Page 42 of What Remains

Her words shouldn't have mattered. Yet, his mouth had opened anyway.

He glanced at her. She didn't look military. No hard edges, no barked cadence, no dead-eyed stare that said, I've buried too many friends to pretend otherwise. She looked smart, sharp, too put together to have ever been screamed at by a drill instructor or slept in the dirt for weeks. Hell, she looked too kind to have ever worn a uniform.

But she'd said it so casually, like telling him her favorite color. Suddenly, he felt like an idiot for assuming she belonged to some soft, safe version of the world before. Maybe that's what rattled him most. He hadn't expected her to understand.

And yet she did. She'd spotted him for exactly what he was, instantly and effortlessly.

He dragged a hand over his face. Idiot.

He didn't talk about his service anymore. Not out of shame—hell no—but because it hurt, and every piece of it tied back to everything he'd lost: Molly, AJ, the life he'd believed waited for him after leaving the Marines.

And now he'd handed this stranger—this woman with sad eyes —an opening he never meant to give.

Keep it together, Seth.

No attachments. No weakness. No slipping.

He could sense Josie watching him carefully, trying to gauge whether she'd said something wrong.

She hadn't.

I did, he thought grimly.

"What did you do in the Air Force?" Seth asked.

The safest question he could think of. Military to military. Distance maintained. Professional. Safe.

Josie glanced at him, then out the window at the barren miles sliding past.

"I was—well, I am—a trauma surgeon," she said. "I put myself through medical school and paid the debt off by serving in the military. Six years in. Mostly fieldwork, stabilization units, forward surgical teams."

Seth turned his head, eyebrows lifting despite himself. "You're a doctor?"

She gave a small, almost self-deprecating laugh. "A surgeon. But yes, doctor works."

Silence stretched between them.

Then Seth blurted, "You don't look old enough."

She blinked—surprised, maybe even a little amused. "I just turned forty." Her mouth tugged into a real smile, the first genuine one he'd seen from her. "But thank you for the compliment."

Seth gave a single, sharp nod but didn't respond, his gaze fixed on the ruined asphalt while something churned inside his head.

"Why the hell did I say that?"

He'd never been one to comment on a woman's age like some awkward teenager. And why should he care how old she looked? None of his damn business. She carried herself with too much calm, too much composure, too much quiet intelligence—if "looking smart" counted as a real thing, she somehow managed it effortlessly.

He gripped the wheel a little tighter.

Keep it together, Seth.

This wasn't flirting. This wasn't interest. This came down to logistics. Safety. Keeping the mission moving.

But the truth pressed at him anyway: something about her tugged at a place inside him he'd believed died with Molly.

He shoved the thought down fast, forcing his voice level. “Surgeon, huh?" He nodded once. "A hell of a lot more useful than any of us."

Josie didn't argue, didn't preen—she simply watched the road ahead, her expression softening by degrees.