I barely slept that night, but I did manage to get at least a few hours of shut-eye. What with my worry about Emma, the cramped futon I was sleeping on, and the giant boner I was sporting, I wasn’t exactly sleeping like a log.

Still, when I woke up I felt surprisingly refreshed and alive. I glanced at my watch--six a.m.

Shit, by my normal standards, six a.m. was sleeping in. Usually, I was out the door for my morning workout by 4:30 a.m.

I walked over to Emma’s playpen, and watched her sleeping so soundly. A hint of sunlight had started to pour into the room, casting a long shadow from the one window in the office.

I smiled as I watched her little tiny chest rising and falling. At six months, Emma was still oblivious to all of the stresses and anxieties of adult life, and I envied that.

Just then, she stirred in her sleep, and a minute later began to cry.

“Awww there, there, Emma, no need for that,” I said in a low whisper, picking her up from her playpen. I hoisted her onto my chest and walked her around the room while feeding her formula. After a little while, she calmed down and I sat down on the now upright futon with her.

It wasn’t long until she was sleeping again, nestled up all nice and close against my chest. I guess that’s what babies do. Eat, sleep, poop, and occasionally giggle. And then sleep again.

Interestingly, even though I was the adult here, and I was the one who was supposedly calming Emma down, I felt incredibly at peace all of the sudden with her little heart beating against me.

The stress of the past few days had sunken in, and there was this gnawing feeling at the back of my mind that something wasn’t quite right with the way I was dealing with everything. I was trying to be as emotionless as possible in all of this. I didn’t need to get attached. I couldn’t get attached. That would spell disaster when I was headed back to North Carolina for the next four years and there was nothing I could do about it.

It didn’t feel quite right just giving baby Emma away. My plan to keep calling her Baby had failed miserably. She was certainly Emma. And like it or not, I was now her only connection to the world. She had no one else.

Emotion welled up inside me, as I thought about the SEALs and the code to never leave a man or woman behind.

It wasn’t done.

I’d put myself in dangerous situations that I tried to constantly forget. But sometimes those memories came crashing back into my psyche, like an unbridled rolling stone picking up momentum down a hill.

I swallowed and took a deep breath, needing to stay calm before my anxiety crashed through and overtook me.

Think about Emma. Think about Genny.

Putting a picture of Genny in my mind’s eye certainly calmed me in a way. Just knowing she was there--that there was someone out there capable of apparently loving me--put me at ease.

She had loved me. Key word: had. Sure, it was clear as day the desire we had for each other had never left, but there was no way we could end up together in the long run. What was she going to do, move out to North Carolina with me?

Shit, I was thinking crazy now.

You’re overreacting.

It was just a little hookup. Just a little taste…

I reached in between a couple of the cushions and pulled out my phone.

Oddly, there was a voice message on it so I pressed play.

“Yeah, hi Kade this is Lara, Jessica’s cousin. We’re passing through the area tonight, and we were wondering if we could meet with you? We know it’s a tough time, but we got that voice message from last night and we’ve recently been looking into adoption. Maybe we could give little Emma a home. Give me a call back…”

I patted Emma gently on the back. “Well Em, looks like you might be finding some good parents after all.”

I vaguely knew of Lara. She was Jessica’s well-to-do cousin who lived in Katy, Texas. Hell, Lara would be able to give Emma a hell of a better upbringing than I could.

Though, of course she would call the minute I was starting to get the slightest bit attached to the little girl.

* * *

Lara and her husband happened to be passing through Douglas that day, so they met up with Emma and me at a local diner for a noon brunch, and we talked over the terms.

“Oh my gosh, Emma is just adorable! Aren’t you, sweetheart!” Lara said, as she gaga’d with Emma bouncing on her lap. I scooped another piece of my omelet into my mouth and nodded.

“She’s the cutest baby this side of the Rio Grande. That’s just a fact. It’s been scientifically proven.”

There was a giant pit at the bottom of my stomach, and I couldn’t really tell why. I knew in my heart that this was for the best. Lara was related to the family, being the cousin of Jessica, Jax’s wife. She could take good care of Emma. That was just the reality, and I needed to face the facts.

Lara leaned in and put her hand on my forearm. Her husband looked on and nodded somberly as Lara spoke. “I’m really sorry. I mean Jessica was my cousin, but I know you must be really beaten up about losing your brother.”

That made the knot in my throat ten times worse.

“Yeah, it’s a shocker.” Is all I managed to choke out. Even though I wasn’t close to my brother at all. That was just a fact. A sad fact. I glanced reflectively out the window for a moment, cleaning off my face with a little bit of the napkin. I washed a forkful of hash browns down with a swig of coffee.

Lara held Emma in her arms, bouncing her. “So Kade, is this it? Do we have to go through an adoption agency? Or how are we going to do this?”

I shrugged. “Honestly Lara, this has been such a crazy week. The fact is, I don’t think they are keeping tabs. I mean they don’t have the resources to be checking up on Emma. For all they know, she’s in good hands.” In my hands, supposedly.

The pit in my stomach only deepened when I thought about not seeing Emma’s little face, or hearing her goofy giggle. Raising my eyes to Lara and her husband, I forced the words out of my mouth. “And now, I can let her go, and she can be with you.”

Lara nodded, and Emma’s cold brown eyes shined like diamonds in the afternoon sun.

Maybe I could have a baby? No, I shook my head. This was the right thing and, to make a battlefield analogy, sometimes you had to know when you were the right man for the job, and other times you had to know when to step back. I wasn’t the man for this job. Emma was meant to be with a family--with Lara and her husband. They were more established. They already have a family. They could take care of her.

It was sad to see her go. As Emma’s car seat was transferred to the other car, I thought about how I needed to return my car seat to Kendra, the nice nurse. It was for the best.

The moment they pulled away in the parking lot, my phone rang. It was my boss, Commander Steele.

“Sir?” I answered the phone.

“Hey Sergeant, how are you holding up? How the hell are you?” he grumbled in a low voice.

I cleared my throat. I was caught off guard by his lack of formality. Plus, I didn’t exactly know how to explain to my commander that I had gotten a little bit attached to my brother’s baby, and had run into my ex-girlfriend and only love. You know, standard stuff.

And now, I had no fucking clue what to do, or how to feel. So, I just turned to an easy answer. “I’m alright,” I said, stiffly.

Silence hung over the phone call. I could hear him breathe. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Sergeant.”

I ran my hand over my face.

“You don’t sound alright,” he continued. “I know what it’s like to lose a brother. It happened to me too. Look, I pulled some strings and we got you the base that you wanted. In Texas.”

Adrenaline pumped through me. “You what?”

“Yeah, you always said you wanted to be located in Fort Worth right? Well, we got you there. Hey, don’t say a thing. We had someone drop out anyway. Wasn’t like I had to do anything wildly illegal. And no, I’m not winking over the phone.”

I had to laugh a little. “Is this your sense of humor, Sir?”

“Sergeant, don’t question me. I’ll be expecting to see you reporting for duty when the time comes.”

“Thank you, Sir.” Though our conversation was brief, it changed everything. Now, I had no fucking clue what I was going to do. Emma, little baby Emma. Genny. Yeah, I had to make a fucking decision.

I turned on my truck and then turned it off for a minute. I opened the window and let the cool air come in. Well, cool for Texas was about fifty-five degrees today.

I could feel the emotion welling up beneath me. Finally, I just screamed as loud as I could. “Fuuuck!”

I banged against the steering wheel, hitting my palms as hard as I could. Why did it feel like something was not right in the world right now? I let out a loud exhale and turned on some heavy metal music as I made my way back to my brother’s place.