by Zoe York
“Damn, I was hoping you would say no, as we get older, we get kinder and wiser.”
He laughed. “I wouldn’t know.”
“You’re plenty kind.”
“Maybe. But…” He chuckled as he kissed the side of her head, then he curled around her, bringing his lips to her ear. “I may not have hit the thirty milestone yet.”
She froze for a second, then groaned. “Jeez, how much am I robbing the cradle by?”
“I turned twenty-seven a few weeks ago. Rob away.”
Heat filled her cheeks then poured down her body. “Well, in a few years, you can find me and let me know how it goes for you.”
He chuckled. “It’s not a big deal, is it?” He turned her arm over and rubbed his fingers along the inside of her forearm.
“No,” she whispered. Not when he touched her like that.
“Tell me more secrets.”
Her head was spinning and she was strongly considering making out with him like teenagers on the top of a sea container, but she didn’t think that was the type of secret he meant. Plus it was getting cold and late, and he had a flight first thing.
“I’ve never been to Spain,” she said quietly, twisting her head so she could see his profile.
“Neither have I.” He smiled faintly as he looked out across the camp. “A lot of firsts for me this tour.”
“Yeah.” She turned more, her entire body shifting now, and he kept his arms around her as she burrowed into him. “I’ll add a first vacation fling to the list. Wasn’t expecting that.”
He grinned. “A fling with a sexy younger man, too. Might as well get bonus points.”
Good. They were on the same page, then. A fling.
A sexy fling.
It sounded perfect.
She wasn’t sure where the secret sharing fit into that, but he didn’t seem bothered by it, so she wouldn’t overthink it.
“We should head back,” she finally said, letting her lips rub against his neck.
“Soon.” His voice caught in his throat. “You’re going to need to stop rubbing up against me before I can be seen in mixed company again.”
And whoosh, there was more heat again. It almost made up for the freezing metal beneath them. Almost, but not quite.
Four days until her holidays. She could be patient.
They sat there for another half hour, then he walked her to her tent, where he promised to find her in the morning to say goodbye.
He did just that, meeting her at the hospital. They stole a few minutes in the office, and he kissed her until she was breathless.
“I’ll just be a short plane ride away,” he whispered. “Waiting for you.”
CHAPTER SIX
May
Pine Harbour
JENNA WAS SHAKING. She could feel it, in her hands and legs and inside, too. Every inch of her vibrating with panic, because he didn’t want her here.
It turned out, when your greatest fear roared to life, you could still stand there and take it.
Not that Sean was any kind of threat. He leaned heavily on the bathroom sink, and he didn’t move even as she stepped into the bright space.
He looked miserable.
She took another step toward him, her instinct to wrap her arms around him, but he flinched.
He flinched.
And he’d said she shouldn’t be there.
She wasn’t going to ask him if he was okay. He obviously wasn’t. But all her carefully practiced lines vanished when she opened her mouth.
“I worried you were dead.” Her voice cracked, but even that didn’t stop the barrage of words from flooding out. “It didn’t make any sense, because there was no notice about a dead Canadian soldier, but it felt like the only explanation. I died inside as the days turned into weeks and I still didn’t hear anything. From you, from anyone else. No news. And then I find out, from a co-worker, hey, heads up…that guy you’d flirted with? The one you went on a carefree adventure with, had a little crush on? He’s been injured and sent back to Canada.”
He winced repeatedly as she talked, but when she stopped, he didn’t say anything.
She dragged in a rough breath and crossed her arms. “So, I’m glad you’re not dead. That’s good news.”
His mouth tightened, and her gaze was drawn to his beard—of sorts. Scruffy hair covered his jaw, but it wasn’t groomed like a beard. He wasn’t groomed at all. His hair stood on end, and his clothes looked like he’d been sleeping in them for days.
If he wasn’t going to talk, she wasn’t going to bother pretending she wasn’t curious. She was curious as heck. And concerned, too, as she looked him over.
He’d lost a lot of weight. His t-shirt hung off his shoulders where it would have stretched broadly across his chest before. He—
“You cut your hair.” His voice cut into her observation.
She gave him a confused, surprised look. “A bit.”
“It looks good.” But he wasn’t saying that to be kind. It had a hard edge to it, and deflection was a classic trick used by patients. He was saying that to distract her from the fact he looked like he’d been to hell and back, and was barely hanging on.
“You don’t have amnesia, do you?” She licked her lips nervously. “Do you remember… everything?” Do you remember us?
Another flinch, this one wracking through his entire body. “No amnesia. I can’t concentrate worth shit, and that includes remembering details, but I know…” He worked his jaw hard, not quite looking at her. “I remember. But it doesn’t matter.”
How could it not? They’d made promises to each other.
He took a careful step forward. His face tightened up and he stopped.
“Can I help?” It was the wrong thing to say, she knew that as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Nothing she could offer would make this easier for him.
He huffed a laugh at that and took another step closer to her. Her heart lurched as she held herself back from reaching for him. He’d made it painfully clear in his few, terse words that she wasn’t free to touch him. You shouldn’t have come. It doesn’t matter. She didn’t matter. But that self-deprecating laugh was so familiar, and it hurt, like a punch in the chest.
She took a clumsy step backwards, then started to turn, but stopped when he cleared his throat.
“Wait,” he said, and her pulse picked up. He groaned then swore under his breath. “I…I can’t walk well.”
Oh. Pain lanced through her. Pain for him, for how awful it must be for a man whose feet had been faster than the wind to be dealt such a blow.
“I have vertigo. It’s the least of my problems in a lot of ways, but it’s pretty severe. I can’t…”
She nodded, understanding now. He couldn’t walk to her, or even past her. He was a captive there, in front of her, until she left him alone. “Does the room spin?”
“The world spins.” The words dragged, hoarse and raw. “And there’s a lot of other shit. Brain injuries.”
She nodded, even though she didn’t like where he was heading with this.
“We—I—made a mistake. Rushed into something without knowing the consequences.”
We made promises, she wanted to scream. “It doesn’t change anything for me. Your injuries, I mean.”
He stared at her, incredulity twisted all over his face. “It changes everything for me,” he said, his eyes boring into her. “You don’t know what it’s been like.”
No, she didn’t. But she would know if he’d sent for her. “I would have come to you.”
He gave her a hard, cold glare. “No.”
She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “I’m here now. Maybe we could—”
“I’m not the man you married.” He said it in a way that didn’t invite any argument, but she wanted to fight like heck. She wanted to push and scream and throw things.
Fuck. She wanted to rage at a broken man. What was wrong with her?
“Yes you are,” she finally said.
He sho
ok his head as if her words meant nothing. “He’s dead. Best you just forget me now.”
“I can’t do that,” she whispered. “Not ever.” Her eyes were hot and scratchy. She’d start crying in a moment, and she couldn’t do that to him. “I can go for now. But I’ll be back. I’ll wait for you, remember? We promised that to each other.”
They’d said a lot of things, but that was all she could remember right now. His lips pressed against hers, his hands in her hair. His confident assurance that he’d be waiting for her. And then she’d made him the same promise, too.
That commitment had given her strength in the long nights before she arrived here. It didn’t matter that he was changed. It didn’t matter if he was broken.
She was going to keep her promise to him, no matter what.
She turned, dragging a ragged breath into her lungs as she hit the dark hallway. Blink. She’d vowed to love this man in sickness and in health. Well, they were here now. Her eyes refocused and she pivoted toward the stairs. With each step, a hard resolve grew inside her.
She wasn’t going to cry over this. She’d been wrong. This hadn’t been the worst case scenario.
It was fucked up, but he was alive, and he didn’t hate her.
He might hate himself, and God only knew if she’d be able to get through to him, but…he didn’t hate her.
That was something.
She dug in her purse for her keys. They felt strange in her hand. She fumbled with the unlock button on the fob, and when she finally got herself into the driver’s seat of her rental, she realized she couldn’t focus her attention properly. Maybe she wasn’t crying on the outside, but she was freaking the crap out on the inside. She forced herself to take a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Let it out, too. She needed that reminder.
Tears threatened again. Another ragged breath, another exhale. She was cycling through freak-out, false-calm, gutted-sadness, and back to freak-out so fast it was making her brain hurt.
A tap at the glass jolted her out of her deep breathing and made her scream. How long had she been sitting there? She pressed her hand to her chest as she rolled down the window.
Dean gave her an apologetic look and leaned in, bracing his forearm against the door. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s fine.”
“Did you talk?”
She nodded. “He doesn’t want me here.”
“That’s just the injuries talking.”
“I know.” That didn’t change the ache, though. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Good.” He looked back toward the house before slowly turning his attention to her again. “He is getting better. Slowly. And I’m glad you’re here, even if you did throw us for a loop. He’s been…not himself. Even around family.”
Family. Right. They had a huge, tight-knit group here. That was going to take some getting used to. She nodded woodenly.
Dean softened his voice. “I know this had to be hard for you, too. It can’t be what you were hoping for.”
She forced herself not to dwell on that. “I appreciate you letting me speak to him in private.”
He sighed. “I’d like to say it’ll be easier tomorrow, but that might be a false promise. Where are you staying?”
She gestured in the direction of the highway. “Owen Sound.”
He frowned. “At a hotel?”
“Yeah.” She rubbed her hands together, suddenly cold. “I’ll find something closer in a couple of days.”
“You’re going to stick around?”
What part of wife did this guy not understand? “Yes. Of course I am. I didn’t think this would be easy.” She hadn’t thought it would be this, either. But that didn’t matter.
He gave her a hard look, searching her face for some kind of confirmation that she was serious. He must have found it, because he nodded. “I have a place where you can stay.”
SEAN LISTENED for the sound of her car starting up then he lowered himself to his hands and knees and crawled back to his room.
He felt wrung out, like he’d been running all day.
Now he could barely handle a few trips to the bathroom and a complicated, emotional conversation.
She’d looked so good. And so hurt.
He was a raging asshole.
But then he’d had to crawl to his fucking bed, so it wasn’t like he had any other choice.
What they’d had was a fantasy. He’d let himself get caught up in magical promises of love and hope and forever, and that wasn’t ever going to happen for him.
The universe couldn’t have used a blunter instrument to show Sean that he didn’t deserve Jenna.
Just like he didn’t deserve a mother.
He’d always thought, growing up, that he was more okay with his mother’s death because he had never known her. He’d been too young to remember her, and as he got older, he didn’t know the difference. His reality was being raised mostly by Dean and occasionally, judgingly, by the Colonel.
It wasn’t that he doubted that he’d had a loving mother. He knew that. There were pictures of her all over his father’s house. Pictures of him as a baby, in her arms. She’d loved him so much. She’d doted on him even while she was going through treatment, while she was sick and dying.
His father made sure Sean knew that the last thing she ever did was cuddle her two year old son to sleep. There was a picture of Sean sleeping in the hospital bed they’d set up in the living room. Curled up against her side.
And in the morning she was gone.
He didn’t remember any of that—he’d been too little—but he knew he’d been loved by this woman so much, it sapped all of her energy and stole her last dying breath. And the Colonel never forgave him for it.
And now here was Jenna. The most amazing, bright, wonderful woman, who thought she loved him and wanted to take care of him. But he couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t sap her energy, too.
And he can’t do that to her. He can’t sap her energy. Because he had no doubt if he were to try to cling to her, something worse would happen.
Something might happen to Jenna.
It was enough that his life had been fucked up, but if something bad happened to her, he would die.
No, if he was going to be a drain on somebody, let it be his brothers. They could all share it.
Or better yet, he didn’t need to be a drain on anyone at all.
JENNA FOLLOWED DEAN INTO TOWN, her heart still pounding and her head reeling from having seen Sean. He led her to a residential street lined with small bungalows and parked in front of one in the middle of the block.
She got out and stood nervously as he hopped out of his truck. Liana Hansen, Dean’s fiancé, jumped down from the passenger side. Jenna remembered Sean telling her about his brother’s whirlwind romance with the country music singer.
“One minute he was all, ‘she doesn’t need a bodyguard, I’m not sure why I have to go on tour,’ and the next he was like an alpha wolf protecting his queen. We all knew he loved her before he did. Staged an intervention at the Toronto airport and sent him right back to her. Dumb idiot.”
She’d laughed at the time, but man, she understood the whole idiot thing now. Love was scary.
And this was a hell of a way to meet a famous sister-in-law, too. They’d said hello when she’d first arrived at their house, but she’d been distracted with thoughts of Sean.
Now that those thoughts were busy re-categorizing themselves after having seen him, she pushed them aside to give some attention to the fact that she had this big, extended family to meet.
None of whom knew her in the slightest.
“Hi again,” she said shyly as Liana approached. “Sorry about before.”
“You’ve got nothing to apologize for, sweetie,” the petite brunette said, reaching out to touch Jenna’s arm. “Let’s show you inside. I love this place, it’s just adorable.”
“What every man likes to hear about his house,” Dean grumbled. The
fondness between them was obvious, though, and it made Jenna’s chest hurt.
She took a deep breath and re-focused. “I really appreciate this offer.”
“It’s the least we could do,” Dean said. “It’s a small way to soften what has to be a pretty awkward welcome to the family. And we do mean that, by the way. We want you to feel welcome here.”
He opened the front door, which wasn’t locked. He gestured to a key on a hook just inside the entrance. “That’s the house key. It’ll open both front and back doors. If you lose it, our friends Rafe and Olivia live directly behind and have a spare.” He led her through the small space. A living room in the front, then a hallway with a bedroom and a bathroom, then a bigger bedroom at the back, beside the bright, sunny kitchen that looked over the back yard. He pointed to a partially erected fence. “That’s the Minelli house. The fence came down in a wind storm last year and their daughter likes to run back and forth between the two houses. If that’s a problem, we can fix it up for you. We just had other priorities.”
There were power tools piled on the kitchen counter.
He pointed to them. “I’ll take those out to the shed.”
“Oh, I can—”
Liana touched her arm again. “How about I show you where the towels are? We left a few things here so the guys could clean up after a work party.”
Numbly, Jenna followed the other woman. It was a nice house, and as if from a distance, she noticed the renovations were gorgeous. Restored hardwood, new trim, crown moulding, and the bathroom was stunning. Done in the same white tiles and yellow paint as the one she’d just left Sean in. “If Dean is getting this place ready for sale,” she said faintly, “maybe it would be better if I stayed somewhere else.”
“I think he was really hoping one of his brothers would want this place, so this works out well, don’t you worry.” Liana opened a cupboard and clapped her hands. “Good, there’s lots of shampoo in here. I wasn’t sure. And there’s a stack of towels. The laundry is in the basement, where Dean’s stashing his tools. It’s rough down there, so we’ll need to bring a laundry basket over for you. And lord only knows if there’s anything in the fridge. There’s a small grocery store in Lion’s Head, across the highway, and we do our bigger shops in Wiarton or Owen Sound.”