I flopped onto my couch and swore into my empty apartment. Today had been one of the most miserable days since my ass had landed in training. I would have killed for a few more classes to teach, even if standing for a long time had been hell on my not-quite-recovered body.
The day had finally ended, though, and now . . . now I had no idea what to do with myself. For the last several weeks, my evenings and weekends had been all about Logan. What had I done with my off time before he’d come along? What the hell was I supposed to do with it now?
Talk to him. I could fucking go talk to him instead of booking it out of the office and hiding in my apartment like a goddamned coward. I wanted to talk to him. I was just afraid to. I didn’t know if I had the balls to say what I needed to say, and I didn’t know if I could handle his reaction. What if we couldn’t come back from the other night?
I debated going for a walk. I was stalling, of course. Trying to do something other than sit here and dwell on everything I was afraid to face. And, well, my leg did need the exercise. The crutches had been gone for a while, but my whole body was still getting used to walking normally again and I was still getting the muscle tone back. So maybe if I walked down the block, that would—
A knock at the door startled the hell out of me, and before the noise had even stopped, I was swearing out loud. I didn’t even have to look to know who it was, and I seriously debated ignoring him just because I was scared out of my fucking mind to face him.
But we’d have to work together again tomorrow. And the day after that. And every weekday between now and when the Navy decided to send me somewhere else. We needed to hash this out, and we might as well do it here so Diego wouldn’t kill us for dragging it into the office. And at least here, no one would have a front-row seat to me spilling my guts and admitting to sins that made my conscience burn.
With a few more muttered curses, I got up and headed for the door. I paused with my hand on the knob, closed my eyes while I steeled myself, then pulled it open.
Logan met my gaze across the threshold. “Hey. Uh, can we talk?”
I broke eye contact. “We probably should.”
“Yeah.”
We stood there in uncomfortable silence for a painfully long moment before I moved aside to let him in. As he stepped inside, I realized he had a book under his arm, and if I wasn’t mistaken, it was one of his sketchbooks. In fact I was pretty sure I recognized the black cover of the book he’d surreptitiously put away when he’d shown me the others.
After I shut the door, I faced him and leaned against it. “Okay.”
“Look, the nightmares . . .” He sighed, shoulders sagging, and my own exhaustion pressed down harder on me. “They’ve been nonstop lately.”
I shifted uncomfortably, ignoring the throbbing in my leg. “I’ve noticed.”
He kept his gaze down. “You remember that conversation we had a while back? Where you said you were going back to full duty soon?”
That wasn’t what I’d expected, so it gave me pause. “Um. Yeah. I do.”
He turned to me, then shook his head and lowered his gaze again. “It’s not your fault, okay? But that conversation got me thinking about things. And it . . .” Logan swallowed. He looked down at the book under his arm, nervously thumbing the edge, which was weathered like he did that a lot. “The bottom line is that I’m sorry about what I said last night. I . . . It wasn’t that I wanted to make light of what happened to you, but I need you to—”
“Wait, are you apologizing to me?”
He jumped like I’d startled him. “Yeah. I am.”
I exhaled. “Don’t. I’m the one who fucked up. I . . . Logan, I overreacted. I’m sorry for—”
“Just listen to me,” he whispered. “Please.”
I stared at him. “Dude, I’m trying to apologize for—”
“I know, but there’s some shit I need you to understand, and I need to say it before I forget how.”
My mouth went dry, but I shut the fuck up.
When he was apparently sure I wouldn’t try talking again, he moistened his lips. “Listen, I really do know what it’s like to lose a big piece of your identity like that. It hurt like hell when I had to give up being a Marine.”
I had to force back the lump in my throat, but I still didn’t speak.
“I . . .” Logan’s eyes lost focus for a moment. Then he looked at the book he still had tucked under his arm. Not like he’d forgotten it was there, but like he was staring down something he didn’t want to. Lips taut and brow furrowed, he finally pulled it out and offered it to me. “I need you to see something.”
I regarded the book uncertainly. “Why?”
“Just . . .” He nodded toward it. “Please.”
I hesitated for another second, but then took it. I propped it against my forearm and slid a finger under the cover. One more glance at Logan—Christ, he was so nervous he was shaking—and then I opened the black cover.
My breath hitched. I instantly recognized his style from the sketchbook he’d shown me before. Flawless lines. Finger-smooth shading. Dramatic highlights and shadows. Impossibly intricate details. It was unmistakably his work, but I definitely hadn’t seen these before.
The first drawing was a set of dog tags. Though it was black and white, there was no question in my mind that the dark smears were meant to be blood. The engraved letters and numbers were clear enough to read. LANCE CORPORAL NGUYEN THOMAS.
After that, a rifle plunged muzzle-first into the ground, a pair of boots arranged neatly in front of it, and a battered helmet—complete with a photo of three kids tucked into the band—balanced on top.
Stomach twisting, I turned the page again. The next few were similar—obvious homages to people he’d lost—but then they started getting steadily darker. And steadily more violent. Scenes of combat that weren’t filled with the usual hard-faced badasses. They were badasses, shooting and shouting and having each other’s backs, but . . . their faces. Every last one of them was full of fear. Bone-deep, childlike fear. Because that was what they looked like—kids. Even the more grizzled guys with lines on their faces, even with smears of blood on their uniforms and rifles in their hands, their eyes were . . . Holy fuck, they were all kids. Terrified and determined and young.
One was a Marine sitting against a broken concrete barrier, rifle against his chest while the whole world seemed to be exploding behind him. Another Marine was beside him, slumped over and obviously dead. The man who was still alive seemed to be caught in a moment of trying to pull himself together. His eyes were closed, his lips twisted, and a single tear was cutting through the dirt on his cheek.
Men huddled on military cots with shadows closing in on them. A soldier kneeling on broken concrete next to a dead child, his own pistol against his temple. My mouth went dry when I realized the name-tape on his uniform read NGUYEN.
There was a scene with explosions and chaos in the background. In the foreground, there was a soldier and someone who could’ve been a villager or an insurgent. At first glance, I thought they were grappling. As I looked closer, though, I realized they were taking cover together. Closer, the soldier was covering the villager with his body. Closer still, the villager might’ve been trying to do the same to the soldier. And then they were fighting again.
I blinked a few times, trying to make sense of what was happening in the image. I genuinely couldn’t decide if they were fighting, or who was protecting who, or what the hell was going on. It made me dizzy. My throat tightened and my eyes burned with the threat of tears as I imagined Logan living through the hell he’d put on these pages. What if he hadn’t come home? What if he’d killed himself like so many soldiers eventually did?
I cleared my throat, lowered the sketchbook, and met Logan’s gaze. “Why am I looking at this?”
Logan pulled in a deep breath. “That’s the shit I live with every day. That’s what I see when I sleep.” He swallowed hard, like it took some serious work. “It’s . . .” Logan’s shoulders sagged. He combed shaky fingers through his hair. “Turn to the last one.”
My guilty conscience was already on fire, and the back of my throat was sour with bile. Chewing my lip, though, I dropped my gaze to the book again. Then I carefully thumbed through the pages until I found the last used one.
And my heart stopped.
The man in camouflage wasn’t scared. He was fierce and determined, running full speed into battle, completely unaware of the Reaper Drone bearing down on him from behind. Or the enemies creeping out of the shadows. Or the bullet that was microseconds away from tearing through his neck.
I couldn’t look away.
I couldn’t breathe.
Because the man in the drawing was me.
My throat tried to close. “What the fuck is this?”
“That’s what I’ve seen every time I’ve tried to sleep lately,” he said so quietly I barely heard him. “It’s what I was dreaming about last night.” He cleared his throat, and this time spoke more clearly. “This is why I said what I did.”
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I couldn’t stop staring at the drawing while he went on.
“It’s not that I want to downplay what you lost. And I am sorry about that. Honestly, I am. It’s just that I really care about you, and the thought of you going through all that scares me. Especially since what the SEALs deal with is ten times worse. The thought of . . .”
I met his gaze just in time to see him drop his to the book in my hand, and he continued.
“Even thinking hypothetically about you being there for any of that. Going through any of it . . .” He shook his head. “I know that trident meant a hell of a lot to you, but you mean the world to me, and one of the few things that makes my nightmares and flashbacks bearable is knowing you don’t have to suffer through them too. It’s hell, and it’s inhumane, and I don’t want anyone going through it, but especially not the man I love.”
I blinked, my lips parting. The sketchbook almost slid out of my suddenly damp hands.
He swallowed again. “I love you, Casey. I want you to do whatever job makes you happy. If that means going to combat or . . .” He waved a hand. “I’m just scared of something happening to you. I’m sorry I belittled what you lost, but I won’t apologize for being glad you might never have the nightmares I do.” He showed his palms. “That’s all it is. I swear. I just . . .” His voice broke, and he avoided my gaze as he wiped at his eyes. “I’m sorry. I . . .”
“Hey. Come here.” I put the sketchbook aside and wrapped my arms around him, and we buried our faces against each other’s necks.
“It’s taken me seven years to pull myself out of the hole three combat tours put me into,” he whispered unsteadily. “And I’d rather go through every one of those tours again than have you go through one.”
I held him tighter. “I understand.” None of this changed how much it hurt to let go of my dream, but it was like I’d had a glimpse inside his head. Between that and everything Commander Fraser had said to me, I got it. Maybe I had sort of understood it before, but today . . . Fuck. Those wounds had looked brutal before, but now I understood they went all the way to the bone. Deeper than that. If it tore me up this bad to realize what hell he’d seen and how much he’d lost, then how could I not understand? Just thinking about him doing another tour made me want to cry and beg him not to go.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I get it. And the part I wanted to say before is that I fucked up, and I’m sorry. I lost my shit and threw you out when you’d just had a bad flashback, and I spent the rest of the night worried you were going to get yourself killed, and—” I almost choked on my voice, and held him tighter as I struggled to hold on to my composure. “I am so sorry, Logan.”
He said nothing, but he didn’t push me away.
Still, I needed him to understand what had happened and why. I made myself let him go so I could look in his eyes. Wringing my hands in front of me, I said, “I had a talk with Commander Fraser today. About us.”
Logan stiffened. “What?”
“I mean, mostly about me. And how I flipped out at you when I just roll my eyes at everyone else.”
He cocked his head.
Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself. “The bottom line is I resented you. It wasn’t fair to you, and it was stupid of me, but I hated that . . .” I paused, searching for the words, and tried again. “Whenever you had one of those episodes, I caught myself wondering if I could live like that. And when I was already freaking out over not being able to get my trident, and worrying about who I am, it made me think . . . maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a SEAL after all.”
Logan’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”
I swallowed hard. “Maybe I couldn’t have handled it. Watching you when the PTSD hit like that, it just kept making me question if I could have ever been a SEAL after all.” I paused, trying to clear the lump out of my throat, but didn’t get very far. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, and I sure as shit shouldn’t have thrown you out. I was just freaking out and resenting you because I . . .” My voice wavered, but I managed to quietly finish: “Because I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore.”
He stared at me for a moment, lips parted and eyes wide. My heart pounded. I thought my stomach was going to launch itself right up my throat. Had I just made things worse?
“I’m sorry,” I whispered uselessly. “The other night was—”
“Come here.” He gathered me in his arms, and I almost broke as I wrapped mine around him. For a long time, neither of us spoke. I wasn’t sure what to say, and anyway, I was too shaky and too shocked to articulate anything.
Finally, I exhaled against his neck. “I love you, Logan.” My voice shook and was barely audible, but he squeezed me tighter, so he must have heard me.
“I love you too.” He stroked my hair and kissed my temple. “I never meant to minimize what happened to you.”
“I know.” I pulled back and met his eyes. “And I’m sorry I couldn’t figure out my own shit enough to . . .” I sighed again. “Just . . . I’m sorry. For everything.”
“Me too.”
“No, don’t. I screwed up. Not you.”
Logan shook his head. “No, I did too. We both did. Question is, where do we go from here?”
I gulped. “That’s the complicated part, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He cupped my face. “This isn’t going to be easy. We’ve both still got . . .” He hesitated. “The thing is, I’m struggling with wars I wasn’t prepared to fight. You’re grieving the soldier you were supposed to be. That doesn’t mean we can’t be there for each other, you know? But it might make things . . .”
“Hard?”
“Yeah. It’s gonna be a long road. I should have dealt with this years ago, but I just started a few months ago. There’s a lot to sort through, and—”
“And I’ve got a lot of shit I need to work through too.” I lifted my chin and kissed him. “We can make it work, though. Now that it’s all out in the open. If we cut each other some slack.”
Logan nodded. The tip of his tongue darted across his lower lip. “Yeah, I think we can.”
“I know we can.” My heart sped up a little as I held his gaze, and I grinned cautiously. “You know, all this started while we were in bed the other night. We could always pick up there and give it a different ending.”
Logan grinned too, but with a lot more certainty. “Don’t get too many do-overs like that, do we?”
“No, we don’t.” I took his hand. “You in?”
“I’m in.”