Jenna returned, as promised, mid-afternoon. He heard the truck pull up then she called out his name as she opened the front door. “Sean?”

He walked through the hall, his cane part of him now, an extra point of balance and stability he’d finally gotten used to, and he strode almost smoothly to where she was pushing through the front door, and he wrapped his arms around her.

“Oh,” she breathed, and it was kind of awkward, because she had her bag slung across her body and what felt like a wine bottle in her arms—now pressed between them—but on her next exhale, she relaxed into him.

And that was so, so good.

“Hey,” he said into her hair.

“Hi,” she whispered back, and he had a strong sense of deja vu. Something sliding into place. Something suddenly being crystal clear.

It wasn’t, not this time. But he remembered that it had been, and he tightened his arms around her.

How did he get to such a place that a hug felt foreign?

“I’m sorry,” he whispered against her hair, and she shook her head.

“Don’t. Not right now. Just hug me.”

He could do that. He wasn’t sure what else he could do, but as his PT kept pointing out, there was nothing wrong with his arms. He was strong enough to give her this.

She looked up at him, but didn’t move any further. She just stood there, being still.

Her eyes held his own gaze, but she wasn’t staring. She was simply being here with him, present and in the moment, like she had been for six long weeks—no matter how hard he tried to push her away.

When the corners of her eyes crinkled up, and a silent laugh bubbled up from inside her, it broke something inside him. A piece of the hard crust around his heart cracked and split away, and with a painful thud, he felt again. So much. He started to laugh with her, and then drew her closer.

“Can you drink?” she asked.

Probably not a lot with his meds, but if she wanted to open a bottle of wine, he wouldn’t make her drink alone. “A glass, sure.”

“Good. Because I’m in the mood but I didn’t want to be a jerk if you couldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t care.”

She wriggled the bottle of wine free from between them. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. I stopped at the wine store on my way home.”

Home. There it was again. He smiled and tapped his chest. “I gathered as much.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He touched her cheek, and she pressed into his touch for the briefest of moments before moving past him, her fingers sliding along his arm.

“I’m going to put this in the fridge to chill for a few. Do you want to sit on the deck?”

He followed her into the kitchen. No, he wanted to hug her again.

He waited while she stashed the wine, then dumped her bag on the table, and pulled out a few pieces of paper. She had a mini filing box on the table where she’d been keeping her work stuff, and she tucked those papers into that. It was when she started rifling through receipts that he knew for sure she was avoiding eye contact—and any conversation about the hug.

“Jenna.”

“Mmm.”

“Jenna.”

“Yes…”

“Look at me.”

“No.” But she smiled, he could see the edge of it, curling in the shadow of her dipped head.

He grinned. “Please?”

She looked up, and her eyes were bright. But then she blinked, and any hint of tears were gone. “I just needed a minute.”

That was fair. He’d needed three months.

He held out his hand. He thought about leading her to his room, or to hers, but he didn’t want to send mixed messages. He wasn’t sure he could perform, and they didn’t need to try to go from zero to sixty here. Zero to ten would be an improvement. Hell, he’d take zero to one. Any movement at all.

Instead, he sat on the couch, in his napping spot. He leaned back against the cushions and tucked his cane away before tugging Jenna into his side.

She look like she wanted to plaster herself to him, and he wanted that too, but she simply sat close. Still too far away, but talking first, cuddling second.

“What’s brought this on?” she finally asked, her words a warm rub against his chest.

“Your note on the coffee maker this morning. The XO. I…hadn’t realized I hadn’t done either of those things.” He swallowed hard. “And it’s not that I don’t want to. But it’s…complicated.”

She tipped her face up, hope radiating off her—and that didn’t freak him out. “You want to?”

He nodded.

She caught his hand and squeezed. “Then it’s okay if it’s complicated. We’ll get there.”

There was we again.

He tugged her closer. We. Yeah, he liked the sound of that.

He cupped her cheek. His heart hammered in his chest as he looked at her lips. Soft, pink, bowed. Sweet, and unkissed for far too long.

Ring.

His chest tightened as the moment was interrupted, and Jenna shifted in his arms.

* * *

That was her phone, in her bag, across the room.

She ignored it.

He was holding her again. He’d been about to kiss her. The world could burn down around them and she wouldn’t care.

The ringing stopped and then started again.

“You should see what that’s about.” He kissed the tip of her nose, and no, that wasn’t the kiss she wanted, damn it.

But Sean was already pulling away, his face flushing with embarrassment. No…

She took a deep breath. Baby steps. “Yeah. I should see who’s calling.”

When she dug out her phone, there were two missed calls, both from the midwifery team in Walkerton. She’d gone to their offices that morning, as she had a couple of times before, to peer review a couple of client cases.

Tapping the number to redial, she took a deep breath and pressed her hand to her belly to calm herself down.

“Jenna, hi! Thanks for calling us back. This is Nadine. Is this a bad time?”

“No, it’s fine. What can I do for you?”

“We’d like to offer you a contract, if you are interested, to cover the rest of the summer.”

She didn’t even need to think about it. “Yes, I’m thrilled to be considered. Thank you so much.”

“Can you come back in tomorrow to shadow Annette in the clinic?”

“I’ll be there first thing.”

Dazed, she hung up the phone and just stared at it. This was great news. But it also meant she was going to be flat out for the next couple of days.

“Good news?” She spun around and found Sean leaning, as he did now, against the doorframe.

She grinned. “The best. I have a job. In Walkerton.”

It was a long drive there, but no longer than getting stuck in Vancouver rush hour.

Sean grinned back at her. “We should celebrate. Do you want to go out for dinner?”

“I…” She exhaled. “You know what I want to do?”

* * *

An hour later, they pulled into the car dealership where the Fosters had bought all of their trucks. Where just a few weeks earlier, Sean had stood in this same spot and quarrelled with his brother.

“Back to see the truck again?” The same sales guy approached.

Jenna gave Sean a curious look.

“Long story,” he whispered. “For the drive home.”

She smiled when he said home. He knew the feeling.

“Not the truck,” he said. He pointed behind him. “We have one of those already.” He put his hand in the small of Jenna’s back. This was her celebration, and her shopping trip.

“I’m looking for something a bit more fuel efficient,” she added.

“But still good in the winter,” Sean said.

She smiled at that, too.

Yeah, he was thinking ahead. Surprised the shit out of him, too.

Jenna looked at a used SUV, a brand-new sport crossover, and a few others to cover her bases. But the first two cars she looked at were the ones she kept coming back to, and the ones which she took out for a test drive.

“What’s the best you could do on the crossover?” she asked when they were back.

The sales guy named a figure Sean didn’t believe for a second.

Neither did Jenna. “Hmm,” she said. “Well, the top end of my budget is two grand less than that. If you get something in that price range in, give me a call.”

Then she turned and headed for Sean’s truck, not looking back for even a second.

“Smooth,” he said as they headed north again.

“I can drive this for a few weeks,” she said, shrugging.

“I don’t think you will be. I’d bet good money he’ll call you tomorrow with a deal in your price range.”

She gave him a surprised, pleased look. “Yeah?”

“Definitely.”

She beamed. “Oh, you were going to tell me what the deal was with the truck?”

Ah. That. “Dean and I were there earlier. He needed to get a new spare tire. So I walked around a bit and looked at that red pick-up.”

She whistled. “Fancy.”

“I wasn’t seriously interested in it.” He sounded defensive even to his own ears.

She reached across and patted his knee. “If you were, I’d think that was a good sign.”

“Dean didn’t.”

“No?”

“He gave me a lecture on not being wasteful.”

“Huh.” She cleared her throat. “Well, I don’t see how that’s any of his business.”

“He made a crack about us living rent-free in his place.”

Even in the rapidly dimming evening light, he didn’t miss that she rolled her eyes. “Oh, whatever. He practically shoved me in there. And Liana told me he really wanted either you or Matt to move in. So don’t let him get to you. Maybe that was about something else, and you were just a casualty.”

“I may have goaded him into snapping.”

She laughed gently. “For brothers who love each other, you all have a very dysfunctional style of communication.”

“That reminds me. We have a family dinner at my father’s on Friday night.”

She gave him an amused look. “You’re not looking forward to it?”

“Never.”

She held up her hand and tapped her thumb to her middle finger. “Remember this?”

The signal he gave her in Urfa. “Yes.”

“Dinner will be fine. And then we have our out plan.”

Good Lord, she was amazing. “You’re a genius.”

“No, we just make a good pair.”

They really did. How had he forgotten that? “I have been thinking about what Dean said, though. My disability pay isn’t going to last forever.” At some point, probably by the end of the year, the army would give him a lump sum payout to get him off the books. “I need to start thinking about getting a job.”

She flashed him a look of alarm across the cab of the truck. “Don’t rush it. Your recovery is like a job.”

“That doesn’t pay for shit.”

“Are you worried about me getting a new car?”

“No.” And he really wasn’t. She wouldn’t make a decision that she couldn’t afford on her own, and he had savings. He was in a decent position to help her—for now. But those savings wouldn’t last forever. “Just starting to think about the future.”

“Okay.” Her expression eased into one of warmth as her phone rang.

Sean was pretty sure this was going to be the rest of his life, having conversations interrupted by that phone. He couldn’t complain, though. She loved her job.

She gestured to her bag, and he pulled out the phone. The screen showed that it was the dealership calling back.

Sean showed her. “Won that bet by a mile.”

She laughed and told him to answer it.

“Jenna, it’s Pete from the dealership. How are you?”

“Pretty good, Pete. How are you?”

He cleared his throat. “I just talked to my manager. Since your family has been such loyal customers, we can cut you a good deal on that crossover.”

She wasn’t biting just yet. “How good?”

“I can get that price down to where you wanted it.”

She pumped her fist in the air. “We can be back in fifteen minutes to sign the paperwork.”

Sean disconnected the call, and Jenna started laughing. “Oh my God, I just bought a brand new car!” She reached for him and squeezed his hand. “Wow. I’m so excited.”

Her fingers were shaking. She didn’t need his help with the car, or her job. But she wanted him by her side, and maybe she needed something else from him. Something more than help.

* * *

Jenna was late for dinner.

He didn’t blame her—she’d had to go in to work today, and she’d lost the morning to getting her new car insured and registered.

But since she wasn’t there, he was stuck making small talk with his father, who had all sorts of opinions about how Sean should just harden the fuck up.

The Colonel shared them in small, barbed bursts, in between bouncing his grandson on his knee and praising Matt for how good the ribs looked.

Like grilling skills were more important than crawling back from the edge of death.

“What are you drinking, son? Are you up to having more than water?”

Sean took a deep breath and nodded. “Yep. But I’m good with water all the same, sir.”

He got a frown for that, but his father moved on. They were all milling around the big eat-in kitchen. Dani was tossing a salad she’d brought, and Jake was setting the table. Matt’s ribs had just been set in the middle, and Liana was teasing Dean that baby Calvin wanted some of his uncle’s beer.

It was…nice. He could see, if he squinted, why his family did this, month in, month out.

Then his father made an off-side comment about how some people had worked hard that day, and Sean swallowed a comeback about the old man being retired and how perfectly cutting a diamond pattern into one’s lawn hardly counted as essential work.

He wanted to work.

It was time to think about that, for sure.

He’d never been lazy. It wasn’t in his nature. Where did his father get off seeing him like that?

“I’ve been spending some time with Tom Minelli and the Search and Rescue Team,” he said. It was a stretch. He’d hung out with Tom at the training facility twice, and they’d done little more than shoot the breeze.

His father snorted. “You can hardly go stumbling around in the woods, though, can you?”

And so much for fucking trying.

Before his resentment could get a full head of steam, though, there was a light, quick knock at the front door. “Jenna’s here.”

He loved her knock. The quick rap had become part and parcel of the unrelenting sunshine she brought to his life, as she doggedly kept using it to announce her presence in his life, even when he hadn’t been well enough to know what to do with her. He was getting there, though. Slowly, and all because of her efforts.

He pushed himself up and got to the foyer before anyone else.

“Hey.” She gave him a breathless smile, and he pulled her into his side. He didn’t miss her surprised little squeak, but she hugged him back without hesitation.

“Just in time,” he said gruffly.

“Everything okay?” she looked up at him.

“It is now.” He took a deep breath. “Come and meet my dad.”

Even though Jenna had been around for weeks, she hadn’t met the Colonel, because it would never occur to him to come over to visit Sean.

Not that Sean wanted his father to come to him.

That would be too weird.

The construct of the family dinner was all the interaction they needed, thank you very much.

“Dad,” Sean said, raising his voice as he led Jenna into the kitchen. He didn’t call him that often, but it seemed appropriate now. “This is Jenna. Jenna, this is Colonel Foster.”

“The original officer in the family. A pleasure to meet you, young lady.” The colonel held out his hand, and Jenna took it.

Her eyes crinkled as they shook hands. “Sean’s told me all about you.”

“Has he, now?” That got a sideways glance. “He kept you quite the secret.”

Jenna didn’t miss a beat. “I keep his secrets, too.”

That hadn’t been what his father had meant, but Sean was pretty sure Jenna knew that.

She was fierce, and pride bloomed hard inside him.

They sat shortly after that, and dinner went as well as it could. The Colonel had lots of thoughts about Jake’s construction business, Dean’s security jobs, and Matt’s office politics at the county EMS department.

He had zero thoughts about what Sean should do next with his life, except to point out what he couldn’t do.

Jenna squeezed his knee each time his leg tensed up.

He finished eating before anyone else. Despite his best efforts, his appetite wasn’t what it had once been. He stretched his arm across the back of her chair and tried to convince himself to eat a few more bites.

From the floor, where he’d been put down on a blanket, Calvin started fussing. Dani went to get up, and Sean waved her off. “I’ll get him.”

He carefully moved his chair back. His cane had been shoved out of grabbing range when everyone came to the table, but he managed without it, and once he was down at his nephew’s level, it was all good.

“Hey, bud.”

Calvin quieted down and gave him a wide-eyed look of wonder. Either that, or the kid didn’t want him to steal his rattle.

“It’s all good. I’m not going to take your teether. Can you shake it? Shake it good?” Calvin thumped him in the face with the slimy toy, and Sean laughed. “Good one. Jake, your kid has a mean left hook.”

“You’ll have to get him into the gym, show him what you’ve got.”

There was a thought. “How about that, Calvin?” Sean whispered. “Can Uncle Sean train you to be fast on your feet and even faster with your fists?”

Dani cleared her throat. “I heard that. No training my kid to be a street fighter.”

Sean scoffed. “No street fighting. Calvin is going to be an Olympian.”

As if he were completely in agreement, his nephew grabbed two chubby fistfuls of Sean’s shirt and hauled himself up to stand on unsteady feet.

“See? He’s a champ.”

And Sean would know. He’d been a champ, too.

He thought about that as Calvin climbed on him.

He had a lot of knowledge locked inside, about training and resilience and striving for excellence in sport and life.

Coaching had never been his favourite part of athletics, but… it was a possibility.

He’d talk to Jenna about it.

The dinner conversation swirled away from Calvin’s Olympic future, and Sean tuned the adults out. He zeroed all of his attention on his nine-month-old future champion. “No pressure,” he whispered to the baby. “But whatever you want to do in this world, I’ll have your back.”

By the time Dean and Liana were clearing away the dinner dishes, Calvin was rubbing his eyes.

Dani swooped him up and settled in her chair, holding her son close as she nursed him.

It was still kind of amazing to him that Dani was a mom. Dani, who’d rubbed his back after all night benders in college. Who’d chased him off the end of the dock and into the freezing cold lake every year to mark the unofficial start of summer.

Everyone’s lives had changed so much while he was overseas. Not just his own.

Matt carried in a cheesecake big enough for them all and everyone oohed and ahed.

Even Matt had changed.

Since when did his brother know how to make a cheesecake?

And it was good, too.

Damn.

Sean was surprised to discover he had an appetite for that cheesecake. He took a decent sized piece, and savoured it.

Next to him, Jenna was talking to Dean about her job.

Sean’s father interjected himself into that conversation, but Jenna handled him with ease.

“Sean should have brought you around sooner,” the Colonel said.

Jenna smoothly countered with an invitation for the senior Foster to come around to their place.

Sean ground his teeth together. His father was playing some kind of passive aggressive game through her, aimed at Sean, and he didn’t like it.

Jenna didn’t either. Nobody else would be able to tell, because the only sign she wasn’t completely at ease was that she was fidgeting her fingers under the table.

Sean frowned. She was tapping her thumb and middle finger together. Just as he noticed, she shifted her hand, setting it on his knee, and she did it again.

The signal.

She wanted to go.

Sean groaned and leaned back against the wall. Seven concerned heads swivelled his way, and he gave them a weak smile. “Sorry, was that out loud?”

Dani tutted, like a legit Mom noise that he wanted to make fun of, except he was pretending to be all tuckered out. So he let her give him a sympathetic look, then he reached for his cane, which he’d moved closer after he’d hung out with Calvin on the floor. It was a good security blanket.

Plus it reminded everyone to give him some space, and he did still need that. A lot.

Jenna may have been the one to silently cry uncle, but he was more than ready to get out of there, too.

“I’m going to need to call it a night,” he said. “But this was…fun.”

Jenna’s lips twitched at the ellipse he couldn’t help but insert there. Whatever. She got him. He didn’t care if nobody else did.

They made their goodbyes and then they headed out to her car.

“How’d your new baby drive today?”

She winked as she patted the steering wheel. “Like the queen she is.”

It only took two minutes to drive across town. Jenna was still talking about her car as they unlocked the house and went inside.

But she stopped mid-sentence and reached for him, although her hand fell short and fluttered back to her side. “Thank you,” she said softly. “We didn’t need to leave dinner so quickly.”

She shouldn’t need to thank him. It was what a spouse did.

It was past the time for him to start acting like a husband. “You’ve been pushing yourself hard. I should have said something sooner.”

“I was having fun, right up until I wasn’t. But you were quick on the ball.” She yawned and stretched her arms. “Do you want to debrief on how that went?”

He laughed. “It went. We’ll do it again next month.”

She gave him a sleepy smile. “Okay. I should try and get some sleep.”

“Try?”

She waved her hand, dismissing the question.

He frowned. “Are you having trouble sleeping?”

“Like you say, I’ve been pushing hard. Just a lot of things swirling around in my brain.”

A lot of those things had the name Sean tattooed on them too. He knew the right answer here. Could feel the words forming in his mouth. They didn’t want to come out, though, because they opened Pandora’s Box in a big way.

They’d settled into a halfway decent routine.

But he wanted more than decent. Or at least, he wanted that for Jenna, if not himself. “Come and sleep with me.”

Her eyes sparked at that. Hope warred with suspicion, though. “Are you sure?”

Jesus, he didn’t want to answer that tonight. Because…

No, he wasn’t sure. This might be a terrible idea. But he had an idea for a future career, maybe, and he wanted to talk to her about that. Lying down. Side by side. And he wanted to hold her, maybe.

Damn it, he didn’t want his reason for finally opening up to her to be selfish.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I know that’s probably not the right thing to say, but…”

Her gaze stayed glued to his face as her expression shifted again. He couldn’t read it, though. His head was spinning from the force of his confession. It had been the wrong thing to say, probably. She needed certainty. Commitment.

She inhaled, a little breath that caught at the top, and she held it there. Then she gave him a half smile. “Do you want me to? Don’t offer if it’s just for me.”

He reached out and caught her hand. “It’s not. At all. I want…” He exhaled roughly. “I was worried I was asking for selfish reasons.”

Her smile got bigger. “Okay. I’ll get my pyjamas on.”

* * *

Jenna brushed her teeth and then put on lightweight pyjama pants and a tank top.

Her heart pounded as she made her way to Sean’s room. She paused at the door, pressing her hand against the wood frame.

And he was already asleep.

He was so exhausted, constantly, that he fell asleep as soon as he was horizontal.

He’d left the bedside light on, and a book lay discarded beside him. He was stretched out, taking up most of the bed. One arm was thrown over his eyes, and his chest moved up and down in a regular, steady pattern.

Moving into the room quietly, she picked up the paperback and set it on the bedside table. She went to turn out the light, but hesitated.

Maybe he liked to have it on. Now that she thought about it, she’d seen a light coming out from under his door most nights. She’d leave it on.

As nervous as if she were a virgin on her wedding night, she climbed onto the mattress.

It was dangerous, how much she wanted this.

You’re going to get your heart broken. She knew that. Had accepted it as the inevitable consequence of loving Sean. But she couldn’t help herself.

She stretched out, holding her breath as she sank into the mattress. It wasn’t the same as before. It would never be. But there was something precious about this moment, for how hard-fought it had been.

And for how innocent it was. Just lying next to him, watching him sleep.

He’d aged in the last five months. Her heart ached.

But it was a warm, soft ache. Surrounded by other, sweeter feelings.

Dangerous feelings that lulled her to sleep before she could explore them in any depth, because she, too, was exhausted.

She woke up in the early morning, overheated and confused. She pushed the blankets off her legs, but most of the heat was coming from behind her.

Sean.

With a jolt of embarrassed awareness, she realized she’d nestled herself right against him in her sleep.

Her heart raced.

This was the opposite of not pushing him.

Frozen, she tried to figure out if she’d woken him up, too. How could she not? But his usually tense muscles were relaxed around her and his breathing was still even.

Carefully she slid back to her side of the bed and rolled onto her back. It would be dawn soon. Maybe she could turn out the light.

She reached for the switch and out of nowhere, Sean’s hand clamped around her wrist.

“Light stays on,” he said, his voice thick with sleep.

“I… Okay. Sorry.”

He didn’t say anything else.

He hadn’t let go of her wrist, either.

She closed her eyes and dragged in a breath. She told herself to go to sleep, to calm down. But she was too hot. She was wearing too many layers. It was the height of summer. Sleep pants were unnecessary, but she’d pulled them on so…

Bitter regret pulsed in her chest. So she wouldn’t give her husband the wrong idea and think that she wanted sex just because she’d climbed into bed with him.

But she did.

She realized with a sinking feeling that’s why she’d woken up. She’d been dreaming of him pressing into her from behind. Hell, maybe it had been real. She didn’t know, but…that was risky. She didn’t want to ruin the fragile progress they’d made.

She wiggled her wrist. “I think I’m up.”

He still didn’t let go. “What’s wrong?”

Did he really want to know? Now, at five in the morning? She shook her head. “Nothing. Need some water.”

He let her go, and she slipped from his bed without looking back. In the bathroom, she filled the water glass sitting on the edge of the sink. Then she downed the entire thing in three thirsty gulps.