Three months earlier

Luke O’Connor had three passions in life.

Women.

The Army.

Football.

So it seemed like a slice of poetic justice that his exit from the second came as a result of the first and the third.

Poetic justice was putting it lightly. Really, it was bullshit with a sprinkle of what-fuckery-of-the-gods-is-this.

Luke lifted his gaze from his heavily bundled left leg, past the chrome footboard, and up to the doctor who’d just delivered the bad news.

“You’re telling me that Trinket, the smallest fucking guy in the platoon, shattered my hip?”

The doctor, an elderly man who still looked strong enough to run up against the heaviest defenseman, didn’t bat an eye. “Sergeant O’Connor, I’ve already explained to you what happened.”

“What happened isn’t physically plausible,” Luke said, trying for the love of all things holy to rein in his temper. “Trinket weighs in at a buck-twenty soaking wet. On a good day.”

Dr. Manson tucked his clipboard under his armpit. “Yes,” he murmured, “but the laws of physics don’t include football cleats into the equation, do they?”

Luke mulled over that. He’d never done well in school, and fact was, he was a soldier, not a mathematician. But the pain emanating from his left hip signaled that, yeah, maybe the good doctor was onto something here.

Ignoring the burning heat from the pain, he fixed his attention on the doctor. “What’s the prognosis?”

“Your hip is fractured in three different places, Sergeant. That is your prognosis.”

Hearing it for a third time wasn’t making it sound any better.

“I’m talking recovery time. How long does a broken hip take to be patched up? We looking at a month, two months—”

“You’re looking at a hip pinning.”

“Come again?”

“Surgery, Sergeant. The extent of your injury requires surgery. Recovery from that will more than likely take three to five days, depending on your disposition”—the doctor slid him a disapproving glance—“and your ability to adjust. From there, I’d suggest spending a week or two here, so that we can oversee your initial stages of healing.”

This wasn’t the sort of conversation he wanted to have while lying down like an invalid. He wrapped a hand around the metal pole by his hospital bed and tried to leverage himself into a sitting position.

Pain flooded his side, turning his vision a fun shade of purplish-red at the perimeters.

Jesus H. Mary, he was going to kill Trinket. So what that he’d been talking shit about dating Luke’s sister? They’d been half a world away from New Orleans, Louisiana, Luke’s hometown. But Luke had let his competitive nature get the best of him, as it usually did, and the idea of his platoon “fighting” over Amy had turned a casual game of football and trash talk into the next Super Bowl.

And now Luke was immobile on a hospital bed with a shattered hip and the sneaking suspicion that he’d just pissed himself.

Trinket was going to die, and Luke was going to make it the best moment of his life.

“Sergeant?”

Luke tore his gaze from the white sheets. “Overall recovery time, Doc. Just give it to me. When can I expect to be back in the field?”

For the first time since the gray-haired Dr. Manson had strolled into Luke’s hospital room he looked remorseful. Luke girded himself for what he knew had been coming since he’d heard the words “shattered hip.”

The clipboard went on the rolling metal desk, and the doctor faced Luke with a somber expression and folded arms.

Luke had never been the sort to cower in the face of anything, and he didn’t now, either. “Just say it, Doc.”

“I’m sorry, Sergeant O’Connor, but you won’t be returning to the field anytime soon. Following your surgery later today, you’ll be honorably discharged from the army.” The doctor’s speech tapered into a deliberate pause, as though waiting for Luke to adjust to the information. “I thank you for your service to this country.”

Thank you for your service.

Luke had heard that same sentiment for over a decade now, sometimes from TSA agents in the airport when he flashed his military ID, sometimes from kids as they saw him in his ACUs, sometimes from the women he took to bed. Always, he took the words and digested them with a surge of pride.

But this time, the last time he’d hear them as an active duty soldier, left him feeling cold.

After thirteen years in the US Army, he’d been fallen by a rogue cleat and a football game.

Hooah.