“We’ve made an amazing start.” Summer beams at me from the other side of her desk, printouts fanned in front of her. We. As if I’ve done anything other than show up. “I’ve got six firms with open positions, so I thought we could work through the application process together.”

“Firms?”

“Yes. Firms. Companies.” She cocks her head to the side, looks at me over the papers. “You said you were interested in analytics and planning, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“That’s where I started.” Summer flips the first paper over so it’s facing my direction and rises partway out of her seat. “Gordon & Preyde has an opening in its administrative department. You’d probably start with a lot of mail filing, but I thought, given the circumstances—”

“Gordon & Preyde? Is that a law firm?” Summer nods and I laugh out loud. “I can’t work at a law firm.”

“Yes, you can.”

“No, I really can’t.”

Her blue eyes search mine. “If this is about those rumors from back in high school—”

The memory of it swims up from the depths of my mind. Anxiety prickles at my core but I cover it with a smile. I didn’t hold up a grocery store back in high school. It was Wes who wanted a thrill, who walked out with two Zippo lighters in his pockets. I was the one the police went after.

But high school’s not the problem with working at a law firm. It’s what I did after I got out of the Army.

I’m not going to tell Summer that.

“It’s not about that.” She keeps it professional, but I see the twitch at the corner of her mouth. I know there’s more she wants to say. “What else do you have?”

“A similar position is open at Delaware Paper Products.”

“Oh, Jesus. Like that TV show?”

Summer grins. “No. Not like that.” She glances over at her computer screen. “It’s a start-up that claims to revolutionize the distribution of paper products across the northeast region.”

“Sounds like my kind of place.” It doesn’t. The thought of sweating through dress shirts in an office cubicle while I try to ignore phantom pains does not appeal to me, but here we are.

“How about this?” Summer gathers up the papers with a flick of her wrists and pushes the stack toward me. “Why don’t you take a look through these, and then we can talk about whichever opportunity—” Her elbow knocks against a mug at the edge of her desk and pens spill onto the carpet on my side of the desk. “Oh—”

She’s out of her seat in a flash, but I’m faster. By the time she’s around to my side I have the pens in one hand and the mug in the other, and I’m standing to meet her. Her face is bright pink. “Sorry about that.”

Summer takes the mug, her hands brushing against mine, and her cheeks get pinker. I didn’t think that was possible. If everything had been different, I’d take her face in my hands right now and—

“Day?”

It’s not the professional, chipper voice she’s been using since she led me back here and offered me a seat.

“Yeah?”

“The pens?”

I can’t stop the short, harsh laugh that’s on the edge of my lips, but I can tip the pens back into the mug. “I think that’s all of them.”

Summer looks down into the pens and takes a deep breath, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. I can’t say I mind that she’s standing this close. “You saved the day,” she says softly, and it’s all I can do not to reach for her.

“No. I’m not that kind of guy.” It’s a joke, meant to be lighthearted, but her smile disappears.

Her blue eyes are huge and clear when she looks into mine, the mug trembling in her hands. “Aren’t you?”

“I don’t—”

“I always thought you were, when I was—when I was growing up.” Her eyebrows draw together. “But then after boot camp—” The air around us is charged, every one of my limbs humming with the tension. This is not how I expected this conversation to proceed.

“I went where the Army told me to go.”

Sunny—that’s who she looks like right now, not the professional Summer Sullivan of Heroes on the Homefront—looks toward her window, then back at me. “You went to Afghanistan and you never said a word to me. I thought—” She swallows hard. “I thought you could have died. All that time, I never heard from you. Not once.”

In the emptiness of my hands, I feel it again—the dust. The grit. The fine sand that coated everything, got into every crack and crevice. I was never clean in the desert. Never. It settled in every breath. Summer is right here. I could finally tell her that with every one of those filthy, dusty breaths, I thought of her. I ached for her.

For that kiss.

It would have been a mistake, to be with her then. Wes proved that.

I thought of her every second. My heart pounds against my rib cage remembering that distance between us, the sun beating down, broiling me inside the uniforms. A bead of sweat gathers at the center of my back and drips down beneath my shirt. This isn’t there. She’s standing right in front of me, her shampoo in the air. I’m breathing her scent. Now. Here. Still that ache, still that hope.

“I couldn’t believe it. Not after—” She smiles like she doesn’t mean to. “Do you remember the night before you left?”

“How could I forget?” She opens her mouth to reply and my last defense drops to the ground. “I did this.”

There’s a sound of metal twisting and breaking, and it’s the sound of all the rules coming apart in my hands. I wrap my palms around her cheeks and her soft skin against mine is a revelation. Boom. For the first time since my boots touched American soil, I am fully here, fully in this moment. I kiss her like I kissed her back then and Sunny might be all grown up but her lips part beneath mine. Her hands are on mine and the rest of her melts, her weight pressing into the kiss. She tastes like peppermint and snow.

Alexei is looking for you.

The thought drills in through the sweet taste of her and I break off the kiss. What am I doing? Summer can’t be near me. She can’t be near that. She’s so much better. Jesus, she’s so much better.

She loses her balance and steps forward, onto my prosthesis, hands going to her face, covering her mouth. “I’m—oh, my god, I’m sorry.”

I step backward to try and get some space, but the chair is there, so I only gain a few inches. “It’s fine. Couldn’t feel it.”

Summer laughs and turns away, straightening her shirt. She’s trying hard to get her professional face on, but it’s not working. She clears her throat. “How’d that happen?” Her voice softens again. “Will you tell me?”

Guilt. Pure and strong and cutting. I can’t get out from under it, from the high color in her cheeks, from this office, and then a surge of anger, red-hot. At Wes. At myself. At the Army recruiter, at the Taliban who buried the land mine. Summer sees it in my face and bites her lip. I try to keep my voice measured. “If you wanted to know about that—” She braces. “You should’ve asked your brother.”