July
Everyone dies around my birthday. I lost my mother a week before I turned nine and one of my brothers three days after my twenty-fifth birthday this year. I don’t think I’ll ever get over either of the two times in my life where I’ve seen my strong father cry.
I get lost in my head a lot, unable to close the door on these memories the way I ache to. I’ve been tempted to take down the pictures in my bedroom with my two brothers, hoping that helps me move on, but can’t bring myself to do it. If I take down Mikael’s picture, I’m afraid he’ll disappear forever. It’s silly, the same thought I experienced after my mother’s death, because I know they’re already gone.
But if I keep the pictures up, it’s like they’re still around somewhere, maybe just outside my room, and I can pretend all I have to do is open the door and they’ll be there waiting.
A hard smack of flesh on metal snaps me out of the melancholy thinking.
My surviving brother, Petr, is playing with his prosthetic leg like he’s a five-year-old who got the best birthday present of his life. It doesn’t look like a real limb and kind of weirds me out, which is why I’m grateful he’s in jeans this time and not boxers. It’s made of some sort of resilient, lightweight metal and reminds me of the robot troopers in the latest round of Star Wars movies. The design is purely out of some science fiction magazine or comic book. If I hadn’t seen him run on it, I never would’ve believed it’d hold his body weight.
“You’re going to knock your leg off,” I snap at him. “The doctor said not to mess with it!”
Petr rolls his eyes. “This thing is cemented to my bone. It’s not coming off.” He slaps his new leg harder, and I flinch.
It just doesn’t look sturdy.
“Your meds,” I say and hold them out. He’s been avoiding them, I think because they make him a little less … hyper. He’s been insisting for days he’s ready to return to duty, while the medical staff wants him to wait another month before letting the military decide what he can and cannot do, if they let him back in at all.
At a little over six feet tall, he’s got my father’s heavy features, a nose that’s been broken more than once, and a lopsided grin that makes him charmingly roguish in appearance. His hair has grown out some since he came home four months ago, but there’s no way he resembles anything other than the soldier he is.
He’s regained the muscle mass he lost while in the coma for three weeks and managed to put on more weight. He works out every day like he’s going to return to the war that killed our brother and nearly cost Petr his life, too.
Over my dead body. I’m the youngest in the family, but you’d think I was the mother. Probably because I took over the role of taking care of my thickheaded, stupid older brothers after our mother died. I was nine, and they were fourteen, old enough to be in trouble every weekend.
“Kitty-Khav, I’m a trained killer. I can take care of myself,” he reminds me and takes the meds, only to put them back on the tray. His blue eyes sparkle with mischief, the way they always have, though there’s a shadow in them that wasn’t there before Mikael’s death.
The death of our brother haunts us both.
He stands, moving away from the hospital bed as if he’s not wearing a fake leg that looks like it could collapse at any minute.
“You shouldn’t be going to the retreat at all, Petr,” I tell him, not for the first time. “What if you trip in the forest or something?”
He ignores me and puts on a knit cap. I’m not sure what his obsession with knit caps is lately, but he wears one every time he leaves the hospital.
“Petr, you have to be careful.” I’m worried about him, have been since I sat by him every day he was in a coma. I never left his side, and I’ve been a wrench in his spokes since then, knowing the doctors can’t influence my stubborn brother the way I can.
“I love you, sis,” he says with a wink. “You can throw as many shoes as you want at me, but I’m going.”
Pursing my lips, I’m about to put my foot down and remind him exactly what the doctor said, when there’s a knock at the door to his room.
“This isn’t over,” I warn him.
I’m hoping it’s the nurse he’s been eyeballing, the only other person who might be able to convince him to wait until the end of the week, after his final round of tests, before he tries to break in the new leg doing something stupid.
Opening the door, I spot the dress uniform of a Marine and frown, then look up at him. Dark hair and eyes, olive complexion, heavy jaw, tapered nose, full lips and a low brow. He smells clean and of some light, sweet cologne that reminds me of coconuts. He’s got the lean physique and wide upper body of a swimmer that I’d drool over, if he were any other man.
“You,” I hiss.
Captain Sawyer Mathis has an intensity and calmness around him that infuriates me, especially when I think of how detached and cold he was at Mikael’s funeral, like saying farewell to my brother was a chore. His brown eyes are on me.
He’s as handsome as he is good at taking out the men of my family. Why Petr and Baba like him, I have no idea.
“Ma’am,” he replies.
“You here to make sure my other brother ends up six feet under?”
“No, ma’am. I’m here to check in on him.”
“These are family only visiting hours.” I slam the door closed, or try to.
His foot is jammed in the door. “With all due respect, ma’am, your brothers saved my life, which makes them more than family in my book.”
“With all due respect, Captain, I think you’ve done enough for my family.”
I swing the door open, realizing his foot isn’t about to budge. Planting my hands on my hips, I’m not about to move from the doorway.
Seeing him reminds me too much of Mikael and how I’ll never see my brother again. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the man who got Mikael killed come near my Petr.
Captain Mathis’ jaw is clenched. I’m not sure what he can be thinking, but he sure as hell isn’t expressing anything that makes me think he’s more human than he was at Mikael’s funeral. I don’t know why he bothered showing up that day.
“If you want in, you’ll have to move me out of the way,” I tell him.
“You can’t weigh more than one thirty. I’ve carried packs heavier than you.” His gaze sweeps over me. “I’ll be out of your way in five minutes, ma’am,” he adds calmly. “But I won’t leave until I get that five minutes with your brother.”
“Violence and threats are the weapons of choice, I see. Guess it comes naturally to someone who thinks invading some sovereign country over oil and getting innocent people killed is the right thing to do.”
A flare of something crosses his gaze and vanishes quickly. “And I imagine you think saving the whales is more important than funding the equipment people like your brothers needed to stay alive in a hostile environment.”
“There wouldn’t be a hostile environment if we had a policy of peace rather than war,” I point out.
“I didn’t start the war, ma’am, but I will win it so people like you can maintain your way of life.”
“You aren’t going to win if you keep killing off your own men!” God, what an asshole!
We glare at one another, the air between us charged and thick. I hit a nerve with him and sense it. I’m happy for it. I hate this man, because he came back when my Mikael didn’t. Not even Captain Mathis’ thick biceps and broad chest can make up for him being what he is: the representation of everything I despise about the military and war that took my brother away.
“Step aside, ma’am.” The order is gravelly, low and quiet in the resolute tone of a natural leader. It cuts through my anger. His gaze is piercing.
He’s not like my brothers and father. He’s not backing down.
“Oh, Kitty-Khav, I think I need some … Tylenol.” Petr says from behind me, pain in his voice. “Can you get the nurse?”
At once, my attention shifts to my brother. He’s seated on the bed, forehead in one hand. I panic at the sight of him in pain. There were so many times I thought we were going to lose him … I’d do anything to keep him from going through the misery he’s spent the past four months in.
“Yes, of course!”
Captain Mathis forgotten, I push by him out of the room, intent on finding the nearest nurse I can, even if I have to drag one out of someone else’s room.