I thought I was braced for this. For the moment that he walked through the door and saw me.

I still wasn't prepared for the utter devastation of watching the realization hit his eyes that we’re going to be working together for the entire semester.

The cadets aren't here yet.

We’re not teaching today. Professor Blake wouldn’t be that sadistic that she’d drop us both into a classroom with no prep. No, today we’re supposed to meet them and pass out the military science syllabus.

Right now, that feels next to impossible. The weight of the room is closing in on me with Deacon standing there.

I was wrong. I was so fucking wrong about being this close without the distraction of the noise and the chaos of The Pint. About being alone with him.

Everything about him draws me closer, makes me crave the feel of his skin against mine.

We probably don't have that much time to get to some kind of equilibrium before they start walking through the door. Just like a commander and first sergeant, we can't let them see us fighting. They'll exploit the weaknesses and play us against each other. It doesn't matter if they're soldiers or cadets; they'll do it.

Because that's what soldiers do.

He stands there for an impossible expanse of time, his eyes dark and blue and intense.

"Well, this is awkward," I finally say when it's clear he's not going to break the silence. "I take it Professor Blake didn't tell you that I was your assistant?"

"Who said anything about assistant?" is what he finally says.

His words catch me off guard. Then again, he’s always been good at thinking on his feet.

"What do you mean?"

"You're my peer. We'll co-teach this." His voice is grating and rough, like there is so much more he wants to say but won’t. Or can’t.

It’s better this way. It has to be.

I make a noise. "I've never taught anyone in my life,” I admit.

His scowl deepens. "That's not true. You taught soldiers all the time as a sergeant."

And there it is. The elephant in the room that is our shared history of Iraq and Fort Hood.

"This isn't the same thing." I'm working on hiding the unadulterated panic in my voice. I'm losing the battle.

"Sure it is. They're college students. You and I are going to teach them about the Army. We're supposed to get them to ask us questions. To push them on what they think they know. Professor Blake told me that she and the ROTC commander agree the cadets don't get nearly enough exposure to enlisted folks."

“She doesn't need me to do this."

He drops his backpack on the table with enough force that I wince. "Tough shit." His voice is practically a snarl. And no, I've never described anyone as snarling before but Deacon is definitely snarly. "They're going to be here any minute. Figure out how you want to introduce yourself because unless you feel like arguing with Professor Blake, you're here for the rest of the semester and so am I."

I say nothing at the force in his response. I don’t know what I’m supposed to read into his reaction but I'm reasonably certain I can't talk without raising my voice. Here at school, they call that yelling. I haven’t yelled at anyone since I got here and I'm not going to start now.

I close my eyes, listening to the sounds of Deacon violently pulling his iPad and his notebook from his backpack.

Breathe in. Deep. Slow. Controlled. Breathing into the knot in my chest. Into the violent heat that burns against my heart and sends my thoughts racing through the tangled maze of memories and fear.

Professor Blake is a crafty old fox, I’ll give her that. If I’d known she was planning on putting me together with Kelsey, I would have begged her to do it sooner.

Looking at her face right now, it’s easy to see how much this is upsetting Kelsey’s carefully crafted Avoid Our Past plan.

That’s over now. And I have to say I’m pretty fucking grateful at the moment. Except that I have no idea how to even begin a campaign plan to break down the barriers she’s erected between us.

And after six months of letting her set conditions, I need to play this right. If I screw it up, I could end up pushing her to get Professor Blake to take her off this assignment. I can’t blow this.

“What crawled up your ass?” she asks, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms over her chest.

This I can handle. “Seeing you still doubt yourself. I thought you finally broke that habit in Iraq.”

Her mouth drops open. That’s clearly not what she was expecting. Good. Maybe if she’s off balance, she’ll stop thinking about all the reasons she left and start thinking about the reasons why us working together can work here just like it does at The Pint.

I don’t mind keeping her off balance. In fact, I think it will be fun. A totally new challenge in my life.

Getting back into hers.

“What, no sarcastic comeback?”

“I’m not really sure how to respond to that,” she says softly.

“Start by agreeing not to downplay what you did over there and we’ll get along just fine.”

The door opens and the cadets start walking in. One more breath and I open my eyes, watching them silently file past us and take seats.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I wasn’t sure before he walked into the room and I’m less sure now as the cadets start to fill the small space. I have to put it aside. I can’t let them see me having an existential crisis. Shit, the Army at least taught me that much.

The classroom is more of a small conference room. With Deacon at the end of the ancient wooden conference table, it feels smaller. More closed in. The windows are at least a hundred years old. It’s the fixing of modernity overlaid upon ancient gothic stone and masonry.

Sums up how I feel right now, really. Like I’m trying to paste a new Kelsey on an older, more worn down one. But the cadets don’t need to know that.

I shut down the unsettled feelings swirling inside me and watch them filter in.

The first thing that strikes me is that they're so young. I wonder if I ever looked that young, that…innocent.

I lean back in my chair, watching Deacon scroll through his iPad as the cadets settle around us. The small space is tight with them in the room now.

They're clearly picking up on our tension because they settle into their seats silently, their conversations about mundane things falling away.

Our class consists of eleven people, crammed into this smallish conference room. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that they look like they come from every corner of America. They look like the rainbow of faces I used to have in my MP platoon.

I want them to wear freaking name tags so I can learn their names. I try to always remember who everyone is. It's a holdover from my days as a sergeant. Know your soldiers and all that, right?

"Excuse me?"

The speaker is a thin young man with dark, intense eyes and sharp features, all beneath a cap of vibrantly black hair.

I school my expression to look a little less intimidating. I'm pissed, being stuck in this situation, but that doesn't mean I need to take my bad mood out on them. "What's up?"

"I noticed you have om on your wrist. Do you know what that means?"

I glance down at the sacred Sanskrit symbol tattooed below my watchband, at the edge of my palm. "I do. It represents an incredibly important part of my life."

He tips his head, curious. "Really? How?"

I inhale deeply. "It's a really long story."

Across from me, I can feel Deacon watching the exchange.

The young man standing in front of me finally sets his bag down and offers his hand. "I'm Veerkar Patel."

"Kelsey. It's nice to meet you."

"I'd love to talk more with you about your tattoo some time," he says as he releases my hand and sits.

"Sure." I wonder if he wants to talk about how yoga saved my life. About how the practice of it helped me put everything back together when it shattered into a thousand pieces of detritus.

But I'll listen. Because it's rare that I find anyone who wants to really talk about the practice. Too often I find people want to etch the symbols on their bodies and wear the yoga pants as virtue signaling but not go any deeper than that.

I know about that, too. That was how I started yoga. I’m no better than any of them.

Except that I'm trying to do better.

I'm still putting the pieces of my life back together.

Yoga has been a big part of that.

I look over at Deacon. At the man who represents the fault line between who I was and who I am trying to be.

And I'm not sure that even the deepest practice will help me keep it together this time.

"Welcome to our military science class. I'm Deacon Hunter and across the table is Kelsey Ryder. We'll introduce ourselves in a moment but first, tell us where you're from, what you're studying and what you've branched."

I'm trying to pretend that I'm an adult and that watching Kelsey from the other side of the small conference room isn't visually stalking her.

I'm better than this.

I'm still agitated, seeing her sitting across from me. I wonder if Professor Blake put us together on purpose. It's not like she could have known that we have a complicated history.

Whatever joke the universe is trying to play, I appreciate it.

I tune in to the cadets again, realizing I've managed to jot down seven names and branches without hearing anything.

"I'm Veerkar Patel. You can call me Veer. I've branched armor and I'm hoping to be a Cav Scout like my grandfather. I'm majoring in biochemistry."

He speaks with a quiet confidence that says he knows who he is and where he's going. I envy him the certainty in so many ways.

"The Army is a family tradition then?" I ask.

He nods. "My grandfather enlisted in the Army after he immigrated from India. Served three tours in Vietnam. My father was in Desert Storm and he met my mother in the Army."

I steal a glance at Kelsey. We could have had a happily ever after if I hadn't been a coward. If I'd fought harder to stay by her side instead of chasing a career I later realized I didn't want.

She's deliberately not looking at me. Rather, she's listening intently to each of the cadets as they tell us who they are and where they're heading once they commission.

"I'm Jovi Sinclair. I also branched armor," says a fierce blonde sporting an intense tan and equally intense eyes. She looks like a Valkyrie come to life. A warrior. She glances over at Veer. "I wanted to follow in my mother's footsteps. She died during the initial invasion in Iraq."

I feel sucker-punched, a direct hit right in the gut. It hits me then in that moment that we have soldiers entering into the war that their parents might still be fighting.

Or who have lost a parent in our longest war.

I breathe in deeply, locking eyes with Kelsey. I see the hurt locked in my chest looking back at me. We've both done far too many ramp ceremonies.

I know the loss we share.

I clear my throat and tear my gaze away from hers, looking at Jovi. "Your mother would be very proud of you," I say, hoping my voice doesn't sound as rough to them as it feels to me. "And armor branch? Congratulations."

She doesn’t reply, doodling something along the edge of her notebook. I notice Veer watching her intently. I wonder if there's a history there.

I wonder if the link between Kelsey and me is as obvious as the link between Jovi and Veer appears to me.

"Iosefe Savea. I'm from LA. I've branched quartermaster." He's a big man, thick and broad and dark and soft-spoken. I can see the edge of a traditional Samoan tattoo beneath the hem of his T-shirt sleeve.

"Why quartermaster?"

"Because that's what the Army gave me," he says mildly. I think this man is incredibly unflappable.

"Makes sense to me," I offer.

The last cadet slips his cell phone in his pocket as he starts to talk. I wonder if he thinks I didn't notice he was ignoring his peers.

"I'm Ryan. I'm from Falls Church, Virginia. I'm signal but branch detailed into infantry."

I smile. "Oh, you're going to have fun." I resist the urge to tell him to buy some lube for all the ass chewings he's going to get as a signal officer. No one gives a shit about signal until people can't talk. Then all hell breaks loose. But he'll learn that soon enough. No need to kick his puppy.

I set my iPad down. "Welcome again. I'm Deacon Hunter, former military police NCO. I served two tours in Iraq, one with First Cav out of Fort Hood in 2011 and one with the 82d Airborne out of Fort Bragg. I'm finishing up my master’s degree in public administration."

Veer raises his hand. "I thought we left Iraq in 2011?"

I try not to wonder how a cadet who is going to be an officer in a few short months does not know we still have boots on the ground in Iraq.

"We've been steadily deploying troops there since the security situation deteriorated after we left," Kelsey says quietly, her voice heavy.

It's a dirty little secret. We officially left Iraq back in '11, but we never really left. We were back at it before the desert sand had even blown over the abandoned bases.

"I'm Kelsey,” she says. “I served two tours in Iraq, both with First Cav. I'm also a former MP sergeant. I'm working on a degree in business management."

I frown, wondering why she doesn't say more. Of the two of us, Kelsey has the much more impressive record. Instead, she’s told them next to nothing about her service.

I clear my throat. "Kelsey is being modest. She earned a Bronze Star for Valor when our base was attacked on our first deployment, for leading the base defense."

Her eyes flash and I can't read the emotion before she looks down at her own iPad. The cadets all glance over at her, their eyes wide. A bronze star is essentially a thank-you-for-serving award for officers that civilians tend to think is a very big deal. But for a sergeant to have a bronze star with v device is a very big deal. They might not appreciate the distinction but I do.

Kelsey should be proud of what she did that day.

Instead, I get the impression that by talking about her bravery and courage, I’ve just royally fucked up.

Again.