Milly and Jake were already in the water, Aaron watching from the bank, when Rob arrived with the boys in tow. They exchanged smiles, and the smile reached Rob's eyes, but they didn't kiss hello.

Yes, the sex last night had been off-the-charts hot. Yes, they had connected in some way, but that was for the alone times. Here, they were both uncles responsible for the kids, and they kept it to a casual brush of hands as Rob walked past to the shallows.

Aaron recalled the first time they’d met up here, Rob’s nephews scared and hesitant to talk to anyone, let alone wanting to paddle in the water. But that was what they wanted now, and after he and Rob exchanged hellos, it was Rob and the kids in the shallows with Aaron watching everyone from the shore.

“Can I go out there with Milly and Jake, Uncle Rob?” Bran asked. He stared wistfully toward them.

Rob checked with Aaron. “How deep is it?”

“Not too bad. Four foot or so to the rocks, actually.”

“Go on then.” And before Bran could ask, Rob added a warning and then, “I’ve got Toby. Have fun.”

When Rob and Toby came back in, Aaron handed out towels.

“One day I’ll go on the rocks too,” Toby announced, his hands on his hips, the towel over his head.

“You sure will, buddy,” Rob said and watched when Toby disappeared into the den that the other two had already created.

“He seems a lot happier,” Aaron commented and waited for the stern dismissal from Rob, the one he’d grown used to. Instead, Rob was sad, thoughtful, and gave a small shrug.

“They love Crooked Tree,” he said finally. “It’s a good place for them to have a home.”

Hope swelled inside Aaron. Was it possible that Rob was staying and that this sexy-hot friends-with-benefit thing they had going could become something else?

“Does that mean you’re staying?” he asked.

Rob shot him a glance. “The kids are,” he said and stepped closer so they could talk quietly. “Not me, okay? Just the kids.”

Aaron was confused. “You have to work away?” He still wasn’t entirely sure what Rob did for a living. He’d never mentioned a job or that he was still in the navy. His work life was a complete blank.

“Yes.”

Aaron wanted to have hope that this was true, but Rob had closed his eyes momentarily and sighed softly, which made everything that came out of his mouth after that seem like a lie.

“But you’ll come back, yeah?”

“No,” Rob said.

Aaron’s chest tightened. He had questions, so many of them, but did he deserve to get any answers? After all, what did they have between them apart from sex? Yes, he’d fallen in lust hard, but they hadn’t done anything that could be considered dating.

What about the kids? Who would be caring for them? Why wasn’t Rob planning on coming back? Why would he not want to come back? Maybe he should start with a simple question, something less threatening than asking how long was Rob staying.

Milly screamed.

In a blur of movement, Rob had shallow-dived into the water and headed for the rocks, long, powerful strokes taking him directly toward the screaming.

“Stay where you are, Toby!” Aaron ordered and went in after him. By the time he reached the rocks, not that long after Rob, the screaming had stopped, but now Milly was crying.

“Bran slipped!” she shouted. “He can’t stay up. I can’t keep him up.” Aaron immediately took over supporting Bran and assessed the situation. Bran’s face was only just above water, which was only around four feet at this point, and he was deathly quiet, but his eyes were open and wide, and his breathing labored. Milly was crying. Jake tried to dive under. There was no sign of Rob down in the weeds that grew there. Jake surfaced, and Aaron decided immediately that his nephew needed to stay out of this. There was a lot of splashing, and Bran was beginning to panic.

“Stay with your sister,” he demanded and then pushed his own face into the water, still trying to support Bran, checking for Rob, trying to figure out what the hell was happening. Rob was by the rocks, pulling at boulders bigger than him, and when the weeds waved around Rob’s hands, Aaron saw, in the clear spring water, that somehow Bran’s foot had become wedged in fallen stones.

“I’m sinking.” Bran gasped and splattered as he slipped and swallowed water.

“I’ve got you, Bran,” Aaron said.

Rob surfaced and gripped his nephew, cradled his face, and supported him alongside Aaron. “I’m getting you out,” he said, the words firm. Then he turned to Aaron. “Keep his head up.”

Rob duck-dived down, and Aaron supported Bran, who was gasping, his lips barely clear of the surface. He wasn’t crying now, but the terror in his eyes was raw.

“It’s okay, Bran. We’ve got you,” Aaron kept repeating, even as Rob returned to the surface, took a deep breath, and dived again. Something shifted, yanking Bran momentarily under, but whatever it was didn’t help because he was still held tight by the rocks below. He spluttered for a moment and then quietened again.

Rob hadn’t surfaced. Milly moved closer, helped Aaron hold Bran, and she was still crying.

“Everything’s okay,” Aaron reassured. Should he get Milly and Jake to swim to shore? Maybe run and get help?

Finally, Rob surfaced, and he took over holding Bran.

His breathing was harsh for a while, and then he visibly reined himself in. “Bran, I need you to listen to me. You need to go under the water. Hold your breath and go under. I’ll be right there with you, but your foot is twisted and stuck, and I need to get you down so I can release you. Bran? Are you listening to me?”

Bran reached up and gripped his uncle’s hair, so composed, so utterly focused. “Yes.”

“Okay, I need you to take some deep breaths and then one last big one when I start to count down from three. Breathe with me, Bran.”

Aaron and Rob exchanged looks.

“He’s got this,” Aaron said with confidence.

“Okay, Bran, on the count of three, take in a deep breath and relax for me. Don’t fight me. One. Two. Three.”

A split second and both he and Bran disappeared beneath the water. Milly yelped, even as Aaron decided to go under with them to check what was happening. And then, the foot was free, and Bran bobbed to the surface like a cork, with Rob soon after, holding him, carrying him over the rocks, surefooted and focused, and then slipping back into the water and swimming with Bran back to the shore. Milly and Jake scrambled to follow. Then it was only Aaron left to check they all made it back okay. When he reached the shore, Rob was sitting on the stones, Bran clinging to him like a baby monkey, sobbing, and holding on as if he would never let go. Toby joined them, and Rob held them both for the longest time.

Aaron crouched to check the foot, ran a few medical checks without making it too obvious. Bran was ominously quiet, but that didn’t mean anything.

“I don’t think it’s broken.” He said as he felt for swelling. “It’s going to bruise, though. We should get back and put some ice on it.”

Rob staggered to stand, bracing himself, still holding Bran and refusing to let go, and together they headed down the hill.

They all made it back to Branches. Milly had run ahead with Jake on her heels, so that when they reached the bridge, Sam and Nate were already there. Justin arrived at the same time they did.

“What happened?”

“He slipped,” Aaron answered when Rob was quiet. “His foot was trapped, wedged in the boulder space. We need to get some ice on it.”

“This happened before, when Justin was a kid,” Nate announced. “We thought it was a freak accident. I never even thought to mention it. Shit…” He pushed a hand through his hair, then pulled himself back to the present. “Ice, we need ice.”

Bran buried his face in Rob’s neck, and for a few moments, Rob gripped him tight, and then he relaxed his hold.

“Sam? Can you sort the ice for Bran?”

Bran murmured something too low for Aaron to hear, and Rob shook his head.

“Go with Sam. He’ll get ice for your foot.”

“I want to stay with you,” Bran said, louder this time.

“I can’t,” Rob said and unpeeled his nephew’s fingers, then passed him to Justin and Sam. Justin held him, and Rob gently nudged Toby to go with them. Then, without a word, he walked in the direction of his cabin and was gone.

What just happened? Why did Rob go? No one was enlightening him, and Aaron went from confused to pissed.

He wanted to follow him, ask him what the hell was going on, but his priority was to Milly, Jake, and an injured Bran. Paramedic and uncle first. Then he could become the angry man he wanted to be. No one should push a child away, under any circumstances. His respect for what Rob had just done at the lake twisted with the feeling that something was very off.

After dropping Milly and Jake home, he was torn. Pissed at what had happened, worried about what he’d witnessed, and then angry. Mostly he was confused that he even wanted to see Rob again. Taken at face value, what he had done was awful, but wasn’t he the one who’d rescued Bran, who had stayed underwater for so long?

Aaron needed a beer and a good night’s sleep, but it wasn’t his place that he ended up driving to, and it wasn’t to get any sleep.

He parked under the lamp farthest from any of the buildings at Crooked Tree and then walked the short distance to Rob’s cabin. The place was in complete darkness, and he made his way to the back of the building where he usually found Rob sitting. The back door was open, but inside was quiet. No sign of the kids, no sign of Rob. He went in because nothing about this felt right. The kids weren’t in their bedroom, the bed empty, and he entered Rob’s room.

“What do you want?” Rob asked from the shadows.

“Where are Bran and Toby? What the hell was that back there?”

Rob said nothing, and Aaron felt for the light, flicking the switch so that brightness filled the room. Two bags sat on a neatly made bed, and the closet door was open, Rob’s clothes gone. And in the center of the room, hunched over in pain, Rob sat on a chair.

"I thought you would be Justin," he whispered. “I think I need to get my gun from Justin.”

He looked like hell, gray, and the way he held himself, along with an unopened box of Fentanyl on the bed, underlined how much pain he was in.

Aaron’s anger didn’t subside, but he crossed for a closer investigation, immediately checked Rob’s pulse. It was strong and steady but fast, and Rob didn’t even bother moving his head.

“I took a shovel up to the lake, kept diving until I could lever the rocks apart. No child will get stuck again.”

“What the hell, Rob? Why would you do that right now?”

“Because Bran and Toby have to be safe here.”

Was it him, or was Rob close to tears? Jesus, what was going on here?

“I have questions.” Aaron sat on the bed, to the side of Rob’s chair.

“I can’t,” Rob murmured. His voice was tight, and pain bracketed his mouth.

“How much have you taken?” Aaron picked up the Fentanyl, realizing as he did so that it was an unopened box.

“None.”

Aaron made the executive decision that whatever was going on here had to be stopped in its tracks. The prescription had Rob's name. He was in pain, so Aaron popped out the correct dosage, according to the label, and opened the bottle of water that had been discarded on the bed. He held out the pills.

“Take them,” he ordered.

Rob lifted a hand, but it was maybe only an inch, and he groaned low in his throat, an animalistic sound of pain.

So Aaron took point, pressed his fingers to Rob’s mouth, seeking entrance, placed the drugs on his tongue and then supported his head as he tilted the bottle. Then he waited, helping Rob by massaging his shoulders gently, pressing at the tight flesh. Had he hurt himself in the water? This was clearly an existing injury if the Fentanyl was anything to go by, so had he injured himself again? After they’d made love yesterday, he’d looked in so much pain, and right now Aaron wanted answers.

“It’s not enough,” Rob said a little over fifteen minutes later, able now to reach for the box, and tried to pop out two more of the small tablets. Aaron helped him, making a note of dose and calculating in his head. This was serious shit, but against his better judgment, he helped him with two more tablets. Another fifteen minutes or so, and Rob was able to move without pain.

“Start talking,” Aaron demanded.

“You can leave now,” Rob responded and wouldn’t look at him.

“Not going anywhere. So what the hell is going on?”

“I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“No, you don’t owe me shit, but you owe Bran and Toby one hell of a lot.”

Rob winced. “They’ll be okay. Justin promised to take them for me so I can…”

“So you can do what?”

This time Rob closed his eyes. “Jeez, Aaron, just go.”

Aaron reached out and took Rob’s hand. “No, and let’s start from the beginning. The pain. Here’s what I know. You’re friends with Justin, so I’m taking a leap here and assuming you worked with him in the years he was missing. Maybe even that you were part of whatever Justin did that ended up with him getting shot. Right so far?” He didn’t wait for the yes, merely forged ahead with his theories. “Don’t forget I was the one who dug a bullet out of Justin, and I heard some things maybe I shouldn’t. I know he was working for some team that worked to keep our country safe, so I assume you were in the same line of work?”

“You need to go,” Rob murmured, but he didn’t deny anything that Aaron had said.

“Tell me about the pain. Were you injured in the line of work? An accident? There are no visible issues I saw when I was in bed with you—”

“You fucking checked?”

Aaron was shocked to hear the horror in Rob’s words.

“I kissed and licked every inch of you…” He leaned over then and stole a kiss from Rob because all the anger in him had gone. He knew something was wrong and was determined to find out what it was. Rob curled his hand into Aaron’s hair and deepened the kiss, which wasn’t what Aaron had been expecting.

“You don’t know me.” Rob was tired, and he hunched forward in the chair again.

“What? You mean some of the things you did for your family? What you saw, who you killed? You forget I was a soldier for a lot of years.”

Rob huffed a quick laugh. “Your job was to save lives. My targets never got up again.” He stopped then as if he realized he had said too much.

“Shades of gray, Rob, always shades of gray. How many targets did you take out that would have gone on to hurt other people.”

“That’s too fucking simplistic. You’re wrong if you think I can even tell you that.”

“Can you ever come to terms with what you did? Is this why you won’t talk about it?”

Rob grabbed his hand and held tight. “Come to terms with it? I regret nothing. I chose to be the surgeon here. I wasn’t lied to, not like Justin was. I was young, idealistic, and I wanted to make the country I lived in safer. I didn’t hurt a single person who wasn’t going to hurt someone else, and I saved lives. None of it haunts me, okay, so don’t try to psychoanalyze the shit out of me. I’m not the victim here, and I don’t need understanding.”

Aaron didn’t doubt a single word of it. He’d signed up to the army to save lives, but he’d left because he hadn’t been able to save enough. He’d come to terms with his own ghosts. At least he had coping mechanisms to keep them at bay. He’d met too men and women who carried demons from war at Hepburn House, and who couldn’t let those demons free.

Rob sighed noisily. "I can see you are thinking about how fucked I am in the head, but it’s all about checks and balances for me. For every person I surgically removed, maybe the team I was with saved another or ten or a hundred. You’ll have to get Justin to tell you about the bomb meant for a football stadium. We stopped that.”

“Okay,” Aaron murmured. “Then if ghosts aren’t chasing you away, why are you leaving like a thief in the night? Why leave the boys?”

“You think I want to leave them? I have to leave before they form any attachment to me that will end up hurting them.”

Aaron recalled the way Bran clung to Rob. “I think maybe you’re too late for that.”

Silence. Too much silence. And then Rob began to speak again.

“I really wish I’d met you sooner,” Rob whispered. “I think we could have been good together.”

That all sounded very final, and Aaron didn’t like it. “We still can be.”

“No, you don’t get it.” He scrubbed his eyes. “Why would you? It’s not like I’ve told you anything.” He muttered the last bit.

Aaron leaned in. “You want to start again?”

“I only have maybe two months left.” He was more explicit this time, and the words were icily hard.

Aaron heard the words but they didn’t make sense. Was Rob being sent on a clandestine mission? Was his war still happening? If it was, then there was the possibility that he could come back. He’d made it alive this far, so why would it be any different?

“Until what? Deployment? A mission?”

Rob looked thoughtful, then shook his head. “Did you know, and I read this on Google, so it must be true, that there are less than one hundred reported cases of lead toxicity in patients with retained bullets? And I’m the lucky one to take that total closer to a hundred.”

Aaron heard the words but couldn’t process them immediately, and then it hit him.

“You were shot, and the bullet is still inside you.”

“Yep, it went in through my side, struck a rib, and the trajectory changed. I mean, it was lucky it hit a rib because that meant my internal organs were missed. Still, it stayed close to my spine, and there it sits right in a mess of severely damaged muscles and scar tissue.”

Aaron had seen that kind of thing before. On the battlefield, there was no chance of extricating a bullet. The patient needed delicate surgery, but that didn't mean the bullet couldn't be taken out. The moment a victim's vitals were stabilized, even in the middle of being fired on, a medics first response is to determine trajectory, counting entry and exit holes, and imagining the path of the bullet. Aaron could visualize the kind of path that Rob was describing.

"So in two months, you're having it taken out? You can still come back after."

“To what exactly?”

“To the kids. To me?”

“You? I don’t have anything for you.”

“Rob—“

“You know when a stone cracks a windshield, how the spider web of cracks spread outward from the impact? Well, my doctor said that's what happened to the muscles in my back. You can’t see it on the surface, but the damage is inside.”

“But the fragments can come out,” Aaron insisted. He’d seen it done. With average results, maybe, but it had been done.

“When the doctors told me what had happened, my first thought was that I wished I’d died because then there wouldn’t be the pain, and anyway, me dying there and then mattered to no one. I argued with them to take the bullet out. Particularly when they told me there was going to be a creeping paralysis and poisoning from the bullet fragments leaching lead. They told me I had two options. Stay with the bullet in me, live with the pain, and eventually die. Or have the operation, possibly die, but if I lived, I could potentially be paralyzed. So I decided to leave the hospital.”

“And live with the pain until you die.” Aaron could understand that. Long-term pain management could be done.

“It’s getting worse. Faster than they said it would, and I refuse to decay slowly in some hospital room from poisoning or paralyzed after an operation, with my only family watching me die. They’ve lost their dad, their mom, I refuse to let them see me die as well. So, I’m dying on my terms and sparing everyone the grief of watching it happen.”

Aaron sat back. “That’s why you want your gun back?”

Rob nodded.

“What kind of a man with a family gives up?” Aaron snapped the words out. Bran and Toby needed their uncle.

“I’m not their family. I want to be, but I can’t. You see that, right?”

“No, it’s not just about blood. I see you with them. You don’t want to leave them.”

“I have to, which is why I am finding a family to look after them.”

Aaron stopped for a moment, lost in thought.

“What about us?” he asked sadly.

This time it was Rob sitting back in his chair, the meds having worked their magic, it seemed. “What about us?”

Aaron wanted to shout at Rob, to tell him he was wrong, to change his mind and at least give the operation a chance, but he was selfish. What right did he have to make someone have an operation that might paralyze them? How could he sit here and say that it was okay to be slowly poisoned and that pain could be dealt with?

He didn’t do any of that.

“How about you get some sleep, right? Then we can talk this over together, in the morning.”

Rob used the chair to balance himself, then crawled onto the bed and lay down, his back to Aaron.

“Lock the door on the way out.”

Aaron did lock the door, but not with him outside. He wasn’t leaving Rob, not when he was in pain.

Not when there is a chance I can change his mind.

He slid into the bed behind Rob and pulled the covers around them. Rob didn’t move or give any sign he even knew Aaron was still there, and with Aaron’s hand on Rob’s hip, touching him for reassurance that he was still there, still alive, he slept.

Sunlight shone direct into Aaron’s eyes.

Locking the door was one thing, but maybe he should have pulled the drapes while he’d been at it.

He reached out to touch Rob and felt nothing but cold sheets. He knew with absolute certainty that there was no point in checking the cabin. Or even the whole of Crooked Tree.

Rob was gone.