Scooping her into my arms, I hug her trembling body to my chest. She doesn’t sag against me like shedid when I carried her from the water. Instead, she’s stiff. Unresponsive. Silent.
I jog inside and head straight to the living room, where I set Hazel on the couch. Then I grab the blanket from the back of it and wrap it snugly around her before pulling her into my lap. I hug her close, rubbing her arms through the blanket to warm them. I tuck her cold face into my neck, only slightly reassured by the warm bursts of air against my neck.
“Haze,” I croon. “Sweetheart. Can you talk to me? Please?”
Her eyes are open but unfocused. Like her mind is someplace else. “Hazel.” I jostle her gently. “You’re in the cabin. Safe. No one can hurt you. I promise.”
After another minute or so, she finally blinks. Recognition fills her eyes as she looks at me. In a tiny voice, she asks, “Alec?”
The relief is so intense, it steals my breath. “Yeah, Haze. I’m here.”
Her lower lip trembles. “What happened?”
I press a kiss to her forehead. “You were outside. It was freezing.”
Tears well up in her eyes. After a few seconds, she says, “I couldn’t breathe inside. I needed air. And then…”
“It’s okay. You’re okay.”
The tears spill down her cheeks. “It’s not okay. I kept seeing Marissa. And then she turned into Angel.And Wendy. They were both dead, too. And—” Her voice cracks. “It was all my fault.”
I thumb her tears away. “No, sweetheart. None of this is your fault.”
“It is. With Jason… if I’d just stayed at my apartment, Marissa would be alive. And today… I should have listened to you guys. I shouldn’t have insisted on going to work. Then the bar would still be okay. Wendy wouldn’t be hurt.”
It feels like someone chiseled a crack in my heart and it’s slowly splitting open. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I promise.”
Hazel’s expression is pure agony. “How can you say that? People were hurt. Killed. Because of me.”
“You’re not responsible for the bad things other people do.”
“But—”
“I know it’s hard to believe. Trust me. I—” My heart thuds hard in anticipation of the truth I’m about to reveal. “I felt like you for a long time. Like everything bad that happened was my fault. But it wasn’t. And it’s not your fault, either.”
Confusion pinches her brows together. “What do you mean?”
On a heavy exhale, I say, “Because I knew someone who did something really terrible. But I didn’t just know him. He was my best friend. Of anyone, I should have noticed. Realized what he was planning. But I had no idea. Not until it was too late.”
Hazel shifts in my lap, turning so she can see me better. “What do you mean?”
“It was almost five years ago. Back when I was a Green Beret. My team consisted of twelve men, but we operated as split teams of six a lot of the time. So the six of us on my split team were close. We saw each other nearly every day.”
The pain of Sawyer’s betrayal resurges; just as fresh as it was all those years ago. “We were all good friends. Like family, really. But Sawyer… I’d known him since basic. He was the brother I’d never had.”
Hazel pulls one hand out from beneath the blanket and strokes my cheek. “What happened?”
“We were on an op in Jalalabad. The mission was to locate and neutralize an HVT—that’s a high-value target—and make a quick exfil out. But—” My jaw clenches. “While we were headed there, we were ambushed. My teammate, Garrett, was killed. And in all the chaos… we lost Sawyer. At first, we thought he’d been taken as a POW. But later, we discovered he left on purpose. Because he’d betrayed us.”
“Alec.”
“He sold us out.” The words are like poison in my mouth. “They bought his loyalty. After years of working with him, spending holidays together, putting my life in his hands… Shit. I brought Sawyer to my parents’ house for Christmas. And it meant nothing to him. All he cared about was the money.”
“Alec. I’m so sorry.”
“I never got to confront him,” I add. “He took the money and just… disappeared. I never got to ask him how he could turn on us like that.”
“But… how was that your fault?” Hazel asks softly.
