Page 46 of Falling for a Grumpy Hero

Instantly, Ford tensed again, his features sharpening as if he was on high alert and his spine snapping straight. His eyes had locked on the window, his attention completely focused on the storm churning in the sky outside.

As I watched him, it was like I could feel the weight of the memories pressing down on the edges of his consciousness. “It does still get to you, doesn’t it? What happened over there, I mean. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, and I know I don’t know you that well, but whatever you’re carrying around always seems to get a little more intrusive when the weather is like this.”

“Intrusive is a good word for it.” His eyelids slid shut, his jaw clenching and his brow furrowed. He inhaled a deep breath. “You’re not wrong. I just thought I did a better job of hiding it.”

“You do, but we spend a lot of time together.” I shrugged, but my heart was pounding. There was nothing nonchalant about the way I was feeling right then, but I knew I couldn’t make a big deal of this. Not if I had any chance of helping him to get through this storm. “If you’d like to tell me about it, I’m willing to listen.”

Lightning flashes flickered outside, illuminating the room for just a moment. He opened his eyes and seemed to be lost in thought for a beat before he finally brought those blue eyes back to mine.

“We were going on a recon mission.” His voice was husky and ragged all of a sudden, his jaw tightening. He moved his gaze back to the window and stared out at the storm. “It was just a few weeks before we would’ve come home. Everyone on my team already had plans. Except for me. I didn’t have any plans.”

My breath caught in my lungs, everything in me completely shocked that he was actually telling me what had happened. Once he started talking, it was like a dam wall burst and he couldn’t stop the flow. It didn’t even look like he was trying to.

His expression grew haunted as he kept going. In the darkened kitchen, I couldn’t see the exact expression in his eyes, but it was almost like I was watching the life drain out of him as he spoke.

“My best friend was with me. Luke. He’d been dating the same girl since high school. He was finally going to propose.” Emotion crackled in his voice like a radio that was slowly losing signal, but he pushed through it, swallowing hard but unable to stop the pain bleeding into his voice. “Everything was fine at first. Until we started taking fire. It happened so fast. Came out of fucking nowhere.”

His shoulders caved, the words coming out faster now. I didn’t even know if he realized I was still here, but I sure as heck wasn’t about to interrupt him. “One second, we were just cruising through the sky, and the next, we were falling out of it. Bullets were tearing the cabin apart. It was chaos. Something was burning. To this day, I don’t know what it was.”

He sucked in a breath and Rook whined as he slid his chin onto Ford’s knee. He nudged his leg with his nose and gently pawed at his foot. Ford exhaled and glanced at me, his brow furrowed and his eyes completely dull except for a shimmer of pain deep within those orbs that seemed almost colorless now, between the emotion and the lack of artificial light in the room.

“The last thing I remember before I lost consciousness was Luke grabbing my arm as we hit the ground. Maybe seconds before.” He sighed. “When I finally came to, I was in a hospital in Germany and I was alone. The only survivor.”

My heart absolutely broke for him. I yearned to get up, to wrap my arms around him and try to bring him some small measure of comfort, but instead, I just kind of imitated Rook. He knew what to do better than I did, so I also shifted closer to Ford and gently laid my hand on his leg next to Rook’s paw.

“Luke’s family has a memorial barbecue for him every year. They always invite me, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to do it. To go to Florida and attend a memorial for a guy who had so many plans, you know? I survived. He didn’t. How am I supposed to look his parents in the eye when their son didn’t come home and I did?”

Features tight with all kinds of emotion that I couldn’t even begin to understand, he looked back out at the storm. Unsure of what to do, I glanced at Rook, noticing that he seemed to have relaxed a little. While Ford was obviously distraught, he wasn’t in distress anymore. That was a good thing, I supposed.

Sensing that he needed a moment, I gave his leg a gentle squeeze but just sat with him for a long time before I finally spoke, keeping my voice as quiet and calm as I could. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I’m sorry that you’re still going through it. I wish I could’ve met Luke, but I’m sure his parents would love to see you. They wouldn’t keep inviting you if that wasn’t true.”

He grunted but didn’t respond, just nodding thoughtfully.

I scooted back and stood up. “I’m going to go look over those plans for Heritage House. I’ll be in the living room when you’re ready.”

For the next twenty minutes or so, I pored over the plans spread across his coffee table, assuming they were the ones he’d wanted me to take a look at. When he eventually came to join me, he didn’t say anything else about his time overseas or the best friend he’d lost. We spent the rest of the afternoon quietly discussing the project while the storm kept raging on outside.

Eventually, we’d hunted down some candles for light. When there was no sign of the wind or the rain letting up when day turned to night, Ford finally made the call. “I’m not driving in this and you’re sure as hell not riding your bike home. I have a guest room. You’ll sleep here.”

“You have a guest room?”

“My parents stay occasionally when they’re in town,” he explained briefly. “Are you hungry?”

“No, I’m okay. Thank you.”

“We’ll get you something to sleep in then, unless you ride around with pajamas in your purse?”

“I don’t.”

He stood slowly, wincing as he put weight on his leg, but I didn’t offer to help him. I wished I could, especially after he’d essentially gutted himself earlier by telling me everything he had, but I just silently followed him down the hall instead.

When we walked into the furthest room and I realized that this was his bedroom, my mouth dried up. I’d been expecting him to show me to the guest room, thinking that he would fetch me something to sleep in by himself, but nope.

I was in my boss’s bedroom—the same boss who I was very much attracted to and had started to understand just a little bit better only hours ago. The fact was that hearing what he’d been through had made so many things about him make so much more sense, and I respected him even more now. Liked him even more now.

He wasn’t just an asshole without a cause, an alpha with an attitude problem whose big dick energy had gotten away from him to turn him, as a whole, into a big dick. The man was traumatized. He had been hurt and he was still healing. That he’d gotten as far as he had under the circumstances said a lot about him.

So did his bedroom. It was as sparsely decorated and tidy as the rest of the house, like he was hellbent against part of his personal space feeling like a home. The bed was huge, pushed up against a wall between his bedroom and what appeared to be an en-suite bathroom, but other than one nightstand, a dresser, and some built-in closets, it was all that was in here.