Page 3 of Yours to Keep
The enemy spread out behind some rocks, fanning into a choking semi-circle that slowly tightened around us. We had only one job left: keep them pinned down until the Hawks arrived. We traded rounds in desperate bursts, each exchange buying us another precious second, another single heartbeat.
And then I heard it.
The distant, beautiful thump… thump… thump of rotor blades echoed through the mountains.
The dominant beat grew louder, vibrating straight through my ribs until a surge of fierce hope finally replaced the clawing fear in my chest. I looked across at Charlie, and he was already smiling.
“Let’s go home, Baby!” I shouted over the din.
He grinned back at me. We were going home.
The Hawks laid down a wall of suppressive fire as the ropes dropped from the sky like lifelines. We hooked in quickly, and we lifted clear of the ground, three lines cutting up through the thick smoke and rushing mountain air with Deck right beside me. As we were being winched up, I looked over toward Charlie’s rope.
He watched me with a sad, steady smile. His lips moved through the haze, forming three silent words.
“I love you.”
Then his head dropped to his chest, and his body went limp.
My world narrowed to the sound of rotor blades and the sight of his blood pooling on his vest.
The moment we cleared the cabin of the Hawk, the medic was already throwing himself onto Charlie. Hands moving in a desperate blur, cutting away his tactical gear. Charlie’s blood soaked through his clothes, bright and completely wrong against the floor as I watched in horror as it spread out beneath him.
I couldn’t speak. The air violently punched out of my lungs. Deck pulled me down beside him, anchoring me, but there was absolutely nothing I could do.
Oxygen masks. Trauma kits. Panicked commands were yelled over the roar of the rotors. They fought for him all the way back to base, but his chest never rose. I looked at Deck, the crushing truth already radiating from his pale, hollow face.
* * *
Back at the base, I followed the gurney in a daze until I was told to wait outside the medical center, time completely disappearing into nothingness. Eventually, a nurse came out for me, her eyes full of pity as she led me down a sterile corridor and into a quiet room. Charlie was there, lying under a white sheet. Still. Quiet. His face was bare, completely calm, looking as though he were merely sleeping.
My angel.
I walked up to him with trembling hands and placed my palm flat against his chest, desperately waiting for it to move. Waitingfor him to wake up. For his eyes to snap open. For him to laugh and tell me this was all some sick, fucked-up joke.
Nothing happened.
Footsteps sounded behind me as Deck walked into the room and stood beside me, his hand coming down heavy and grounding on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, brother,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, ragged whisper, as though he was terrified of waking Charlie up.
I would have given anything for a scream, for a violent fracture of the silence, if it meant Charlie would open his eyes.
I shook my head, refusing the reality. No, this wasn’t right. Charlie was just messing with me, playing a game. That’s all this was.
Right?
“He’s going to wake up, Deck. You’ll see.”
Deck’s voice was even quieter this time, laced with a heavy, unyielding grief. “No, brother. He’s gone. He saved us.”
Something snapped.
I pulled Charlie into my arms and sank to the floor, holding him like I could force him back into the world. Tight. Desperate. Begging whatever god existed to give him back.
Then I broke.
A sound tore out of my throat that didn’t even feel human, a raw, agonized scream that emptied my lungs until there was absolutely nothing left inside my body but hollow emptiness. When the sound finally died away, there was only a suffocating silence.
