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“You’re welcome.” He loved being close to her.
They were quiet for a bit.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I just … The stupid thing is that when I caught the guys, I froze up and I just let them run out of the house. I should’ve chased them down or yelled at them.”
“You did exactly the right thing.”
“I didn’t run after them or anything.”
“You aren’t trained to do that.”
She sighed. “It’s not just that. Over the last year and a half, every time there’s been something that has surprised me or jolted me, I always go back to that day of the accident. I always hear the sound of Ian crying and screaming. It’s like I feel that momentum that shoved the car forward and held me in my seat belt, like I’m just suspended. And then I remember looking over at Will and seeing the airbag had crushed him. I can’t …”
Boundaries or no boundaries, it was impossible for him not to lean over and pull her into his arms. “I’m so sorry.” He stroked her head and thought of everything she’d been through.
For a long time, he just held her.
Finally, she turned to him and asked, “Do you have those moments? I mean, you don’t have to tell me. You probably have way worse things that have happened. I can’t imagine what you have been through. But I just wonder if you have those moments that make you freeze up. Or that catch you off guard.”
Of course he did. He had way too many to count. He had way too many to tell her about, because it would do no good for her to hear all of them. So he tried to pare it down to one that he could tell her. “My second year as a SEAL,” he began, “we were asked to go clear out a city in Afghanistan. I was the lead on it, and I was the one instructing people on where to go. At the last second, I got this distinct impression that we shouldn’t go left. So I changed the hand motion and I filed everyone to the right. There was this guy, Frank Matthews. I’ll never forget him. He was a good dude, but he had lots of issues. Anyway, I don’t know how he didn’t see my hand gesture, but he went across the other way. It wasn’t five seconds later that the whole building blew up.”
The memory weighed him down like an anchor had been thrown onto his chest. He didn’t like to think about Frank Matthews. He didn’t like to think about that day.
“It was my fault. It was my fault, and there are a lot of other debts on my hands. But that day … that day haunts me. I think of his face, and I think of the way he always tried to get the team into a game of cards. He was a gambling addict. I think of so many things that are not reasons to die over. Frank shouldn’t have died. It was my fault. I should’ve died with him.”
She snuggled even closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
He knew that this woman was more than just a two-week fling. If it were up to him, and just him, she would be his wife. And soon. He wanted to pull her closer, but he didn’t want to cross boundaries. They stayed that way for a long time.
