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"I can see that about you. I bet you were a hell of a good leader."

Again, his praise did weird, uncomfortable, squishy things to my emotional, metaphorical insides. "Thanks. I tried. Not everyone appreciates that mentality, though. Luke was more of a bad boy who tended to treat most rules and regulations like vague suggestions. Direct orders were different, but he never ranked up very much because he'd ignore orders he thought were stupid or dangerous. He was usually right, and he was hell on wheels in a firefight, so he got away with a lot more than he should've."

"Sounds like you two were opposites."

I nodded. "Very much so, in a lot of ways. Pretty much every way there was. He was huge; I'm tiny. He was loud and brash and cocky, and he could be the sweetest teddy bear you’d ever met, and I’m…well…me. Ice queen is the nice version. I've been called a heartless See-You-Next-Tuesday more than a few times, whereas literally zero humans could say a bad thing about Luke other than his superiors, who took issue with his tendency to disregard orders and then turn out to be right."

"Anyone who thinks you're cold or heartless just isn't paying attention."

This stopped me flat. “Okay, buddy." It came out acidly sarcastic, while deep inside, the part of me that was starting to think Jax actually did see real me was causing a ruckus and wanting to come out and play.

"We can argue about that later," Jax said.

"It started out just physical. Stress release, y'know? Two consenting adults engaging in a clandestine sexual relationship. It was risky, because the consequences if you're caught are pretty severe. But the reality is that command did turn a blind eye to it, for the most part, as long as it was discreet and didn’t interfere with people getting their jobs done."

I paused, thought, continued.

"We never talked about it," I said. "The relationship aspect of it. Even when we knew it had progressed from something merely physical to something…else. That was the deal. We didn't talk about serious stuff. We didn’t talk about not talking about it. He risked death every time he went on a mission, and so did I. We both knew it. So how could you start something under those conditions, especially when being together at all went directly against General Order Number One?" I shrugged. "So we just… met when we could, where we could. Sometimes it was literally just a few kisses behind a bunker or in the back of a troop transport, waiting for mechanical to get to it. It was a lot of stolen moments like that. No one knew. Our buddies would've kept it secret, because shit, they all had their own clandestine hookups that we pretended not to know about or just didn't know about."

"That doesn't make it any less real, though," Jax said.

And again, that comment said a lot more than the mere words conveyed. He got it; he got me.

And that was truly scary.

"Yeah, it was real. It was…" I heard my voice tremble. "It was real." I held up both hands for him to give me a second. "I don't know when it happened, or how. I just…I found myself wanting to talk to him. To tell him about what had happened on the mission. That funny joke someone had told. That embarrassing but funny thing. That fucked up situation. I wanted to tell him about it. I wanted to hear about his stuff." I covered my face. "I'd had boyfriends in high school, but nothing serious because I knew I was going into the Navy as soon as possible. So Luke was the first person I'd…" I trailed off, shaking my head, the word sticking in my throat.

"Loved," Jax said it for me.

My eyes burned, and I blinked it away—or tried to. "Yeah," I whispered. "I guess so."

"Tea, c'mon."

I looked down at him, only now realizing that his head was still on my lap. I'm an emotional coward, though, so I didn’t look at that too closely, either. Man, the pile of Jax-related shit I was pretending didn't exist was getting pretty damned tall.

I had a feeling it was going to get hairy when that Escher-tangled Gordian knot of la-la-la-la-I'm-not-looking emotional bullshit all came apart on me. Which seemed imminent.

"Yes, I loved him, okay?” I blurted—it just spilled out, unbidden and unwanted. "I loved him. I didn't want to, and I tried not to, but I fucking did! And this is exactly why I didn't want to love the big sappy bastard! I knew I'd lose him! I knew it. I fucking—I fought it so hard. I didn't give him an inch, Jax. He just…he fucking took it." I had absolutely zero control over the flood-tide of words; not even in the government-mandated counseling sessions or the private therapy I did on my own later did any of this come out. "He just fucking took it. You think I'm prickly and difficult and bitchy and hard to be around now? I was a goddamned cornered pit viper, back then, Jax. I cannot fathom what the everloving fuck Luke even saw in me, what he got from me except the use of my body. I've been through so much therapy just to get to this point.” I slapped my hand against my chest as I emphasized the word.

Jax said nothing at all, but his arms tightened around my waist. And if I'm being honest with myself, that squeeze did more to anchor me to the present than anything he could've said.

Also confusing.

"I tried not to fall in love with him,” I continued. “I never said it and neither did he. We never even acknowledged the emotional aspect of things, that it was more than just sex. I did my best to stay away from him on base, because if I was around him, I wanted to be near him. We…that mission was the second time we worked together, the first being when we met. He'd gotten separated from his unit during an action up in the mountains, and I was flying the SAR team assigned to locate and retrieve him, because one of my specialties is flying low and fast and staying under the radar, and he was in a hotly contested area that was crawling with insurgents. So we found him, my guys brought him back, and then we got stuck waiting for debrief together and writing our after-action reports."

"Can I ask a question?" He rolled carefully to his back, wincing as the movement pulled at his wounds, settling to his back with a soft grunt.

"Sure." His hair needed a trim, and I couldn't stop my stupid little fingers from traipsing across his forehead to brush it from his eyes.

"You said you knew you'd lose him." He paused. "Was that, like, a feeling or a fear?"

"What's the difference?" I muttered, and then looked away, thinking about it. "At first I think it was just a fear. The reason I held my emotions in check, the reason I never let things get…squishy or personal; he tried, though, damn the man. He was the sweet, romantic one. Or as much as you could be when it was against regs, a secret from everyone we knew, and taking place on a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan." I hesitated. "He found a little wildflower, once, when he was up in the hills, chasing tangos. This delicate little blue thing, like a cornflower or something, I dunno. He carried this little notebook, you know, the kind detectives carry in TV shows. A Moleskine? He was always scribbling in that thing. Sketching, journaling, I dunno. I never got to see it because he was super private about it, even with me. Well, he came back from a mission, and I found that flower under my pillow, flattened from being in his notebook."

"You still have it?" Jax asked.

"God, yes. It's framed in a shadow box with the rest of my stuff."

"Where's home for you, incidentally?"