by Amy Woods
“And the thing is, I don’t blame him one bit—him or Macy. They have little ones to take care of, and if one of them had been awake, had come across my path when I was lost to reality, well—”
“Hey, hey,” Isaac soothed, putting a hand over hers. Her fingers ceased their repetitive motion over the rock. “It’s no good talking about what might have happened. The important thing is that your niece and nephew are fine, and what Tommy did was to protect them, yes, but it was also to protect you. Besides that, you are doing the work you have to do to get better. You’re going to your therapy appointments, and now you’ve got Foggy and me to help.”
She smiled at his sweetness, at his unfailing optimism. How wonderful it would be to have Isaac with her always, to lift her spirits each time they fell. But no matter how great he was, he couldn’t fix her heart. She would have to do that herself.
“If Tommy really wanted to protect them, he should have tossed me out a long time ago.”
“I disagree, and he and Macy would, too. They love you. They wanted you to realize how much pain you were truly in, and to help you find a way out. I just think they may not know the best way to do that. By giving you an ultimatum—a wake-up call, so to speak—they forced you to look for other options besides therapy. My brother was in therapy for a few years, and he still couldn’t handle the symptoms. There is only so much doctors and medicine can do in certain cases. Sometimes you need a little something more, a little something off the beaten path.”
It was Avery’s turn to comfort Isaac. Lines creased his usually smooth forehead and his eyes were suddenly full of darkness she hadn’t seen before.
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” she said carefully, not missing the past tense Isaac had used. “What was his name?”
Her statement seemed to pull him out of the depths of thought he’d been falling into, but the storminess remained in his face.
“His name was Stephen. He died when I was just out of college.”
“Oh, Isaac,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder. The gesture was meant to calm him, but it was possible that she’d benefitted the most from it. “I’m so very sorry for your loss.”
“It was a very long time ago,” he said.
“I’m not sure that matters, though, does it?”
“No, you’re right. It doesn’t. It still feels like he’s going to walk back into the house and ask what’s for dinner. And expect me to cook, of course. Stephen always was great at eating, terrible at preparing food.”
He chuckled at the memory and Avery’s heart picked up speed at the sound, glad he hadn’t been pulled completely down into his sorrow.
“Do you mind my asking what happened to him?”
Isaac swallowed and tilted his head to the side, and for a second, Avery thought he might say that yes, he did mind.
“No, not at all. He took his own life when he was about the age I am now.”
There was nothing she could say or do to express how acutely she felt his pain, and she wished for all the world that she could take it away, that she could bring his brother back for him.
Isaac was the closest person she had to a friend since she’d returned from war, battered and bruised in invisible ways, and if she were honest with herself, she wanted more from him than just friendship. So it hurt that she had nothing to offer in the way of consolation. The only thing she could do was to be there, and be open, the way he was for her.
Isaac spoke, softly. “He was very sick, and I can’t say that I was...surprised...but that didn’t make it any easier on me, or on Mom. I did the best I could for her, afterward, but she was never the same. I think she lost a lot of herself when her first child passed, and even though I knew, always, that she loved me just as much, I couldn’t replace him.”
Isaac’s jaw set hard and Avery could see the extent of his hurt, despite his attempt to rein it in.
“He fought hard, he really did, but it wasn’t enough. His death is what spurred me on when I left my old job and started to look for something more important to do with my life. I wanted out of the office, big-time, but a lot of my motivation to do something more was my need to live life to its fullest—for Stephen. It was almost like I had a duty to live enough for both of us, since he didn’t have the chance.
“He’s what led me into working with service dogs. I knew there had to be something different for people who weren’t making it with the usual medication and psychiatric help. It wasn’t until Stephen that I came across research that supported what I always felt to be true about animals—that they can feel strong emotion and can even help us when we are overwhelmed with our own. They love us without judgment, even when we can’t love ourselves and when we think no one around us can, either. They don’t care where we’ve been or what we’ve done. They care only about the present, about living in the moment the best way possible. It’s a beautiful thing and humans could certainly stand to take a cue from our animal friends sometimes.”
“Was he—” Avery chose her words carefully, not wanting to press on any nerve endings or cause any more hurt than he already felt, but wanting to know more, because she cared deeply about the man next to her. “Did he serve in the military? In combat?”
“Yes, he did.” Isaac looked up at her, and even though his eyes held sadness, they were also full of optimism, and she wondered how someone who’d been through something so difficult could maintain his humble generosity, his pure but somehow not naive, outlook on life.
“Is that why you help people like me?”
Isaac grinned and Avery’s heart lifted, relieved to see that wonderful sight again.
“To answer your question—yes, Stephen is the big reason why I got into training dogs for vets. I don’t want to see anyone in my community go through the same stuff that he did and believe that there is no way out, that there can’t be life on the other side—full life.”
After a long moment, he raised both palms to her face and stared straight into her eyes with more intensity than she’d seen up to that point. Flecks of gold danced around his irises as he gave her a crooked, perfect smile, and Avery noticed for the first time that he had adorable dimples in both cheeks.
Sparks of electric joy shot through her entire body.
“But I have to correct you,” he said, suddenly quite serious.
She knew that this...this was the moment she’d wanted so badly only minutes before. Instinctively, she could feel that this was one of those times she would look back on someday with great happiness.
The moment she started to think she might be able to find it again, to find love.
Take a chance, a little voice inside her prodded.
“Why’s that?” She bit her lip, nervous and elated, sad and hopeful, vulnerable and brave, all at once.
He smiled, his brown eyes glittering in the sunshine. “Because, Avery, you asked if I help people like you because of Stephen, when, in fact—there is no one like you.”
He caught her smile in his lips as he gently pressed them into hers, kissing her with a delicious combination of tenderness and passion. She closed her eyes and let herself drop over the edge into something new, losing herself in the moment, enjoying the sensation of falling, falling, falling, with the knowledge that she was safer than ever before in Isaac Meyer’s strong hands.
It was incredibly liberating to forget everything that had happened to her before that moment, every cut, every scar, every bruise that had pulled her further and further away from her true self, from the strong woman she knew was still inside somewhere, waiting to be set free. And she knew he couldn’t do that for her. Only she could fight her demons, only she could push until she reached the other side of the horrors that she feared would always return in her nightmares.
She knew all of those things as she kissed him back, wrapping her arms around his firm torso. But
she had to admit, it was mighty damn nice to have someone at her side while she did the hard work.
* * *
Kissing Avery was far more than everything Isaac thought it would be. He supposed they were still there in the park near the pond, with the dogs at their feet and sunshine soaking through their shirts, but at the moment, he wouldn’t have been able to tell if his life depended on it.
Wrapped up in the sweet, honey taste of her lips, the ones that were definitely, incredibly, kissing him back, he lost all sense of reality, all sense of time, all sense of anything except her.
He didn’t care that this was probably too soon, that it would mean things might change for them more quickly than either was prepared to handle.
It didn’t matter.
This wasn’t an ordinary girl, and this wasn’t an ordinary relationship.
But there would be time for all of that later. Right now, all he wanted was to memorize the summery scent of her hair as its strands danced around her face in the gentle breeze, and the way her soft cheeks warmed under the touch of his fingers as they trailed along her jawline.
The way, when he’d finished kissing her, for now—he’d already decided that there would be so much more—Avery’s blue eyes fluttered open as if coming out of a dream. A very good dream.
As she covered his hands with her own and pulled them gently away from her face, Isaac remained still, mesmerized by her beauty.
“Kisses look so good on you,” he said, not caring that the words might be cheesy. Hadn’t she told him that she always wanted the truth from him, no matter what? And it was the absolute truth. Her cheeks were rosy, which only made her blue eyes shine a shade brighter, and her lips were the color of strawberry jam, plump from their collision with his.
She smiled and gazed down at their joined hands. It didn’t bother him that she didn’t say anything. There was no need to. Everything they needed to say had already been stated in that kiss. The air buzzed between them with excitement and possibility, but they had plenty of time to figure things out.
A loud growl interrupted the quiet and for a second, Isaac thought it had come from one of the dogs.
“Someone’s hungry,” Avery said, laughing. She reached over and poked Isaac in his abs. Not a vain man, he was nonetheless glad he kept in shape, and her touch so near his groin set his mind off on a path that would be hard to come back from.
“Starved,” he said, glad for the distraction.
He’d brought her to the park after their training session to relax and let the dogs out into the fresh air, but the park also happened to be the home of a food truck that served excellent burritos. The thought of lunch set Isaac’s stomach to grumbling again.
“Let’s do something about that, shall we?” Avery suggested, grabbing Foggy’s leash and standing up.
Isaac did the same with Jane, but his girl wasn’t a service dog, so it took a bit more work than just the “let’s go” command to get Jane’s mind off the ducks.
He’d kept an eye on Jane as they’d sat admiring the water. She had some hound in her, he was pretty sure, along with a thousand other things, and whenever she came across small animals her ears perked up and she fancied herself a hunting dog. Not that she was any threat. Whenever Jane got anywhere near a cat or a squirrel after a chase, she simply stood staring down her opponent, waiting to see if it would run off and start up their game again. She was completely harmless and a big doofus, but still, he always tried to make sure she was on her best behavior in public places.
“Come on, Jane,” he said. “I promise I’ll share some of my lunch with you if you’ll promise me you won’t run off after those ducks,” he said, joking, but gripping her leash a little tighter all the same. At the mention of lunch, Jane’s thoughts switched over to food and she finally decided that it was okay to leave the pond.
Isaac grabbed Avery’s hand and they walked the hundred yards to where the food trucks parked. A row of shiny Airstream trailers, promising every variety of Texas cuisine, beckoned as they arrived at the gravel parking lot. Picnic benches painted in primary colors were scattered about, and kids ate rapidly melting ice-cream cones while their moms and dads munched on burgers and quesadillas.
“Wow,” Avery said, her eyes wide at the sight. “I hadn’t realized how much I missed this place until now.”
Isaac shielded his eyes from the sun and smiled at her, glad that he’d picked a good place for their first date. Jane sniffed the ground, searching for dropped crumbs, and Foggy’s nose twitched at the savory scents filling the air.
“We used to come here in high school,” she said, her expression gone soft at the memories.
“Yeah, you were lucky to have it,” he said.
“What? It wasn’t here when you were at Peach Leaf High?”
“Nope. I’m a couple years ahead of you, according to Tommy. They built this right after I graduated.”
She squinted, thinking about the timeline. “Oh yeah, you’re right. It was my junior year when this all went up.” She grinned. “I just remember sneaking over here on lunch break to grab hot dogs. We weren’t supposed to go off campus until senior year,” she said, giggling. “But you know, teenagers always follow the rules.”
Isaac chuckled with her.
“So...you’ve asked Tommy about me, huh?”
Her voice was lighter than it had been before, and Isaac was almost certain it was more playful. His grin stretched from ear to ear when he realized suddenly that she was flirting with him.
“I have,” he said, meeting her tone. Then he switched his voice to sound gruffer. “But, you know, I’m a professional and you’re technically my client now.”
He stopped walking and turned to face Avery, slipping a strand of hair behind her ear, enjoying the fact that he could touch her now without causing her to jump. “I make it a practice to know what I need to know about the people I’m working for.”
“I see,” she said, tucking a finger under her chin. “And what is it that you need to know about me, Mr. Meyer?”
There was genuine curiosity in her voice alongside the flirtatiousness. She wanted him to ask about her. This was the invitation he’d been waiting for.
“Everything,” he said truthfully.
Chapter Ten
“I want to know everything about you, Avery Abbott,” he said, staring into her eyes in the hope that she could fully recognize his sincerity.
She swallowed, appearing suddenly nervous.
Had he been too honest? Said too much? He retraced his steps, wishing he could put that carefree look back on her face.
“But first—lunch.”
She relaxed, giving him a smile, and he reminded himself to take things slow. He hated the thought of going anything but full speed ahead now that he’d been around this woman enough to know he wanted more, more, more, but if he pushed too hard, he could lose her altogether, and that simply was not an option.
“Anything you want, sweetheart. Take your pick.”
Avery crossed her arms over her chest and surveyed the selection. Isaac’s favorite were the massive, overstuffed delicacies from Freddy’s Fajitas, but if pressed he’d have to admit that anything from any of the food trucks was guaranteed to be fantastic.
“I’m actually pretty darn hungry,” Avery said, sounding surprised at herself.
“That’s great news, and something we can definitely fix.”
They must have been on the same wavelength because Avery’s eyes wandered over to Freddy’s and she headed in that direction. They ordered and walked away carrying giant tortillas stuffed to the gills with chicken, avocado, onion, sour cream and enough jalapeños to light the town on fire.
“A girl after my own heart,” Isaac said, nodding at the spicy fillings spilling out of Avery’s meal.
“Oh, don�
��t get me started. I can’t get enough. Macy is the only one who can make salsa that’s hot enough for me, and I could beat the guys right out of my unit in pepper-eating contests. Every time.”
She winked at him, proud, and he was thrilled to hear her sharing fun memories of her time in service.
“Man, I missed Tex-Mex while I was gone,” she said, reminiscing and pulling her food a little closer to her as they walked over to a butter-yellow table and set down their cardboard boats of food, their drinks and a few paper napkins. Isaac excused himself and headed to the food truck to grab a plastic bowl, then took it over to a water fountain and brought it back to the table, placing it underneath for Jane and Foggy to share.
“How long were you over there? Afghanistan, right?” Isaac asked, watching her closely.
“Yep, that’s right. Three tours, six months each.”
“Wow. That’s...a lot.”
“It was,” she said, nodding as she sat across from him and spread a napkin over her lap. “The time went by fast, in a way, but there were nights when I really, really wanted to be back in my bed, when I just wanted to be home again.”
“I can only imagine.”
“A lot of bad things happened, but...there were good times, too. At first it’s hard, especially in Basic, because you don’t know anyone and you miss home and everything is physically demanding and weird and it makes you all emotional.”
She took a sip of her iced tea and peered into the distance, a trace of a smile crossing her lips as she watched a mom feeding a toddler little cut-up bites of pizza.
“And then, of course, you don’t want to show everyone that you’re emotional, so you try to hold it in and it just sort of comes out of you at random times.”
Avery laughed at a memory. “Once, my friend Sophie and I were just chilling out after a drill, listening to the radio, and an old stupid song from the eighties came on. You know, one of those ridiculous, drama-queen hair band ballads, and I just completely lost it. I’m pretty sure Sophie thought I’d lost my marbles.”