Cowboy SEAL Christmas

by Nicole Helm

  “Hi, Mom,” Colin’s voice said into her ear.

  She nearly choked on a sob, but she kept it inside. Swallowed it down and turned away from Gabe, so he couldn’t watch her desperately try to keep it together. “Hey, baby. How’s it going?”

  “Awesome. Grandpa took me to the shooting range, and I got to shoot his big gun. He said next year he’ll take me hunting.”

  “Oh. Joy.” But it was normal—her father pushing the boundaries of what she wanted Colin to do. Normal and good. She took a deep breath as Colin kept talking.

  “And Grandma let me help make the cookies and didn’t get mad at me like you always do.”

  Well, that one hurt.

  “She froze some for you.”

  “Good. I can’t wait to be there and see you.”

  “Oh, and they bought me a bunch of books and I’ve read like three.”

  “You…read three books.” She was forever trying to get Colin to read. She’d tried bribing and ignoring and offering a million incentives and…

  With her parents, he was happily making cookies and learning to hold a weapon and reading.

  So much for not feeling like a failure. “I miss you.”

  “Okay, Mom. Grandma says I gotta go.”

  “I love you.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.” She looked at the phone, the call already ended, and indeed her battery was at 20 percent, so she should save it.

  He’d been with her parents for a day. One and a half days and he was someone else. More than happy without her.

  The tears started spilling over, and she tried to breathe through all that. She was being silly. Overreacting. She tried to think back to those parenting handbooks she’d read a million times over. She tried to think about what she’d tell a patient who was having similar feelings about their parenting.

  But she couldn’t think beyond the persistent whisper. Failure. Failure. Failure. She couldn’t find her rational center over this twisting stab of pain and guilt. She did always yell at him when they baked together because he never listened. She tried too hard to get him to read. If she’d been chill about it…

  A sob escaped her mouth, and she slapped a hand to it, trying to muffle the sound. Trying to hide what an utter mess she really was.

  “I’m just going to…” She started moving toward the hallway. She’d have her cry in Colin’s bedroom.

  Another sob and it was hard to make her feet move. She should run and slam the door and hide and—

  Gabe’s hand touched her shoulder. She tried to jerk away from it, but he simply turned her to face him and then pulled her into his chest. A hug. Firm and comforting.

  This time, she couldn’t stop the sobs, no matter how hard she tried to breathe through them or swallow them down. She could only sob against the hard, warm comfort of his chest.

  “Shh,” he murmured, stroking her hair.

  She sucked in a halting breath. “He doesn’t need me,” she sobbed into his chest.

  “Come on. He’s your kid. Of course he needs you.”

  “He’s having more fun there. He’s…reading. He’s… I’m failing.”

  Gabe’s hand kept stroking her hair, a slow, calming movement that somehow made the sobbing ease, even if her tears didn’t.

  “He’s with his grandparents. Grandparents are always more fun. They’re probably stuffing him with sweets and never making him sleep. He’s having the time of his life. You can’t compare.”

  She looked up at him. He seemed so…sincere. So genuinely trying to make her feel better. It wasn’t that she was surprised he’d try to make her feel better, because he was kind. It was just that she didn’t think it would come from words and hugs.

  Still his arm held her to him, there in the entrance to the hallway, his other hand at her hair. “My grandma died when I was like eight or something, but she used to sneak me candy and let me watch things I wasn’t supposed to. Grandparents are the fun ones, the ones who make your kid resent you. That’s how the world works.”

  She laughed at that between the tears. “My grandma used to let me put sugar on my Rice Krispies, even though Mom specifically told her not to.”

  “See?” He let her go, but then he was wiping her cheeks delicately. His big, rough hands being unreasonably gentle. “No reason to cry.”

  She wanted to cry for a whole new reason, but that would be fatal or something. It would just kill her.

  “What if I can’t get out?” she asked. “What if we’re stuck here for weeks? What if I miss Christmas with him? I’ve never missed a Christmas with him. Never not been with him on his birthday or mine or Valentine’s Day or even Columbus Day. I have never, ever been away from him for even a day.”

  Gabe shrugged, and his expression was all kind regret. “You’re doing it right now. You’ll have to do more than that someday.”

  She frowned. “That’s a mean thing to say.”

  “No, it’s a practical thing to say. If you don’t accept that time marches on, you can’t march with it, and then you miss everything.”

  “That’s very wise.” She blew out a breath. “I haven’t cried in front of anyone like this since…” She shook her head. “I can’t even remember when. I was alone when I found out about Dex, and I always hid if I was going to have a jag.”

  “Blizzards are a bitch.”

  She managed a laugh at that too, and she took note of the way he was starting to edge away. His instinct might have been to comfort, but he wasn’t comfortable with that instinct.

  It saddened her to think it had probably been beaten out of him, if not literally, then figuratively.

  She made sure to look him in the eye even though she was embarrassed by her outburst. She was more grateful than embarrassed, or at least, she’d try to be. “Thank you.”

  “It was nothing. Just a little sense to stop the hysteria.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know you’re trying to piss me off now. Please don’t. You did a nice thing. Just say you’re welcome and move on.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Then they stood there, looking at each other, like a few too many other moments since they’d been stuck. Those sparks everyone had been poking at them over. Because it didn’t matter that her head hurt from crying or that she loved him and that was stupid. When she was with him, breathing the same air as him, she wanted him.

  God, how she wanted him. “We still have two days,” she whispered.

  He watched her, quietly and stoically for the longest, most horrible minute. “Wouldn’t want to waste it.”

  Chapter 20

  Gabe woke up the next morning wrapped up in dancing candy cane sheets, a warm woman tangled up with him.

  Sadly, they weren’t naked. It was too damn cold for that. Anything that wasn’t covered or wrapped up in the approximately ten blankets they’d put on the couch bed felt like ice. He was pretty sure his nose would never thaw. But underneath the layers of blankets and clothes, there was a warmth he had no interest in leaving.

  He tried to shrug the blankets closer to his face without actually unwinding his arms from around Monica, but that didn’t help, and since she was currently laying on top of his arm, he decided to use her instead of the blanket.

  He nuzzled into her neck, cold nose against warm, smooth skin, until she shrieked awake. Then she slapped him. Hard.

  “Sorry,” he murmured against her neck, trying not to grin against it.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  She sighed but curled closer. “It’s freezing.”

  “I hear that happens when your electricity goes out and it’s below zero. The snow is insulating us somewhat though.”

  “Somewhat my butt.” She shivered, wrapping her arms around him more tightly.

  He yawned into her hair, his f
ace slowly thawing out. It was nice. Nice not to have to jump up and worry about chores, nice to be lazy and doze. Nice to have someone to wake up to, mumble sleepily to, feel…

  He blinked open his eyes, everything inside of him unaccountably stilling at the horrible realization.

  This was more than nice—it was like heaven. It was a joy to wake up with someone in bed with him, lack of heat or no. It was a comfort and a bone-deep contentment he’d never, ever, ever had. And it was as temporary as the snow outside.

  He knew he could go without sex for months, and he also knew he could find sex if he wanted it. There didn’t have to be a lack of that after this was over. And if all else failed, he had his own damn hand. Dry spells happened. He knew how to handle a dry spell.

  But he’d never… Well, he’d never had someone to wake up with, someone to cook meals with and just…live with. Which was what this blizzard had forced him and Monica to do. Now he’d experienced it, and he wanted it. To last. To be real.

  It was like waking up in that hospital room all over again. His world changed, leveled, and the people he’d counted on, cared about, taken away.

  Alone. He’d be that dark, ugly alone again. The only difference was the lack of physical injuries, and he had the sinking suspicion there’d be plenty of emotional ones to make up for it.

  There wasn’t anywhere to go with this realization. He was stuck in this bed, the damage already done, even if he pulled away and started acting like a dick. Whether it was today or two days from now, the end was a reality that was going to crash down on him. Hard. Painful.

  So why not enjoy it for those few more days? What was done was done, and no number of minutes or days would change the awful end result. Why not put it off?

  Especially when it was damn cold beyond these blankets. At least there’d be work to do eventually. Here, all he could do was wallow, so he’d enjoy what he had and when he had to go back to not having her…

  Well, he was used to that. Having someone and then not. He’d learned early and often that was life.

  He started disentangling himself from her, suddenly not so worried about the cold. Sometimes cold was better than warmth. “I’ll go start the coffee.”

  “Wait.” She held on tighter. “I have to ask you my question.”

  He stiffened in spite of himself. He would have rather she not been able to feel that physical reaction, but he couldn’t exactly take it back. “You really want to do that again?” He hoped he sounded dismissive. He was afraid he sounded pained.

  She burrowed closer, pressing a kiss to his neck. “Yes, I really do.”

  “All right.” After all, yesterday’s question had ended in sex. Even if that had made everything weird. Weird sex was still sex, and the sex was good, no matter the circumstances.

  Damn good. The best. Seriously, what the hell was wrong with him?

  “What experience with therapists made you hate them so much?”

  He should have predicted that was where she’d go with today’s question. He’d laid the seeds, and it was his own fault for allowing them to sprout. If he’d been thinking, if he had any self-preservation skills left, he would have made up some story in advance.

  He should lie, and even as he told himself to come up with one right that second, he knew…

  She’d asked him not to lie to her and he’d agreed.

  “The fire thing… Well, believe it or not, people don’t take it lightly when you set fires indoors at weddings.” He said it lightly, even as his gut clenched against old memories of anger, confusion, pain. Having to sit at that table with a bunch of strangers while Mom and Evan sat with his kids at the head table. He’d realized at some point he was sitting with the help: photographer, reverend, florist. A little boy, left alone at his mother’s wedding.

  Even now, he didn’t feel much regret at fooling around with the lighter he’d found in the bathroom. Even now, he got a grim kind of satisfaction remembering the way the flame had licked up the paper decoration that had hung in the hallway that led back to the main reception area.

  Warped, sure, but he could accept warped. He wasn’t a liar, and he didn’t hurt people. He’d take messed up in the head over anything Evan was.

  “Imagine that,” she murmured. Her leg was curled over his, her arm over his chest. She reached up and began drawing her fingers over his cheek, down his jawbone, then back up. Sweet. Comforting.

  Just as he had last night, he felt a tightening in his chest. When she’d been crying over Colin, thinking she was a failure when she was the best mom he’d ever known. That clutching, painful knot that hadn’t dissipated till he’d reached out and held her while she cried.

  Now the clutching, painful knot was there in his chest because she was offering him the same. Comfort. Touch. Care.

  “Evan wanted me punished or sent away, but eventually they agreed on counseling. Over the years, that would be a constant. I don’t know how many offices I was dragged into, how many people tried to twist what I felt into something else or shove a pill down my throat so I felt nothing at all.”

  “That isn’t what counseling should be,” she whispered against his neck. “I’m not a psychiatrist, but counseling isn’t about telling you what you feel.”

  “But that’s what they did. Told me what to feel. Told Evan what he wanted to hear. I was warped and damaged and a threat.”

  She leveraged up on her elbow, looking down at him, her eyebrows drawn together. “That can’t possibly be true.”

  “And yet…”

  “No, I meant…you’re none of those things. I’m not denying that those things happened to you. I’m expressing my utter confusion.”

  “He paid them off, Monica. Or threatened them. I don’t know. But they were working for him.”

  “Surely… You take an oath. You… Surely someone told him go to hell.”

  He snorted a laugh at the idea of anyone saying that to Evan Milan. “No, not a… Well, I suppose there were a few they had me see that… I’d forgotten that.” Forgotten in all his bitterness and rage that there had been a few friendly faces. It was just he’d never seen them again.

  “What?”

  “There were shrinks they took me to who we never went back to. I suppose they didn’t fall in line with what Evan wanted them to say.”

  Monica was quiet, her fingers still trailing up and down his jaw.

  “Would you?” he asked, even though it was a stupid question. Of course she never would, and if she would, she’d never admit it.

  But she was quiet for a few moments as if she was really considering it. “For money? No, I couldn’t manipulate a patient for money.”

  “No amount?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe it’s because I’ve never had to live in real poverty, but I can’t imagine any sum that would assuage the guilt I would feel. That being said…I can’t say I’d never do it.”

  He frowned at her. “You can’t?”

  She lay back down on the pillow as if considering her words. She looked downright angelic with her blond hair spread out all over the pillow, her blue eyes wide and serious.

  “Maybe I’ve watched too many episodes of Law & Order, but I can think of a few situations where I’d capitulate, mainly involving any threats to my loved ones I couldn’t circumnavigate.”

  “Most people would just say no, they wouldn’t do it.”

  “I’m under no illusions that I’m a saint, Gabe. Or that I wouldn’t do something that repulsed me under the right awful circumstances. Maybe that comes from working with military men. Maybe I’m just too practical to fancy myself the most noble. Sometimes people have to do ugly things they never thought they would. That I do know.”

  No one he’d ever spoken to had articulated it quite like that, even Alex and Jack. They didn’t discuss the things they’d done, the questionable choices they’d sometimes ma
de because of war. Because they’d had to.

  But she’d put it all into words that shifted something inside of him. Sometimes people have to do ugly things they never thought they would.

  He knew in that moment she’d understand. All of it. The darkest pieces of himself, and she’d assuage all that guilt, all that wrong and warped. She’d say he was fine, and she’d mean it—another terrible realization in a long line of them. Because no matter that it was irrevocably true, that he was one hundred percent certain, it didn’t change basic facts.

  She’d always love her husband. Colin would always come first. Hell, being a therapist would always come first. If he hadn’t lived through hell, maybe he could believe he could contort himself into the spaces that were left.

  But he’d tried that too often and too much as a kid to think it was possible. There was only so much room a person had in their life, and she didn’t have much of any.

  He wouldn’t cut himself to pieces to fit into them.

  * * *

  It was an odd thing to have this conversation while actually touching each other, practically being on top of each other. While he spoke, thought, breathed, Monica could feel the tension in him. The way he held himself still or purposefully relaxed. She could feel all that emotion roll through him, and it made it all more honest somehow. Connecting.

  She shouldn’t want that, but after last night, she was under fewer and fewer illusions she had any control over this thing between them. She’d cried in front of him, sobbed like a baby. He simply undid her completely, and she knew he wasn’t trying to.

  But very much against her will, she’d shown him a million vulnerable sides of herself, sides she’d held under lock and key so long she’d forgotten they existed. As if it was second nature, he’d opened that lock and Monica had poured out. Not the mother or the therapist, just a person.

  She hadn’t been smart enough to ward it off, strong enough to walk away from all that. She’d fallen in love with him knowing nothing could come of it.

  Can nothing really come from it?