“Are you crying?” Roger walks into the kitchen, catching me wiping the tears away from my face.

Wine and baking do not mix. After running into Angelo and Tate, I cracked open a bottle and decided it was a splendid idea to drown my sorrows.

“Grab an apron and stop judging.” I scrape the sides of the mixing bowl as tears stream down my face.

“Tilly.” He touches my elbow, trying to comfort me, but I’m too far gone, and honestly, too tipsy for anything to get through. “What happened?”

I turn to face him with the spatula in my hand, dripping with chocolate cupcake batter. This isn’t my finest moment, but it’s raw and real. “I met his kid, Roger.”

The space between his eyebrows wrinkles. “Whose kid?”

“Angelo’s, and she’s precious. Completely adorable. You should’ve seen her.”

My face is doing this weird thing. A cross between a smile and an ugly cry. By the look on Roger’s face, it’s painful to look at and not pretty.

“That’s nice,” he says, like we’re talking about the weather.

“Nice?”

He drops his hand from my elbow and rubs the back of his neck. “Well, yeah. What else should I say?”

I shake my head and grab my wine, needing just one more sip. I don’t know how to explain all the emotions I’m feeling after meeting Tate and seeing the way Angelo is with her. It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking all at the same time.

Before I can bring the glass to my lips, Roger tries to snatch the damn thing from my hands, but I twist in the opposite direction. “I think you should slow down.”

I’m careful not to spill a drop and level him with my glare. “You are not my father.”

I hate being handled, especially by Roger. While he means well, the last thing I need is for him to tell me what to do or how to feel. I had months of that after Mitchell died. Between the counselors, military wives, and Roger, I had had enough.

He lifts his hands in the air. “Point taken.”

“Either join me in a drink, or you know where the door is.” I lift my chin, defiant and petulant as I take a sip.

Roger grabs the wineglass I set out for him, filling it to the top without even looking at me. “So, tell me about the kid. What has you so…”

He’s walking on eggshells. He wants to say crazy, but it’s a term he knows will make me come unglued. I’m not insane. I’m emotional.

Fuck, I’m grieving.

Anyone who’s been through losing a spouse will know the insanity that follows. Emotions change quicker than the direction of the wind, and there’s no warning before the anger suddenly strikes or the sadness becomes unbearable.

“I’m feeling so many things.”

Roger nods but doesn’t speak. He’s learned it’s best to say as little as possible and let me blabber on. It took months for him to realize I just need someone to listen to me.

“I look at her little face and imagine what it would be like to have a little piece of Mitchell here with me.”

“Oh,” Roger whispers, deciding it’s time to start drinking the wine he’s holding.

I begin to pace, kicking off my shoes because my feet are freaking killing me. “Then I think, why would I want to put the sadness I feel in my bones on someone so young and innocent.”

I chug half the glass before I speak again. “Tate took my hand today and wanted nothing more than to show me her bike. She kept looping her finger through my hair as I bent down to check out the pink paint and her cute little white basket.”

The tears come a little faster this time because my heart ached from the moment she touched me. I wanted to wrap her in my arms and never let go. No child should feel the pain of love and loss at such a young age. I was in college when my mother died, and it damn near broke me.

Roger hops up on the steel table and watches me, staying silent and nodding his head.

“I don’t know how Angelo does it,” I say and then stop moving, looking over at Roger. “I don’t know how he got this far. How can you grieve and raise two kids?”

“I don’t know. I remember you wouldn’t even get out of bed for a month, and then…”

“I know. I felt and smelled like trash.” It wasn’t my proudest moment, but it was all I could do. I wanted to curl up and die, joining Mitchell wherever he was. “I was so in shock, I barely remember that month, honestly.”

“You were literally a day away from the county mental ward.”

I stalk across the tile floor in my bare feet and look him straight in the eye. “They never would’ve taken me alive.”

“That’s why I never called. I wasn’t willing to lose you. Not after losing Mitchell.”

I can see the pain in his eyes. Sometimes I’m so lost in my grief, I forget he lost his only sibling. He became an only child in a heartbeat, just like I’d become a widow.

He opens his legs as I move closer. “Why did this happen, Roger?” I place my head in the middle of his chest. “Why?”

He sets his wineglass next to his legs before prying my glass from my hands. “There’s no reason, Til. Life doesn’t make sense sometimes.”

I peer up, eyes filled with tears. “I need things to make sense.”

He touches my chin. “I don’t know if life will ever be normal or that we’ll ever get the answers we want.”

Five years later and the government is still investigating Mitchell’s missions, trying to figure out what went so terribly wrong. My husband wasn’t the only casualty that day. He was one of five brave SEALs tasked with rescuing American hostages behind enemy lines.

“Answers won’t change anything,” I whisper and drop my head back against his chest.

He wraps his arms around my body, rubbing my back. He’s warm and smells amazing, just like his brother used to. “Nothing will take away the sadness. The only thing we can do is go on and try to find a new happiness.”

I twist his shirt between my fingers, using the cloth as a tissue for my tears. “I’m trying.”

Roger grumbles, hating when I ruin his clothes with my snot, but he doesn’t chastise me. “You see your pain in Angelo, don’t you?”

“I see a different kind of pain, Roger. One that may be more profound. Scars that run deep.”

“What do you mean?”

I keep my face planted in his chest, finding it easier to talk when I don’t have to look at him. I close my eyes and take a deep breath before I try explaining what’s going on in my head. “His wife died of cancer.”

“Okay.”

“When Mitchell died, it was a shock. Everything changed in a single second, you know?”

“I do.” He blows out a breath, probably remembering when the Navy showed up at my front door.

I was the one who had to tell Roger about his brother. I was notified first since I was his wife and legally his next of kin. Showing up at Roger’s door, having to tell him his only brother was gone was more than my heart could bear. Saying the words made it real, and I wasn’t ready for what would follow.

“Angelo lived in hell for months before she died, Roger. You know how cancer works. Treatments, doctors, chemo, and everything that goes along with trying to survive.”

“I know all too well.”

Roger’s best friend died of cancer two years ago, and the toll on him was immense. I remember watching him struggle to hold it together, going through the grief that still hadn’t healed from Mitchell.

“I wish I could’ve said goodbye to Mitchell. I wish I could’ve had time with him to say everything that needed to be said. Angelo had that. But he had to endure the months of watching his wife die slowly before his eyes.”

“Oh, Tilly,” Roger whispers against the top of my hair as he holds me tighter. “You can’t compare grief and loss.”

He’s right. Grief is grief. There’s no easy way to do it. There’s no one way better than another. But there’re things I wished I’d said to my husband that I’ll never be able to say.

Roger’s hands cup my face, forcing me to look at him. “The one thing I know is my brother loved you. There wasn’t anything you could’ve said to him that he didn’t already know.”

“You’re right, but that doesn’t make it easier.”

Roger brushes my damp hair away from my face. “I went through the slow process of dying with Chet, baby. I don’t know if I could’ve done that with Mitchell. I couldn’t have sat there, day after day, seeing him dying and knowing there was nothing I could do.” Roger closes his eyes, and I can hear the emotion in his voice. “Mitchell left us doing what he loved. He was born to be a military man. He was a fighter and one of the damn best there was too. He’d want us to celebrate his life, and he for damn sure wouldn’t want you alone forever.”

“I don’t know if I could leave this world and tell him to move on without me. I’m not that nice of a person, Roger. I’d be haunting his ass from the great beyond if he ever laid his hands on another woman.”

Roger laughs and shakes his head. “I have no doubt you’d be relentless.”

“I like Angelo,” I whisper like I’m confessing a sin. “I feel guilty saying those words too.”

“You two are tied in grief. You’ve experienced something very few people have at your age. It’s only natural you’re going to be drawn to him.”

“But I’m not just drawn to him because of the pain.” I hate saying those words out loud. I feel guilty wanting another person or feeling the almost forgotten flicker of lust.

“He’s hot if you like that look.” Roger makes a face.

“You mean hot? He’s such a hardship on the eyes.”

“He’s a little rough around the edges for me.”

“Well then, it’s a good thing he doesn’t like dick.” I laugh, feeling like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders after having this talk with Roger.

“He’d totally be a top if he did, and that would be a problem.”

“I’ll never understand gay men.”

“I’ll never understand women, so we’re even.” He laughs. “Now what is all this mess?” He waves his hand around the kitchen, which doesn’t look all that much cleaner since I had the flour bomb.

“I’m making a special cupcake for Tate.”

“You’re a goner, kid,” he says, and I totally agree.