Page 16 of Pursuit of Honor

“It’s not pity that you need. What you need is patience and understanding,” she said. “Same as everyone else.”

“Everyone else...”

“People have different needs, but everyone needs patience and compassion, right?” she asked.

“I guess,” he said, not sure how to feel.

“On some level you agree with me because you help people with your job,” she pointed out. “Everyone deserves to be cared for. That’s what your search and rescue job is, even though its super macho.”

He laughed at that. Yeah, she was onto something. Plus, he liked listening to her talk because it gave insights into the way her strange, beautiful mind worked.

“Honestly, I just feel like people need to be protected,” he explained with a shrug. “It’s not a big deal. All in a day’s work.”

“It’s a big deal to the people you rescue,” she reminded him.

He paused to consider that. Law would never be into people bending over backward for him because of his service, but maybe he could try to understand what it might mean to have someone be grateful that their country gave a damn about them. Gave a damn enough to want to help them for nothing in return. “Guess I never thought of it that way. Just do my job, you now?”

“Well, it’s okay to think of it as a job or a duty to be there for people,” she said. “You think because its routine it isn’t special, but it is. It doesn’t have to be wrapped up in a pretty bow to matter. Just doing your job and showing up for people is enough.”

“Just enough,” he said firmly. “I’m not more or less special than anyone.”

“So stop thinking that you deserve less. I bet you think that because you’ve had a hard life you deserve it to be hard all the time. Well, that’s not what enough means. Enough doesn’t mean you treat yourself less than while acting like it’s okay,” she observed. “Well, I think it’s the opposite of being hard on yourself. Experiencing hardship in the past doesn’t mean it has to be your future. It’s like the sky we saw at the academy. It wasn’t all dark, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t,” he said, his battered heart swelling.

“Exactly, there were stars and lights there too. I know I can be corny,” she said, laughing softly, “but things are corny and clichéd because they’re true. True things are everywhere so we take them for granted. But that doesn’t make them any less true.”

“Art has helped you figure that out, huh?”

“Yes, I guess it has,” she replied. “Guess the too-long, didn’t-read-version of my spiel is that it doesn’t have to look special to matter. Art is art because it exists. People are works of art for the same reason. So, you just have to be there for people. You just have to show up. And one of the people you can show up for can be yourself.”

“You’re smart,” he told her, leaning in to kiss her forehead.

She gave a shy, breathless laugh that made him want to keep learning about all the ways he could put a smile on her face. “I know I sound like a greeting card.”

“You do have a way with words,” he said approvingly.

“My art is a lot less flowery,” she admitted.

“What I get from your art is that even bad-asses need love too, sometimes,” he said, remembering the shark and the stingray figures she’d crafted with her own hands.

Piper pulled back to look at him, granting him the brightest smile he had ever seen in his life, her cheeks going all pink. “I think you’re the one who has a way with words.”

“I have my moments,” he said.

She smiled again and then snuggled up against him, her soft curls brushing across his chest. Law held her close, the warmth of her body was so good that it felt like it was healing him somehow. Softening his heart after years of letting the damn thing freeze.

Piper was strange and open and said exactly what she was thinking. Yet, even though it was going to take some doing to decipher everything she said, Law felt the intention behind everything she said. Everything she did was done with kindness, curiosity, patience, and a singular intelligence that made him feel that even he could be understood if someone just put in the effort. Truthfully, she made him feel as if he was worth the effort, which scared the hell out of him because he had obligations that ran way beyond his own selfish desires.

For one thing, he had a job to do. A job that demanded he sacrifice everything for the good of others. Not to mention, his shipmates were all he truly had. They were his safe harbor, though he’d never confess that to those knuckleheads, even if they tried to force it out of him by shoving his head underwater. It was a small life, but he did have a life to get back to. And maybe meeting Piper was what he needed to expand it when he finally came back to shore for longer than a weekend. He’d never forget her, that was for sure.

They held each other for a long time. Then, when he glanced at his phone to check his messages, he realized that he needed to get back to the motel if he wanted to be packed and ready to ship out in the morning.

Without a word, he went to the adjacent bathroom to get dressed, then stepped back out. Law had never had talent for goodbyes. Typically, he figured out when he was on the verge of overstaying his welcome, then grabbed his few belongings and left. This time felt different because she didn’t make him feel like he was overstaying. “I was wondering, could I call you?” he asked. “Could we stay in touch after I leave? We might have something and I don’t want us to lose it.”

Piper climbed out of bed, wrapping the blanket around her gorgeous body before approaching him. “You mean like a long-distance friendship?”

He wanted more than friendship. But he didn’t have the right to demand that she not date other guys while he was halfway around the world living his life. Law might have been okay asking that of her if they were actually together. But they weren’t. So a friendship was all he could expect. Probably more than he deserved, which was why, even though it killed him to accept that she’d never be his, he decided to agree. “Yeah, let’s be friends.”