minor executive decisions.
Me:You’re spoiling them. I’ll be
home soon.
Mom:Take your time, Camille. Hear
him out. And maybe remind him
my baby girl doesn’t play around.
Me:You’re enjoying this too much.
Mom:Always. Now stop texting and
go figure out if this man is worth
my grandbabies’ time.
I slipped the phone back into my bag, exhaling slowly. Leave it to her to cut right through me with a mix of love and sass. Hunter came out of the kitchen then, two glasses of water in his hands. He set one in front of me and sat across from me, elbows on his knees. “I know you don’t trust me yet,” he said quietly. “I don’t blame you. But I’m here. And I’m not leaving until you’ve heard everything I should’ve said before.”
I stared at the water glass, my reflection rippling on its surface. My guard was still up, my heart still sore. I let myself lean back against the couch and hear him out.
Chapter Sixty
Hunter
Iset a glass of water down and took the next one across from her. My pulse was hammering as she sat back, arms crossed, eyes locked on me. They looked tough and wounded at the same time. Making me want to look away, but I held her gaze.
I’d rehearsed this a hundred times in my head. In the truck. In therapy. Even lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling, imagining how she’d look when I finally said the words. But standing here in front of her, all that I’d practiced scattered. So I started simple. “I was scared.” Her brow lifted slightly, skeptical, but she didn’t speak. So I pushed forward.
“I know, Beautiful… And I’m… I’m sorry.”
I dragged a hand through my hair. “The nightmares, the triggers, the PTSD… it all makes me feel like I’m failing. Most days, I still feel stuck over there. Firecrackers, slammed doors, anything loud puts me right back in the middle of Afghanistan. I hate it. Hate the idea of our kids seeing me like that. And that is exactly what started happening. I started slipping.” I said our kids without thinking. Her eyes softened, arms still crossed, but I could tell it landed. They felt like mine, even if not by blood.
“I’m serious about going back to therapy,” I said. The words felt weird, but it was the truth. “Not the mandated stuff. Real therapy. Five sessions in. I’m not fixed, not even close. But I’m not trying to figure it out on my own. When I get triggered, like with sudden loud noises, I’ve started grounding myself. It’s not automatic, not yet. But now I stop, look around, and it pulls me back. Small thing, but it means I’m working on it.”
Camille’s eyes flickered as I talked, but I couldn’t read if it was relief or something else. She looked at me for a long moment, weighing every word, trying to decide if she could trust what she saw in my eyes. I caught a glimmer of hope in her face, a sign maybe I was finally getting through.
I swallowed hard, voice rough. “But sitting in that silence, knowing I’d lost you anyway? That was worse than any nightmare. I don’t want to run anymore, Camille. Not from you. Not from them. Not from myself.”
For once, I dropped the act. Let her see the fear, the shame, even a little hope. I just hoped it was enough.
The silence dragged out, my mind flashing back to therapy whether I wanted it to or not.
I hated therapy at first. Sitting in that quiet room, arms crossed, waiting for someone to poke at my head. The Marines taught me to lock it down. No weakness, no softness, no tears. My old man hammered that in even earlier. But therapy forced me to quit hiding behind silence.
In the first session, I barely said a word. Second, I let slipabout the nightmares that left me waking up soaked in sweat, fists balled, sure I was back in Afghanistan. She didn’t flinch or scribble notes like I was a case file. Just said, “That must be exhausting.” And it was. More than combat, more than deployments. Carrying it every day, pretending it wasn’t there, eating me alive.
By the third session, I admitted the truth I’d been swallowing for months: that I pulled away from Camille because I didn’t think I deserved her. Every time the kids laughed or reached for me, it twisted something inside me, because I wanted it too much. I wanted them too much. The therapist nodded and said, “Wanting something doesn’t make you broken. It makes you human.” I didn’t know what to do with that.
Now, sitting across from Camille, I realized this was the true test. Not therapy, not the worksheets or breathing tricks. But this, being honest, letting her see what I’d buried, fighting the urge to bolt when things got raw, that was the hard work. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough, but I knew one thing: I wasn’t going back to silence.
So I sat there, heart pounding, waiting for her to decide if I was worth it. Therapy isn’t a quick fix. No magic words, no secret to erase the nightmares. But I’d been picking up tools, stuff I never thought I’d use. Grounding, for starters.
The therapist showed me how to pull myself back when my head started to spin. “Name five things you can see. Four things you can touch. Three you can hear. Two you can smell. One you can taste.” At first, it sounded like kid stuff. But when fireworks went off down the block, and my chest clenched, I forced myself to try it. Truck. Streetlight. My boots. The scar on my hand. The moon. One by one, itbrought me back to now, not stuck in the past.
Breathing too. Not the shallow kind I used to bark at recruits, but deep, steady breaths that actually unclenched my chest. It felt weak, like admitting I needed something so basic to survive. But it worked. Sometimes it was the only thing between me and snapping at someone who didn’t deserve it.
