That had been a fun lesson to learn when he’d stepped into the role of primary parent. Sam had always taken care of putting Natalie to bed but when she’d gone, Patrick had gotten a crash course in little girl hygiene requirements. Put the kid to bed with wet hair, wake up with a rat’s nest to comb through.
Which was always so much fun when trying to get out the door at five-thirty in the morning.
She stopped at the bottom step. Paused and blinked slowly.
Then her face lit up, and with a burst of energy, she shot across the small space, a happy cry of “Daddy!” filling the void in his heart.
He scooped her up, holding her close and breathing in the scent of her. She was clean and safe and warm.
She was his little girl.
“You came.” She nestled close with a happy sound.
He caught Sam’s eyes over Natalie’s shoulder. Her expression was blank, but in her eyes was a hint, the barest hint of something beyond the dead, listless stare he’d seen since she’d come home from Iraq.
He wanted to shake her, to push her to snap out of it. To bring back the woman he’d fallen for all those years ago when she’d let him into her home and her life. A life that had included a baby girl that he’d fallen hopelessly in love with the moment she’d entered the world.
He didn’t know how to fix things. He didn’t know how to fix her.
And because of that, he was losing everything that mattered in this life.
Natalie leaned back. “Will you come with us to see Santa today?”
His gaze collided with Sam’s. He saw her open her mouth. Braced for the denial. Braced for her to ask him to leave.
To ask him to stop being a father to the little girl in his arms.
“Honey, I’m sure Daddy’s tired. It’s a long flight from Texas to Maine.”
Patrick stilled, analyzing her response. Her words bounced around his brain, seeking some point of reference before he recognized that she hadn’t said no.
“What time are you going?” he asked when he could find his voice without risking embarrassing himself.
That feeling, that choking, uncertain feeling was hope modulated by pure terror.
“I was thinking about noon,” she said quietly. “You could get settled first. Maybe take a nap if you wanted.”
He tried to keep the surprise off his face and was pretty sure he failed.
Natalie bounced down and rushed to her mother. “Thank you! This way Grammy can go visit Mr. Thomas and have Grammy and Thomas time.”
Patrick choked. He didn’t want to know if “Grammy and Thomas time” meant what he thought it meant. He’d known Nancy and Thomas were close since the first time he’d come home with Sam. Natalie raced back up the stairs, yelling for Grammy. If Nancy had been trying to go back to sleep, she definitely wasn’t now.
He’d always liked Samantha’s mother. Nancy Egan hadn’t approved of her daughter’s choices, but she’d never breathed a rude word toward Patrick. When he’d shown up on her doorstep that morning, the only thing she’d done other than let him in the house was make coffee and then go back to bed.
Patrick watched Sam closely at the mention of her best friend’s father. Had she seen Thomas since she’d been home? Sam may have lost her best friend but Thomas had lost a daughter.
How on earth was Sam coping with her death? He looked at her then, seeing the too-familiar grief looking back at him. He wanted to ask, to say something that would make the pain easier to bear.
But nothing, not even time would do that. It would sneak up on her, again and again over the years.
It was something no one told you about going to war. That it never really leaves you when you come home.
“I’m sorry, Sammy,” he whispered.
She turned away, but not before he saw the tears glittering in her eyes, and his heart broke for her all over again.
* * *
Her lungs hurt. It felt like a massive sucking chest wound that ripped open all at once with the mention of Mel.
She thought she’d made her peace with her best friend’s death on that convoy.
But standing there in her mother’s kitchen beneath the sparkling white Christmas lights, her chest felt tight, her lungs compressed.
She couldn’t breathe.
All she could do was feel.
And it fucking hurt.
She swiped at her cheeks, blinking and trying desperately to shove the emotion back down where she could pretend it wasn’t a live thing, choking off her air.
That her heart wasn’t shattering into a thousand pieces in her chest.
She felt rather than heard him move. One minute, she was standing alone at her mother’s sliding glass doors, her reflection staring back at her through the frozen glass.
The next, a shadow stood behind her.
His hands were strong on her shoulders, the heat from his palms radiating through the chill in her bones.
He was solid and steady behind her. A thousand emotions surged inside her, storming toward the gates, threatening to drop her to her knees.
It was too much. The sympathy in his touch, the ragged pain in her chest, the burning behind her eyes.
She sucked in hard, deep breaths, wrestling everything back into the box that she locked then threw into the darkest corner of the abyss where she could safely ignore it.
She’d deal with the emotions in that box some other day.
It was only when she was certain she wouldn’t shatter that she turned to face him.
And felt the loss immediately as his hands slipped from her shoulders.
“Natalie is glad you’re here,” she finally said carefully as tiny feet pounded on the ceiling above them.
A neutral topic. One she could handle.
She hoped.
“She was pretty upset when she called me,” he said. He didn’t move, but he didn’t crowd her either. He was simply there. Right there. All she had to do was reach for him. A single touch to cross the chasm between them.
It wouldn’t fix things, wouldn’t fix them. Because it wasn’t their relationship that needed to be fixed. It was her. And she had no idea how to say the three hardest words in the English language. I need help.
“What did she say?” Sam asked, steering her thoughts away from the emptiness inside her.
His eyes reflected the frozen landscape in the glass behind her. Dark and whip-smart and so often filled with laughter.
Today they were filled with worry.
“That something was wrong.” His voice was thick, filled with recrimination.
“She’s not wrong.” It hurt to admit that.
“I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s wrong, Sam.”
She retreated a single step, her back colliding with the slider behind her. The cold seeped through her fleece. “You can’t fix this, Patrick.” You can’t fix me.
“So that’s it? You’re just going to walk away and take my daughter and leave, and I don’t even get an explanation as to why?”
“She’s not—”
“Don’t.” He held up one hand, shutting down the words she’d been about to speak. His eyes flashed violently. “Don’t tell me she’s not mine. We never got around to the paperwork, but I’ve raised that little girl like she was my own. Don’t you dare say she’s not mine.”
Sam swallowed the lump in her throat. “Patrick.”
He shook his head and stepped away, out of her space. “I can’t do this right now. Do you want to meet here or at the place I’m staying for the trip to go see Santa?”
“You don’t have to go. You look exhausted.”
He pinned her with a deadpan look. “That’s what happens when you catch a red-eye to the middle of nowhere because your daughter says she’s scared.”
She wasn’t prepared to deal with his anger. She supposed that was why she’d told him and then left the following day.
She hadn’t wanted a confrontation. She’d been hoping things could just… dissolve quietly.
Without any nastiness.
He hadn’t fought her when she’d said she was leaving. She’d assumed that meant he was relieved. That he was going to just let her go.
But he was here now.
“You didn’t have to come. You could have just called me.”
“Phone calls didn’t seem to be the right way to discuss things,” he said quietly.
Hell, she’d run away to Maine in order to put some distance between them. Because obviously the distance between them for the last year hadn’t been enough.
She could see his reflection in the glass behind her. The worry in his eyes. The hurt.
It was her fault. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve this.
And yet she couldn’t find any feelings in her heart for him. There was simply nothing there. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him. She hadn’t meant to. She’d only wanted to stop hurting him, to stop feeling like nothing mattered. To stop feeling afraid that if she said those three little words, he would turn away from her in disgust at her weakness that she hadn’t been able to go to war after all. That she would lose her lover because she’d lost her ability to feel and she was ashamed to admit it.
She’d thought she’d been hiding what was wrong with her. One look at Patrick told her otherwise.
And she’d lost him anyway because she could no longer remember what loving him felt like.
But she couldn’t be around him and remember that once upon a time, she’d felt something for him. Standing there now, facing him, was just a reminder of something else she’d lost along the way home from war.
And she hated it. Hated the war. Hated the pointlessness of it.
So why did she stay in the Army? Wasn’t that the hundred–thousand-dollar question?
“I don’t want to do this right now, Patrick.” Words filled with sadness and regret. “We can talk about how to split things up after Christmas.”
The patient, steadfast Patrick she’d fallen in love with all those years ago was there but he was angry now. And hurt. He stepped into her space.
His hands were rough where they slid over her cheeks. He didn’t stop his advance until she was pressed between the cold glass behind her and the raw heat of the man in front of her.
“You act like things are already over,” he said fiercely. “They’re not.”
And then he kissed her.
* * *
He didn’t know what pushed him to invade her space. He couldn’t say what happened between the moment the idea formed in his head and moving. But part of him needed to feel, to touch her and remind himself that she was real, not simply a shadow of the woman who had left him.
He had to know.
But then her skin was cool and soft beneath his palms. Her body was hard and warm against his, her lips soft and warm and Sam.
They parted with a gasp. It was a shock to them both as he took, demanding access to her secrets and her pain and everything she was holding back from him.
From them.
Because this distance—this wasn’t just about physical distance.
She was his best friend.
And he kissed her like he was dying without her.
Because he was.
He wanted his Samantha back. The warrior goddess who’d laughed when they’d been at the range and she’d outshot him. The fierce lover who took her own pleasure while driving him wild.
The woman who didn’t take shit from anyone.
He kissed her like it was his first taste of pleasure in months.
Because it was.
Her response was a deep, shuddering thing between them. One hand curled around his forearm as he claimed them both, held nothing back. Poured everything he was into that kiss and told her without words that he wasn’t giving up on her without a fight.
The briefest flare of passion and then it was over.
But it wasn’t. She was still in there. His Sam was there. Damaged and afraid, but there. He’d felt her in that kiss, the echo of the love they’d felt for each other.
He stepped back, knowing he was leaving her off-kilter and unbalanced and knowing there was nothing else he could do.
“I’ll meet you here in an hour.”
And he was gone before she could protest.
Because in that kiss, Patrick had made a decision.
That kiss wasn’t a kiss that said they were over. She’d responded to his touch, she’d swayed against him. He knew in his bones that had they been alone, he might have been able to press his advantage and find a way into the dark where she was trapped.
If there ever was a time for a Christmas miracle, now would be the time, he thought as he drove out of the snow-packed drive and turned onto Route 16, heading into the tiny little town of Saber Falls.
He didn’t have a plan. He didn’t have a fairy godmother to tell him what was wrong so he could figure out how to fix it.
But if the war had taught him anything, it was that time was so very precious.
He was going to figure this out.
Because if he lost her and Natalie, he’d have truly lost everything.
Chapter 3
Why are you being so quiet, peanut?”
Patrick glanced in the rearview mirror at Natalie. Her little brown head was bowed, and she was scribbling on a piece of paper.
There was no kicking the seat, no whining about having to pee five minutes after leaving the gas station.
There was just silence.
And silence plus kids always equaled trouble.
He’d learned that the hard way when Sam had first deployed, too. He’d thought he’d have a nice Sunday afternoon watching football while Natalie played in her room. He’d dozed off, only to wake up in a panic when he realized he hadn’t heard a peep from her in who knew how long.
She’d been painting the bathroom floor. With nail polish. Which had been much harder to get off porcelain tile than he’d been prepared for. He’d also learned the difference that day between acetone and non-acetone nail polish remover. And hadn’t that been a fun conversation to have in the middle of Wal-Mart with a little old lady who looked ready to call Child Protective Services because Natalie was out in public in pajamas, a bath robe, and bunny slippers. At three in the afternoon.
He smiled at the memory.
“Nat?”
She looked up. “Nothing, Daddy. Just writing a letter to Santa.”
He glanced over at Sam, who shrugged and remained quiet.
“What are you going to ask him for?”
She looked up at him, and he saw her mother looking back at him from those somber blue eyes. “I can’t tell you that. It’s a secret.”
“Baby, it’s a secret when you blow out your birthday candles and make a wish. It’s not a secret to tell us what you’re going to ask Santa for.”
She shook her head. “Nope. Not telling.”
He saw Sam’s lips curl in a faint smile before turning his attention back to the logging truck in front of him.
That kiss stood between them like a live thing, demanding attention and unwilling to be ignored.
And yet, Sam was doing her best to pretend nothing had happened. That he hadn’t seen the spark in her eyes when he’d stepped away. That she wasn’t gone forever.
But she was still there. Hiding. Deep in the shadows.
All he had to do was figure out a way to draw her out, back into the light.
He sighed quietly and focused on the road. A better man might have let her go. Might have cut his losses with a woman who was, even after nine years together, still skittish. Still didn’t trust that he wouldn’t cut and run.
That he was not her father or the man who’d left her high and dry.
“How was your flight up?” he asked, trying to fill the silence.
“Fine.”
“Well, let’s not waste too much air on conversation, now shall we?”
She shot him a bland look. “I’d rather not do this with little ears in the car, if it’s all the same to you.”
Patrick glanced over at Sam, who looked just this side of horrified.
“No, honey, we’re not getting divorced,” Sam said quietly. “Why do you know what divorce even is?”
“My friend Elsa’s parents are getting divorced. She said her mommy called her daddy a two-timing pig. What’s a two-timing pig?”
Patrick rubbed his hand over his mouth to keep from smiling. Sam was less than impressed.
“It means that her parents aren’t going to live together anymore,” Sam said gently.
Patrick glanced at Natalie. She tapped the pencil against her cheek. “So if you and me move to Maine and Daddy stays in Texas, how is that not divorce?”
Patrick felt slightly ill. He sighed quietly. “It means Elsa’s parents aren’t going to be married anymore. Your mommy and I aren’t married, so we can’t get divorced.”
And holy hell, he did not want to do this right now. Talk about making it difficult to pay attention to the truck in front of him.
“Why aren’t you married?”
“It’s a long story, honey,” Sam said. “It hasn’t mattered before.”
Except that it damn sure mattered now. Patrick tried not to be bitter.
Patrick cleared his throat. “Why don’t you work on your letter to Santa some more?” he said, hoping, praying that she would drop it and knowing that she probably wouldn’t. She was usually incessant with questions.
So the silence that came out of the back seat ended up being quite a surprise. After a while he looked back in the rearview to see she was still busy writing.
“What the heck could an eight-year-old be writing that takes so long?” he asked Sam beneath his breath.
“She’s always had an active imagination.”
There was nothing more to say, because Sam was right. The things that needed to be said couldn’t be said in front of Natalie.
Instead, there was only silence as the drive continued.
Come Home to Me Page 2