Sophie had seen a part of him she hadn’t understood tonight. Oh, intellectually, she’d known he’d deployed and had acknowledged he’d been through things. She was aware of the definition of post-traumatic stress disorder, and she’d seen it manifest in various ways for different people. Her intelligence and incredible empathy had taken her a long way in understanding not only him but Rojas and Cruz better than anyone in the community around Hope’s Crossing Kennels.
But until tonight, she hadn’t met the cold stranger he’d turned into when he’d gone overseas. He’d told her about the compartmentalization he’d done with his personality. He’d done it to protect himself. The process of going through boot camp and technical training, of the various programs in the military, wasn’t just to provide him with skills and technique. The training had had the dual purpose of educating and unmaking an individual’s personality. He’d been rebuilt into someone much more capable of surviving life as a soldier during his deployments, and he didn’t regret it at all. But he’d learned to take the piece of him that’d grown up in middle-class suburbia and tuck that boy away to protect him from the reshaping that’d been required.
Through those deployments, running mission after mission, he’d become further detached from his old personality. It had to happen. For some, they turned so completely away from who they used to be, they never did go back to civilian life. And that wasn’t a bad thing.
He’d simply had a single person in his life he’d wanted to get back to.
She stirred in the chair, her feet slipping out from under her as she turned. Amazingly, she managed to shift her position before she fell out of the seat completely. He kept expecting her to end up like one of those hamster videos online where the fuzzy thing fell asleep and sort of…rolled off its perch.
He was going to hell for waiting to see if it would happen instead of moving to secure her position. He’d have lunged to catch her before she hit the hard floor, though.
Ah, Sophie. He’d wanted to hide the truth of himself from her, shelter her from the monstrous part of him he’d developed while he’d been away. He couldn’t call it anything else, because what else could any person become when it was safer to excise the humanity and tuck it away?
She hadn’t been afraid of him. And she hadn’t fought him, not really. She’d snapped out of fear and she’d gotten stubborn out of concern for an individual she’d cared about. She’d come through it, and held her shit together through it for the most part.
There were a lot of people, men and women both, who’d broken under similar circumstances. Even with training, a person didn’t really know what they could survive until they were forced into the real circumstances.
His Sophie was a survivor.
And she’d been a match for him. She’d looked into his eyes and faced the truth he’d hidden since he’d come back to establish Hope’s Crossing Kennels. She’d taken a look at every demon he had inside him. And here she was, sleeping in his presence, like she hadn’t figured he might have killed someone not a few feet away from her.
It’d been her acceptance he’d come home for, he thought. But he’d been too much of a coward to try to show her in the years since he’d started the kennels. He couldn’t find the right time, the right place, and didn’t know how to bring his demons out for her to see.
He’d come close to asking her to come with him to therapy sessions so maybe she could get a glimpse there. But she disliked psychologists almost as much as he did. So he’d held off on that last resort.
There was no way he’d have ever wanted the events of the last week or so to have happened to her, but the result wasn’t something he was going to regret. She’d seen the person he could become in life-threatening situations.
He wasn’t sure where their relationship was going to go after tonight, but at least he knew she wouldn’t turn away from him out of fear. She hadn’t hated what she saw.
He stood silently and stretched his arms toward the ceiling. Muscles in his back protested, and he breathed in and out, willing oxygen to those abused muscle fibers. He was going to be sore as hell tomorrow and so would Sophie. Best to stretch and keep from getting stiff to give himself a better chance to heal from the bruising and soreness quickly.
Rolling his shoulders, he turned to look at her. He’d relished the chances to watch her sleep over the past couple of days. Maybe it made him a creeper, but it didn’t stop fascinating him, the way she was beautiful in any light. It didn’t matter if she was curled up in a chair or sprawled out taking up an entire king-size bed.
Years. It’d been years since he’d bought the acres for Hope’s Crossing Kennels and broken ground for the buildings. She’d sought him out once she’d heard he was back in town. She’d offered him her friendship like he’d never left.
Then, he’d thought it was the start at rebuilding a life for himself that he’d been looking for. He’d been happy for it and promised himself her friendship would be good enough.
Her father hadn’t ever brought up their conversation again, but Forte had been aware of the old man’s scrutiny. The wariness had remained. And he’d maintained his distance, preserved his cherished friendship, and told himself it was enough.
But Sophie had been right. He’d betrayed her. He’d taken away her choice in the matter.
In a lot of ways, he’d rebuilt his life all right. He’d built it right from the place they’d left off, thinking that was what he needed to be happy.
The past few days had taught him differently. He hadn’t needed to go back to where he’d started. He’d only wanted it.
Truth was, he needed a hard reset. Now that he knew what to do, he wasn’t sure Sophie’s friendship would be there for him to build from here.
* * *
“Mr. Forte?”
Sophie woke with a start at the quiet words. Within seconds, she processed the cool greens of the small office at the veterinarian’s.
Brandon stood within reach, facing the nurse at the door. “Yes?”
The nurse glanced at Sophie. “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Oh no. Don’t worry about it.” Seriously. Compared to the rest of the night—hell, the whole week—this was peanuts. “How’s Haydn?”
The nurse pressed her lips together, then smiled. “The doctor is just washing up and then he’ll be ready to talk to you. Haydn is in recovery.”
Tension seeped out of Brandon’s shoulders, and emotion welled up in Sophie, spilling over as a happy tear. With all of the damned crying she’d been doing that day, this was one moment when tears were welcome. Happy tears.
Recovery meant Haydn was alive.
Sophie settled back into the chair to wait and give Brandon space. He was a man with a lot of emotion, and he didn’t like to admit it, even to her.
He surprised her by turning and kneeling next to her. “I know you might not be inclined, but I’d really appreciate a hug right now.”
She stared at him. She’d never, ever deny him comfort. The thought froze in her head as she remembered their argument.
Her words had stuck with him and he wasn’t sure where they stood anymore.
Neither was she.
He closed his eyes. He never did that around anyone, not out in public. “I broke your trust. I don’t know if I can build it back. I’ll understand if you decide not to give me the chance.”
As she continued to stare at him, the compartmentalization was happening. The Brandon she knew was withdrawing in minute changes of expression. His posture was becoming stiffer. The humanity was leaching away from his face, turning his formerly neutral expression to a frightening blankness.
She sobbed. No, no, this wasn’t what she wanted. It was like her Brandon was leaving even if he was kneeling there in front of her. No.
She threw her arms around his shoulders, almost losing her balance and falling out of the chair.
His arms came around her and he lifted her back onto the chair. Then he lifted her again a
nd set her so her legs were stretched out and elevated.
“We need to get you a bag of ice.” His voice was gruff, full of emotion again. This was her Brandon. “I’ll be right back.”
He stepped outside and left the door open a crack so she could hear him out in the hallway.
She wrapped her arms around herself and considered what’d just happened.
The idea of him withdrawing, losing the part of him she’d come to associate with her friend, was out of the question. But how could they go back to being friends?
It was confusing.
She almost laughed at herself. She’d been coasting for the past day or two, hanging in limbo. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she’d been confused the whole time, with no idea of what she was going to do next.
It’d been easy to let him tell her what each step would be. Sure, there’d been good reasons for it. He was keeping her safe. She’d run from her hometown. She’d gone into hiding with him. And she’d come through almost dying multiple times without truly facing the reality of it all.
She could have died.
And before that? She’d done everything she was supposed to do according to her parents and elders and everyone else in her life. There were always sensible, logical, practical reasons for doing what people told her to do. And she reassured herself that she was a strong, independent, self-sufficient woman because she carefully thought out each action and decided to do what they said.
But that’d still been the easy way out, the path of least resistance.
It’d been like taking a multiple-choice test all her life. Choices were presented to her and she got to pick the best of the options. She’d fooled herself into thinking she’d accomplished so much, built a career for herself. But multiple-choice tests required less thinking, less effort, than coming up with the answers from scratch.
Maybe she should start challenging herself.
She didn’t know what the next step would be, but she shouldn’t wait for Brandon to come back into the room and tell her what her options were. She needed…no, she wanted to think for herself and decide based on that.
No more going with choice C just because it had the highest percent chance of being the right answer. No more choosing the longest answer of the choices available because that had the highest potential to be the right one.
No more pretending life was a standardized multiple-choice exam.
Brandon returned then with an ice pack.
She reached out and accepted it from him. “Thank you.”
He stood, hovering, while she loosened her medical boot and arranged the pack on it. “Maybe we should take it off.”
“No.” She didn’t want to get snappy, but she tried to keep her tone firm. “I think it’ll swell if we do. Better to ice it while it still has some compression for now and I’ll get it looked at by a doctor for humans when we get the chance to go to a human emergency room.”
His eyebrows rose but he didn’t argue.
Instead, an awkward silence hung in the air. She was tempted to ask him what needed to happen next. After all, he was the expert in dealing with people who tried to kill other people.
No. That wasn’t fair. Okay, maybe it was accurate, but it was unnecessarily snarky and frightening. When it came to what she wanted to do with her life, she didn’t need her answers right away, and she didn’t need to get pissy about them. She just had to break the habits she’d identified.
“You’re thinking hard.” He moved to lean against the wall next to her, facing her with his arms loosely crossed over his chest. His biceps and forearms were criss-crossed with tiny scratches.
“I have a lot of questions piling up.” Yes, that felt right. She did want to know what to do next, but the old her would’ve just asked him for next steps. The new her needed information in order to form her own ideas. “I guess I’m wondering if we need to talk to police after this or if we can go to a human emergency room.”
Unfortunately, sleep seemed a long way away and there was no actual bed anymore.
Brandon continued to study her, and she thought she caught the ghost of a smile playing over his lips. “The police are probably going to want to talk to us, but if we manage it correctly, I think they’ll talk to us while we’re at the emergency room.”
The thought of those lips sweeping over her skin heated her most intimate parts. Imagining him hovering over her with that ghost of a smile just before he dipped his head to…only she had real-life experience to enhance the imagination and now was so not the time to be indulging in the fantasy.
It took effort to drag her very naughty mind back to the present. She nodded. “Are we likely to get arrested?”
Her stomach did a flip-flop as she considered the possibility. She’d just managed to survive with actual professionals trying to kill her. Getting in trouble with the law, and potentially going to jail, was a horrible way to end this. It seemed insanely unfair. Or just insane. Maybe she was finally losing her sanity under the strain. She wasn’t sure.
“Not likely.” He definitely sounded amused.
“Okay.” She drew in air and blew it out slowly. “How long before we can go back to the cabin and look for Tesseract?”
There was a long pause and Brandon slid his back against the wall until he was sitting on his heels, his arms balanced on his knees. “Hours.”
“I want to go look for her.” The decision settled in her mind and felt right. Then another question popped in her head. “Is she…is it possible that she died in the cabin?”
Brandon sighed. “She had a lot of escape routes. But I don’t want to get your hopes up. There’s a chance she might not have made it.”
Her throat closed. Ah, she felt awful. She’d only known Tesseract for a couple of days. And she obviously hadn’t been a better forever home for the cat than the cat café. As signs went, it seemed relatively obvious she wasn’t fit to provide for any other life but her own.
Or, more truthfully, she couldn’t even take care of her own life, much less be responsible for another.
“I’m sorry.” Brandon touched her shoulder briefly, then the warmth of his fingertips disappeared. “We’ll go look for her, but even if she did get out we might not find her.”
The woods were a dangerous place for a domesticated cat. Sure, Tesseract had her full set of claws intact, but she could come up against a raccoon or possum. Worse, Tesseract could run into a larger predator.
Sophie nodded. “We’ll look, but I won’t have false hope, okay? I just need to go and at least look.”
“Okay,” Brandon acquiesced readily.
“Okay.” She stared at the door. Step one had gone well, she thought. Tough question, a decision, and somebody to support her in the decision. “Thank you.”
“It’s not a thing.” He said the words lightly.
She pressed her lips together. “It is. It’s a lot of things, actually. Too much to list. But mostly, thank you for letting me decide what we’re going to do next instead of telling me what to do.”
There. Even if he tended to look like he could read minds whenever he stared at her with those startling hazel-green eyes, he couldn’t. She wasn’t going to go through her entire thought process from the past several minutes, but he wasn’t going to make her, either.
And this, she thought, was something she could settle for. Or she’d have to, because friendship, or whatever their relationship had been turning into, wasn’t something they could go back to.
A sharp knock at the door brought Brandon to his feet and they both stared as Raul poked his head in the door. “Hey. The doctor is coming down the hallway.”
Brandon dragged his hand through his hair. “Copy.”
Raul hesitated, his brow wrinkled with a quirky expression.
“Something else?” Sophie decided to prompt him because maybe the whole ex-military habit of less is more when it came to words wasn’t the best approach at the moment.
Raul met her gaze, somewhat relieved. “So
mething snuck into my vehicle. Taz doesn’t know what to do with it but it’s definitely not afraid of him and doesn’t look like a random stray from the woods around that cabin.”
The man stepped all the way into the room, gesturing to a cream-colored puff of fur attached to his shoulders. Her claws were hooked firmly into his weapons harness and her bright blue eyes scanned the room.
Sophie straightened. “Tesseract!”
Her cat uttered an imperious meow and leaped from Sa’s shoulder to the chairs, then daintily picked her way over to Sophie. By the time her cat had climbed up to her chest, Tesseract’s fur had smoothed down and she curled up with a happy purr.
Sophie buried her face in Tesseract’s side, reveling in the silky softness of her cat. She smelled of smoke and maybe gunpowder? But she was here and safe.
Raul was talking to Brandon. “It was just sitting in the back of the car where Taz rides. Didn’t know what to make of it. Figured I’d bring it in and drop it off here for adoption if you two didn’t know where it came from. Does it always freak out like that?”
Brandon chuckled. “Yeah. Yeah, she does.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
This apartment is a comfort-food-only zone. It’s a carb overload. Everything tastes good, and the word ‘diet’ is banned until every room is cleaned and either set back to rights or redone.” Sophie stood in the doorway leading to her apartment, holding off Lyn and Elisa until each of them grinned and nodded in acknowledgment.
There hadn’t been any doubt, really. But this way, they couldn’t say she hadn’t warned them.
“You’ve been back for a morning. How did you have time to cook?” Lyn picked her way into the living room area and set down bags of cleaning supplies. “And why is Brandon holed up in his office like a bear going into hibernation?”
“Brandon said there were a few more things he needed to take care of,” Sophie said slowly. The men who’d attacked them in Virginia were all in custody. But those men worked for an organization, and Brandon had said he had enough to be sure which it was.
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