I read the text message twice, then I read it one more time before I began typing my response.

Emily had recommended I see the latest movie release from the Marvel franchise. She said she hadn’t laughed so hard in a long time. I didn’t know if this meant she thought I needed a good laugh — who didn’t need one? — or that she didn’t laugh much. I wanted to ask her if it was the latter. She knew so much about me, and I hardly knew anything about her. But I couldn’t help feeling as though she was purposely not volunteering anything too personal about herself.

She didn’t respond right away. Finally, after six minutes of waiting like a desperate chick, I tucked my phone in my jeans pocket and pushed myself up from the sofa. I tried not to take the lack of response personally, but it was difficult when the last thing I’d texted her was something so personal.

As I grabbed a beer out of the fridge, I could sense myself building a wall around my heart. Just because Emily had taken such an interest in me these past two years, it didn’t mean she was interested in anything more than a long-distance friendship. How could I feel so connected to Laurel and Emily when I hardly knew either of them? I needed to put my guard up or I was going to get my heart broken again.

As I pulled on a hoodie, Boomer and I went outside to sit on the back porch. I’d been enjoying my beer and the late morning rain for a few minutes when my phone vibrated in my pocket.

I shook my head as I realized I had overreacted to her lack of response. I remembered something my therapist had said. He said that PTSD sometimes causes us to catastrophize. Small problems are blown out of proportion and large problems feel like the end of the world. It reminded me of the day I found out Nicole had cheated on me with my brother.

I literally thought it was the end of my world. I had thought about suicide a lot during my third tour, when all the trauma finally started catching up to me. I considered the logistics: what method I’d use, where I’d do it to make sure no one found my body. I didn’t want to leave any of my loved ones with PTSD. I considered allowing myself to be killed in action, but I worried that this might put my brothers in danger.

The only thing that kept me from taking myself out was the promise of a life with Nicole. I knew after six years together, she would stay with me until I got better. She would be my safe haven from the raging storm in my mind.

The day I found out she had been cheating on me with Dane was like any other day. I came back from Afghanistan in the end of June, so I was outside in my parents’ driveway washing my dad’s truck. I’d been looking forward to making it back before the Fourth of July block party they threw in our neighborhood every year.

My parents’ house backed up to Lake McCusick. They were very close friends with the neighbors in the other seven houses on McCusick Lane. I had just picked up a bunch of groceries for my mom, who was making a ridiculous amount of food. I washed my truck and had moved on to washing my dad’s truck, when Nicole and Dane pulled up next to me in the driveway.

My brother got out of the SUV first and I nearly tackled him in my excitement to see him. The atmosphere shifted when Nicole got out of the car and I saw her belly. At first, I wondered if maybe she’d just gained a little weight. She was only five months pregnant at the time, so it was a possibility. But I quickly realized she hadn’t gained weight anywhere else, and the apologetic look in her eyes just about destroyed me.

As I stared at Emily’s text message, I thought of what had transpired between Laurel and me in her SUV the other day. A simple touch and the atmosphere had shifted. She had dropped me off that day without the promise of a phone call or a visit, the way she normally did.

My instinct was to not respond to Emily’s text. I needed to keep building that wall around my heart. I didn’t know if I could survive another heartbreak.

Fucking hell. My life was getting messier than an Afghan village after an airstrike.

Finally, I shook my head as I let out a hefty sigh and began typing.

The sound of footsteps in my driveway made my muscles tense as I whipped my head to the left.

“Shit!” I said, louder than I probably should have.

Laurel gasped. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to creep up on you.”

I looked at Boomer, who was lying on his side fast asleep, and chuckled. “You’re fine. But you have once again confirmed that this lazy dog has absolutely no guard dog tendencies. What brings you here on this fine day?”

She was wearing a pair of faded black skinny jeans with rips in the knees and a light-gray hoodie that looked at least two sizes too big for her. Her blonde hair was pulled up in a messy bun and, as usual, she seemed completely unaware of how unbelievably beautiful she looked.

She glanced into my backyard then at my leg. “Some of your apples fell over the fence into my yard. I just… wanted to know if you need some help picking them.”

I smiled. “Well, aren’t you just as thoughtful as can be? You sure you’re not just making up excuses to come over here now?”

She smiled and shook her head. “Nope. But I may be interested in stealing some of those apples, if you don’t mind.”

“Actually, if you’re offering up your services, I do have about an hour or two of work that needs to be done back here. I could pay you one bushel of apples per hour.”

“Deal,” she beamed.

It took about fifteen minutes for Laurel to help me pick the first harvest of kale. She didn’t seem to mind doing it in the rain. We grabbed a ladder from the garage for her to pick the fruit from the Fuji apple tree near the fence.

“Check you out. I didn’t know you had such amazing tree-climbing skills. You’re definitely going to survive when the apes take over the planet.”

She laughed as she grabbed a few apples off the branch in front of her and tossed them into the wooden crate I was carrying. “Climbing trees used to be one of my favorite pastimes when I was growing up. My mom refused to let my dad build me a tree house. She was afraid it would kill the tree. So I had to climb up the tree without a ladder. I used to stay up there for hours sometimes.”

I followed her as she moved to a different part of the tree and continued to drop apples into the crate. “Careful!” I blurted out as her foot began to slip on a wet branch.

She giggled nervously as she regained her hold on the limb above her. “Well, maybe this wouldn’t take so long if you stopped eating all the apples I’m picking.”

“I ate one apple!”

She let out another throaty guffaw. “Oh, crap. I just realized… That would make a great headline: Woman slips out of apple tree and dies three days before her thirtieth birthday.”

“That would most definitely not make a great headline. Maybe you should come down now. You’re getting too wet up there.”

As soon as I said the words, I realized how bad they sounded, but it was too late to take them back. Almost a week had passed since that brief encounter we’d had outside the shooting range. I knew she had felt something just as I had. Laurel was very rarely quiet, but she didn’t say a word the entire ride back. Then, I didn’t hear from her again until today.

But accusing her of “getting too wet up there” was a very poor choice of words. I was ready to flay myself when the sound of her laughter refocused my attention.

“Oh, my God. That’s so cute. You look mortified,” she said, reaching for another apple.

“You think that’s funny,” I shot back, willing myself not to stare at the curve of her ass or the way wisps of wet hair stuck to the sides of her face. “I am mortified. I should not be talking like that to a married woman.”

Especially when I couldn’t stop thinking about all the dirty things I wanted to do to that married woman’s body.

“Am I married?” she mused aloud as she moved down to a lower branch. “Not even I know—”

Before she could finish her sentence, her foot slipped on the limb below her and she knocked her cheek on another branch. The shock of it made her lose her grip on the limb she’d been holding on to. In a split second, I dropped the crate of apples and stretched my arms out to catch her.

She quickly pushed off me and stood up straight, her mouth agape as one hand covered her cheek. “Oh, my God. Did I hurt your leg?”

The force of catching her in my arms had sent a shockwave through me, which had my thigh throbbing like a bitch. But it was definitely bearable.

I laughed. “You fell out of a tree and you’re asking if I’m okay.”

She looked up at me with those big brown eyes full of worry. “Are you sure? You don’t need me to take you to the hospital or anything?”

Her face was no more than eight inches from mine, close enough for me to smell a new scent I’d never smelled on Laurel, like a peach blossom. Mixed with the fragrant rain and apples, it was intoxicating, like I’d downed a whole bottle of liquor. My defenses were down.