Page 58 of Mountain Man’s Mystic Touch

“Yes.”

His tone remains even, but I hear the younger man beneath it. Eighteen, angry and frightened, perhaps pretending to be neither.

“My attorney negotiated deferred adjudication. Treatment, community service, probation, and no further trouble. The judge didn’t order me into the military. That isn’t how it officially worked, even then. But he told me I could continue in the direction I was going and eventually land in prison, or I could finish the program, apply for a waiver, and find a life with structure.”

“You chose the Army.”

“After I finished everything the court required. It took time to qualify.”

“Military police seems like an interesting choice for someone who had recently been arrested.”

“That was mentioned during the application process.”

A soft laugh escapes me. This time, his mouth moves with it.

“Why that specialty?” I ask.

“Because I knew what it was like to be the person making the situation worse. I wanted to become the one who stopped it from getting worse.”

The answer reaches into me before I can protect myself from it.

It explains more than his occupation. Rocco does not merely look for danger. He looks for the moment when one decision turns into another, when foolishness becomes harm, and when someone must step between the two.

“Eight years is a long time to devote to correcting mistakes made at eighteen.”

“It wasn’t all correction.”

“No?”

“The Army gave me work I was good at. People I trusted. A reason to pay attention.”

“And the accident?”

His fingers tighten around the cup.

I regret the question immediately. “You don’t have to answer that.”

“I know. We were returning to base after transporting a detainee,” he says. “The road was wet. Another vehicle crossed the center line, and our driver swerved. We went down an embankment and rolled.”

The images he did not give me fit themselves around the fragments I saw beneath my hands. Metal folding. Dirt and glass. His body held in a position it could not escape.

“Were you driving?”

“No.”

“But you blame yourself.”

His eyes harden. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

The silence between us changes. I have crossed too close to the place he guards.

I could reach for him with the part of me that senses bruised things. Once, I would have done it automatically, believing care gave me the right to enter any wound I thought I could soothe. I know better now.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “That wasn’t mine to interpret aloud.”

“Most people would keep going.”