“It wasn’t a dream. It’s a memory. Of . . . of how I failed my team.” His voice was quiet. Ragged. He sighed. “I was EOD, and I was called in to sweep an area.” He swallowed. “My gut said it wasn’t clear, but my CO was pushing me and . . .”
“You got it wrong.”
He nodded.
EOD. Explosive Ordnance Disposal. The kind of work where mistakes meant body bags. Where second-guessing yourself at the wrong moment got people killed.
“And now you’re still afraid of missing something.”
“Something like that.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Thinking about her own failures. Her own ghosts. The weight that never quite left, no matter how many missions you completed, how many people you saved afterward.
Then, “I’m not going to tell you it wasn’t your fault. I don’t know enough about what happened. But I do know that mistakes live in your body, even after you’ve forgiven yourself.”
Something in his expression shifted. Loosened, just slightly.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
“For what?”
“For not saying ‘It wasn’t your fault.’”
“Blame doesn’t help anyone.”
“Yeah,” he said, as if he didn’t believe it. He took another sip of the tea, then set the cup down and stood. “I’m going to sleep on the love seat. The one by the window.”
“Dakota, you don’t have to?—”
“I do.” His voice was quiet but firm. “Just in case it happens again. I don’t want to hurt you.”
She wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him she could handle herself, that she’d been trained to subdue men twice his size, that a nightmare wasn’t going to break her.
But there was something in his face—a raw, exposed kind of shame—that made her swallow the words. “Okay.”
He grabbed a pillow and the woven throw from the foot of the bed. Crossed to the love seat. The low, cushioned frame looked comfortable enough for sitting but would turn a person to a knot overnight. Especially a man his size.
He settled onto it anyway. Pulled the throw over his shoulders.
“Get some sleep,” he said. “We’ve got a long day tomorrow.” He reached over and closed the woven bamboo screen between the sleeping area and the sitting room, creating a barrier.
Like she wouldn’t just lie there and listen to him breathe.
She lay back and closed her eyes. Was it terrible to be absurdly glad she’d been here when the nightmare hit? That she’d been able to bring him back?
That for just a moment, she’d been someone who mattered to someone who mattered to her?
The thought should have terrified her.
Maybe it did.
And she didn’t care.
Tomorrow they’d land in Sydney and go their separate ways, and this would become a story. A memory. Two days that existed outside of normal time.
Two days that somehow felt more perfectly real than the last three years of her life.
FOUR
