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  Kat cleared her throat, refusing to give me her eyes again. “Nice to meet you, Timber. Uncle Roger, I don’t mean to be rude but I’m actually really busy with the new inventory, I’ll see y’all later, okay?” She’d never taken my hand, so I let it drop to my side.

  “Oh sure, no problem, honey. Didn’t mean to take you away from your work,” Roger said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek before she briskly walked back to what I assumed was a storage room.

  Beaver leaned forward on his stool. “Wonder what got her butt ruffled?”

  “Don’t you mean ‘panties’?” Roger corrected.

  “Tomatoes, tomahtoes.” Beaver shrugged, as if that was an explanation for his confusion.

  Slim spoke up and said, “Let’s grab a drink, boys.”

  With that, the three of us walked to the bar and sat down. Two hours passed quickly and I was definitely drunker than a skunk. What does that even mean? Do skunks get drunk? Do drunk people stink? I not so discreetly smelled my armpits. Nope, fresh as a whistle.

  I’d been watching the girl, Kat, serving behind the bar for most of the night. I’d observed her as she spoke easily with everybody in the bar. They all seemed to know her and I assumed she was from around here. She had a certain pull to her. A magnetism that made me want to know her too. But she wouldn’t give me the time of day. Whenever my Crown ran low, she’d get Melanie to come fill me up. At one point during the night, while the whole bar banded together and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her, I watched as she let go of the stiffness I seemed to have caused her. I found out she was turning twenty-one years old. She seemed to remember that I was still here watching her. I’d caught her eyes peering at me. I’d given up trying to figure out where I knew her from, or who she reminded me of. My drunken fog pretty much banned any coherent thoughts. Well, all thoughts except for the fact that this girl was beautiful, and not in the traditional sense. She wasn’t the type of beautiful that would grace a magazine cover. She was the type that you slowly let seep into your system and take a hold of you. She was the type that once she had you, you would never look at anybody else the same. Her beauty was the end. It was all you’d ever want again.

  I shot back another glass of Crown and slammed some cash down on the table. Needing to get out of here and breath some fresh Texas humidity, I told my bosses that I’d see them tomorrow, and not to can my ass if I came in late and hung over. As I made my way out, Beaver offered to call me a cab. Since the idea that there was even a cab available in such a small town was laughable, I told him thanks but I only lived around the corner. He shook my hand again in another crushing hand shake, and I walked out of the bar. After I tripped and swayed my way to my apartment, my body decided that the couch looked good enough to sleep on and wouldn’t take itself the few extra feet to my bed. Thankfully, I had bought the couch for this very reason. A man needs a good napping couch. Mine just serves a greater purpose sometimes - for all night napping. As I closed my eyes, I felt the familiar jarring of my muscles dragging me back into the same nightmares of war.

  Chapter Three

  Timber

  “Dude, I need you to do me a favor. I think I have a rash on the bottom of my nut sack and I can’t really see it. Could you look and tell me if I should go to medical and get some cream or something?” Holt asked while he was scratching himself.

  “What the fuck, man. No, I ain’t looking at your junk. Get a fuckin’ mirror.” I laughed, but there was no way I was looking at another man’s dick voluntarily.

  “Hey, I’d do it for you, asshole.”

  “Yeah, and that’s what makes you gay,” I retorted, knowing that I was only getting him riled up.

  “Was it gay when I fucked Corey’s mom before we left?” Holt said.

  I was sitting in my rack with most of my squad, hanging around and waiting for our next patrol. There was a chorus of “oh’s” by the guys because of Holt’s stupid comment. He was fun to pick on, and he often rose to the occasion when it came to taking the bait. He was the youngest out of all of us. I’d found a picture of him before he’d graduated from high school that’d fallen out of his bag. Pretty boy had long shaggy hair that would make Justin Bieber jealous, and a million dollar smile that likely made girls come with a glance. But out here, he was just a kid with zero experience. And his looks wouldn’t save his life from an RPG. I looked out for him more than any of the other guys.

  Corey had just walked in when Holt had opened his mouth. “What’d you say about my mom?”

  “I said she makes some mean ass snicker doodles, man. In fact, could you ask her to send us some more in the care package?” I chuckled as the kid quickly back peddled.

  Corey was the resident hard ass. He was a soldier’s soldier. He grew up wanting to join the Army for as long as he could remember. This was his dream. Serving his country is what gave him a purpose. Corey was an average guy with average looks, but he had a heart of gold. He came from an all-American home and his mom routinely sent us shit in the mail. We each got letters from her at least once a week telling us how proud she was of the men her boy served with. As much as we gave Corey crap for his overbearing mom, I knew we all loved it.

  “Yeah, I bet it’s the snicker doodles. We’ll see if she puts any cookies in your box next week if I tell her you’re running your mouth, kid.”

  Holt flipped Corey the bird. Busted.

  It was just after evening chow and we were all coming back from the Mess Hall. We had an hour before we would head out on our nightly patrol of the eastern side of Fallujah. My squad did four patrols over a twelve hour shift. I laid back on my bed, allowing my meal to digest. Turning my head, I looked over at Rooster, who came strolling in with a shit eating grin on his face and a small box in his hands. For the record, his name was actually Nick Smith. What a generic name. Rooster was a seriously hard headed son of a bitch. We’d been in the same squad together for quite a while. He wouldn’t tell us where the name Rooster came from. He had a wife and two kids at home, and he did his job with a no-nonsense attitude. He was the type that when he got an idea into his head, he followed through with it. So seriously, that two years ago he was in the middle of gunfire in Afghanistan and took a bullet in his left shoulder. They’d sent him home immediately and he did a solid year of physical therapy. He said he had been in a really dark place for a long time while he was recovering, but when the doctor cleared him and said he was fit for duty, only then was he able to live again. In a way, I looked up to him. He was only three years older than my twenty-three years, but the things he’s lived through and done made him worth respecting.

  “What’s in the box?” Holt asked, while he was still scratching himself.

  Rooster looked at him and curled his lip. “It’s from my wife. But you aren’t touching shit until you wash your hands.”

  He sat the box down on his bed and all four sets of our eyes were riveted on Rooster as he opened it. Other than Corey’s mom sending us weekly boxes, we don’t see much from the States.

  “Shit,” Rooster said as he held up a hot pink lace thong. He set it down and kept digging. Next he pulled out some lotion that smelled like an apple. That will be empty before the next six months was over, I smiled to myself. I watched as he pulled out condoms, massage oil, risqué pictures she had taken, and then a small stack of dirty magazines. I felt myself gulp. It had been a long damn time since I’d been with a woman. At least seven months, when we’d first come out to this hell hole.

  He was about to look through the photos, but he thought better of it when he glanced up and looked at us. We must have looked like a pack of wolves ready to attack, or hump anything with tits and a smile. He put them back in the box along with the other contents and put it under his bed. There were a few grumbles around the room.

  “Seriously, boys, that’s my wife. I’m not showing you an inch of her body,” Rooster snickered.

  I glanced down at my watch. It read nineteen hundred hours, time for our last patrol of the night. I stood up and
stretched my achy muscles. “Let’s go, last round.”

  Thirty minutes later I was in the MRAP, which was a crazy looking hummer but build better, and sitting in the back seat with my eyes glued outside. I was trained to scan my surroundings. What people are walking around? What are they wearing? What are they doing? Have I seen them before? Do they take special interest in us when we come through? These were the assessments that I made and catalogued them all in my head. It had saved my life and my men’s lives more times than I could count.

  As we turned the corner of the last block we patrolled, I noticed a man was yelling at a woman. She was cowering, her eyes cast downward. Women here were not supposed to be the dominant ones in this country. They were subservient to the male population. I scoffed quietly to myself. I preferred a woman with some fight in her. This woman was only doing what she had been trained to do since birth. The man reached out, roughly grabbed her arm, and shook her. She was nodding her head vigorously, but still her head remained down. He shoved her up against a wall, and I could see that she winced from the pain. It was making my blood boil. I’d like to introduce that guy’s face to the wall.

  Just before we drove out of sight of the couple, Holt asked, “Should we stop and intervene?”

  “Nah, keep driving,” Rooster told him from the passenger seat.

  I continued to watch them, and just before we rounded the corner, the woman glanced up… warm hazel eyes.

  What the hell? That’s not how I remembered them. Her eyes were almost completely black, always. I know these eyes.

  I shot up to a seated position on the couch. Dragging a hand through my damp and sweaty hair, I got up and walked to the kitchen to get a glass of water. My mouth was so dry it hurt for the liquid to go down. I chugged the lukewarm water and filled the glass a second time. While I drank it down, my thoughts were all over the place. My dreams had never changed. Every night they were the same. Why would her eyes change color? My gut was tugging at me to dig deeper, think harder. Where do I know those eyes from?

  While the glass was tilted up, my lips on the edge of the rim, it hit me. The thought was so startling that I dropped the glass. It fell into the sink, breaking into several large pieces. I didn’t care, I remembered those eyes.

  “Fuck… Katherine.” I growled.

  Chapter Four

  Kat

  According to the dictionary, asphyxiation is a condition in which one is deprived of oxygen. Have you ever been deprived of oxygen before? Having your airway completely cut off and incapable of taking in the air that your lungs so desperately needed? I have.

  High school for me was bad. Very bad! And not in the way that most nerdy kids had it. They were all either computer geeks or played in the marching band. Some of us played sports, but we still didn’t fit in with the popular crowd. It was like that for me during my freshman year. I had a few friends that ran track with me, but I was usually a loner. At the end of ninth grade, one of the popular junior guys decided that I would be his target of choice. I couldn’t understand why he paid so much attention to me. It wasn’t until my sophomore year when things started getting really bad.

  His name was Adam. I did everything I could to stay clear of him because I just wanted to be left alone. During the year his teasing had progressively worsened and I couldn’t escape him. He would say perverted things to me, dump drinks on me, and leave threatening notes in my locker. One day he took it a step further.

  It was in the middle of May, just before graduation, and I was trying out for next year’s track team. It was in the upper nineties that day so I had been really hot and sweaty. At the end of tryouts I had taken an extra-long time in the girl’s locker room and stood underneath the steaming shower water. I remember hearing a noise behind me. When I turned around to look around the presumed empty space, I found I hadn’t been alone. Adam marched towards me and covered my mouth with his hand. I didn’t stand a chance.

  Never in my life did I think I’d become a victim. But I also never thought I’d be the girl that didn’t fight back if ever faced with that situation. However, there I was, doing the very thing I said I wouldn’t do. I was completely frozen. I stood there motionless, as Adam unbuckled his belt, and slid down the zipper of his expensive designer jeans. His muddy brown eyes, I knew, would haunt me until the day that I died. I would never be able to wipe the memory of him penetrating me and taking the one thing that I could never get back. My innocence. I had stood there, held captive by my own fear, while he defiled me. When I felt the initial pinch that everyone says you feel when you lose your virginity, my mind began to protect itself. My senses completely shut down.

  I don’t remember his hands being on my hips as he ground into me, leaving behind purple bruises. I don’t remember his large hand coming up to my neck and squeezing, slowly cutting off the only thing that was keeping me alive in that moment. Those long fingers that I had watched throw winning touchdown passes or make a basket in the last seconds before the buzzer were now killing me. I do remember the sudden burning in my lungs as my body began to struggle on its own accord to live. I do remember Adam’s grip growing tighter and I knew he was getting off on my sudden effort to breathe. And I do remember his final thrust before he pulled out of me, and I felt his semen coating my leg.

  He had let go of me and I collapsed on the ground in a heap, totally naked. I was coughing over and over again, gulping air, and blinking back tears. Adam tucked himself back into his pants and left me there. I couldn’t tell you how long I sat on the tiled floor of the locker room. I just know that it was long enough to watch the water turn from red to clear, and hot to cold.

  I never spoke about that afternoon with anyone. He told me he’d be watching me, and he’d know where I was. Adam graduated that year and went off to college. However, he still made sure to let me know he wasn’t gone. I’d get the occasional text message from him describing what he wanted to do to me when he saw me again. I lived my last two years of high school in a constant state of fear.

  When I was done with school, my life didn’t return to normal. I never went to college to ‘further my education’ as my grandpa liked to say. I just wanted to leave Bay City and get away from the memories that followed me at every turn. My Uncle Roger, my mom’s brother, worked at an oil field in Port O’Connor and invited me to come down and stay with him while I sorted out the mess that I called my life.

  I think my family thought I’d take a break for maybe a year and then come back and go to school at Sam Houston University. They had no idea what had been done to me - they just thought I was going through a horrid moody teenager phase and that I would eventually snap out of. That was never in the cards for me. I wanted to find a small corner of the world and work until I couldn’t anymore. I crossed my fingers, hoping that my worst nightmare had stopped following me. Even after changing my number, he still found me.

  Two months into my stay with Uncle Roger, I ended up finding a bartending job at The Hole. At first they didn’t want to hire me because I was underage and legally couldn’t serve. Lucky for me, my uncle was best friends with the whole Port O’Connor Police Department (all four of them.) It didn’t take much convincing for them to overlook my being eighteen. They understood that when I came to work I didn’t consume any alcohol and did the job that was required of me. I hardly ever drank. It held too many bad memories. I was certain that I had smelled liquor on Adam’s breath that day.

  I worked six days a week. Sundays, of course, the bar was closed. I cherished Sundays. I liked to go out to the beach and sunbathe while reading a good romance novel. Well, more like read and reread the same book. It was called Emerge by author S.E. Hall. I was fascinated by the love triangle that the main character, Laney Walker, was in. She was a simple hometown girl with two great options - the bad boy that she loved at first sight, and the sweet, gentle boy she’d known her entire life. Just thinking about it made me happy and sad at the same time. Not long ago I dreamed of being a Laney. I wanted to have love. Shit,
I would have been over the moon if I had even two options. Now I was cynical when it came to love, and I considered myself damaged goods. My new love was the sun, water, and reading. I was aware that I’d never be the person I once was and I’d come to terms with it. My life was the bar and my beloved Sundays. Oh, and Ed.

  Ed was the owner of The Hole. He was an older man whose wife, Rose, had passed away a few years before I showed up. I think he was lonely and I was just the company he was looking for. I liked talking with him every night as we closed up. He talked about Rose and what it was like being in love in the old days. They had one of those once in a lifetime love stories. He’d seen her from his Navy boat in New York City when they were tying up in port. He said he got off the boat as fast as he could and tracked her down. He insisted that he was in love with her from one glance. He said at first she thought he was crazy, but after he’d gotten down on his knees in front of his entire crew, she let him take her to dinner. They were inseparable from then on. Even my cold heart swooned a bit at his story.

  It was a few weeks after I’d started working that Ed told me that he’d been doing some repairs on the upstairs apartment and he wanted me to move in. He said he’d give it to me at a discounted rate. Honestly, I was barely paying a dime to live there. Our agreement was one hundred dollars a month and I helped him paint the small space, as well as some of the walls in the bar where the paint was chipping. He said if I told him no, he’d fire me, old bastard. But I loved him. He wanted me to be able to live on my own and put money away. Much like my grandfather, he wanted me to go to school someday. If I ever did, I’d do it for Ed. He loved me like the daughter he never had. He made me feel safe. He shared so much of his life with me. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.

  The few friends that I had in my young twenty-one years I could count on one hand - Uncle Roger, Slim, Ed, Beaver, and Melanie. The last two were only recent developments. Melanie was already a waitress at The Hole before I started. She was in her early thirties and been divorced once. She was one of those people that possessed enough energy to take over an entire room. When she introduced herself to me, she pulled me into a hug, then grabbed my cheeks and said in the most southern accent I’d ever heard, “Well aren’t you a pretty lil’ thing!” From then on, we’d been friends.