Trying to resist the urge to look in the mirror and check my hair and makeup was like trying to resist a drink of water in the middle of the Saharan desert. A Herculean task. Nothing good could come of obsessing over my appearance today. I was going to a shooting range, not a classy restaurant or a nightclub.

I didn’t have anyone to impress.

This wasn’t a date.

I was going to a shooting range to attempt to confront my fear of guns.

This wasn’t a date.

I was going with a friend.

This wasn’t a date.

My cell phone buzzed loudly as it vibrated on the nightstand. I scooped it up, my heart thumping wildly as I turned it over to look at the notification on the screen.

I gasped and almost dropped the phone as I fumbled with it, clumsily unlocking the screen and typing my response.

The marketing director at Barley Legal Brewery offered to send me some Barley Legal merchandise to use as inspiration for the app mockup I was creating. I would be billing the brewery hourly as a freelance software developer, creating a few drinking game apps. If they liked any of the mockups, we would then negotiate a price for developing and delivering the final product.

If I did a good job and worked my ass off, I could probably make enough in the next few weeks to support myself for the rest of the year. That would give me a nice cushion of time to find more freelance gigs.

Just thinking about this stuff made my stomach ache. I had worked to support myself through college, but I was painfully aware now that I had lived a charmed post-college life. The days of yoga class, coffeehouses, and planning my blissful future were gone.

Part of me was glad to have something to work for. Supporting myself made me feel stronger and more purposeful than I had in years. But I couldn’t deny the part of me that yearned to be taken care of. I just wanted to know that if I lost my grip, someone would be there to break my fall.

When I pulled into the parking lot of The Rodeo in Hillsboro, I took one glance at the tinted storefront windows covered in garishly-colored signs, depicting guns and shooting targets, and the hairs on my arms stood at attention. Isaac was taking me target shooting today.

I had forced myself to watch him load up the trunk of my SUV with gun cases, ammunition, and protective gear. The whole twenty-five-minute ride to The Rodeo, his mouth kept moving as he spouted off gun etiquette and one safety rule after another. I tried to pay attention, but when he got to rule number twelve, I began to tune out his voice out of sheer self-preservation.

It was too much to remember.

Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot.

Don’t point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.

Always treat a gun as if it’s loaded, even when you’re certain it’s not.

Always know what’s behind your target.

Always be aware of your surroundings, especially if there are staff members walking around.

Observe the range facility rules, especially when it comes to check-in, cold and hot range rules, and changing targets.

And those were just the rules I could remember. This outing was beginning to seem like a worse idea than I’d anticipated. As I pulled into a parking space, I turned off the Tesla and stared at the dashboard in silence.

“Hey, like I said, if you’re feeling uncomfortable, we can turn around right now,” Isaac assured me, softening his voice to try to put me at ease.

But it wasn’t working.

“I’m not ready. I’m sorry you came all the way out here with me and now I’m chickening out. Maybe…” I glanced at the hopeful look in his eyes and quickly turned away. “Maybe if we just sit here and chat for a bit, I’ll work up the nerve to go inside. Is that okay?”

“Absolutely. You make the rules today.”

I let out a soft sigh as I turned in my seat to face him. “Okay, you told me before that you were a sniper in the Marines. Did you get any awards or medals for hitting targets?”

His smile waned. “Yeah, I’ve got some medals. Some I’m more proud of than others,” he replied. “The farthest target I ever hit was a touch shy of 3,300 meters.” Suddenly, as quickly as his smile had disappeared, it was back, along with a proud gleam in his hazel eyes. “At that distance, your heartbeat is enough to throw you off target, so I had to wear a heart rate monitor. Once I was in position, I closed my eyes and did deep breathing exercises to slow my heart rate. I got it down to forty-seven beats per minute, less than one beat per second. In that one second space between beats, I opened my eyes, aimed, and pulled the trigger. I set a record for the 148^th.”

“The 148^th?” I asked.

“The 148^th Infantry Regiment.”

My stomach tensed at his reply. Isaac was a man who was trained to shoot to kill. I wondered if the man who murdered my son had also trained in the military. Did the country I love create the one man I loathed?

I took a deep breath to release some of the tension in my muscles. “Okay, I have a question I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time, but I’m afraid that you won’t want to answer, or that I may not want to know the answer.”

He narrowed his eyes as he silently contemplated my words. “I’m an open book,” he finally said. “Ask away.”

I cast my eyes downward, my gaze focused on the console between us. “What’s the one thing you did in the military that you’re most ashamed of?”

“Not speaking up,” he answered without hesitation.

I looked up at him and the way his pain distorted his handsome features made me sick to my stomach. “What do you mean?”

His jaw was set as he replied. “There’s a thing most soldiers will deny doing, because it’s a practice that’s supposedly been banned, but it still very much happens. It’s called… canoeing.” He looked me in the eye. “Don’t google it unless you want nightmares.” He waited until I nodded in agreement before he continued. “Anyway, it’s a way of completely assuring the enemy combatant you just neutralized is definitely not getting back up. And… I never did it myself, but some of the men I looked up to did. There’s something that breaks inside you when you see someone you admire doing something so completely… hideous. It’s… Well, I should have spoken up.”

I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding and mentally resolved to never Google the term “canoeing.” If it was the one thing he regretted most, and he had already admitted to me a few weeks ago how he didn’t feel an ounce of guilt when he killed an enemy combatant, then it must be pretty bad.

I suddenly realized the muscles in Isaac’s forearms were corded with tension as he clenched his fists. Was he about to have an episode?

Before I could stop myself, I reached forward and gently placed my hand on his fist. “Hey. Are you okay?”

He shook his head as he seemed to come out of a trance. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry. How long was I gone?”

I put on my best reassuring smile. “Just a few seconds. You’re okay.”

He glanced at my hand on his. His fist slowly unfurled, then he took my hand in his, staring at it for a moment in wonderment.

“Your hands are soft,” he whispered.

I knew I should pull my hand away. I knew Isaac wanted more from me than I could give. And I was technically still a married woman.

But my body longed to be touched. My heart longed to be acknowledged.

I savored the sensation of his rough skin against mine, his thumb brushing gently over my knuckles. A sudden throbbing between my legs made me yank my hand back. I clutched it to my breast, breathless as my chest ached with guilt.

I quickly turned the car on. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to do this,” I said, looking over my shoulder before I pulled out of the parking space. “We should go home. Maybe… Maybe we can try it again another time.”

I didn’t look at Isaac the entire ride home. I couldn’t even bring myself to put on music. In between commands from my navigation system, the silence in the SUV was deafening. But neither of us made any attempt at small talk. Because we both knew that whatever just happened between us had changed everything.

We had crossed the threshold beyond idle chatter. Every word we spoke to each other now would have underlying subtext. And there was no turning back.