Trapped For Christmas

Chapter 16...

"So," Turning in my seat I clapped my hands on my knees. A good thirty minutes has passed of us driving and I was tired of the silence. "You've never told me why you enlisted in the Marine's."

"I didn't?" Logan glanced over.

"Nope. I don't really know how you met my brother either."

Logan was quiet for a moment, making me think he wasn't going to answer.

"I enlisted right after I graduated high school."

"Did you always want to join?" Helping out at the VA I've heard so many different stories about why people enlisted in the military. They all ranged from 'everyone in my family did so I did too', to 'it felt like my duty to help my country'.

"Not really. My senior year a recruiter came to my school and it kind of went from there."

"When did you meet my brother?" Over the years I've heard little bits of Logan and my brother being in the same task force but both rarely talked about it in front of me.

"It was my second tour. I had just been re-stationed overseas where your brother was." I stayed quiet, listening intently as Logan talked. He rarely talked about his time in the military...or really anything in general. I was going to take anything I could.

"I got assigned to his task force and we just became friends after that. When you spend weeks together you have no choice but to become friends. I actually looked up to your brother."

"Wait, really?" A small smile tugged at my lips. The thought of Logan thinking my brother was somehow cool was kind of hilarious.

"He was three years older than me and already a Sergeant. It's not an easy rank to have." I often forget my brother was pretty badass in the Marine's. Being a Sergeant usually took years and a lot of experience, add on that my brother was in charge of a task force....yeah he was pretty damn cool.

It was a little weird being reminded that Logan was close to my brothers age. Thirty-three where I was twenty-five.

"Do..." I hesitated in asking my next question.

"Hm?" Logan glanced over, waiting for me to continue.

"Do you regret enlisting?" I asked. I chewed on my bottom lip as my question lingered in the air. I once asked my brother that question, needing to know if he regretted going and leaving our family...leaving me. His immediate response was a sharp no. Like how could I ask him such a question.

At the time I was 18 and his answer hurt. He didn't regret leaving for eight years. The years without my big brother sucked. He was someone I wanted to come home and talk to. To take me to get ice cream when someone picked on me in school. On top of him being gone so long he got hurt.

Hurt enough that he had to come home and heal. It was beyond horrible watching my big brother hurt, laying in bed and wincing every time he moved. The only reason he didn't go back was because of my parents passing away shortly after.

For the longest time I thought he resented me for making him stay. If I had been older, or if we had other family, I could have stayed with them while he went back to the world he was in the past eight years.

The day I asked that question was the first time we ever brought up his time in the Marine's. We would always skirt around the subject when it was brought up. Clearly painful for both of us.

I remember being so mad and hurt by his words. But later that day when he came to my room he gave me the real honest answer. While he didn't necessarily regret enlisted, he regretted leaving me behind.