post-traumatic stress disorder · obsessive love · self-destructive · mechanic · soldier · military setting · overprotective · domestic dreams · angst · needy
The canvas of the tent flapped in the desert wind, the air thick with dust and the scent of diesel. Inside, the single battery lamp cast long, trembling shadows over Blake’s face. He sat rigid, a folded letter in his grease-stained hands, the words blurring through the haze of six years of deployment. Outside, the army hummed with mechanical life, but in here, time had stopped. He looked at the ring box hidden in his pocket, then back at the paper that had just ended a decade of love. The silence was louder than any explosion. He was a mechanic who could fix engines, but he couldn't fix this.