Except here's Jade, asking questions I don't want to answer, and instead of shutting her down like I should, I'm sitting here wanting to tell her. Wanting to explain why I am the way I am. Wanting her to understand.
That's dangerous.
That's how people get hurt.
"Can I ask you something?" she says, breaking the silence.
I tense. "You're going to anyway."
She smiles a little. "Probably. But I'll try to make it a good one."
"Go ahead."
She's quiet for a second, like she's choosing her words. Then she asks, "Do you ever talk to anyone? About whatever it is you're carrying?"
My jaw tightens. "No."
"Why not?"
"Because talking doesn't fix anything."
"Maybe not. But it might make it easier to carry."
I look at her, really look at her. She's not pushing. Not demanding. Just asking. Like she genuinely wants to know.
"You lose people," I say, the words coming out rougher than I intend, "and you've got two choices. You can talk about it until everyone around you is as miserable as you are, or you can carry it yourself and let other people live their lives."
"Those aren't the only two choices."
"They're the only ones that make sense."
"To you, maybe." She shifts, pulling her knees up to her chest. "But what if talking about it doesn't make other people miserable? What if they want to help carry it?"
"No one wants that."
"I do."
I stare at her, trying to figure out if she means it or if this is just something people say. The kind of empty offer that sounds good but disappears the second you actually take them up on it.
But she's looking at me with this expression that's so open, so genuine, that I almost believe her.
Almost.
"You don't know what you're asking for," I say.
"So, tell me."
And God, I want to. I want to tell her about the sand and the heat and the sound of the explosion that I still hear sometimes when it's too quiet. I want to tell her about Marcus and DeShawn and Cooper and all the others whose names I carry like stones in my chest. I want to tell her that I dream about them almost every night, that I wake up reaching for a rifle that isn't there, that some days the guilt is so heavy I don't know how I'm still standing.
I want to tell her all of it.
But what if I do and she can't handle it? What if I open up and she realizes that I'm too broken, too damaged, too much? What if she looks at me the way Sarah did toward the end, like she's trying to love something that's already gone?
That would break me.
I've survived a lot of things. War. Loss. Six years of isolation. But I don't think I'd survive that. Not again.
So, I do what I always do. I shut it down.