Authors: Mallory Hart
Chapter Ten
Samantha
Hearing a handsome man call out my name until his voice was hoarse did wonders for my self-esteem. Not that I hadn’t called out his name all night too.
His soft snoring hit my ears when I woke up, naked underneath the navy blue comforter. My eyes widened as I glanced around the room. Discarded clothing, a broken vase, and the door seemed ajar. I flushed as I realized that my intense dreams had been a reality. The memories of last night came flooding back. The visit, the range, the laughing, the sex.
Oh shit. So much for patient-physician ethical conduct. Smacking my hand into my face, I took a deep breath. Still, the memories of our night together were amazing, and I couldn’t say I regretted any of it. Denying my attraction to Callum was like trying to avoid air.
I turned to see him dead asleep underneath a pillow, blocking out the light of the early sun. Thank God it was a weekend. I slipped out of the bed and tried to collect as much as my clothing as possible, putting most of it on expect for my sweater which I knew was downstairs.
After I'd gotten dressed, I might wait around to see if he woke up. Maybe we could talk about happened. Had I put my bike in his garage? I couldn’t remember. My hand found the door handle, and I opened it, smelling the stuffy air.
The light illuminated everything. Two Harleys. We had moved them in, after all. That’s good, I sighed in relief and turned to leave when a box shoved in the corner caught my eye.
“Will” had been scrawled on it with feminine handwriting. I frowned and glanced out into the hallway. If I strained, I think I could still hear him snoring.
I padded over to the box and lifted it. It was filled with memories that weren’t mine. Piles of photos of them smiling, medals, everything. Will was just as tall as Callum and was a looker himself. They had been best friends, but they almost seemed like brothers. It became clear that Callum was still trying to process his loss.
The box was right beside the garbage can. It was too full to fit inside, I realized when I peeked underneath the lid.
He’d meant to throw it away.
“What are you doing?” It was Callum.
I yelped at the sound of his strained voice behind me, ripping myself away from the opened box. His blurry eyes looked past me and then a horrified look came over him. He bit his lip, jaw tightened as we faced each other with an uneasy silence. The tension rose, stiffened, hardened. It felt like the air was being sucked from my lungs.
“Callum,” I murmured, “Why were you throwing this out?” I had to know. He was trying to hide something. My brain screamed for me to be cautious; that this could be the murderer’s confession, but my heart was throbbing with overwhelming sadness, as if somehow, I’d already sensed what he was going to tell me.
What happened to Will?
His teeth gritted together as his eyes fell to the ground. A buzz from the electricity above us kept a dull hum in the background. I took a step forward, feeling brave. The air seemed to be slowly returning. My head felt a bit clearer as I called for him.
“Callum.”
“Stop,” He pressed suddenly with a panicked voice. “Stop. I can’t tell you.”
“Why?” My voice sounded strained, unstable. The professional clinician had vanished. “Why can’t you, Callum?” A shiver of anxiety ran up my spine. My nerves felt like live wires in my body, waiting to spark and create chaos at any moment.
His eyes grew dark, not at me, but at something else. Like he was looking at something far away. When I caught his gaze again, I drew back from the grief radiating from him. It was immense. My eyes stung.
“He killed them all.”
The light’s buzz seemed to scream in my ear now. My mouth dropped open.
“What?” My lips shook terribly. I felt my fingers begin shaking too.
“Will. He killed them all.” His voice was cold and torn. His eyes might’ve been watering, but I couldn’t tell. My skin felt ice cold despite the summer heat coming in from outside.
“What are you talking about, Callum?” I asked in a slow voice, hands spread and trembling as the anticipation shook me.
“He killed them, Sam!” His yell echoed through the garage. He ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head in a fit of emotion. I inched back, and a guilty look came over him. He turned his head away in shame, hanging it with a pitiful shake. “He couldn’t take it anymore, don’t you see?”
I gasped. “He...he tried to take you all out.” A click seemed to sound off in my thoughts. It wasn’t Callum who had gone mad at all. It was Will.
“Yes. He nearly got me too.” This part he said as if he almost wished he had been killed. My stomach twisted into a knot. I tried to steady my breathing, switch into clinical thinking. It was so hard. His overwhelmed face was the only thing I could focus on.
“It was the stress?”
“Of course. It was everything. Will wasn’t...he wasn’t as strong as he seemed sometimes,” he confessed with a guilty look. Will had been the family man, of course. He was the one who was stable while Callum was seen as the lone wolf, the type of person who would and could go mad if he wanted to. The fog seemed to be clearing from my brain. Why hadn’t I seen this before?
“Why didn’t you tell–”
He threw his head back. “Who? Who was I going to tell? His wife, who loved him more than anything? His kids? They don’t have a father anymore because his demons won.” He sucked in a deep breath. “If I told everyone what really happened out there, Will’s reputation would be ruined. At least this way he died with some dignity. Even if he lost it in the end, at least he has that, Sam.”
Tears started running down my face before I knew they were there. A bitter taste flooded my mouth. My chest burned, and my cheeks were hot as the tears stung the skin.
“I won’t tell anyone, Callum.” That was a promise. No matter what happened, I would never tell.
But, he wasn’t listening. He slammed the garage door opener button. It began lifting up, slow mechanical whirring disrupting the pent up grief inside the room.
“Get out, Sam. Now.” It was not a request. My stomach felt like it’d been punched dead center.
He slammed the door behind him as he entered the house.
I was left with my bike and a box of memories meant for the trash.
My tears didn’t stop until the next morning.
Chapter Eleven
Callum
Fuck everything.
Fuck Will. Fuck the guilt. Fuck that doctor getting in my head.
My name was Callum Hall, and I didn’t need a shrink. All I needed was the whiskey in the cabinets. Four bottles were gone in two days. My body screamed at me, rebelled in every way, but all I could do was drink and sleep. I drew the curtains on every window. When anyone tried to knock, I pretended that I wasn’t home.
The phone was worse. Sam kept trying to call, along with everyone else. I was missing her sessions. How could I face her? The bottle was the only doctor I could see right now. Her smile flickered in my mind, the heat of her beauty underneath me, but I pushed it away and downed another drink.
I fell into the dark embrace of slumber. It was just another day wasted. Welcome to my new life– the life of Callum Hall, the coward. Maybe they’d write that on my grave.
When I woke up, it was even darker outside. Groaning with my head throbbing, I rolled off the couch. With a hiss, I cursed every deity in existence when my head connected with the side of the coffee table.
The sound of my ancient landline phone went off. Fuck. I forgot I still had that. The voicemail message went off with me sounding years younger and dumber than ever.
Sam’s voice rang out: “Callum, it doesn’t have to be this way. Please just let me know if you’re okay.”
It cut off, and the robotic voice message said something about archiving the message. I covered my face with my hands and grunted, anger and frustration spilling out. It was not supposed to be this way. It was never supposed to be this way.
When I sat up, my eyes caught the messy writing on an old VHS tape. Cleaning out all the old technology would be my priority if I ever got out of this self-made hell. I squinted. The writing was all run together, but it said “Early Years” or something like that.
What was that from? I still had my small TV with the VHS player attached so I could watch the classic movies I kept. Since I hated myself, at least I could escape watching something entertaining until I fell asleep. And if I fell asleep forever then I wouldn’t have to worry about anything.
I pushed the video into the player and turned the TV on. A blue screen showed that turned black and then went to static. The sound of the white noise filled the room. I tapped my foot, silently praying that my headache would start to fade. I prayed for little things like that because God can’t be trusted with the big things. When the static went on for a few seconds, I leaned forward to stop it. Time to abort the mission.
Will’s face appeared on the screen just before I reached the stop button. Smiling from ear to ear, fresh-faced and happy. He was in the uniforms we got after our basic round of training. His boyish charm was evident even on screen.
“Hey, hey, nice Christmas present, right?” He asked the camera. His question was directed to someone out of the frame. I heard a grumble on one side of the frame.
My eyes widened as I watched myself, much younger, pop into frame and flip off the camera. Typical. “Whatever, dude, always showing off. Let’s get to work.”
“So serious,” Will said with a laugh, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. “Come on, Cal. Tell the camera what your dreams are.”
“Women, booze, fun.” My younger grin seemed goofy, but it was nice. It was before everything got heavy–for both Will and myself.
He cackled in response, showing a thumbs-up to the camera. I nearly stopped breathing when he looked into the camera to address some audience he was imagining. Will had always been a performer. If he hadn’t joined the military, he should’ve been a famous actor.
“Remember, life is as fun as you make it, folks.” His kind, cheerful voice was as real as ever.
The video went blank. I fell back onto the couch, dazed as I stared at the blank screen. That was Will I knew. Will before the stress had gotten to him. Will before the military finally took its toll. Will before raising three kids and balancing a wife with his work. Will before we both grew up–I mean really grew up, and realized that dreams weren’t always going to come true.
I’d never tell anyone that I cried, not even Sam, but I did.
I think somewhere, Will was crying with me too.
Chapter Twelve
Samantha
When he stopped showing up, I promised myself to stop calling after three weeks. Four missed appointments, and I’d left my last message yesterday, sacrificing every ounce of my dignity to call his old home phone that was listed in his file. It was a miracle that it wasn’t cut off.
One of the front desk clerks paged me to let me know that my afternoon appointment had canceled. I checked my online calendar. That left me with the rest of lunch and the open slot I’d been holding for Callum. I hovered the mouse cursor over the box and debated deleting it, but my will wasn’t strong enough.
Maybe I’ll do it in two weeks after seven missed appointments have passed. His commanding officers had been paging me non-stop to ask questions, but I kept rescheduling calls and making up excuses for not being able to talk. I didn’t want to speak to that commanding officer and try to avoid telling him that Callum truly wasn’t a loose cannon, just as he’d suspected. I made a promise to Callum. I wasn’t about to talk about his secret to everyone, even if it was his superiors. Even if it was for his benefit, I knew I couldn’t violate his trust. Not after feeling his pain like it was mine. The officers could deal with whatever information I gave him.
A tiny voice in the back of my head listed off suicide rates and PTSD. My heart squeezed painfully. I didn’t think he’d hurt himself. Well, not more than his boozing was already doing. Who knows, maybe he was engaging in risky sex too. It’s not like we’d talked about a relationship or established one. As a matter of fact, it was just the opposite; we’d talked about not being into them from the beginning.
Why did I feel this incredible all-consuming sadness then? I was never upset with breakups in the past, and this wasn’t even an actual breakup. A sigh left me and then another. I leaned back into my office chair and felt tears threatening to surface, but I pushed them back down. Not now, not here. I could wait until I got home.
My afternoon was completely clear now. I could finish some paperwork and leave early. That idea sounded nice. My hands flew to a small stack of papers nearby my computer. Things to be signed, documented, and checked off. As my hand grabbed a pen, the front desk clerk paged me again.
“Dr. Oliver?”
“Yes?”
“Mr. Hall is here to see you, but I was wondering if he was still scheduled. We haven’t seen him in several weeks.”
I dropped the pen, and it clattered onto the desktop. The sound seemed to echo in my office. A bird chirped excitedly outside, and I jumped.
“Dr. Oliver?” I jumped again when I realized that this wasn’t my imagination. This was happening.
I stared at the phone. “Yes, um, of course, that’s fine. Please tell him to come in.”
The next twenty seconds passed like hours. My eyes rested on the door. A knock sounded.
“Come in!”
The door opened, slowly but surely. I held my breath, hitched painfully in my throat as if this particular dream was going to puff up in smoke and dissipate. When I had left him, he’d been a wreck. He had told me to leave. The sting in my heart from his words was still painful.
Yes. It was him. Clean shaven face and smelling of pine. My mouth couldn’t stay closed.
“You’re back,” I said in a breathy voice.
He shut the door and nodded. “I’m sorry.” He gave me a sheepish half-frown. “I was an idiot. I was cruel, and I should’ve just told you what happened. I didn’t know what to do.”
I sat in stunned silence. “That’s all right, I forgive you,” I said because I had already decided that was what I wanted to do. Everyone made mistakes and had rough patches. I made one by digging in his personal property, even if the box was meant for the trash. And, if it was me in his situation... My mind ran wild with ideas of what he could be feeling.
“I’m ready,” he admitted after a sudden breath. “I’m ready to start letting go.”
He leaned over my desk and swept me up into a kiss. My lips seared against his. I gasped for breath when we parted. His eyes never looked more handsome. I could’ve let him take me on this desk, remind me of his touch, and all the ways he made me feel good.
He smiled at me, and I felt my heart melt.
“Can you help me with something this weekend, Sam?” It was an invitation. He was finally asking for help, trusting me to be able to help him. My smile ran ear to ear as I nodded excitedly.
“I’d love to.”