Page 77 of Keeping a Warrior

With a chuckle, Rhys lay down on his side and propped his head in his hand. “A lot of PJs hate being called ‘medics,’ but it’s never bothered me. It’s the simplest term to use, but it’s only a small part of what I’m trained to do. Our specialty is personnel recovery—downed pilots. We insert behind enemy lines, locate and authenticate, provide lifesaving care and then fight our way back out if necessary.”

“Shit. Have you ever had to do any of that?”

“No.” A shadow crossed his face. “At the rescue squadron, most of what we did was pick up the pieces of our guys and innocent civilians who’d run afoul of an IED.”

There was a thread of...something...in his voice that made Devon put her hand on his forearm. The next words burst out of him in a torrent of sound.

“Once some infantry guys were on patrol and a dude stepped on an IED. It—” Rhys closed his eyes. “It blew him up into some trees. He was hanging there by his pack. Dead.”

Devon rubbed her thumb over the corded muscles and just listened.

“The tree was too high for anyone to climb, too dangerous. So they called us. I was winched down from a helo and I cut him free.”

Such simple words to encapsulate what must have been a horrific experience, both for Rhys and the man’s friends on the ground, who’d had to watch the lifeless body of someone they loved spiral back to earth like a carelessly dropped rag doll.

There wasn’t anything Devon could say, nothing that would lessen the impact of what he’d gone through, so she just kept stroking his arm, letting him know she was there.

After a moment, Rhys’s ragged breathing steadied and he opened his eyes. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”

She knew why. Who back home would understand? They’d be horrified, and fascinated, to hear a story like this, but in the end it would affect them not at all, which was why so many combat vets were adrift when they returned home.

“There wasn’t anything you could do for him at that point,” she said softly. “You know that, right? All you could do was help him get home to his family.”

And at great personal risk to himself, too. Winching down into the trees from a hovering helicopter was no joke. Any deviation in altitude could’ve meant Rhys’s injury or death. That pilot was a hero, too.

“Yes. That’s exactly what I tell myself.” Rhys’s voice was husky with remembered emotion. “When I’m wandering the aisles of my local Safeway at three in the morning.”

“Ah.” She quirked her lips. “Good old Safeway. The site of many a battle with mental demons.”

“What’re yours?”

Her gaze didn’t waver from his. “You know what they are. And no, I don’t feel the need to talk about the details anymore. It’s something that happened to me, and it wasn’t my fault. It was theirs.”

“So what makes you wander the Safeway?” Rhys’s voice was whisper soft.

“Because I trusted them, okay?” she snapped. “I would have taken a bullet for any one of those men. And they threw my trust away like garbage.”

Turning his palm up, Rhys gripped her fingers. It was his turn to listen as the words rushed out of her with the force of a tsunami.

“I came back here to rewrite that part of my story, you know? It’s my narrative, not theirs. I wanted to learn to trust again; believe in myself again. Prove to everyone around me that I’m not a victim.”

“No way. You’re not a victim.”

“Damn right I’m not.” She gave him a mighty shove in her enthusiasm and he collapsed down on his back, dragging her with him. Propping her elbow on his chest, she gazed down into his face, smiling.

He grinned back at her. “I gotta say, you’re really beautiful when you’re all fired up.”

“Yeah?” Devon stroked his jaw, the roughness of his beard tickling her fingertips. “Only when I’m fired up?”

“Nah. You’re beautiful all the time, but there’s something extra gorgeous about the way your eyes flash...” Rhys gave an exaggerated shiver.

Chuckling, she lightly flicked his nose. “You’re silly.”

“But I give good hugs.”

He opened his arms, and without hesitation, Devon curled up against his side and put her head on his shoulder. “Oh, yeah, you do.”

His embrace was perfect—tight enough to be comforting, but not so restrictive that she felt threatened in any way. They drifted in silence, the only sound the slight clink of Rhys’s dog tags as Devon lifted and dropped them back against his chest.