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“I don’t think marriage is for me, either,” she said. “I wanted it before, but not anymore. I’m a fugitive. A criminal. I can’t bring children into a world where their mother could be taken away from them at any moment.”

“So what happened to that boyfriend of yers?” He said the word “boyfriend” through gritted teeth.

“Bryan. We were together for a year, and then we split up. It didn’t work out.”

Amber chose not to reveal that he’d became a bit too rough with her. She wasn’t proud of it and often wondered if it was something in her that had made him be like that.

“We were on the same base, and he wanted to resume the relationship, but I just couldn’t. One night, about two weeks ago, we were both at a bar and he came at me hard. He was drunk, and everyone witnessed how I pushed him away.”

“A bar?”

“Yeah, like an inn. Where people drink beer and whiskey and wine.”

“Uisge?”

He pronounced the word differently from “whiskey,” although both words were clearly related. It was still amazing to think she could suddenly understand and speak Gaelic. She wished it had been as easy with Dari, the language spoken in Afghanistan.

“Later, I passed by the barracks and heard something… I went inside to check on Bryan and he was—”

Her voice broke and she tensed as she remembered the pool of blood, and the giant red flower that boomed on Bryan’s white T-shirt around the bullet in his stomach.

“He was so pale, like a bedsheet. My hands shook so bad, I dropped my phone in the blood. Then I saw the gun lying on the floor.” She shook her head. “I was such an idiot. I picked it up. Just like that, my fingerprints were all over it.”

Owen didn’t interrupt, although he wouldn’t know what a gun was, or a phone, or fingerprints. She was thankful he let her talk it out without interrupting. Telling her story was like letting go of a terrible pain she’d been holding on to.

“He was dying. I wanted to call the medics, but he stopped me, told me Major Jackson had shot him because he was going to expose Jackson for smuggling drugs from Afghanistan to the United States. And then—”

Her chest spasmed, and she sobbed uncontrollably. The sound was girly and weak, and yet so freeing.

“Then he died,” she managed before grief and regret overtook her. She curled into a shaking, weeping ball, and Owen wrapped strong arms around her. She pressed her cheek against his hard chest and wailed. She wailed for Bryan, and for her broken life that would never be the same, and for how helpless she’d been against a powerful man.

Owen stroked her and whispered something to her in Gaelic that she couldn’t hear over the sound of her weeping. Soon, her sobs subsided and her body went limp. Owen only held her tighter.

“It’s the first time I’ve cried since it happened,” she said.

She felt calmer, the pressure had eased from her now.

“’Tis all right, sweetheart,” he whispered against her hair.

Sweetheart… Something in her chest melted. She wiped the tears and looked up at him.

“Jackson came into the barracks and found me holding Bryan, the gun in my hand. He managed to take a picture and said I’ll pay for what I’d done. He was about to call the authorities when I realized just how screwed I was. I panicked. I knew I couldn’t win against him. So I held the gun on him and tied him to one of the beds. Then I ran. I’ve been running ever since.”

“So much so that ye ran back in time,” he murmured.

Amber swallowed hard. She needed to ask him the question that tightened her stomach and made her clench her fists until her fingernails dug into her flesh.

“Do you believe me?”

“Aye,” he said without a second of hesitation. “I believe ye, lass. I ken what it is to be wrongly accused of something.”

Relief flooded her system like sunlight. And at the same time, something tightened in her chest to the point of ache.

He got her. He’d protected her. He cared for her.

And she cared for him—more than she wanted to, more than she could afford to.

More than she should.