On the first parade night after the holiday break, Matt got to the armouries early, because he only had to drive four blocks. He’d been at Natasha’s house for dinner first, and headed out when she marched Emily upstairs to have a post-spaghetti bath before bed.

He’d go back to her place tonight after the Army got their pound of flesh from him for weekly training.

He wasn’t the only one in early. Some of the most senior NCOs—including his brother Dean and Ryan Howard—were in for an O-group meeting before training began.

Matt checked in with his officer and gave a verbal report of how many members of their platoon he was expecting to show and explained the absences reported so far. Then he decided to go and grab a coffee because he had time, but Ryan stopped him on the way out.

“Matt,” the DSM said, holding out his hand.

“Sir.”

“Shit, you know I hate that.” Of all the non-commissioned officers, only the sergeants major were called sir. And the rest of them enjoyed doing it a bit to get the ribbing in.

“That’s why I remember to do it every time.” Matt grinned. “What can I do for you?”

“I know I covered it last time, but we’ve got another Mental Resiliency session tonight and I’m going to be in and out of exercise planning meetings all night. You don’t get to dodge it this time, sorry.”

“Actually, that’s fine.” He didn’t miss the look of surprise on Ryan’s face. “I’ve had some, uh, stuff come up at the day job. Owen Kincaid’s got me thinking about how a lot of this is more relevant to me than I wanted to admit.”

“Owen’s a smart guy.”

“He is.”

“Listen, you know my door is always open on that score—or any matter.”

“I do, sir. Thank you.”

It had been a while since Matt had taken the course for leading the professional development sessions on mental readiness, so after the training night started and his troops were tasked off, he grabbed the notes from online and got himself squared away in a classroom upstairs.

Like the book on male depression, the teaching slides described Matt—and his brothers—on every page. He also saw his issues at work.

He was a pro at compartmentalizing his stress.

He just couldn’t ignore the boxed-up shit for too long.

When the troops filed in, he shoved away those personal reflections and took them through the slides. It was a textbook perfect lesson, but one that was not connecting with them. He could see it in their blank stares and shifting body language.

He could see himself, and his resistance to all of this until it was almost too late.

His throat tightened up, and he firmed up his jaw. Damn.

“All right. Let’s set aside the slides with the canned language, and get real.” He turned off the projector and paced back and forth, waiting until he had everyone’s attention.

He made eye contact with every troop in the room before continuing.

“Here’s the thing,” he said thickly. “All of you are going to need this shit at one point or another. Every single one of you will be in a place where your emotions run high or you’re blindsided by conflict, trauma, injury, or stress. And you know how I know that? Because it happened to me. I want to tell you a story. And I want you to know before I start that this is a hard thing for me to share, because I don’t like to think of myself as being weak. But the thing is, it’s not weak to recognize stress inside your body. It’s strong.”

As he said those two words, everyone shifted. It wasn’t what they had expected him to say. Maybe someone else. Maybe Sgt. Major Howard, but not Sgt. Foster. They were listening now because he was shocking the hell out of them.

“As I’m sure you are aware, a year ago my younger brother was injured in Iraq. We are all grateful that he survived, that he is home again and doing well. What none of you know is that the same day I found out Captain Foster had been hurt, I lost a patient at work. And I didn’t have a chance to deal with that death. He was a soldier, too. Retired guy, long history of service. Did three peacekeeping tours overseas. Kosovo, Bosnia. Life-long smoker, had chronic bronchitis. And a couple times a month, I’d be called out and we’d take him to the hospital.

“I know that COPD kills people. I knew he was sick. But he was as alive as you or me when we picked him up. When we arrived at the hospital, I joked with him about picking up women. And in the half-hour or so it took us to do our paperwork before we headed out, he had a massive heart attack and died in the emergency room.

“I didn’t see it coming. That’s the shit that will fuck you up, boys. Something in your life will blindside you. Your woman will cheat on you. You’ll be in a bad car accident. You’ll lose a job and slide into debt. You will lose a loved one, a friend, a neighbour. Have a house fire. And in our line of work, you will see people get hurt, see people die, or worse.”

“Nothing’s worse than seeing someone die,” a young corporal interjected.

Matt didn’t bother to jack him up for interrupting. This was too important. “It’s not about better or worse. It’s all about what gets under your skin, what gets in your head. And that’s going to be different for each of us.”

“So what happened to you?” Another corporal asked.

“I got nightmares. Panic so real it felt like my chest would crush in on itself. I stopped hanging out with friends and my brothers. I poured myself into work so I wouldn’t need to be alone with my thoughts. I, uh… conflated what happened to my brother and what happened to my patient. I felt guilt so ugly, so deep, I couldn’t name it. I still do, I gotta be honest with you. This is some fucked up shit.”

“You don’t look fucked up.”

Matt looked at the young woman’s name tag. “No, Barro, I don’t. I look like I’ve got my shit together, don’t I? And most days I do. But my supervisor—he’s ex-infantry too—he saw some subtle shifts in my personality. He called me on it, and gave me a good book to read about depression.”

Every spine in the room straightened.

He nodded. “Yeah. That’s not a word we talk about a lot. There are other ones, too. Anxiety. PTSD. You’re going to hear people talk about mental injuries, and that’s what these all are, but I dunno…I think it’s good to talk about depression the way we do everything else. To use the word and name it. I’m struggling with depression. And it completely blindsided me.”

“So…” Another troop started and then stopped his question.

“What am I going to do?”

“Yeah.”

“Go see a doctor at some point. Talk to my girlfriend about it—a lot. Talk to my EMS partner and boss about it, especially when I feel it affecting me at work. Focus on a good work-sleep-exercise balance. And I’m going to talk to a professional about it as well. The key takeaway for you guys is that I ignored all of the early warning signs. So don’t be like me. Don’t be stupid. Treat your minds like they’re any other part of your body and don’t hurt them.”

His truck hadn’t even had a chance to warm up, that’s how close the armouries was to Natasha’s house. That’s how quickly he could get back to her after a night of work.

Natasha was in the living room, staring at her idea wall when he pulled up. He watched her through the window as he parked, hopped out, and headed up her front walk.

She was working so hard to get everything done and watching that—this late at night—did something weird to him inside.

Stopping, he turned around and jumped back in his truck. He drove around the block and hit the drive-thru at Tim Hortons. He got two different herbal teas and a twenty-pack of Timbits, fuel for a late-night planning session.

When he arrived back at her house, she was in exactly the same position, still wracking her brain for how to best tackle her mile-long to-do list.

He jogged up the steps and knocked quietly.

It wasn’t until she opened the door that he realized his heart was pounding and his chest was tight.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, her eyes wide as she looked at his face.

“Nothing.” He stepped inside and stopped. “I mean, I didn’t think anything…”

She took the tea and donut holes from him and set them aside. Then she closed right in up against him and kissed him. Warm caresses to his wintery cold skin. A sweet balm to his broken soul.

“I was fine,” he said, his voice cracking. “I was. I am. I just… Something snuck up on me and I didn’t realize it.” He barked a laugh that sounded weird to his own ear. “I came straight here, and I saw you in the window. You are so beautiful. So fierce. Focused and gorgeous and strong. So I thought, I should go and get you tea, because I know you like that.”

“Thank you.” She whispered it against his skin. Soft and sweet.

His hands clenched on her hips and he closed his eyes. “I told a room of young guys about my shit tonight.”

“Oh, wow.” She breathed in, and he tried to match her inhale and exhale. He failed. “How did that feel?”

“I thought it was good.” But she was looking at him like he’d seen a ghost and his chest was doing that fucking thing it did where it screamed like a canary in a coal mine that he was not fine, not good, not okay. “But maybe it was scarier and harder than I thought.”

She nodded. “Maybe. And then you got me tea?”

It wasn’t possible to hold her tight enough. He wanted to get her anything and everything she needed to make her dreams come true. Tea was nothing.

She unzipped his coat and he hung it on one of the hooks just inside the door. He’d installed them two days earlier. A row up high, where he put his coat. And a little row down low, for Emily.

He hauled Natasha against him again and kissed her.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, her lips not leaving his. “I’m right here.”

“I don’t want to talk about the Army.” He took a ragged breath, then another, this one smoother. “Not tonight. I did a thing, it had a delayed effect on me, but now that I’ve got you in my arms, it’s better.”

“Okay.” She squeezed her arms around his neck. “Hugs are always good, though.”

“Always. And now I want to talk about why you’re up late staring at your idea wall.”

She sighed and stepped out of his arms. “I was actually trying to distract myself. My current problem isn’t reno-related.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged, but she didn’t meet his eyes. “Tea first?”

“Tasha.” He stopped again and bent down enough to meet her eyes. “What happened?”

Screwing up her face, she took a deep breath, then gave him a small, sad smile. “David sent me an email blowing off his next weekend with Emily.”

“What?”

“Said something work-related came up, but I don’t know.” Her mouth tightened up, and he could see the pain in her eyes.

Fuck. “I’m sorry.”

The corners of her mouth turned down. “Yeah, me too. I really am, because…” She dragged in a breath. “For Emily, first of all. He had a nice run there of being dependable. And this doesn’t mean he isn’t necessarily dependable—”

Matt begged to differ.

She caught his expression and gave him a look.

He raised his hands. “I know, not my place. I just don’t like to see you like this.”

She picked up her tea and paced towards the couch. What a night of rocky feelings.

He followed, not sure what else to say.

“He’s always had a way of running roughshod over boundaries,” she said. “And I let him get into my head when I knew better. He’s not going to ghost completely, I don’t think, but I need to be more cautious about trusting him to commit to a schedule. And I shouldn’t make plans based on that promise. Lesson learned.”

“This was next weekend?”

“Yeah. And I agreed to cover three shifts at Bailey’s, which would have gone a long way to pay for the tiling of the bathroom.”

“I’m sorry.” Matt scrubbed his hand over his face. “Can I help?”

She shook her head. “There’s nothing to be done. I’ll call Malcolm and apologize. I should never have agreed to take the work.”

But he knew she needed the money, and not just for renos. She didn’t make much at the lumber yard, and paying for childcare out of her earnings had to be making a big dent. Working when David had Emily would have helped her out a lot. “I could take care of her.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“I’m offering. You’re not asking. You just need to say yes—if you’re comfortable with it. And if you aren’t, that’s okay, too.”

Her mouth flapped open, then shut. “You aren’t working that weekend?”

“I don’t think so, and I can probably trade the shifts if I am.” He grinned. “It may mean I need to show up the night before and fall exhausted into your bed.”

She gave him a weak laugh. “Right.”

“But I can sleep on the couch. I’ll make a big production of it.” So far, Emily hadn’t noticed that he was there each night, and he was gone before she woke up in the morning.

Natasha frowned as she searched his face. “She might need cuddles at night.”

“I can cuddle. I can also make secret midnight hot chocolate—with teeth brushing afterward, of course—and read endless stories.”

“This is a huge favour.”

It didn’t feel that way to him. “It’s not. You need help. I love you. I’m here in whatever capacity you need me. It’s the same thing any friend or your sister would offer.”

She cut him off with a kiss, first a gentle brush of her lips against his, then when he tugged on her hands, she climbed into his lap. More kisses, always more. Never enough.

“You can trust me with her,” he whispered against her mouth.

“I know.”

“We’ll have fun.”

“It’ll just be this once.”

“It doesn’t need to be.” He wanted to be a part of their lives. He wanted to be someone she could lean on, could depend on to help her out. And if she needed to work more to get her dreams done, he wanted to be the guy she could trust to always be there to read stories to her daughter.

She leaned into him, giving him her weight. It felt like a gift.

Let me be your rock, he thought, and not for the first time. But it was the first time he’d felt like that when out-of-sorts himself, and it grounded him. “I’m yours,” he said gruffly. “To lean on and ask favours of and share Timbits with.”

“They’re all the way over there.” She nodded toward the front door.

“I’ll get them for you.” He shifted out from beneath her and fetched the treats. “Chocolate?”

She shook her head. “Honey dip.”

He found one and fed it to her. She offered him a chocolate one and he gobbled it up, licking the icing off her fingertips, too.

“It’s hard for me to lean on anyone, you know,” she whispered softly.

“I do know.” He stretched his arm out across the back of the sofa. “Same for me. We’re going to have to figure this out together, because I want to be there for you.”

“Same,” she murmured.

He ate another donut hole. “I love you,” he said quietly as she picked another Timbit for herself. “I don’t know what I thought love would look like if I ever stumbled into it, but it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t tea and donuts and confessing frustration at the end of a long day. And that makes me a total idiot, because this is actually amazing.”

“Stress eating is amazing?”

“Reward eating,” he corrected. “Because you’re handling stress like a rockstar, and I came here instead of driving home tonight, where I’d have felt like a caged bear and had no idea why. But you saw something—”

“You were white as a ghost,” she said softly.

“See? I didn’t know.”

“It’s nice to have someone to catch you,” she breathed as she nestled in tight. “I’d written that off as an option for myself.”

“I’d never even put it on the options list.”

“We are quite the dysfunctional pair, then.” She laughed and nudged him. “Shall we go to bed?”

Yeah, this was love. And it was actually amazing.

At the end of the following week, Matt arrived at the Kingsley residence at eight in the morning, following his shift. He had breakfast with Emily, who thought it was hilarious that was actually his dinner. Then he crawled into Natasha’s bed—alone—and passed out for seven hours.

It was the longest stretch of daytime sleep he’d had in a year.

It felt glorious.

When he woke up, the room was pitch black. He fumbled for his phone and checked the time, but he still had an hour before Natasha had to leave for her Friday night shift at Bailey’s.

He ground the heel of his hand into his eye as he woke the rest of the way up.

She’d bought blackout curtains. That’s what was different. He hadn’t noticed when he’d fallen asleep, so maybe she came in and closed them after he was out.

His mouth tasted like an animal had died in it, so he got up and used the washroom. His overnight bag was downstairs, but he didn’t need it—he had the purple toothbrush she’d given him that first time. She’d put it in a cup in the medicine cabinet, and he’d been using it for weeks now. Heading into months, really. And he liked that.

Downstairs, he found Emily playing with her ponies on the couch. “Good afternoon,” he said.

She laughed. “Good morning, you mean.”

“It is my morning, yep.”

“Mommy’s making you soup for breakfast,” she said, giggling again.

“Is she?” He turned toward the kitchen, where he could see the edge of Natasha’s body swaying in front of the stove. “I’ll go help her.”

She was listening to music turned down low, and she glanced over her shoulder at him as he approached. “How’d you sleep?”

“Like a baby. Did you buy blackout curtains just for me?”

She blushed. “It was the least I could do since you agreed to watch Emily this weekend.”

A purple toothbrush, a pair of curtains. It wasn’t much, but it felt like everything. “I really appreciate that. It was…unexpected. I thought I’d slept really well because I was in your bed, surrounded by your scent. But maybe it was the curtains.”

“I like the more romantic reason better,” she whispered.

He kissed her quickly. “The curtains? That’s true romance. That right there is why I love you.”

“Good, because I’m making you really cheap tomato soup for dinner, so…”

He blew a raspberry on her neck. “I love that, too.”