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She gave a little smile, but it melted away again. “How hard is it to go from being a Ranger to being a civilian?”
There was that perceptiveness again. He met those sea-blue eyes and gave her the truth, not just because her curiosity was sincere, but because some day she’d have a brother going through the shit of transition, too. Though, hopefully not until Ryan put in his twenty and was good and ready to retire.
“It’s like…it’s like going from a world where everything’s in technicolor to one where everything’s black and white.”
Shayna’s lips parted like maybe he surprised her. But he suddenly needed her to understand. He turned toward her, their knees touching under the counter.
“It’s like, one day you’re dodging bullets and jumping out of helicopters into deserts alive with hidden threats and you’re taking really bad fucking people off the streets, and the
next day, you’re standing in a grocery store aisle with seventy-five types of cereal wondering if anyone knows how goddamn ridiculous it is that there are so many choices of one thing. And you’re going to dinners and parties and people are talking about what some celebrity said or wore or what happened on the last episode of a TV show and all you can think about is that somewhere someone might be dying because you don’t have their back. Which probably sounds arrogant as shit, but it’s how you feel. How I feel. Sometimes.”
And hell if that wasn’t more than he’d admitted to anyone in a long-ass time.
Shayna’s expression was a beautiful mask of emotion—more of that surprise, but maybe sympathy and sadness, too. And fuck, he really hoped none of what she felt was pity. Because even though he was capable of throwing himself a goddamn stellar pity party on occasion, he hated it from anyone else.
“So, uh, yeah. That was probably more than what you wanted, but, uh, that’s one soldier’s take.” He finally took a drink to cut off the string of awkward nonsense coming out of his mouth.
She swallowed, and it was a thick sound, as if she were a little choked up. And then he saw the glassiness in her eyes.
“I’m sorry it’s hard sometimes. And it must be harder because people who haven’t been through it can’t imagine it. Not really. We think soldiers come home from war and must be so happy about it never realizing…”
“That’s the thing,” he said, hardly believing how much he was laying bare—or how easy he was finding doing so. With her. “I was happy at first. I don’t think you have any way of guessing at all the ways in which being in the real world starts to seem surreal. It’s why so many people get out of the military and end up doing similar kinds of jobs as a civilian.”
His friend Noah was only the most recent example of that very phenomenon. Guy worked as an ordinance disposal tech in the Marines, which meant he spent his time around things that exploded or threatened to do so, and now he worked for TSA as a bomb appraisal officer.
Some of that was skills and qualifications. But some of that was an urgent fucking need to return to the work you’d done before, because it’d felt meaningful, and despite the fact that said work might’ve been responsible for injuring your body or fucking with your head.
“Like with you doing investigations,” she said.
He rubbed a hand over his face, needing that momentary break from laying himself so bare to her—and from how much Shayna fucking got him.
“Yeah. Exactly,” he finally said. “I was actually drawn to private security, but my recovery was kind of a long, slow process and I feared my responsiveness wouldn’t be what a crisis situation might require.” Which had been a helluva thing to come to terms with.
“You’re a good egg, Billy Parrish,” she said, her expression suddenly shy.
And fuck if he didn’t feel a little heat crawl up his face. “I think I preferred when you called me a ballbag.”
She laughed, a full-belly laugh that eked a smile out of him in return. “Fine, knobhead.”
And now he was laughing, too. How was it that this woman had taken him from some really damn intimate shit he’d barely been willing to tell his therapist to humor in the course of a few minutes? He didn’t know, but he appreciated it. A lot.
“Much better,” he said, nodding.
He could barely believe they’d been sitting at the breakfast bar talking for nearly two hours. Or that he’d enjoyed it so much when it’d involved digging into some of the shit he usually kept boxed up tight. But he had.
The LED clock on the microwave caught his eye. “Damn, is it three o’clock already?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. I’ve taken up your whole day.” She grabbed his plate and bowl and threw him a smile. “Here, I’ll clean up. I hereby release you from furniture building and moving.”
He grasped her arm. “Don’t apologize. I liked getting to hang out with you. It’s been a while. I just need a few hours to do research on a case that’s been a pain in my ass.”
Her expression went so soft and sweet. “I get it. Really. Go ahead. Do what you have to do. I’m just gonna chill out anyway.”
“You sure?” he asked, pushing off the stool.
“Yes, knobhead, I’m sure.”
He flipped her off and made for the stairs, grinning to himself as she burst into laughter again, and then he threw her a wink as he went up.
