“It’s not like that. My family is only a phone call away. And I can’t expect them to drop everything every time I think there might be a chance.”
“They dropped everything for your sister when you were a kid.”
“That’s not fair,” Kensie said, but it lacked heat because she knew Colter was just trying to take her side. The problem was, there were no sides. There was just sadness. Her parents’ way meant accepting Alanna was long dead, lost to them forever. Her way meant the possibility of an endless cycle of hope and heartbreak.
“You’re right,” Colter said. “I’m sorry. But you shouldn’t have to do this alone.”
“I’m not doing it alone,” Kensie said softly, her hand still absently stroking Rebel’s head. “I’ve got you.”
And that had changed everything. She stared at him, the soft understanding in his gaze, the ice hanging sideways off his leg, dripping unnoticed onto the chair.
She’d never met anyone like Colter Hayes. She’d probably never meet anyone like him again.
If this was what being halfway in love with him was like, she was in trouble. Because it would be far too easy to fall the rest of the way.
And she had a feeling if that happened, she’d never recover from the hard landing.
“I’VE GOT YOU.”
Kensie’s words echoed in his head, the soft, shy certainty in her voice tugging at his heart. She deserved someone to stand next to her, to help shoulder her burden for more than just a few days or a week or however long she was going to be in Desparre.
That was something he could never give her. But he could support her while she was there.
And he could open up to her, the way she’d opened up to him.
The very idea made his lungs constrict too hard with each breath, made his skin burn with clammy heat despite the ice melting all over his leg. But he pushed the words out anyway, praying he wouldn’t have a full-blown panic attack in front of her.
“When I woke up in the hospital, the doctors told me they weren’t sure they could save my leg.”
Kensie’s back straightened at his change in conversation, her hand slowing on Rebel’s head.
As if sensing he needed her now, his dog came to the recliner and dangled her head over the chair arm. She nudged at his elbow, encouraging him to pet her, and he laughed at her antics.
But his laughter faded fast. “Pretty quickly, though, it didn’t even matter what happened with my leg, because they told me none of my brothers had made it out of that ambush. Rebel got out, but they weren’t sure she was going to pull through.”
He smothered the sob that lurched forward at the memory. He could almost smell the hospital’s nauseating mix of bleach and sickness. Saying the words was a softer blow now than it had been then, but it still felt like someone had punched him right in the chest.
Kensie lurched forward. She gripped his shoulder, not impeding the quickening motion of his hand petting Rebel. “You don’t need to talk about this, Colter.”
“I do. I want to tell you.” As he spoke, he realized it was true.
He hadn’t talked about that day since it happened, refusing to get into any detail with the shrinks the military kept offering him. Refusing to go into detail with his parents, who wanted to help him, but just couldn’t move past their own mix of fear and joy that he was alive to understand his depression.
“You know that picture in my room you liked?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper. He could actually hear her swallow, waiting for him to continue.
“It’s the last one I have of them. We weren’t technically a team. I was Military Police, K-9 Unit. Rebel’s role was pretty new to the military then. She’d been serving for three years as a Combat Tracker Dog. It meant the two of us were partners. Sometimes we’d go with a unit, other times we’d get dropped into a site by ourselves.”
“Dropped?” Kensie asked, her hand absently rubbing his shoulder.
He wondered if she even knew she was doing it. “Yeah. Helicopter would take us in and we’d rope out together. Rebel would be attached to me and we’d be set down somewhere, usually out in front of a unit to check out a location. Rebel’s job was to start at the site of an explosion or an ambush and then follow the trail back to the person who set it. She was good at it, too.”
At the praise, Rebel’s tail darted back and forth a few times. But it settled fast, either because she knew what he was talking about or she recognized the serious tone of his voice.
“Anyway, for almost a year, Rebel and I had been attached to a Marine Special Operations Team. The guys you saw in the picture in my room were that unit. We all bonded fast. That day—the day the picture was taken—we’d just come back from a mission. We thought we were finished for the day. We should have been finished for the day.”
He blew out a breath, remembering the moment the call had come that they were going back out. There’d been nothing out of the ordinary about it. They’d all had just enough time to get cleaned up, get comfortable. But that was the way of missions sometimes. You might not see any real action for weeks and then, all of a sudden, you’d barely get any rest.
That day they’d heard about a bomb going off, listened to the initial reports. One of his brothers had said he hoped they’d be the ones to check it out. They all knew Rebel’s success rate. They believed she could find the bomber who’d taken the lives of what he’d later learned were twenty-six soldiers.
That moment in the command tent was the last time they’d all been together before heading out. He could picture the whole group,
