“What? No, I—” David let out a quick breath.Fuck. “I’m kind of fucked up,” he said in a quieter voice.
No one argued. He supposed that was fair.
“Look,” Reese said, sighing. “I’m going to guess something, or somethings,happened to you in the past, and all this is a symptom of that.”
“You mean PTSD. And yes,” David said, cheeks burning.
“Whatever it was—and you don’t have to tell us—seems to have done a number on your sleep.”
“There’s an understatement.”
“Right. So, we can’t fix that,” Reese said.
David’s heart hurt. Not that Reese wasn’t perfectly correct. But some part of David had always hoped someone, someday, would be able to fix it. He was aware of how foolish that was.
“But we can try to make it better, if you tell us how—and provided the answer isn’t that any of us end up on the couch.”
“Youhavemade it better,” David admitted.
“Good,” Reese said, climbing to his feet and pulling them with him. “Let’s get back into bed. You can tell us how we help, and we can do it some more.”
David let himself be guided into the bed. He was barely settled before Mati rolled into him, her nose pressed to the divot at the base of his throat. The lights went out, and Reese curled up against his back, his knees nestled behind David’s, his mouth tickling the nape of David’s neck, leaving soft kisses there.
The knot in David’s chest loosened a little more.
He sighed, burrowing under the warm and heavy covers. Strong arms wrapped around him.
“I shot a friend. I killed him.”
No one moved. No one breathed.
David had no fucking idea what had made those words come out of his mouth.
Mati cuddled closer, her grip ferocious around his ribs.
“I’m sorry,” Reese said quietly.
He waited for them to ask for the details. Or to question if that was something David should have done. Their confidence in him both flattered and alarmed him.
“I was on SWAT,” he explained, because he needed them to know. “I’m a good shot. There’s a few of us who were good enough to be on sniper duty. That day was my turn.” He could remember being proud when he’d gotten his marksmanship certification. He’d been a kid. A dumb, fucking hopeful kid. “We didn’t know where we were going until we got there. We pulled up, and I realized I’d been there before. Poker night. The Super Bowl. I’d worked with Cronin for years. We all thought he was a good guy. Been on the force for a decade before I showed up. We didn’t work together often, but he’d had my back a time or two.”
He stopped to take a deep breath, his entire world narrowed down to the gentle brush of Reese’s nose through the short hairs along his nape, and the puffs of Mati’s breath on his collarbone.
“I guess he wasn’t such a good guy at home. By the time we showed up, he had his family at gunpoint. In the living room. I could see them from the roof across the street, right through the window. He had to know that. He never looked at me, but he didn’t close the fucking curtain. He wasn’t…he wasn’t dumb. He had to know…but he kept threatening them. Then himself. Back and forth. Sweaty and red-faced and shaking. I could see all the signs. Our negotiator couldn’t get him to stand down. His wife was begging him to put down the gun. To let the kids go. They were crying and clinging to their mother. I couldn’t hear words, but you could tell. By the noises, you know?”
David’s voice cracked and he took a shaky breath. They held on tighter.
“His partner, a guy I know pretty well, went in to talk to him. Cronin shot him. He didn’t even hesitate. Didn’t listen to a word he said. He just dropped him. It was a leg wound, and he survived, thank god, but we didn’t know that. We didn’t know anything. All I could hear was the screaming from all the way across the street—over the shouting in my earpiece, over the swearing from the guy on the roof with me, watching my back. My supervisor didn’t have any choice. He made the call. I took the shot.”
He could hear it now. That single, sharp report. The ringing in his ear because he hadn’t had any noise protection. He could still see Cronin’s body drop to the floor like his strings had been cut. Because they had. Because David had cut them.
He could feel Mati’s tears on his neck and the tremble in Reese’s arm around them. But they didn’t move away.
At some point, David had started clinging to Mati. He didn’t remember doing that. Or when his breathing had synched up with Reese’s. Or when he’d begun to cry.
“That’s what I dream about,” he added uselessly. “There were others. Other call-outs. Other shots. They sometimes make appearances, but that’s the one…”
He swallowed hard and focused on timing his breaths with Reese’s while his chest was too tight to speak. He petted Mati’s tangled braid when he wanted to curl his hands into fists and smash something.
