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“Nope,” Jasper countered. “It means one of a kind…”
“Anyway,” Kellan said, emphasizing the word with a shake of his head. “The point is—we’ve all got our issues. If you want to learn to sleep in there with Sparrow, one of us will start sleeping there too—until you have it under control.”
Except… “I might never have it under control. I’ve had these nightmares since the ambush.” Nightmares. Night terrors, really. Flashbacks. PTSD. “Happened in the field. In the hospital. In counseling.”
I shrugged.
It was one of the reasons.
“Then it can’t hurt to try ‘cause you want to be there, or you wouldn’t have fallen asleep tonight.” The absolute certainty in Kellan’s voice slashed through me. Level-headed, even, and grounded.
“Ms. Stephanie—” Jasper broke off for a moment, and the punch of grief slammed into me. Slammed into all of us, honestly. I wasn’t the only one sucking in a deep breath. “Ms. Stephanie,” Jasper said again, “always said that talking it out wasn’t an easy fix. It wasn’t a painless fix. Sometimes, it wasn’t a fix at all. But it did work. You just had to be willing…”
“…to put in the work,” I said in the same breath as Vaughn, Milo, and Kellan. “Yeah, she believed that you could do anything if you invested yourself in it.”
“So invest yourself in us, Doc,” Liam suggested. “No one here is going to judge.”
“I would,” Jasper volunteered, ignoring the exasperated looks thrown his way. "I said Iwould,except—my glass house has enough cracks in it that I’d rather just try to understand.”
“Fuck my life,” Liam muttered. “Who are you, and what did you do with Hawk?”
“I’ve matured,” Jasper informed him. “Maybe that’s gonna be an acquired taste for you.”
A real, if reluctant, chuckle escaped me. Milo, however, laughed for real. So did Kellan. Pretty sure Vaughn was chuckling as he muttered, “Bullshit.”
That set Liam off. Shaking my head, I stared at the fridge. What mirth filtered through me sobered. “Any luck with that prick?”
“No,” Milo said. “He has no pain tolerance.”
“None,” Liam agreed. “But he’s more afraid of his brother than he is of us.”
“We could take the wife in there,” Kellan said. “But that’s a card we’re only going to get to play once. If he couldn’t fight for his abused wife,then, I don’t expect that will have changed all these years later.”
Thoughts of violence drifted through me. Thoughts and ideas.
“How long of a break has he had this time?”
Liam glanced at his watch. “Twenty-four hours, no food, no water, and no relief from the music blasting or how we hoisted his arms.”
He’d need hydration soon. “It’s not talking…”
“But it is therapeutic.” Milo nodded, then paused to glimpse at Kellan. I spared them both a look. Far too used to leading, Milo still struggled now and then when it came to deferring. At the same time, the role fits Kellan, and I understood why everyone adapted—even Milo—swiftly. “Thoughts?”
“It’s almost four in the morning. Clothes. Coffee. Then carnage.”
The others filtered back inside, but Milo and Jasper lingered with me. When it was just the three of us, I glanced at them. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Jasper said. “Really—being the one who gets to knock some sense into you for a change was a thrill.” His grin was both cocky and amused. Little shit.
Milo gave it a beat while Jasper slipped inside then looked at me. “You good?”
“Nope,” I said. “But I’m back on dry land again instead of wading in the weeds.”
“Might be all you can get.”
I studied him. Milo hadn’t said a word about me dating—was that what we were doing? It felt like a lot more—his sister. Reconciling Little Bit with his Ivy didn’t always register in my brain, and at the same time…fuck, I was a little under twice her age. You’d think I had more sense.
The hell of it was. I didn’t want to let her go, for anything.
