Page 138 of What We Break
"He's something, isn't he?" Danny appears beside me while I'm updating a chart.
"Blake? Yeah."
"When he first started coming, I thought he might be too intense." Danny gestures toward the group. "But these guys need someone who gets it. Someone who's been where they've been."
"He understands loss."
"Yeah. His best friend. And a bunch of others." Danny's voice isquiet. "That kind of loss changes you. But Blake's channeled it into something good."
I know he has. I saw it on the highway with Emma's mom. I saw the patience, the gentleness that Reid talks about.
But that just makes the other morning make even less sense.
He wasn't just distant. He was cruel. And it came out of nowhere.
Maybe I just caught him on a bad day. Maybe whatever memories Danny is talking about are closer to the surface right now, and I just happened to be the one standing in the line of fire.
God, I hope that’s all it is. Because if that wasn't just a bad mood—if that’s how he actually sees me—this is going to be a lot harder than I thought.
Or maybe I'm just making excuses for someone who actually doesn't like me.
"Laine!" Reid calls from across the camp. "Can you grab the antiseptic? We've got a wound that needs cleaning."
I grab the supplies. As I'm walking past Blake's group, I hear him talking to the young veteran from earlier.
"The thing about guilt is that it tricks you into thinking you deserve to feel like shit. But you don't. You did your job in an impossible situation. You shouldn’t carry shame about that."
The young man's eyes are bright with unshed tears. "How do you get past it?"
"You don't get past it. You learn to carry it differently." Blake's voice is gentle but firm. "And you let people help you carry it."
I stop walking.
You let people help you carry it. Seriously, is he possessed?
"Laine?" Reid's voice. "The antiseptic?"
"Right. Sorry."
It happens so fast.
I'm organizing the antibiotic ointments, half-listening to Danny joke with a regular, when a sound rips through the air.
BANG.
Just a semi-truck backfiring on the overpass. A loud, sharp crackthat echoes off the concrete pillars. I flinch, and Reid, who's handing out socks near the van, ducks his head before laughing it off.
But the man in the dirty army jacket doesn't laugh.
He drops to a crouch, eyes wide and white-rimmed, scanning the perimeter. His breathing goes shallow and rapid.
He's not here anymore. I can see it. He's somewhere else entirely.
"Incoming!" he screams. "Get down!"
He scrambles backward, knocking over a stack of crates, and backs right into Carol.
Carol, who is seventy years old and holding a cup of hot soup. The soup splashes. She cries out. And the man—reacting to sudden movement behind him—spins around and grabs her.
