Page 25 of Trusting a Warrior

Geo’d lost someone, too. Not as suddenly as she had, but it’d certainly been traumatic. And he’d been a child, just like her.

A wave of pure empathy flooded her, which made the inevitable tears come. She sobbed until she had nothing left, until she was curled in a tight ball, her gasping breaths slowing to occasional sniffles. Finally she pushed to sitting, only to groan at the nausea now surging into her throat.

Trudging into the kitchen to make some ginger tea, she thought, “I don’t need this. I’ve got too much of my own shit going on to spend my energy crying over someone else’s past.”

Besides, Geo was a SEAL, one of the most mentally tough people on the face of the earth. He wouldn’t need her sympathy. He’d only followed up because he said he would, and if her baggage hadn’t scared him off before, it probably had now.

After her tea was brewed, she picked up her phone again. Yeah. No text, no pic of Bosch. In fact, it was highly unlikely she’d ever hear from him again.

Well, maybe it was for the best. For both their sakes.

Chapter Six

“Oh, God, I fucked that up.”

Groaning, Geo tossed his phone aside and slammed a pillow over his face.

Real smooth there, dumbass, bringing up your dad.

He hadn’t meant to. All of that was long into the past, when he’d been a different person with a different life. What in the hell possessed him to bring it up now? And why was it hurting so much all of a sudden?

Next to the bed, Bosch twitched his ears, his face impassive, although he cocked his head as if to say, “What was that?”

Geo groaned again. “Yeah. Here I am, talking to this great girl, and not only do I choke when she’s trying to tell me about something important, I dump my shit on top of all her shit.”

Dragging himself up from the bed, he buckled Bosch into his harness and clipped the leash on. They made their way out into the stifling hot night and headed toward the small greenbelt a few blocks away.

Once there, he let Bosch loose to wander, and explore, just be a dog for a little while. An occasional fighter jet screamed overhead as the pilots practiced night landings and touch-and-gos. With the combination of that sound and the heat, if Geo closed his eyes, he could almost imagine himself back in Iraq. The only thing missing was the scent of honeysuckle. Each war zone had its own distinct scent. Afghanistan’s had been pine, from the forests high in the Hindu Kush. Iraq’s was honeysuckle.

Pulling a tennis ball from his pocket, Geo held it up. Immediately Bosch went into prey mode, muscles quivering, tail held high. Geo made him wait for a beat, then flung the ball into the darkness.

Bosch took off like a shot after it. This wasn’t a game of fetch. Once Bosch had his ball, he wouldn’t give it up unless commanded to. It was his to gnaw, to crush in his powerful jaws, to carry around, until Geo told him to drop it. Ambling after him, he let the dog have his reward for one full minute.

Upon the command to release, Bosch dropped the wet, slobbery ball at his feet. Geo scooped it up and threw it again with a sharp instruction for Bosch to hold, which he did, his whole body straining toward the direction it disappeared in.

“Zoek!” At the command to seek, Bosch tore after the ball. A moment of silence, then, instead of the happy snuffling sounds of a dog with a toy, out of the gloom came a long, low growl.

“Oh, fuck me.” Heart pounding, Geo hustled in that direction. “Whoever you are, stand still!”

Bosch was trained not to attack without the proper Dutch command, but Geo wasn’t taking any chances.

“Uh, don’t worry. Not moving.” The reply was the tiniest bit shaky, and no wonder. When Geo ran up, Bosch had his front legs spread, hindquarters lifted, every hackle he owned standing on end. The rumbling growl emanating from his throat meant he was ready and willing to fight the man standing in the crosshairs, frozen in place. Holding the tennis ball.

“Dude, toss the ball to me. Slowly.”

The man did, and once Geo had possession of it again, Bosch visibly relaxed. At the “come” hand signal, he trotted to Geo’s side and sat, his unwavering stare fixed on the interloper.

“I’m so sorry.” The man kept a wary gaze on Bosch, too. “I was out for a run and this ball came bouncing right at me. It was instinct just to grab it.”

When he took a hesitant step into the pool of light cast by the streetlamp, Geo blinked in sudden recognition. “Hey, you’re one of our new straphangers, aren’t you?” He stuck his fist out. “Don’t think we’ve formally met. George Monteverdi.”

“Matt Knytych.” The man returned the knuckle bump with a quirk of his lips. “And yeah, I’m part of your temporary backfill. My regular troop’s on block leave, so...”

Geo nodded. Guys hungry for all the experience they could get, especially new SEALs, would ask to join other platoons’ training trips. If Matt’s platoon was on block leave, that meant they’d just returned from deployment, but instead of taking time off, Matt had decided to get right back to it.

Matt was still eyeing Bosch suspiciously, so with a chuckle, Geo introduced them.

“Really sorry I hijacked your ball, Bosch,” Matt said, sincere apology in his tone. He glanced at Geo. “I didn’t even think a tennis ball might be a training evolution.”