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I drop my hand on the banister, but don’t move to go closer, the tightness I’ve been feeling since last week only magnifying at the sight of him.
His gaze cuts to me, brows cinched up in the middle, hair tied back in the untidy knot I’ve missed more than I could have possibly imagined. Imisshim with a ferociousness I’m not sure I even realized I was capable of.
His gaze travels the length of me, down my short black dress to my leather sandals, then back up, his jaw clenching beneath his beard. “It was our last day of duty,” he starts before I get a word out, his voice rough, hands still fisted on the table.
I take a step towards him, stare still flicking over his face, pulse throbbing in my throat. “Mylo. You don’t have to tell me this…”
“I do. I want to.” His jaw ticks again but he takes another breath. “We were so fucking ready to come home.” He drags his hand over his mouth, and his posture eases ever so slightly. “Banks had been talking non-stop about his mom’s pot roast.” His gaze drops down to the table in front of him and he breathes out a laugh. “He invited the whole team back to his place. The kid was like a puppy. So fucking jazzed just to be there. So fucking green.” The faraway smile on his face fades and he shakes his head, wetting his bottom lip.
I swear my heart literally clutches at the pain that tightens the fine lines around his eyes when I pause by the side of the table.
He pushes out the chair in front of me with his foot and glances up at me.
My legs shake as I sit, tension thick in the air. So thick I can’t quite seem to form any words. Not one. So, I just stare at him.
“We left in a convoy of two trucks. Shelly had been my second since my first tour as sergeant. She did her basic training with Felix and me.” He clicks his tongue off his front teeth. “She was razzing me about something. I don’t even remember what it was now. I know I was laughing though. Not paying attention. Not scanning the road like I should have been.” His gaze drops to the tabletop again. “It happened so fucking fast. One second, she was laughing, the next…” He squeezes his eyes shut.
I release a breath, press my lips together, dread over what comes next almost suffocating. “Mylo, please, you don’t have to—”
“I want to. I need you to know, to understand.” He swallows thickly and nods like it’s not just me he’s convincing. “The blast took the back clean off our truck and… it completely annihilated the one behind.” His wince has me reaching for his hand. “Blood.” He shakes his head. “There was so much fucking blood and…” His jaw clenches. “Screaming, like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Banks was trapped under the truck by his leg, practically on top of the body of…” He blows out his cheeks. “My arm was hanging, dislocated, full of glass and shards of fuck knows what.”
The scars. “Mylo,” I half sob, half whisper and tighten my grip on his fingers. “I’m so sorry.”
He sniffs in, then puffs back out but keeps staring at the table. “When we got back, Banks was… we both were… he just. He would just go over it and over it, like it was stuck in a loop in his head. I couldn’t.” His shoulders drop and he finally looks at me. “I was losing it. I couldn’t be around the kid.”
“Mylo, that’s not your fault. Anybody would be—”
“No. I should have done better by him. Hedeservedme to do better by him, he was undermycommand, inmyunit.” The finality of his words, the desperation on his face has my eyes stinging for him. “I failed him when I came here. I just…” He sighs long and hard. “Coming here was like turning the page. Nobody knew anything, nothing reminded me of anything. The normality was addictive. I couldn’t make myself go back there.”
Done with the distance between us and the hauntedness to his features I reach across and clasp the back of his neck, my fingers knotting in his tied-up hair only barely resisting the urge to just climb into his lap. “You didn’t fail anybody. That was self-preservation, you hear me?” I brush my thumb over his cheek and swallow down the lump in my throat.
His big hand wraps my wrist, and he leans into my touch, gunmetal gray gaze flicking from my left eye to my right. “I thought I could deal with it on my own. I thought… I thought if I could just forget—pretend it didn’t happen—I’d just get past it and move on. I never wanted any of it to touch us. You. I hated the idea of you knowing how absolutely I fucked up. How many lives it cost.”
I tilt my head to the same angle as his and lean closer across the corner of the table. “It wasn’t your fault.”
His chest expands. “I went to see a therapist when I was home. He referred me to one on the island. I’m dealing with it, Kenz. No more running. I’m all in.”
I sink my teeth into the inside of my lip, pain for what he’s been through stinging behind my eyes. Words refuse to form in my mind, the hugeness of his confession, of his past, the unwarranted guilt radiating from him almost too much to comprehend.
“Thank you.” Unable to bear the stress and sadness etched over his face and acutely aware of how much it took him to share this much of himself, I stand and nudge him back in his chair, straddle his lap, and wrap my arms around his neck, the tightness I’ve been feeling since last week finally easing at the contact. “I’m here for you in any way you need me to be to get through this.”
His arms circle my waist without hesitation. He crushes me to him, and presses his face into my neck, his beard soft against my throat.
I’m not sure how long we stay, locked together, the distant waves and cricket song wrapping the moment in calm. His scent—his clean, slightly spicy, uniquely him scent, settles in the depths of me for the rightness of it. The realness of it.
“I missed you,” I finally whisper against his temple. “None of this felt real without you.”
He lifts his head and clasps my forearms in his big hands, a vulnerability to the tilt to his brows. “I’m sorry I missed tonight. I didn’t know if you’d—”
“Shhh.” I touch the pads of my fingers to his lips, then replace them with my mouth. A slow, but sure kiss. Because I am sure now. I’m sure that this time it will be different. That this time there’ll be no holding back. “You’re here now.”
Something on his forearm, peeking out from beneath his rolled shirt sleeve, shining dully in the dim glow of the hanging lanterns catches my attention when I pull back.
I grab his arm with both hands. “This is new.” I glance up into his face, then release my grip on him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean, you don’t have to.”
For the first time tonight, his lips twitch up. “It’s fine. No more secrets.” He pulls his hands from my waist and lifts them to the top button of his shirt, slipping it from its hole, his eyes on mine.
I can’t help the smile from curving my lips even though I’m frowning. “What are you—”
