Pas de Deux: Part Two (A Cross and Pointe Novel Book 2) (26 page)

Cillian's heart seized as if a cold, invisible fist grabbed and squeezed it. He huffed out a short, painful breath. Lee was everywhere.

“Come sit,” Mr. Li said, gesturing to a sofa against the wall. Cillian walked stiffly to the sofa and sat down, and Mr. Li took the armchair at his right. There was a long wooden coffee table in front of the sofa, and facing it was a picture of Lee—and of Cillian, and Matthews, and Meyer. All in the desert, on their very first deployment.

Mr. Li followed his gaze and smiled for the first time. “I enjoy that one. You all looked so young then, like little boys.”

“We were young.” Cillian cleared his throat. “I think we were around twenty-two in that picture.”

“You always said you had fun together that time.”

Cillian nodded. “We did have fun. We were scared, but we had a lot of fun, too.”

Mrs. Zhang came over at that moment, holding a tray. There was a small teapot on it and three tea cups, plus a little plate of cookies.
Biscuits. She always calls them biscuits.

She poured tea, and Cillian his tea cup first, with a little bow of her head. A tiny smile pulled up the corners of her mouth. “For you. You still like tea?”

Like Mr. Li, Mrs. Zhang still carried a noticeable accent, but hers was also tinged with the influence of the British-English she'd been taught in school in Hong Kong, where she'd lived until she moved to Beijing at eighteen. She had lots of “British-isms” that Lee had used to tease her about growing up.

“Biscuit?” she added, holding out the plate.

They weren't exactly like American cookies—they were rectangular shaped, dark brown, and smelled like brown sugar. They'd always been Cillian's favorite when he came over—he always used to call them “crispy cookies”.

Coincidence? Or does she remember?
He met her gaze, and her dark brown eyes were soft.

“Always your favorite,” she said, as if she could read his mind. “Yours and Jensen's.”

Cillian took a cookie, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. His eyes stung.
Just a cookie, you fucking pussy. Get your shit together.

But it wasn't just a cookie. He was welcome here. He was welcome, and he didn't know why they wanted him to stay.

He bit into the sweet cookie, its familiar flavor bringing on memories of staying over with Lee and his family on drill weekends during the early days of his Army service, when he was too tired to drive back to Boston. He and Lee would commandeer the basement with boxes of these cookies, a twelve-pack, and play Call of Duty until three in the morning.

“I'm sorry,” Cillian blurted, setting the remnants of the cookie and his tea cup on the coffee table. “I'm sorry about Jensen. I'm sorry for what happened over there—”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Mr. Li said, his voice quiet but with the stress of urgency. He placed his hand on Cillian's shoulder. “Jensen made a choice.”

Cillian shook his head, clenching his jaw. “He didn't have to make that choice. If I had just—”

“You cannot blame yourself,” Mr. Li said. “It was hard on all of you, over there. He emailed us about what he'd seen. I know how deeply it affected him.”

“I saw the signs. I saw how he—he was hurting himself.” The things Cillian never planned to tell anyone about Lee, ever, came tumbling out of his mouth. “He was hurting himself, and I knew that, and I didn't do anything about it. I didn't tell command. I didn't tell the guys—I didn't know what to do. So I did nothing.”

Lee's parents exchanged a look. Mrs. Zhang pulled a tissue from her pocket, dabbing her streaming eyes.

“We saw the autopsy report.” Mr. Li looked down at his hands. “We saw where it said he had cuts on his arms. The coroner noted that they appeared self-inflicted.”

Cillian nodded. “They were. It's why I'll always hold myself responsible for him. I should've told command—but I didn't want to get him in trouble. I didn't want him to get kicked out of the Army. I was selfish—I needed him there, so I could get through it. We all needed him. It was too hard, too much, the last time. We never thought Lee would suffer the way he did.”

“There is no sense in carrying around guilt, Cillian. I wanted to blame someone, anyone, for what happened to my son. I wanted to blame you, and the other boys. I wanted to blame the Army, the government, this country, for taking my son from me.” Mr. Li cleared his throat, and took a sip of tea. His hands were trembling. “We will never know what would have become of Jensen if you had spoken to your command. Maybe he would still be here. Maybe he would not. But you cannot hold onto the guilt, because it does not change the fact that he is gone. All it does is make the grief stronger, and we will always grieve for him. My wife will always cry herself to sleep every night, because she has lost her son.”

Cillian glanced at Mrs. Zhang's hands, where they scrunched and unscrunched the tissue. If he looked at her face, he knew he'd break all the way down.

“I do not blame you, Cillian,” Mr. Li went on. “I cannot blame you. You were a young man at war. I can never understand what that does to a person's mind. Look what it did to my boy. Yes, Jensen is gone, but he is gone because of himself. But you did save him—you saved him from the fire in the truck. And I will never forget that. You risked your life to save his.”

They were both quiet for a long time. Mr. Li lifted his gaze to meet Cillian's. “Is that why you came here today? To seek forgiveness?”

“No.” Cillian shook his head. “I don't want to be forgiven. I want—I wanted—you to hate me.”

“Why would you want that? We could never hate you. All of you boys—but especially you, Cillian—were like sons to us. Wen and I have felt forgotten by you.”

Cillian's eyes watered. “I'm sorry, Mr. Li. I'm sorry you've felt that way, Mrs. Zhang. We never forgot you—we just didn't know how to come back here.”

“We would like to see you all more,” Mrs. Zhang spoke up, her voice barely above a whisper. “You were so close with Jensen, it's as if he was still here, when we see you.”

Fuck.
Cillian took a breath and held it, blowing it out slowly. “I'm sorry. I promise, I'll come visit more.”

“We would like that.” Mr. Li smiled again, and Lee's smile ghosted across his face.

Cillian stayed another hour; they had to leave for their weekly mahjong game and lunch with a couple friends, and it pleased him to know that they were doing little things they enjoyed.

Mr. Li walked with him back to the truck. “Thank you for coming to see us today.”

“Thank you, Mr. Li. I'm sorry to just pop up like this, but I had to come. I shouldn't have waited so long. I'm sorry.”

Mr. Li shook his head. “No more apologies. We continue from this point.” He tucked his hands behind his back. “Are you sure you're all right?”

Cillian took a deep breath. “Life is...a little bit crazy right now, but I—I'll be okay.” He cleared his throat. “How...how were you and Mrs. Zhang on the—the day?”

Mr. Li sighed. “We looked over all our old photos of him, from when he was a baby to the last pictures we had of him before he died. We thought about all of our favorite memories. We watched home movies. We even watched the video clips you boys sent us from overseas, on your first deployment, remember?”

Despite himself, Cillian couldn't help snorting. “Do you mean when we tried to get the camel spiders to fight?”

Mr. Li chuckled. “Yes. And Joshua was so scared of them he kept running away, yelling, and running back to see if his spider had won.”

Cillian laughed too. “I remember that night. Way too much illegal beer. We're lucky we didn't get written up and kicked out.”

Mr. Li patted his shoulder. “Those are the memories of our boy we hold onto—our funny, mischievous boy.”

“He was funny,” Cillian said quietly. “He always kept us laughing. He broke up fights—this one time, these two soldiers almost got into it, because one of them lost his rifle, and thought the other one stole it. Lee pushed in between them and then he started reciting the Braveheart speech, Scottish accent and all, pretending he was galloping on a horse.”

He couldn't help chuckling, and Mr. Li joined in, slapping his knee. Even in dark times, that memory could make him smile. He'd never forget how still and quiet the bay had gotten, watching Lee galloping on an invisible horse, shouting, “They'll never take...our
freedom!
” The tension vanished instantly and every guy in that room fell on the floor laughing.

“That's what I remember about him,” Cillian went on, sobering. “How he could change the whole atmosphere of a room, just by being himself.”

“Sometimes, I feel he is still across the world, deployed on base somewhere, playing games, joking.” Mr. Li's eyes took on a faraway look as they shifted up to the sky. “Someday, he'll come back home, I tell myself.”

Cillian held himself together as he hugged Mr. Li goodbye. He held himself together as he watched the slight man walk back to the house, head bowed, hands in his pockets. He held himself together as he pulled out of Hawthorne Village onto empty Beech Street.

Then, he let go.

Cillian tilted his forehead against the steering wheel, shoulders shaking as heavy, silent tears coursed from his eyes, the first real ones he'd shed since he found Lee's body in that Humvee over a year ago. He released the tears—for Jensen Bao Hong Li, who'd died at age twenty-nine because the ugliness of the world had been too much for his light. For Lee's parents, who'd lost their only child, whom they'd loved more than anything. For Matthews, Meyer, and all the guys from the unit, who'd had the pleasure of knowing him, of being affected by him, of being touched by that light.

And for himself, suffering the loss of what felt like a true brother. He released it all, trying to force the guilt to go with it. He'd never not feel somewhat responsible, but the blame, the heavy bricks of guilt, he'd leave here, on Beech Street in Franklin, Massachusetts.

Someday, he'll come home.

Cillian stopped at a gas station for more coffee before getting on 495 to head back to Boston. He dug his phone out of his pocket, which he'd had on silent since going to bed last night, and his eyes widened at the list of missed calls and texts he had. They were all from Basanta.

He didn't bother checking any of the messages, calling Baz back immediately.

“Dude!” Basanta sounded on the verge of panic. “I've been trying to fucking call you since last night!”

Shit—something's wrong with him.
“Baz, what the hell's goin' on? My phone was on silent all night, man, sorry I missed all your calls. You all right, bro?”

“Your girl came by the gym last night.”

Cillian sat up straight. “Sammi?”
Not my girl anymore.

“Yeah, Sammi. And she was
really
upset. She asked for you. Carl attacked her last night.”

The blood drained from his face and he got lightheaded. “Carl did fucking
what?
”

“I wasn't there, I didn't see it, but Sammi said he was waiting for her at the rec center last night, however the hell he knew she'd be there, and tried to force her to go somewhere with him.”

Cillian's heart pounded with horror and fury. “What the fu—is she okay? Is she hurt?”

“She's okay, but she was pretty terrified. She kneed him in the balls and ran, the gym was the closest familiar place. Thought you'd be here. I got her a taxi and sent her home. Then I got fired. Or I quit. I'm not really sure.”

Cillian shook his head rapidly, trying to process it all. “Fired? What?”

“Carl came up as she was leaving and started popping off at the mouth. So I accidentally called him a piece of shit and got myself fired.” He let out a mirthless chuckle. “I guess we're in the same boat, now, huh?”

“Shit.” Cillian pressed his fingers against his temples. “I'm really sorry, Baz. You shoulda ca—” He snapped his mouth shut.
He couldn't call you—you silenced your phone, moron.
“Hey, thanks for takin' care of her. What're you gonna do?”

Baz sighed. “I've got some dough saved up. I'm gonna hit up some of the other gyms and see if there's any need for personal trainers. Otherwise, all else fails, I can always get back in the cage.”

The bitter echo in his voice sent a pang through Cillian. “I'm sorry, man. I know that's the last fuckin' thing you want to do.”

“Yep. But, I got a sick mother to take care of, so...I'll do what I gotta do. Where you at, man? Your reception is sketchy.”

“I'm heading back from Franklin. Visiting Lee's family.” He chewed his lip. “So...you're sure Sammi was okay?”

“Yeah. Definitely scared—said he was grabbin' her and cornering her. Said some fucked up shit to her. But not a scratch on her. You should go check on her.”

“Wish I could, but...I can't. I need to keep my distance.” His call waiting beeped in his ear, and he checked the screen. “Dude, Matty's calling me. I gotta let you go, but I'm gonna hit you up when I get back. Thanks again, bro, and I'm sorry for all this...shit.”

“No worries. Yeah, let's link up when you're back. Later.”

Cillian clicked over. “Matty.”

“Hey, bro. What you got goin' today?”