. “It may have all started with Gio, but it didn’t end when he came home. There are too many other kids out there waiting for someone to come for them. There are too many terrified, desperate parents who are clinging to every last ounce of hope they have that they will see their child again.”
His poignant words had me silently nodding because that was exactly why we did what we did. Years earlier, King and his brothers of the heart had been like any other family in the world; they’d been living their lives, completely unprepared for what fate had planned for them. One of the brothers, Luca, who shared no blood with King but called him best friend, had lost his son, Gio, to sex traffickers when the boy was only around eight. What had followed had been a hellish search by all the brothers. Thankfully, with the help of a group of like-minded men and women, they’d been able to bring Gio home, but he’d been only one of thousands of kids waiting for their own rescue to come.
“Well said,” I murmured in response to Christopher’s words. “So you wanted to know about what happened after I left the military. After my tour ended, I was a little lost. I knew I could go home to Colorado and join my dad’s business, but I knew it wasn’t something I really wanted. My dad did too.”
As I thought about my father, a stab of pain swept through me. The man had been my biggest champion, and my mother had been right there next to him cheering at the top of her lungs.
“Rush?” Christopher said softly, and then I felt his fingers touching mine. Not entirely believing it was really happening, I looked down to confirm it, and sure enough, his uninjured hand was resting against my own.
I must have been staring too long at our nearly joined hands because Christopher began to pull his hand away, his expression uncertain. At the same time, someone honked their horn at me because the traffic light had turned green. I closed my fingers around Christopher’s as I got the car moving. When he didn’t try and pull away, I linked our fingers.