“I’ll definitely do that. And I’ll make sure they know how much Brooks was thinking about them, too,” Cooper added, giving Brooks a grin.
Luckily, Selena had her back to Brooks, so she couldn’t see the rude gesture he made in Cooper’s direction, which was a good thing, since she’d probably be shocked. The guy might be like a brother to him, but that only meant he could sometimes be just as irritating as one. Cooper just made a show of sniffing the brownies and walked back into the bullpen with a chuckle.
“Don’t worry,” Selena said, coming over to hand Brooks the brownie she’d saved. “I can bring you another batch if you want.”
He bit into the brownie. “You can bring me these things anytime you want.”
“If you’re planning to come back with more,” Cooper called from the other room, “I’ll take a few dozen, if you’re taking orders. I’ll even pay you for them.”
Selena laughed.
“Want to head over to one of the other buildings?” Brooks asked. “So we can talk without constantly being interrupted.”
That earned him a chuckle from Cooper and the rest of his packmates in the bullpen.
“Sounds good to me,” Selena said.
Brooks popped the rest of the brownie into his mouth as he led her outside, then across the compound into the training building, hoping Mike, Rachel, and his other teammates weren’t there. Fortunately, they weren’t.
The dayroom was big enough for the whole SWAT team to fit, as well as their extended pack, which was a good thing, since it was growing in leaps and bounds. In addition to the two couches and coffee table, there were beanbag chairs and a sweet big-screen TV. Since it was the holiday season, there was also a Christmas tree with all the trimmings. Brooks gestured to one of the couches, then sat down beside her.
“I’m glad we got a chance to talk in private,” she said. “I wanted to ask if you got injured in the rescue but wasn’t sure if I should bring it up in front of everyone else. I know guys can get embarrassed when women ask questions like that around other men.”
He was so distracted by the sexy curve of her hips as she crossed her legs that he almost missed what she’d said. “Injured? Nah.”
“You weren’t? Huh.” She frowned, confusion clouding her eyes. “There was so much blood on my clothes, not to mention the floor, and when I realized it couldn’t be Pablo’s, I naturally assumed it was yours.”
Brooks’s first instinct was to say nothing. That was the standard response anytime someone outside the Pack saw something they shouldn’t. But Selena looked so distressed, he had to tell her something.
“Oh, you must mean these.” He gestured at the freshly healed scars on his forearm from both the small bullet hole up near his elbow and the larger incision he’d gotten when Trey had dug Pablo’s bullet out of him. “I cut myself on a piece of glass picking you up. It was nothing.”
Selena studied the scars, her eyes narrowing a little before she looked back at him. Brooks had no doubt she was trying to figure out how scars that looked like they were a week old could possibly have produced as much blood as she’d had on her clothes. When she stared him straight in the eyes for several long moments, he wondered if this was what her students felt like when they’d been caught lying. He held his breath, sure she was going to call him on it.
But instead, she nodded and broke eye contact. “I’m glad it wasn’t anything more serious. You could have gotten shot shielding me like that.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “It was nothing. I was more worried about hurting you. I slammed into you pretty hard. I didn’t break anything, did I?”
Selena shook her head. “No breaks, thank goodness. The doctor was worried I might have gotten a concussion, though. He could be right. My head was a little wonky last night for sure.”
“Wonky?” It was his turn to frown. “What do you mean? Should you be out of the hospital?”
Brooks subconsciously moved closer, his heart beating faster at the thought that he’d hurt her. He was half a second away from sweeping her up into his arms and hauling ass for his truck to take her to the hospital.
Selena must have read his mind, because she stopped him with a smile and a gentle hand on his arm. “I’m okay…really. I’ll admit that my heart rate was all over the place when I was there, and I had a fever that nobody could explain, but thankfully, everything went back to normal. As it turns out, the doctor decided my symptoms weren’t related to anything physical.”
“What was it then?”
She took her hand away from his arm as she shrugged. “He seemed to think I’m dealing with post-traumatic stress.”
A part of Brooks was relieved Selena wasn’t physically injured, but at the same time, he was worried. PTSD wasn’t anything to mess around with. He’d known a lot of good cops who’d lost their jobs, their families, and sometimes more because they’d gone through a rough situation they’d never been able to get past.
“Have you thought of talking to someone about it?” he asked.
She sighed. “You sound like my principal and vice principal. They want me to talk to somebody, too. In fact, they’ve essentially kicked me out of my class for the rest of the week, so I can take time off to recover. Whatever the heck that means.”
“Selena, this is serious,” Brooks said. “Someone tried to kill you. It’s normal to be affected by something like that. Normal to feel confused, scared, and freaked out as hell. It’s also completely normal to sit down and talk with someone about it.”
Her shoulders sagged. “I know. And to be honest, I am a bit freaked out by everything that happened—the parts I can remember anyway. But honestly, I’m not sure who I’d even talk to about something like this. I don’t know if I could walk into a therapist’s office and open up to someone I’ve never met. My grandmother is the only family I have left, but I don’t want to worry her any more than she already is after what happened yesterday.” Selena thought a moment. “I suppose I could talk to my priest, but he’s such a gentle soul that I’m not sure I could bring myself to tell him all the things I was feeling in the classroom when Pablo was waving that gun around.”
