Swiping away the tears that won’t seem to stop falling, I lean down and rest my elbows on the wooden fence in front of me. After I stormed away from Everett a few hours ago, I kept walking and crying, hurting and feeling so lost that I didn’t even realize how far I’d walked until I found myself a few acres away, at the far end of the fenced-off grazing area for the horses. For the first time in my life, I didn’t put the needs of this camp first and that just makes me cry even harder. I might have just screwed up everything my parents built by sending Everett away, but I couldn’t be around him for another minute, keeping up with this stupid farce, without losing myself completely in the process.

Who am I kidding? I lost myself a long time ago, and having Everett here again just highlighted that fact. Being around the campers didn’t make me happy, organizing the charity dinner didn’t make me happy, being in charge of something I’m so incredibly proud to be a part of didn’t make me happy. All the things that used to give me purpose and used to make me feel alive just felt stagnant and flat. I attributed this to Aiden’s death, but standing here now, looking out at the plantation I grew up on and thinking about all of the memories I’ve made here, I realize I’ve felt this way for a lot longer. Four-and-a-half years, to be exact. I haven’t felt like myself and I haven’t been able to figure out how to be happy again since Everett left.

I hate him for ruining all of this for me.

I hate him for making it impossible for me to forgive him.

I hate him for tainting every good memory I have of this place, replacing it with sadness that he wasn’t here the last few years with me to make new memories.

I hate that I can’t just let go of my hurt and anger and let him help me save the camp.

I hate that I can’t pretend as easily as he can.

“I just left Everett at home, slamming cupboards and muttering a whole bunch of fun curse words. How mad are you at me right now?”

The voice behind me makes me jump and whirl around.

“Like, throw a punch at me mad, or just scream at me and call me horrible names mad?”

I laugh through my tears even though nothing about my situation right now is funny, staring at a man who can always make me smile.

“I’m not going to punch you, Jason.”

He lets out a deep sigh of relief, moving to stand next to me as he slides one hand through his hair on top of his head, just like his brother does when he’s nervous or frustrated.

Why couldn’t I have fallen in love with THIS brother? It would have been so much easier.

No matter how much or how little time we spend together, we’ve always been able to laugh easily with each other. It never feels like a job trying to make Jason smile. He’s never let me down or disappointed me, unlike his brother.

“I really, really want to punch you, but I like you too much to ruin that pretty face of yours,” I reassure him with a smile as we both turn to stare at the horses, which have been let out into the pasture for one last time before they get locked up into the stables for the night.

Jason laughs, removing one hand from his pocket to reach up and give my shoulder a squeeze.

“I do have a really pretty face. Especially since I own a razor, unlike my brother.”

I close my eyes at his mention of Everett, his face floating through my mind and the destroyed look on it when I told him to go home. Along with the look in his eyes when he was spouting all that bullshit for Stratford’s benefit. Bullshit that I fed into and allowed myself to pretend for a few minutes was real, allowed myself to be transported back in time when I was so crazy in love with him that hearing those words would have had me kicking Stratford out of the room and climbing onto his lap. And then he had to go and ruin it all with his announcement of how long he’s been home. Just like always, I’m reminded of how loving that man brought me nothing but pain. And obviously being friends with him again would produce the same result.

“You should have told me he was home,” I whisper, my throat tightening and my eyes stinging with tears all over again. “Nine months, Jason. He’s been home for nine months and you didn’t say anything. Why?”

I look away from the horses to stare at his profile. A muscle ticks in his jaw as he grinds his teeth together, probably trying to come up with a plausible excuse for keeping something like this from me. Strong jaw, full lips, a mess of unruly hair on top of his head, the same dark brown color as Everett’s. That’s where the similarities end. Jason is always in a good mood, always smiling and happy no matter what he’s doing. He was never affected by his childhood the way Everett was. He never needed someone to fix him, because he was never broken.

“How many years have you worked here?” he suddenly asks, finally turning to look at me.

“Um, since I was a teenager, which you already know.”

It’s a stupid question, and one that confuses me. Even though Jason and I have never been super close—like Everett, Aiden, and I were—we were still friends. He never needed the comfort of this camp growing up like Everett did, but he still hung out here from time to time, and he stops by all the time when I need his help fixing things, or just to hang out with me, or other people here at camp that he’s become friends with over the years. He knows everything about my life and what I do here. He knows exactly how long I’ve worked here.

“Technically, all your life, since you live here,” he adds.

“Yes,” I tell him, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

He turns to face me, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head to the side.

“And in all that time, you’ve spent countless hours working with families and helping children cope, when their loved one came home from deployment and couldn’t quite get a handle on the reality of not being in a war zone anymore,” he states, his voice growing softer.

My shoulders start to drop and all the tightness in my body from my irritation with him beating around the bush rushes out of me so quickly that I almost feel light-headed.

“You’ve seen firsthand what PTSD can do to someone. You know how it can break a person, make their entire personality change, and make it really fucking hard for them to remember how to wake up each day and want to take another breath. He might not have fought in a war, but he still struggles with his own form of PTSD. Everett saw things no one should have to see. He saw people he knew die right in front of him with their blood on his hands, he held parents as they cried in his arms because he couldn’t save their child, and then he dealt with the guilt of not knowing his best friend was dying, not being able to save him either.”

My head starts shaking back and forth with the reality of what he’s saying to me. I don’t want it to be true, but I know it is. I can see it written all over his face. He wouldn’t be saying something like this if it wasn’t the God’s honest truth, and I feel like an idiot. I’ve been so wrapped up in my anger that Everett would just show up here out of the blue after almost five long years, and then overwhelmed with hurt when I found out he’d been here for nine months before he came to me, that I didn’t even stop to think why. I just assumed. I never once thought about what all that time overseas would have done to him, or what he would have seen and lived through. I never looked at him and saw anything other than the old Everett. The man who, as an adult, was always strong and sure and confident. The man who wouldn’t let anything get in the way of his dreams. I didn’t look at him and see someone hurting and vulnerable. I didn’t want to think of him as someone who couldn’t handle anything, but I should have known. Jason is right. I’ve seen firsthand what PTSD can do to a person, and sometimes, it isn’t pretty.

“It also didn’t help that he learned one of his best friends had died after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and that best friend forbade anyone from telling Everett that he was sick since he wanted him to come back for the ‘right’ reasons, and not just to watch him die, and so he couldn’t get back for the funeral and he never got a chance to say good-bye. It just got to be too much for him, and it broke him,” Jason tells me softly, turning away to look out at the horses. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you he was here, but I couldn’t. I wanted him to come to you, believe me. I begged him to get his shit together and go to you. I knew you of all people would have been able to get through to him, but he was lost. For a while there, I didn’t think I’d ever get him back, Cameron, and it scared the hell out of me.”

Just when I think I don’t have any tears left, they come pouring out of me so quickly that Jason’s face becomes a blur. I should never have agreed to Aiden’s demand not to track down Everett as soon as we found out he was sick. Aiden knew he didn’t have much time left, and he was adamant that he didn’t want Everett to see him that way, so weak and frail and confined to a bed. As angry as I was with Everett at the time, it killed me that he wasn’t here to say good-bye, and I can only imagine the guilt he felt about not being by Aiden’s bedside right along with me.

“I’m such a bitch,” I mutter, wrapping my arms around my waist to hold myself together. “I smacked him across the face. I screamed at him. I told him I didn’t care and I told him to go home.”

Jason chuckles under his breath and glances over at me.

“He probably deserved a little bit of that. I even warned him that you’d probably punch him in the face when he showed up here.”

He wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me against his side, rubbing his hand comfortingly up and down my arm.

“I didn’t tell you this to make you feel guilty, Cam. I just wanted you to understand that he didn’t stay away these last nine months because he was an asshole and didn’t care about you. If anything, his problem is that he cares too much, and he didn’t want you to see him like that.”

We stay like this for a few quiet minutes until I’m finally able to speak.

“How bad was it?” I whisper, resting my cheek against the side of his chest.

“Really bad. Do you remember a few months ago when I was here fixing the porch railing and Amelia’s ex-husband showed up?” he asks softly.

I nod against his chest. I’ll never forget that day. Amelia had been doing so well and had been so happy for so long, that I almost forgot she had a husband who wouldn’t get help for his PTSD and almost ruined her and their son, right along with him. He was so drunk he could barely stand up, stumbling around the camp with a bottle of whiskey in his hand, screaming for her and cursing at the top of his lungs. She’d recently filed for divorce, and the papers had been delivered to him that day. It took three men, including Jason, to get him under control and get him away from her. Amelia handled it better than I thought she would, and I had never been prouder of her for standing her ground, telling him he needed to get help, and that she didn’t want to see him or speak to him again until he did.

“Multiply that by about a thousand, and that’s what Everett was like the first couple of months after he got home,” Jason tells me.

I squeeze my eyes closed, not wanting to have that picture of Everett in my mind. Not wanting to know how badly he struggled when he came home, how hard he must have fought to get better, and how much it must have hurt him when he showed up here today and I threw it in his face and made him feel guilty.

I should have known better. All these years, all of my training working with soldiers, and I couldn’t separate from my own pain long enough even to consider that Everett might have been hurting just as badly, even if he wasn’t a solider. He must’ve seen so many horrible things when all he wanted to do was save lives. He lost people right in front of his eyes, and then he came home and had to deal with losing one of the most important people in his life. Knowing that he couldn’t do anything to help him.

“I’m a horrible person.”

Jason laughs again, pulling away and grabbing my arms, turning me to face him. He bends his knees and looks directly into my eyes.

“You’re not a horrible person. You’ve got a lot on your plate right now and it’s my fault for convincing Everett it would be a super idea to just show up here without giving you some kind of warning or explanation first. I’m not excusing him for being a complete asshole for signing up with Doctors Without Borders when he was supposed to come back here and refusing to come home even for one weekend. Don’t get all sappy on me now and let him off easy for that shit. Just give him a break for the last nine months; that’s all I’m asking.”

Jason kisses the top of my head and walks away, leaving me alone again with my thoughts…a place I really don’t want to be right now.