The Three Words You Can't Take Back
Ethan:
“FUCK!” I groaned. I couldn’t breathe; everything inside of me felt like it was being twisted in a vice. The more I fought it, the harder it twisted. I bent down to put my hands on my knees, trying with everything I had to breathe through it, but all that came out was a gasp for air. My chest was tightening more every second, and my need for oxygen was getting greater and greater. I couldn’t believe I had just fucking told her that. Why would I tell her that?! What the fuck was wrong with me??? I dug the tips of my fingers into my knees, trying desperately to stop the oncoming full-blown meltdown that was pushing its way harder and harder into my mind. I was about to lose it. I felt reality slipping from me as Jessie began to pant heavily and try to shove me over. And then I saw it. Something that I never wanted to see again. Something that I would do anything to stop from happening again. I saw a tear roll down Kara’s cheek, and my heart fucking screamed for her. This poor girl had no idea what she had gotten herself into. I tried so fucking hard to stay away from her. But she just kept coming at me. She just kept changing everything I had ever known. I loved her. I loved her so fucking much I was a mess. I had loved her the moment she sat down next to me and started talking to Jessie. And where did that get her? Standing here with me with tears running down her face because she just realized how far gone I am. I felt my stomach roll; the adrenaline from my anxiousness was piling up, and it was going to make me sick to my stomach. I needed to leave; I needed to get out of here, but she just fucking stood there looking at me, saying nothing. Not a fucking thing, and it was going to end me. “Well?” I coughed, fighting the nausea back the best I could. “Are you going to say anything?” I shot at her harder than I had meant to. I was such an asshole. I stood up straight, trying to suck in more air and gripping my hips again, hoping that if I pinched them hard enough it would stop my eyes from stinging. I wasn’t ashamed to cry. Fuck, I’d seen grown men sob for their mothers; there was no shame in crying, but right now was not the time. I sniffed and cleared my throat. She needed to say something. My mind was racing off the rails, and I was seriously starting to feel like I was going to pass out; my heart was jackhammering so hard in my chest. “Fucking say something, Kara, because I can’t take this.” I whispered across the space between us. My throat felt like it was closing. I tried to tell myself I was fine, but it just wasn’t enough. I needed her to say something. I needed to stop the oncoming panic, and I couldn’t do that if she was standing in front of me like that, breaking me down to nothing without even knowing it. “Please...” I breathed heavily and brought my shaking hand to my face, hoping to rub the pain from my eyes. Then she did it, she spoke. At least I thought that she did. The words she said sounded so foreign to me. They couldn’t be real. Were they? Did she say that? I couldn’t hear anything over the slamming of my heart in my ears. And then my brain flipped a switch, and a terror filled my body from the top of my head to the ground I stood on. She had spoken; she had said the three words that you can’t take back. The three words that I had been trying to keep from her for weeks. Her voice echoed through my mind saying “I love you” over and over and over again. My eyesight blurred for a moment as I watched her swallowing hard. She was nervous. Why was she nervous? Sweet Girl, I would love you for the rest of your life if you let me. A million promises that there was no way I could give her rushed through my mind as I stood rooted to the floor several feet from her. I couldn’t move. My mouth became drier and drier with each passing second until I realized that my lips were hanging open slightly. I licked them, and the pain that stabbed through my head kept jolting me every other breath I took. I could look at her beautiful face but only for a few moments before I had to look away. I couldn’t say it back to her. I couldn’t do that to her. She didn’t deserve that. She didn’t need to be tied to me like that. I kept trying to think of things to say to fill the silence, but the moment my mouth would begin to form a word, my mind would skip to another thought. I couldn’t stop it. My head was spinning; everything was overwhelming. In an effort to hold off the shakes that were threatening my body at any moment, I bent forward and gripped my knees again. My eyes closed tight, trying to block out everything. I needed to recenter myself; I needed to breathe. I could hear her weight shifting on the creaking board under the rug, and it snapped me out of it. I stood up straight and took a deep breath. A sudden urge to throw up hit me, but I swallowed it back as words finally came from my mouth.
“What did you say?” I asked in a low rasping voice while I looked at Jessie. I couldn’t look at Kara. I couldn’t do it. I could say something I’d regret. I could do something that I shouldn’t.
“I said I love you, Ethan,” she whispered, twisting her fingers and bringing them to her mouth like she was going to be able to hide it. No, Sweet Girl, no, don’t say that. My mind screamed so loud it hurt. Everything hurt, and I couldn’t stop it when my chin started to flinch, and my eyes burned. She loved me. She said she loved me, and every part of me fucking loved her. My chest started to raise faster and faster. I could feel myself losing it as my entire body was hit with a shock wave of emotions, and I couldn’t fight it anymore. My feet moved quickly to her, and my lips pressed to hers before she could say anything else. I didn’t need to hear anything else. She was going to be a part of my being for the rest of my life. My hands were on her face, and the feeling of her delicate fingers coming up and gripping mine was enough to fire right through my heart. Her tears hit my hands and burned my skin knowing that I had caused them.
“You’re crazy,” I gasped into her lips forcefully, going right back to kissing her like she was the only thing in the world that meant anything to me, because she was.
“I don’t care,” she panted back in a way that fed a need growing in my lower body. She wanted me, all of me, and my fucking god, did I want her. Not being able to stand her lips away from mine, I pulled her forward and put my hand on the back of her neck, holding her to me. My body took on a life of its own, and I could feel myself growing for her by the second as my tongue pushed past her lips. She let go of my face, and suddenly everything around us went dark. I heard her scream. A panic shot through me, and I felt her disappear from my hands.
“KARA!” I yelled so loudly I could taste blood from my throat as my breathing began to speed up and my body shook. “KARA!” I yelled again into the darkness. Pain shot through my limbs. It was like I was getting blown up all over again as every scar on my body ripped freshly open. I screamed in agony, lost in the total darkness around me. I fell to my knees trying to keep the scraps of my broken body together when I heard a sound so loud that it pierced my eardrums, and the only thing my mind could focus on was the ringing that ripped through my ears. She was gone, and I was dying without her. One fucking painful tear at a time.
The slamming of the thunder outside shook the windows of my townhouse, and I shot straight up in my bed. My sheets that were still on my body were drenched in sweat. My shirt was sticking to me. I couldn’t breathe. I needed my meds. I needed to wait it out. I needed to hold the fuck on. I kicked my way out of the blanket that was wrapped around my leg, and I quickly got out of bed trying to get down to the kitchen. I wasn’t planning on a storm tonight or I would’ve kept the fucking things next to the bed like I had been. But there shouldn’t have been a storm this late into the year. I stumbled through the dark and down the stairs. My feet hit the spot where I had been standing in my dream just moments before. This was the spot that I was standing when Kara told me she loved me that first time. The image of her letting her bathrobe fall to the floor in front of me froze me where I stood. Her hands taking off my shirt flashed in front of my eyes. My stomach rolled. I was going to be sick. I raced to the kitchen and bent over the sink just in time to throw up anything left in my stomach from dinner last night. I ran the cold water trying to splash handfuls of it on my face, my stomach continuing to wretch. I deserved this. I deserved all of this. I deserved to fucking suffer in a corner for what I did to her. I reached over my head to the silver shelf above me and pushed my hand through the bottles upon bottles of medication that I had been prescribed in the last few months. Things for depression, things for panic disorders, mood stabilizers, things for sleep, things to wake my ass up, you name it. The bottles rained down into the sink as my hand searched in the dark of my kitchen. Finally, I found the bottle I was looking for. Thunder slammed again, and my other hand gripped the bridge of my nose so hard I really thought for a moment I might break the fucking thing. I felt my head begin to spin, and knowing what was coming, I slid down to the floor, leaning my back against the cabinets watching my hands struggle to open the lid of the orange plastic bottle in my grasp. I was ready to break the goddamn thing when it finally opened, and I was able to pull out two pills. I tipped my head back and swallowed them down. They tasted fucking horrible. I hated them. I hated all of this. How was this shit any better? I kicked the door of the fridge open with my foot, and the light from inside lit up the kitchen where I had first kissed her. Every part of this goddamn house reminded me of her. I fucking hated it. I grabbed a water bottle off the bottom shelf and chugged it, leaving the refrigerator door wide open. The cold wafting from it felt good on my overly heated skin. The rain slammed the sliding glass doors in my dining room, and the only thing I could do was wait and hold the fuck onto nothing. I had nothing. I laid down on the cold kitchen floor and pulled my knees to my chest, waiting. Waiting to freak the fuck out again, waiting to feel better, waiting for the pain to stop. Just waiting. It was all I could do.
I heard someone at my door from where I lay staring up at the bedroom ceiling. I waited to hear Jessie bark, but nothing. Everything was quiet. I had installed a video doorbell like Kara had when I got back. It actually made me feel better to know I’d get a notification if someone so much as walked by my house. I also had an alarm system installed. All things that I never felt I needed when I had Jessie. Between her and me and our training, no one was coming in that door unless we said they could. But now, she wasn’t there, and the only way I could live a “normal life,” as one of my doctors liked to call it, was if I started making changes. Like my bedroom; I needed to sleep there, at least that’s what they told me. Honestly, the idea of staying in my bedroom had become less stressful since I started sessions with Doctor Nadi. Except on nights like last night. Now, thanks to that, part of my therapy was to fucking lay here and reflect on how last night made me feel. Tired… it made me feel tired. Tired of life. Tired of nightmares and silence. Tired of reflecting on every little fucking thing. I’d done so much of it the past three months I might as well be a fucking mirror.
I understood the logic behind it all. I really did. Don’t internalize, don’t harbor, express it all. Express your feelings, express your thoughts, express your pain. I reached up and rubbed my hands over my eyes. I expected to feel the cold metal of my ring rubbing over my face, but then I remembered it was gone. And I remembered where it was. Well, at least where I hoped it was. I would’ve deserved it if she had chucked them in the fucking trash at the airport. But my god, I hoped she still had them. I needed her to have them. I wanted to be able to believe that she didn’t think I was a total asshole. I needed to be able to think that she couldn’t actually hate me.
I held my hands up in the air in front of my face and looked at the line of smooth skin on the inside of my finger where my ring had once sat for so many years. My eyes closed on their own, and in the darkness behind them, I saw Kara kissing it. “Fuck me...” I sighed out loud to my empty room, dropping my hands to my chest. The girl was everywhere. Constantly. She was in my dreams, she was in my house, I’d get flashes of her, memories. All of this on top of the images that had already haunted me. My life was essentially constant snippets of my past over and over interrupted by commercials of real life.
My phone chimed, letting me know the person was still at my front door. I really wished that Instacart shoppers would read the notes. I said to just leave the groceries. I had gotten to the point that going out shopping was something I just couldn’t do. What if Kara saw me? What if I didn’t know that she saw me? The anxiety of it all made my throat clench. I could do it if I had Jessie. I think I could at least. Probably not, but I could tell myself that.
I picked up my phone and hit the button to speak to the driver. “Just leave it there, thanks.” I sighed, watching the young girl look around and shrug like she didn’t know where the voice was coming from. I wished I could just go shop for myself, but she couldn’t know I was home. What the hell would I say to her? I hadn’t done enough yet. I needed more time. Because of this, the idea of seeing her around town was terrifying.
I had done a pretty good job of staying under wraps since I got home. Hell, there were two weeks in the very beginning, right after they had taken Jessie back, that I didn’t leave the living room floor. I just laid on the mattress that Kara and I had put there and slept. I’d get up and work out on the living room floor until my body was numb. I’d shower, eat, then go back to sleep. The doctors had wanted me to go up to my bedroom right away. They said that I needed to “immerse myself in my healing.” Fuck them, I knew what would happen if I did that. I was going to end up right back to where I was when Kara had first found me. Listening to every tiny noise and sleeping with a gun under my pillow. I didn’t want to be that guy again. I had a taste of what it felt like to be normal for once in my life. To be happy. She gave me that freedom, and I needed to be able to give it back to her, and there was no way I was going to be able to do that the way I had been going. She was right, she was always right, I had to fix it all. But I needed to do it without hurting her, and she deserved a chance to be happy and not stuck with a shmuck like me. At least that was what I told myself when all I could do was think about how broken she looked the day I let her go.
I knew what she really wanted me to do, I knew what she wanted me to say. She wanted me to stop her and change my mind and pull her back, but I couldn’t. The struggle in my body that night between my mind and my physical self was enough to kill me. My heart pleaded for her as my mind and legs pulled me from her. I didn’t have a choice. Thank god for Mel. I don’t think I could’ve done it without her help. I don’t think Kara would have stepped foot on that plane without her holding her hand. I hated asking Mel to be part of it. But Kara wasn’t going to see. She couldn’t see what was happening to not only me but to her. Christ, the poor thing sobbed in my arms for over an hour the last night we were together just at the thought of me deploying again. What the hell was going to happen to her when I would be gone for a year? I just couldn’t. I couldn’t break her like that. I had texted Mel thanking her when all was said and done. “Fuck. Off.” Was the only response I got from her. She sent it to me one letter at a time to really drive the point home. I couldn’t blame her. I fucking hated me too. I deserved every single letter she sent me of that text and more.
After that, I didn’t hear from Mel for a month. And then all hell broke loose, and I heard from her at least three times a day asking why I hadn’t “fixed myself” yet. It just hurt me even more and, in the end, I had to block her. My doctors suggested it after she sent me into a panic attack once. It wasn’t her fault; I was already at the end of the rope. They said, “she wasn’t conducive to the healing process.” I told them that I wasn’t conducive to the healing process.
I had wanted to marry Kara. I had wanted to wake up looking at her beautiful soul every goddamn morning, but at what price? An asshole husband who couldn’t keep his shit straight? What if I hurt her during a flashback or attack? They had gotten one hundred times worse since therapy started digging into every little memory that I had repressed. I had wanted to start a family with her, but I couldn’t. She didn’t need a father for her kids that might suddenly drop to his knees and start screaming because a fucking car backfired. Christ, what if I had deployed and died? I had seen too many people have to bury their husbands and wives and I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t let her hold a folded flag next to a casket. Kara deserved so much more than I was able to give her at this moment. I was doing my best to fix it, but it was going to be a long fucking road. Between losing her and Jessie, I had landed in outpatient therapy five days a week, in addition to teleappointment visits with my two main doctors once a week. Don’t forget the group therapy sessions on Mondays and Thursdays over at the hospital downtown. And the luncheon at the veteran’s hall on Saturdays. Between all of those and trying to map new running routes that would avoid anywhere that I knew Kara might be, I didn’t have a huge amount of free time. I had thought about getting another dog, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want another dog; I wanted my partner. I had failed that poor girl right along with Kara.
I was trying to figure out how to bypass everything and get her out, but there was nothing. If worst came to worst, I had told myself that I’d file to adopt her when and if they retired her, but that could be years. And the lack of her in my life was having its toll. I couldn’t go anywhere in the dark alone, which was a real issue given that the daylight was becoming less and less every day. I tried not to drive anywhere in case Kara saw my car. I needed to get a grip, I needed to talk to her, but if I was her, I don’t know if I’d piss on me if I was on fire. What the fuck was I supposed to say to her? There was nothing I could say to make this better. I had to get myself stitched back together the right way this time. No band-aiding shit. If I wanted the life with her that we dreamt of so many fucking times, if I wanted to win her back, I needed to be so much more than I was now. I needed to be her why. And right now, at this moment, I was nowhere close.
