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08: LOVE MADE ME CRAZY Leah
“What are you doing?!” I screamed at him, thrashing against the enemy's grip. I was throwing myself around as violently as I could, not caring about myself as I screamed like a child throwing a tantrum.
“It’s okay, Rampage.”
“Let him go! You motherfuckers, I’ll fucking castrate you!” I threw my head back, making one of them groan in pain before grabbing my head and body. They smashed me against the concrete floor, my skull hitting the hard ground.
And they held a gun to my head.
“Stop it!” I wasn’t going to stop. Despite the tears already streaming down my face, my eyes were burning with rage as I looked at him.
My husband.
“Shut the fuck up!” He turned me over, throwing a punch at my face with the handle of the handgun.
“Rampage, stop.”
“They’ll have to fucking kill me,” I breathed out, my gaze not wavering even as the gun was aimed at my right eye.
“We’ll let you and your bitch go if you tell us the location. Last chance,” Our kidnapper hissed in his ear, and he winced as he pressed his thumb into his bullet wound in his shoulder.
And I knew it. I knew that he wasn’t going to give us another chance, so I made eye contact with Johnny. I looked at him with the look of a woman willing to lose everything for the man she loves - staring into those big brown eyes that I’ve loved for the past three years of my life.
“Fourteen Ze-”
“Don’t listen to a fucking word she says!” Johnny shouted.
And those were his last words. Our kidnapper had gotten sick of this back and forth for six hours, and slit his throat. My breath caught in my throat as I watched him gargle. I watched as the dark red blood spilled down his neck, and he started to lose the light in his eyes. The tears had stopped, and I felt absolutely nothing as my body stilled.
“Shoot the bitch.”
“I’ll fucking kill you! Let go!”
“Kazansky! Wake up!”
“Leah! You’re okay!”
I wasn’t fully awake. My hand curled around the handgun under my pillow, and held it up at whoever was holding my arms. Collective gasps were heard around me as my vision started to clear up, and the person holding me by my arms was Bradley.
“B-Bradley, oh god,” I choked out, tears immediately flowing as I dropped it.
“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, I-”
“Everyone get out,” Bradley said, his voice stern but soft. No one questioned anything and started to leave, leaving the door open so that the hallway light allowed me to see,
“I-I’m sorry,” I whimpered, not aware that he let me go as my hands went up into my hair and I looked down.
I’m a fucking mess.
I’m not ready.
I don’t deserve to be here.
“Leah. . .are you okay? Do you know where you are?” This was protocol if someone had an episode, and even though it’s something you have to do, I was glad his voice was the one to soothe me.
“On base. San Diego, California,” I replied, still not daring to look up.
“What was your nightmare about? What mission?”
Oh god, I can’t. . .
My hands released my hair and went down to my knees, holding them to my chest, “Rescue of Johnny Tomlinson. . .four years ago.”
“You don’t have to tell me what happened-”
“Bradley, they killed him.”
Look at you.
A fucking unit leader.
And you’re still shaking like a wet dog.
“They killed my Johnny. They killed my husband,” I dared to look up at him, hoping to see just a blank stare. But once our gazes connected, his eyes widened with shock and sympathy.
“You were married?” Was all he asked.
I shook my head, “It-It was a month after. On our honeymoon, they. . .they found us in foreign waters and killed him right infront of me. They wanted the commander's address and where he would be, but we-we couldn’t. But Bradley, he was my husband. I couldn’t watch them kill him, but they did. . .they took my love away from me, Bradley. . .my Johnny.”
I could tell he had more questions. Like why I didn’t tell him, or why he never knew that I was engaged or getting married. But those were not questions for right now.
“I was too weak. . .and I still am. Harvard, Yale, Coyote, Fanboy, Hangman, Phoenix, Payback, you-you all deserve to be here. I dont -”
“You deserve it more than any of us, Leah Kazansky,” He sat down on the edge of my bed, looking at me but I couldn’t bear to look at him. Not while I’m like this.
“Please look at me,” His voice was hushed yet pleading.
I shook my head, “I-I can’t.”
I wanted to find comfort in the dark corner of the room. The corner I stared into and dissociated with on my worst days just so that I could forget the pain. Forget how I had to go home and tell his family that I failed - that he died because of me. So I could forget the nights I spent waking up screaming because of the whole in my heart. Waking up with a gun in my hand because of how terrified I was that I would be next. The days of depression where I held onto nothing but his ring, clenching it into my hand and thinking that if I prayed hard enough, maybe he would come back to me.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t push Bradley away when his rough and colloused hand grabbed my chin, and had me look at him. Maybe that’s why I didn’t interject to him scooting closer to me, and grabbing my small frame and holding me against him.
Because I couldn’t find comfort in the dark anymore.
“You deserve this not because you’ve been through the worst shit imaginable, but because you stayed alive. Through the most awful days and nights, you knew you had a way out. A way out of the pain, but you stayed. And God am I so glad that you chose to stay because you’re my best friend, and the strongest woman I’ve ever known,” I could feel his tears on my hair as he held my head to his chest. Not so that I didn’t have to look at him, but so that I didn’t have to see the way he cried. Because he blames himself. Because he pushed me away and we lost contact, I had to go through so much by myself. I never blamed him, but God did Bradley Bradshaw hate himself more than anyone else in the world because he wasn’t there for me.
“Please,” I spoke up.
“What?” He asked.
“Please never leave me again.”
He kissed my forehead, “I’ll move Heaven and Earth to be with you, Leah. Always.”
/// Leah has PTSD. She's been cleared to be on the field but she has extremely bad nightmares about that day.
