I didn’t fill the silence. Jasper didn’t speak. We sat like that for three full minutes—Jasper with his hands on his belly, me with my palm flat against his back, both of us looking at the mountain through the window.
After the third minute, I said, “Put your shoes on.”
Jasper turned to look at me, confusion visible on his face. “What?”
“I have something to show you,” I said. “It can’t wait.”
Jasper shook his head slightly. “Deck, I’m the size of a small barn,” he said, voice carrying the exasperation I’d come to recognize. “Walking is not my preferred activity right now.”
“I’ll carry you if I have to,” I said, keeping it simple. “But we’re going.”
Jasper gave me the look that meant he was going to argue and then decided not to—the expression of a man who’d learned that some battles weren’t worth fighting, especially when they were against someone who’d just gone through a firefight to keep him alive.
It was one of my favorite things about him—this quality of picking his moments, of understanding when standing his ground mattered and when letting someone else take the lead served everyone better.
He sighed, the sound landing somewhere between exasperation and reluctant amusement. “Fine,” he said. “But if you make me walk more than a quarter mile in this heat, I reserve the right to murder you in your sleep.”
I nodded, accepting what he’d offered without pushing for more. “Deal,” I said, already reaching for his boots beside the bed. “You won’t have to go that far.”
Jasper made a sound that wasn’t quite a word but carried meaning anyway, and reached for the shoes with the carefulness of a man who’d stopped questioning whether he was allowed to want things and had started asking for them directly.
Whatever came next—whatever version of a life we built together—we would face it as something we had chosen rather than a situation that had chosen us.
I pulled the worn red bandana from the top dresser drawer—the one I’d carried through two deployments and kept for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate—and held it up where Jasper could see it.
His eyebrows lifted slightly, but he didn’t say anything as I stepped behind him and tied the fabric over his eyes—loose enough to be comfortable, tight enough that he couldn’t peek around the edges.
“This feels unnecessarily dramatic,” Jasper said, but there was no bite to it.
“You’ll live,” I said, already guiding him toward the door with one hand on his arm and one at the small of his back. “Three steps to the door. Screen opens outward.”
Jasper moved with the carefulness of someone who couldn’t see where he was going, but trusted the person leading him—one hand extended slightly in front, the other finding the doorframe when we reached it.
I opened the screen with my foot and guided him through, then down the three porch steps with the same careful attention I’d give to a child or someone injured.
The gravel road stretched in front of us, pale gold in the afternoon light, winding down toward the main gate and then branching east toward where Burke and Danny’s place stood among the pines. I turned Jasper in the opposite direction—north, toward the tree line and the rise of land beyond it—and started walking.
“I would like to register a formal complaint,” Jasper said immediately, his free hand coming up to grip my forearm. “This gravel is uneven. There are definitely potholes. I’m going to break an ankle and then our child is going to be born in a ditch.”
“Keep walking,” I said, tightening my grip on his arm slightly. “The road’s fine. You’re not going to fall.”
“I’m absolutely going to fall,” Jasper said, but he was smiling now. “And then I’m going to sue you for emotional damages and physical trauma and also for making me walk in this heat while I’m approximately the size of Montana.”
“You’re not suing anyone,” I said, guiding him around a larger stone in the path. “And we’re almost there.”
“Lies,” Jasper said, voice carrying the warmth of a man who was more entertained than he wanted to admit. “We’ve gone approximately twelve feet. I counted my steps.”
“You counted wrong,” I said. “We’re turning left in three, two, one—“
I guided him off the gravel and onto the grass that ran along the property line, the transition from hard surface to soft enough that Jasper stumbled slightly, his hand tightening on my arm.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, voice pitched higher with surprise. “A little warning next time?”
“I said we were turning,” I pointed out, already adjusting our course toward the rise of land that had been empty three months ago.
“You said ‘turning,’ not ‘leaving the road entirely,’” Jasper said, but he was laughing now, the sound landing somewhere between exasperation and genuine amusement. “This is definitely a ditch. I’m definitely going to fall in it.”
“You’re not,” I said, guiding him around a small depression in the ground. “Twenty more steps. Tops.”
