He huffed through his nose. “That what you think I’m doing?”
“I think you’ve been harder to reach lately. One of the guys mentioned you really love poker.”
He looked away again. It had to have been Crew. Irritation slipped under his skin like a thousand splinters. Why would Crew talk to Rhae? Why were they discussing him? Why would any of them discuss him outside the program?
“Good to know I’m a damn case study.”
Rhae compressed her lips. “Nobody’s gossiping about you, Pope. Sometimes when guys get close to graduating from the program, they panic a little.”
Outside the office, construction noise drifted faintly from the other side of the building.
Rhae picked up her pen again. “They start doing things that pull them backward because leaving means they don’t have a safety net anymore. They have no more ways to avoid figuring out who they are outside of what happened to them.”
What happened to him. Fuck.
“Not my problem.” He shot to his feet and already turned to the door before Rhae could push any harder.
As he reached the opening, a child with pigtails flying ran into the office. She set eyes on Pope and launched herself at his legs, wrapping her arms around him.
He reached down to cradle Navy’s head, his chest tightening.
She jumped on top of his boots and tipped her head back to look at him. “Horses!”
He gave one pigtail a light tug. “We’ll go see the horses later, Navy.”
The little girl grinned at him like he’d promised her the moon and enough stars to hang on her bedroom walls.
He swallowed against the strange pressure climbing into his throat and tugged his hat brim down before glancing at Rhae. He didn’t quite meet her stare.
“See you next week.”
The second he stepped outside, the sharp cold woke him up a little but not enough to clear out the mess tangled in his mind.
Summer.
Therapy.
The ranch changing around him. New vets would arrive soon and all those new rooms would be filled.
The ranch family—the Malones, all their significant others, the vets tied into Black Heart Security and the training facility—were all building something. Moving forward, leaving him stuck somewhere between the SEAL he’d been and whatever he was supposed to become.
Too many thoughts. Too many feelings. None of them good.
* * * * *
The baked beans were gone. Summer stood in the canned food aisle with her grocery list in one hand and Ben’s hand tucked in the crook of her elbow. And the exact amount of money she could spend on food for the week was already stretched so thin it felt like a joke.
She stared at the empty spot on the shelf where the store brand should have been. Not the name brand two rows above it. Not the organic ones with the fancy label that cost almost double. The cheap ones.
The ones she’d counted on because she’d sat at the kitchen table last night with a pencil, a calculator and the store’s sale flyer, figuring out this grocery trip down to the penny.
Beans, rice, eggs, bananas, chicken thighs if she could make the meat budget work, and the baked beans because Ben liked them and they could stretch into two meals if she added hot dogs and toast.
She checked the shelf again like maybe a can would appear if she stared hard enough. Nothing. Just one dented can of a brandshe couldn’t afford, and changing her list meant standing in the middle of the aisle doing math she didn’t have room in her head to do.
Ben leaned his cheek against her arm. “Hey, Mom. We could make cupcakes.”
Summer closed her eyes for half a second.
