Natalie’s resolute decision gnawed at Aaron’s desperate need to protect her above all others. Her eyes followed him in his relentless pacing.

The Sevens were all sitting in her living room. Holly and Dec were among them along with her parents. Camp was still set up outside but her brothers had returned to their homes. At least that’s what they’d said they were doing. Aaron had a feeling they were out somewhere on the ranch conducting target practice.

“He’s stopped at a hotel somewhere. Car hasn’t moved in three hours,” T gave another report.

The clocks in her home chewed through the time too quickly. Aaron wasn’t convinced she was prepared to face him again no matter how certain she seemed.

“I don’t care. He’ll be here when he gets here. Don’t you get it? A lot of victims have to live with their abusers for years. I didn’t. And… I kind of think we each have to handle it our own way. There is no wrong way to deal with it. It sucks but there’s really no way out of your only life. In fact, I don’t want a way out. I happen to like my life. So, he’s coming here. I want to deal with this by facing him, telling him exactly what I think of him, wishing him well on his one-way trip to hell, and then I want to get back to living my life.”

“My big sister is kind of a badass.” Holly winked at her.

“Yeah, she sure as hell is,” Aaron agreed. “My beautiful badass.”

“Oooh maybe I’ll get a tattoo that says that.” Natalie laughed. Unable to believe she was actually laughing in the face of this, he just fell more in love with her.

“Baby girl, your daddy’s heart has been through a lot this evening. Could you not get a tattoo until I’ve had time to process this day?” her father begged.

“All right, Daddy, but why don’t you all go on home? I am fine. He’s not going to show up tonight and if he does I have a horsewhip.”

“She is handling this remarkably well,” Dec quietly informed Aaron as he passed by his chair.

“Yeah, but I’m not.”

“I’d say it’s high time you let her be strong beside you. She doesn’t need you to be strong for her.”

“I’m trying.”

Members of the Camden family begrudgingly left after making both Aaron and Natalie promise to alert them when her uncle returned to the road.

After seeing her parents out, Natalie spun to face the Sevens. “I am not an egg or some kind of china doll. I’m not going to break. But since it doesn’t seem like you’re leaving I want to know exactly what happened with the courthouse, and the library, and Cheryl.”

Griff cleared his throat. “Basically, we all love you for loving Triple A and once we discovered that someone had hurt you we were like rabid dogs. A might’ve asked for our help but it wasn’t all him. I went as far as to lift your jacket that night at the Hi-Way to have an excuse to come out here and find the fucker who’d hurt you.”

T nodded. “Yeah, and Griff and I got greedy because I’ve seen Cracker Jack boxes with higher security than this entire town. We shouldn’t have done it in the first place but we had what we were looking for at the court house. The library was us being dumbasses.”

“What were you looking for in the library and how does that letter play into all of this?”

“They went in the library to look at old newspaper reels from the week when your family threw your uncle off of the ranch. T found the letter in Hope’s desk. Mick had written to her asking if he could visit his grandkids. When I read that, I went insane. I had to find out if Hope had told him he could come.

“The morning I left you here to go get my dogs I stopped by the library, snooped around, and eavesdropped on a conversation between Brock and Hope about the letter. Guess I owe them an apology, too.” The weight of all he’d done, all the lies he’d told her hung like a noose around Aaron’s neck.

Her willingness to forgive him gave him steady footing. He was no longer swinging but that damned rope was still wrapped tight.

She shook her head at him. “When you all set out to do something you go all out.”

“Kind of what we were trained to do,” Smith tried to explain. “Since the doc walked, I’ll offer up a little of my own psychobabble the dudes at the VA keep telling me. You gotta remember the missions we went on, the things we did, we were never allowed to tell anyone about. Hell, my own sisters had no idea where on the globe I was for years. Triple A was running a mission in his mind. He couldn’t tell you even if he should’ve. We all have a little trouble converting back to life outside our army boots. There’s this significant separation between life then and life now and it’s not always so easy to traverse back and forth.”

“I already forgave all of you, just don’t ever do anything like this again.”

“Despite everything that came out of it, thank you for doing all of this for me. I… can’t thank you enough for being there today.” Aaron searched for more words to offer his old team but none came to him. The full range of emotions he’d experienced that day had him bound.

“You tell her what happened in Najaf?” Griff asked.

“Yeah.”

“K, now I’m gonna tell her what really happened.”

“Did you lie to me about Iraq?” Natalie huffed.

“He didn’t lie to you. He just doesn’t quite remember it the way it actually went down.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t. Triple A kept telling our detachment commander that one or more of the men we were working with was sour. He didn’t have proof but he knew. Commander didn’t believe him. Kept telling him to let it go, so he took it to our operations sergeant. Got turned down there, too.

“It was just supposed to be a gas refill in the vehicles. No big deal. When all hell broke loose, Triple A threw himself on top of a nut job who felt his sole purpose in life was to blow himself up to kill all of us. He was five feet away from three dozen ten-thousand gallon tanks of gasoline. If he’d detonated himself, none of us would be here to be telling this story. Guy shot A twice at point blank range in the gut. Triple A shot him the head and then threw himself between me and a guy with an M-16 we’d given him. He saved my life, too. So, all of his bullshit about it being his fault, that’s the one and only lie he can’t seem to figure out isn’t the truth.”

“Aaron,” Natalie couldn’t believe what they were telling her. How had he survived? How could he possibly believe he wasn’t worthy, even if he had lied to try and protect her? Flinging herself into his arms, she tried to hug him hard enough to make him believe their truth if he didn’t believe his own. “You are never ever allowed to do anything dangerous ever again.”

She heard his team chuckle but he just held her tighter. That was all that mattered.

“Hey, doll baby, you know you got a massive splinter in your finger?” Voodoo asked her as he passed by her on his way to the kitchen.

Aaron set Natalie down and grabbed her hand.

“I knew I had it. I just had a few other things going on and asking mama to take it out for me would’ve meant leaving my house this afternoon, and I am stupidly stubborn enough to have not wanted to give you all that satisfaction. You work on the lying thing and I’ll work on the stubborn thing.”

“You got it, baby, but let me take it out for you. Where’d you get it anyway?” Aaron’s gentle touch on her hand erased the slight pain from existence.

“From my bed.” She spoke through her teeth.

Voodoo laughed. “Oh, there’s definitely a story I want to hear, but I am the team medic so step back Triple A. Let Voodoo do what he do.”

“Little bit worried about exposing my girl to the things you do,” Aaron teased. Relief flooded through Natalie. It was so good to hear him joking around again. With everything else this day had held, she needed that.

Voodoo waggled his eyebrows and Natalie giggled. “I only want to get freaky with him…” she pointed to Aaron, “…but I’ll let you take this splinter out for me.”

“Hello.” T leapt to attention. “Just how freaky does Triple A get? We need something to harass him about.”

“I get just as freaky as my girl likes, not that either of us will be telling you about it, perv,” Aaron harassed.

While Natalie was laughing, Voodoo expertly pulled tweezers from a pack strapped on his thigh and removed the splinter. She didn’t feel a thing. “You’re really good at that.” She stared at her finger to make certain he’d really performed the task that quickly and painlessly.

“I’m really good at a lot of things, baby doll.”

“If I didn’t owe you all so fucking much, I’d throw you out just for that comment,” Aaron informed his friends.

“No. I don’t want you to have to go all the way back to Lincoln tonight. I have two spare bedrooms and the couch folds out.” The bravery she’d clung to all night long was still with her. She had every intention of confronting her uncle, but having a team of Green Berets nearby wasn’t something she planned on turning down.

“We did pack for a week,” Smith shrugged.

“You were going to stay out there an entire week?”

“I would’ve stayed out there a lifetime, Nat. I don’t want to do life without you,” Aaron readily informed her.

“I’m not the only stubborn one I see.”

“Hey, your daddy told me the one and only chance I had was to out stubborn you. I followed orders.”

“That sounds like my daddy.”

“Kinda think he likes me now.”

“Yeah, well, you’re good for me.”

“I try to be, Nat. I swear I’ll never stop trying to be good for you and to you.”

“All right, let’s let him get sappy with her in private. Direct me to sleeping quarters,” Smith ordered.

“Take your pick and thank you for staying.”

“It’s like Griff told you, we love you ’cause you love Triple A. You two end up getting married you’ll basically be taking us all to raise. Fair warning.”

“I might’ve had a decent chance of her saying yes ’til you told her that.” Aaron feigned irritation.

“I’m going to need more information on what exactly taking you to raise means.”

“Can you cook as good as your mama?”

“No. But my mama will feed anyone who sits at her table anytime they’re sitting there.”

“Sold. I’m moving out here.” Smith laughed.