“Me too,” I said before I could keep it back. Did I? Worry about Nash? I guess I did—even more than just whatever had happened this morning. I worried about him losing the people he loved most and still trying to function as if nothing was different. I worried about his career and what he’d do without it. I worried about him not telling a soul he actually had a family.
“He was full of piss and vinegar this morning. He didn’t pick a fight, did he?” she asked.
“I…” I shook my head. “I don’t understand him sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?” she laughed. “That boy could baffle the toughest of minds.”
“I… He…” Then, I stopped. Nash wouldn’t want me to talk to her about it. I wouldn’t want him to talk about what happened to me in the elevator. “Never mind.”
She watched me. “Where did you all go?”
A hand referred to my sweaty apparel.
“I jogged down to the plant and came back before he joined me at the pond.”
Her body froze. “The pond? Nash was at the pond?”
“Well, I was there, cooling off under the willow trees, and he… he stopped,” I said, trying to deflect, brushing the memory of his pounding heart from me.
“He went all the way to the trees?” Her voice was squeaky and unsure, and now all of my signals were going off. I’d seen too many people in Washington try to hide things to not see this for what it was. A secret. A dark secret. One that had her stuttering and repeating herself, and one that had had Nash freaking out as if he’d never gone through SEAL training.
I nodded and reached my hand across the table to squeeze her hand. “Is everything okay?”
She brought herself back, much as Nash had, from a memory that neither of them could bear. She removed her hand from mine before patting it. “Yes. Of course, it’s all fine.”
But I knew for a fact it wasn’t.
Nash
SECOND CHANCES
“I won't break you,
I will not let you down.
Open up again, I believe in second chances.”
Performed by Imagine Dragons
Written by Mckee / Reynolds / Platzman / Sermon
I was shaking. Shaking through every limb in my body as I climbed the stairs. I felt like my skin was being pulled from me inch by inch. Torture worse than anything we’d experienced at Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training. When I got to my room, I shed my clothes, entered the shower, and stood under the steady stream of water, trying to wash away the fear and pain I felt in every part of my body.
My vision filled with Dani. Finding her in almost the same exact spot at the side of the pond was like a dam breaking inside me. Heartache and loss filled my soul. I slammed my hand against the tile, the pain there doing nothing to dull the pain raging inside me.
Dark hair and grass in the moonlight instead of the sunshine.
Dark hair and limbs in the dirt on the side of a road.
Dark blood. Darkness.
Fucking darkness.
I got out of the shower and dressed in my jeans and a T-shirt.
Darren. Dani. My past. They were all rolling together, forcing me to feel things I’d locked away. Before I thought it all the way through, I hit dial on my phone.
“Hello.” Tristan’s voice, sweet and light, tore at me. Family. She felt more like family to me than Carson or Maribelle had in a long time. That family had died on a moonlit night by the pond.
When I didn’t respond, Tristan sighed, full of tiredness. She said my name with a small question at the end. “Nash?”
“I just needed to hear your voice,” I said, trying to pull myself together so I didn’t make things worse for her. “How’s Hannah?”
She paused a beat before saying, “My grandma is spoiling her. She’s never going to eat a vegetable again.”
Since she’d kicked me out, we’d only had a couple of conversations. The first stilted, the next easing us back to safe ground: Hannah and the dog.
“And Molly?” I asked.
“Molly loves everyone better than me, so Grandma has become her new favorite. I think she might love her more than she loves you.”
“Impossible,” I said.
“Grams gives her gobs of extra treats.”
A small smile crept onto my lips.
“When are you coming back?” I asked.
She hesitated. “Honestly…I don’t know.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means life here is agreeing with me.”
I couldn’t keep it from stabbing at me that a town was agreeing with her more than I had. I grumbled, “Because I’m not there?”
A frustrated sigh echoed over the phone. “Believe it or not, Nash, not everything centers around you. This. Being here. Working with my grandma at her store…I feel useful. I feel like I have another reason besides Hannah to get up every day. Isn’t that what you said I needed?”
The taunt hurt.
When I didn’t respond, she continued, softer, “I like visiting with Gram’s friends, and how they ask about her. I like that Hannah is getting a chance to know her. It feels like something that is just mine and not his.”
God that hurt.
The space between us was making me realize how little I’d done for her. Sure, I’d been there to help with the physical things. The baby. The dog. But I hadn’t really been able to help her. Not when I’d been grieving so much myself.
I hadn’t been able to pull her from the edge.
I’d just continually reminded her of where it was at.
“I’m glad,” I said, voice rough. My eyes burned, and my fingers were clenched, biting into the palm of my hand, but it was the truth.
“Are you?” she asked, trying to interpret my tone.
“Yes. It’s all I want. For you to be happy again.”
She sniffled, and I wanted to punch something because I’d made her cry again when she’d just been telling me she was doing better.
“You know that’s what he’d want for you, too, right?”
