It's Always Been You

by Jessica Scott

  He leaned his head back to look at her.

  “What,” he asked.

  She kissed him gently. “Food.” She brushed her thumb over his bottom lip. “We can talk shop later.”

  * * *

  Breakfast was crepes and fresh fruit. Olivia couldn’t remember the last time she’d had anything so delicious. They ate in relative silence, letting the morning go on around them.

  Olivia had showered and tried to forget what Ben had looked like, covered in his soldier’s blood and painted with his grief.

  It was easy to let the warm Tuscan feel of the restaurant push away the harsh reality they were both attempting to avoid. When their waiter offered espresso, Olivia was tempted, but only for a moment, to say no.

  Then a glance at her watch convinced her otherwise. It was past noon. “Breakfast is more like lunch,” she murmured.

  They sat on the patio to wait for espresso and canapés en route from the kitchen. Ben stared into his glass.

  “It’s been a hell of a week. I don’t even know which way is up.”

  She brushed her thumb over his. “You’ll find your stride, Ben. First few weeks in command are always rough.”

  He looked at her then. “Have you commanded?”

  She shook her head. “There aren’t a lot of command opportunities for lawyers.” She sipped her wine. “But I’ve worked with a lot of commanders. First rule of command is that the first month is always the roughest.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. You’re like new parents, but figuring out someone else’s kids.”

  He laughed softly then rested his head against the back of the chair. “Never really thought about it that way.” He took a sip of his wine.

  He stared out over the lake. A light breeze blew in from the water. “I keep thinking about Escoberra.”

  Olivia set her glass down as their waiter brought the espresso to the table. She unthreaded her fingers from his and tore open a couple of thin sugar packets then stirred her coffee slowly, trying to find the words to ease the guilt she heard in his voice.

  She waited until he met her gaze. “You didn’t drive him to this.”

  “I can’t help but feel like the war changed something inside him. That’s not an excuse. It’s just…” His throat moved as he swallowed hard. He scrubbed his hand over his mouth.

  “I know.” She squeezed his hand. “I know. But you’re not his keeper. You’re not responsible for what he does or doesn’t do.”

  Ben set his cup down roughly. “Do you know how much we partied when we came back from Iraq the first time? Goddamn, we were so fucking happy to be home alive.” He covered his mouth with his hand. “He was so fucking happy to be home.” He rubbed the scar on his stomach. “It didn’t matter that he’d nearly lost his career over the attack on our base.” He sighed heavily. “I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t be around him, knowing I was getting promoted and that the commander wouldn’t even approve Escoberra for an award.” He took a sip of his espresso. “I let the distance grow between us. Because I was ashamed to be an officer. I couldn’t figure out how to be an officer and his friend.”

  There was nothing she could say to ease the guilt that tore at him.

  She simply sat, her fingers twined with his. “I should have seen this coming,” he said quietly.

  “You can’t blame yourself for this,” she said quietly. “You can get him help.” She slipped around the table, cradling his face. “You can’t change the past, but you can make a difference now.”

  He tugged her until she came into his lap. Tucked her against him and simply sat.

  And tried to find a way to face the day.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Ben walked into his company ops Monday morning and was greeted by the happiest thing he could possibly have seen. It was more than his first sergeant making coffee. It was how his first sergeant was making coffee.

  Sorren slid his coffee cup beneath the espresso machine and waited for the water to heat up before he pressed the button that ground the beans and made magic happen.

  Ben grinned at Sorren. “This is better than a puppy. You know that, right?”

  “I figure we’re going to have a lot of long days and nights. We might as well not have to suffer over shitty coffee.” He pointed to the counter near the front door. “Cuss pot. Not that I expect any of us to actually stop cussing but it’ll pay for the beans.”

  Ben grinned and shook his head, then went into his office for his own cup. “You know, I’m tempted to kiss you right now.”

  “Please don’t,” Sorren said.

  Ben waited patiently for the machine to work its magic again and then sipped the espresso, straight up, and enjoyed the violent bolt of caffeine straight into his bloodstream. “Now that is a fabulous way to start a morning.”

  Sorren glared at him. “Did you just use the word ‘fabulous’?”

  Ben grinned. “Maybe.”

  Sorren shook his head and sighed heavily. “Some days, sir, some days.”

  “Happy Monday to you, too.”

  Sorren studied him quietly for a long moment. “You slept this weekend, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.” Ben sobered. “I take it by the fact that I didn’t hear from you again over the weekend that there were no more incidents?”

  Sorren shook his head. “Nope. Escoberra was a perfect saint with the nurses and his guards.”

  “Are they going to move him to the psych ward?”

  “No. They’re doing some CT scans, though, which is something I’ve never heard of before. They’re keeping him for another day or so to make sure that he’s stable.”

  Ben sank down into one of the chairs at the conference room table in the middle of his company ops. “So what do we do with him, Top?”

  “Don’t know. Spent all weekend thinking about it.” Sorren made a second cup of coffee then joined Ben at the table. He took a long pull off his mug. “We’ve got major training events coming up in a month. We’ve got to get this formation under control. We need to send a message and send it fast.” He pointed at Ben with his cup.

  Ben sighed heavily. “I want to send him to rehab.”

  Sorren slammed his coffee cup down on the table. “Rehab isn’t the answer here. Escoberra’s not an alcoholic; there’s something else going on. One minute he denies knowing what happened, the next he’s thinking of killing himself because he remembers. I don’t like this any more than you do but he’s got bigger problems than we can fix in the fucking army. We’re going back to war and we’ve got good soldiers out there who are waiting for us to lead them. We can’t keep pussyfooting around with this guy who keeps drinking and beating up his family.”

  “He was a good soldier.” Ben set his own cup down.

  Sorren leaned toward him. “I got what you want to do here, sir. Believe me, I understand. But I don’t want to bury any more kids because we were so busy chasing down these guys we didn’t have time to train the rest of them right. We’ve got training we need to get to.”

  In the silence that followed, neither of them came up with a solution. Ben tipped his mug up and looked into the splash of coffee at the bottom of the mug. It was a hard, cold reality that some soldiers had bigger problems than the army could fix.

  “Top, when’s the last time anyone saw Zittoro? Tomorrow is his thirty-six month mark,” Ben said quietly. “I’m kind of shocked he made it.”

  “He hasn’t made it, sir.” Sorren looked into his coffee and avoided Ben’s gaze. “I’ve had NCOs go to his apartment twelve times over the last couple of weeks, dragging his ass to work.”

  Ben stilled, the implication of his first sergeant’s words settling like a shroud over his shoulders. He’d made sure Zittoro got to work, made sure the kid did what he needed to do so that he could make his thirty-six month mark. He’d supported Ben’s decision even though he disagreed with it.

  “The NCOs are pissed off, aren’t they?” Ben asked quietly.

  Sorren shrugged, avo
iding his gaze. “Not as much as you’d think. They’re kind of impressed that you’d do this for one of the guys.”

  Ben’s throat constricted and he took a drink of his coffee, hoping to break the lump. When he could talk without embarrassing himself, he said simply, “Thank you, Top. For taking care of Zittoro.”

  Sorren grunted. “Like you said, he was a good soldier. We can’t save him but maybe he’ll be able to do it on his own someday.” He sniffed. “Sometimes the right thing to do isn’t the easy thing to do.”

  “Sometimes it’s not the legal thing to do, either.” He sighed. “If the colonel finds out about this, he could have my ass for it.”

  Sorren shrugged. “What’s he going to do, yell at you some more?” He lifted his coffee in mock salute. “What’s going on with you and the lawyer?” Sorren asked.

  “I don’t know what to call it,” Ben said. “She’s—” Steady. Amazing. Funny. Smart. Sexy. He settled on amazing. “She’s pretty amazing.”

  “She’s terrifying,” Sorren said. “I mean that in a good way.”

  Ben drummed his fingers on the table, needing to change the subject away from whatever this thing between him and Olivia was. Because it was a strange thing, this feeling of being needed, wanted. Of knowing someone was there, waiting for him at the end of the day.

  He didn’t have the words for it.

  But it felt good. That much, he knew.

  And he wasn’t ready to pour his heart out to his first sergeant and start writing poetry. He cleared his throat roughly. “The LTs have a wager on the shoot house next week.”

  Sorren lifted one eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

  “They think they can take you and me out.”

  Sorren snorted rudely. “They’re dreaming.”

  Ben shrugged. “Three against two.”

  “The day I get taken out by three lieutenants is the day I need to retire,” Sorren said. “What’s the wager?”

  “A fifth of black label Crown Royal.” Ben pointed at him with his mug. “You know we can’t lose this, right?”

  Sorren shot him a baleful look. “Excuse my language but are you high, sir? I’ve seen the LTs do PT. I’ll wipe them off the floor in three minutes and that’s if we take our time.”

  Ben grinned. “Glad to hear you’re up for it. I’d really hate to have to watch them drink that in front of us. That stuff is expensive.”

  * * *

  Olivia’s hands trembled as she looked at the file in front of her, then looked up at her friend. The news was no easier to swallow hearing it from a friend than from a complete stranger in a white lab coat. “You’re sure, Emily?”

  This was going to devastate Ben. But it was an answer. Not a good one but the mystery was no longer hidden.

  They knew what was wrong with Escoberra.

  “I’m positive. There’s no mistake in the results from the CT scans we just did. It’s too classic.”

  Her breath shook as she tried to inhale, then she looked over at her friend, sitting across from her in Olivia’s office.

  Olivia looked at the scales on her desk. The broken scale heavier than the intact plate.

  But this? This was so much worse than what she suspected. Because it was a permanent thing. Maybe even a thing that they couldn’t fix.

  “If the nurse at the school hadn’t told you what Hailey’s little brother had said, we might not have looked into this until it was too late,” Emily said.

  Olivia rubbed her hand over her mouth, her heart lodged in her throat. She had been wrong about Escoberra.

  For once, she was glad.

  But it didn’t make the diagnosis any easier to deal with. Because it meant that Escoberra might never get better.

  It could mean that things were only going to get worse for him.

  She had to tell Ben. She had to be the one to tell him what was going on with his sergeant. He needed to hear it from her.

  She owed him that much.

  Olivia ran her fingers over the broken plate on the scales of justice. And with a slight flick of her wrist, the unbroken plate tipped lower. For once, maybe just this time, justice wasn’t the most important thing. Maybe this time, jail wasn’t the answer.

  The lump in her throat was solid, making it hard to breathe.

  “Are you okay?” Emily asked quietly. “I know you were pretty hard up on putting this guy in jail.”

  Olivia shook her head, smiling flatly. “For once, I’m glad to be wrong.” Her voice cracked as she spoke. “But I wish this wasn’t the reason.” She studied the paperwork and tried to swallow the lump blocking her throat. “It’s going to crush Ben,” she whispered.

  “They’ve got some good treatment programs,” Emily said. “It’ll take the division commander to sign off on it but it’s worth a shot to try.”

  Olivia nodded then stood. “I guess I need to go. This shouldn’t wait,” she said.

  She didn’t resist when Emily pulled her into a quick hug. “You did the right thing,” she whispered.

  “It doesn’t feel like it,” Olivia said.

  She picked up the folder and sent Ben a text, asking him to meet her.

  * * *

  “What’s so important that I had to meet you here?” Ben walked up to Olivia outside the First Cav headquarters. To their left, the memorial rose out of the parade field. Polished black granite gleamed in the midafternoon sun.

  “I have something to tell you.” She swallowed, her voice thick. “You’re not going to like it.”

  His expression shuttered closed. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. The muscles in his neck tensed. “Are you secretly a man?”

  She smiled and wished she could laugh at the joke. “No.” Deep breaths did nothing to dislodge the knot in her chest. “This is about Escoberra.”

  “Damn it, Olivia…”

  “Hear me out.” She reached for the folder she’d cradled beneath her arm. “I wanted to be the one to tell you.

  “About a week ago, the school nurse called me. She said Hailey’s little brother had been talking to her about his dad.” She wished she didn’t see his hand shake as he took the folder. “I asked Emily to see about some extra tests while he was in the hospital.” Olivia swallowed. “It’s a confirmed diagnosis.”

  She held her silence while Ben read through the paperwork. A shadow darkened his expression. His eyes were bleak and sad and empty when he finally looked back up at her.

  “Severe traumatic brain injury?” His voice broke. “What does that even mean?”

  “In his case? Blackout rages. Memory loss. Severe headaches.” She sucked in a deep breath. “He’s been in at least five documented explosions. He’s lost consciousness at least six times that the docs know about.”

  “How do we fix this?” Ben whispered. His eyes were nothing but sad now. “There’s got to be something we can do?”

  Olivia took a step closer, afraid that he would break with the reality that Escoberra might be lost forever. TBI was a life-altering injury. “There’s an experimental program down at Fort Sam in San Antonio.” She took a step toward him, turning a page in the folder. “I’ve called in a favor with the division commander.”

  Ben looked at her sharply. “You did that?”

  She nodded. “You believed in this man. And I was wrong about him.” She lifted her palm to cover his heart. “I’m so fucking glad I was wrong.” She breathed out slowly. “This paperwork will get him admitted. No red tape. No waiting months for the packet to be approved.” She hesitated and a long silence stretched between them. “Just have your commander sign off on it and I can get it signed by division.”

  * * *

  Ben stared at the packet, his heart pounding in his temples. Severe TBI. Evidence of brain damage. The world beneath his feet tilted and rocked. Everything clicked all at once. The anger. The feeling that things had changed.

  That Escoberra was no longer the man who’d kept Ben from bleeding out all those years ago.

  He had changed. Everything ha
d changed.

  He blinked rapidly, staring down at his brave, fierce lawyer. “That means he really beat the hell out of Hailey, didn’t he?”

  He finally lifted his gaze to hers. She nodded slowly and his heart broke a little more. “But you were right. There was some other reason,” she whispered.

  He shook his head, denying the reality of her words. “I don’t want to be right. Not like this. Not if it means he can’t get better.”

  She rested her hands on his shoulders. His skin burned where she touched him. His soul ached with the truth of her words.

  He stopped then. Clenched his fists by his sides and breathed deeply, staring at the packet in his hand that held Escoberra’s fate on a single sheet of paper. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “For doing this for him.”

  He bit his lips together, needing space before he broke. Before the weight of the war and the weariness threatening to destroy him succeeded and he fell apart in front of her. “I have to go brief the boss,” he said.

  “Are you okay?”

  He looked down at the file. “I don’t have a choice,” he said quietly.

  * * *

  If there was a word for the misery simmering in Olivia’s chest, she didn’t know what it was. It physically hurt to breathe but there was nothing she could do but trust that Ben would be okay. She trusted him. It was a leap of faith, one that hurt her to take. She’d hurt him. She’d known it would hurt him when she told him about Escoberra.

  Her heart was tight in her chest and there was a solid lump in her throat. Grief for him was a physical thing sitting on her lungs, pressing down. But she held on to the trust in him.

  There was a sharp rap on her door.

  Hope soared inside her, only to die in a fiery crash on the cold polished floor. Captain Marshall stood in her doorway. “LTC Gilliad wants to see you.”

  She could see at that moment why Ben hated this greasy prick. He wore a self-satisfied smirk that made her want to slap him. But she refused to give him the satisfaction. “Thank you,” was all she said.

  “Do you always shack up with the guys you work with?”

  She stopped and briefly reconsidered her stance on workplace violence.