“Hey, you okay?”
Jayson opened his eyes and stared at Lana for several minutes. God she was so fucking beautiful.
Her blue eyes weren’t as bright as they used to be, but damn she still took his breath away. She’d lightened her hair to a blonde with mahogany streaks.
“I’ll get there. Takes me a little bit after a flashback,” he finally answered, rubbing his face with his hands.
“How long have you been out of the Army?”
Jayson looked up at the ceiling on a heavy sigh. “Some days it seems like it was so long ago and then the days like tonight, hours ago. Reality, I was medically discharged three years ago.”
“How many didn’t make it?”
“Lana…”
“How many, Jayson?”
“Five didn’t make it. Myself and another guy, Jeffries, were injured. We fought off the enemy until our rescue got there. The enemy knew we were coming.”
“Damn. I’m sorry. Bad intel or possible leak?”
“We think it was both. But not enough proof of either one. On the surface, it looked like bad intel.”
“But you don’t think it was.”
“Jeffries thinks it was a hit on our team, and they got to the intelligence officer.”
“Jeffries? I don’t remember his name on your team roster.”
Jayson smiled at her statement then her blush as she suddenly went quiet. She had been damn good at her job when she was an intelligence officer.
“I was assigned to a new team after you left roughly six months later. I then went Delta Force shortly after joining the new team.”
“So, you did make it.”
Jayson’s heart squeezed at the smile on her face at the news he’d made Delta Force. She was actually happy for him.
“Yeah, I made it to Delta,” he answered softly, his smile matching hers.
“She said I was holding you back. I guess she was right after all.”
Jayson looked at Lana in confusion when she mumbled her statement about holding him back. What the hell did she mean by that?
“What the…”
When she cleared her throat in the middle of his question, he shook his head. He had to stop himself from reaching out to pull her back down onto the bed when she stood up.
“I’ll let you try and go back to sleep.”
“I’m fine, Lana. I won’t be able to go back to sleep. It’s very rare for me to go back to sleep after a flashback like that. I’ll call a cab and get out of your hair so that the rest of you can rest.”
“I’m awake myself. I can take you home. Let me go get dressed.”
“You okay with LuElle’s for breakfast? My treat?” Jayson offered. “Plus, we can get our talk out of the way so we can work out visitation and child support. I want to be a part of their lives if you will let me.”
“LuElle’s is still around? Yeah, I’ll take you up on that one. And yeah, I’m perfectly okay with you in their lives, Jayson. They need you and your parents in their lives.”
Jayson nodded at her as she turned to walk out of the room. Sighing heavily, he got up and got dressed in the clothes he woreearlier in the day since he would need a shower before he put on clean clothes.
