Chapter 26

“Emergency.”

Alex jerked at Jack’s flat, hard voice. He looked around the bunkhouse, trying to remember what he’d been doing. But everything was dim, and he just…didn’t know.

The flutter of panic at not knowing still existed, but it was so faint underneath all this exhaustion, this fog that had become something like a comfortable blanket he didn’t even fight it anymore.

Somewhere below, a dog whined, and Alex realized with another start that Star had been sleeping on his feet. How long had he been standing here?

Best not to dwell on that. “What kind of emergency?” he asked.

“Just come on,” Jack said. “Out in the north pasture.”

Alex frowned, but he followed Jack. “What’s the problem?”

“Hard to explain.” Jack nodded toward the stables, where his and Alex’s horses were saddled, reins tied to the post. “Follow me, yeah?”

He opened his mouth to say something about Jack riding, but it seemed such an effort to form those kinds of words, to press on what the emergency was. So, in the end, he simply got onto the horse and followed Jack on his up toward the north pasture.

Something eased inside of him, an odd tension he wouldn’t know how to name, wasn’t even sure he’d known it was there.

Here, on the horse, he was in control. He felt some stirring of that rightness he’d felt when he’d first arrived—fresh air and mountains, a trustworthy horse beneath him taking him wherever he needed to go.

When they reached the north pasture, Gabe was already there. Alex frowned a little because the fence seemed fine and the cattle were all a good distance away.

He got off the horse and walked toward Gabe, Jack falling into step behind him.

“What’s the emergency?” Alex demanded, something prickling at the back of his neck. An odd foreboding that reminded him too much of a desert road with these same two men. And one who was dead.

“Let’s call it less of an emergency and more of an intervention.”

Alex stopped walking, but Jack was behind him and gave him a little shove toward Gabe. Alex glared, but Jack only gave him another shove.

“Enough.”

“You’re right, Alex. It is enough,” Gabe said, that obnoxious grin spread over his face. The kind of grin he lobbed at anyone who crossed him.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you two—”

“Friendship, I guess,” Jack said, still giving him little shoves.

“I’m warning you, Jack. Knock it off.”

Jack resolutely shoved him again. “Or what? Hell, Alex, you can barely walk these days.”

Alex stood to his full height, glaring as much down at Jack as he could manage. “I’m fine. Your limp is worse than mine.” Might be an unfair jab, but it was true.

“Fine.” Gabe laughed, that hard, sarcastic edge filling up this little corner of the pasture. The breeze was cool as the sun set in the west, an occasional cow’s moo breaking through the peaceful evening. Clouds billowed in the east, dark and angry.

“You haven’t been fine since that grenade blew up, and in the past few weeks, you’ve withered away into nothing. I could take you with one hand tied behind my back.”

“My ass.”

“Then let’s fight.”

“What?” Alex scoffed as Gabe held his hands up in fists. “I’m not going to fight you.”

“Scared?”

“You’re not going to insult me into it. I’m not fighting you.”

“Okay, how’s this—you land a punch on either one of us, even a weak one, and we’ll let this be.”

“Let what be?”

“You, dipshit,” Jack interrupted. “You. You’re a zombie at best, killing yourself at worst. Ruining everything before it’s even gotten off the ground.”

“I haven’t ruined anything. The bunkhouse is almost finished. We’ve had a good calving season, should leave our finances in the black, and—”

“And what about Becca?”

“Fine.” They wanted to fight, then he’d punch the hell out of both of them. He swung at Jack, surprised to find himself stumbling when Jack easily sidestepped out of the way.

Alex found his footing and shook it off. Just needed to clear his head. He knew Gabe’s and Jack’s weak spots. He could exploit them. He fake lunged at Jack, then went after Gabe again, but somehow it didn’t work. He didn’t connect with anyone. Just the hard ground.

He sprawled out there, nothing in his body responding the way it should. He felt shaken and weak, and that wasn’t who he was. He struggled to get up, but it was too much, so he simply rolled over and looked up at the dark clouds encroaching on blue sky.

“You can’t even get up, Alex. When is that going to sink in? You’re killing yourself.”

He had arguments, but he couldn’t seem to verbalize them. Even in his mind, they seemed to simply turn to ash and blow away on the hard wind.

“I’ll be fine. I can fix it.” But even to his own ears it sounded like rote memorization and the words failed to feel right or make sense.

“No, man. You can’t.”

He couldn’t be fixed.

He couldn’t fix it.

It was Mom all over again. Driving into the embankment. Becca demanding more of him than he could safely give. He was not in control. He had no say.

He couldn’t fix this.

Jack and Gabe each grabbed an arm and hauled him to his feet. Even once he was steady enough to stand on his own, they didn’t let go of him.

“When we were discharged, what did the shrink tell us?” Jack asked softly.

“That we were fine.” They had been cleared.

“But that if we stopped feeling fine, it was time to talk to someone,” Jack said, and his voice sounded rough and pained. “I know you got the same talk I did, and I know…it sucks and I don’t want to do it, but this is worse. Watching you do this to yourself is worse.”

Alex swallowed, but his throat was too tight. “I just haven’t figured it out yet.”

“You don’t have to figure it out by yourself. And I don’t just mean the therapist, though I’d say that’d be a hell of a first step. All of us. All we’ve wanted is to help, but you have to let us.”

Alex looked at Gabe. “I was supposed to…” He was supposed to lead. He was supposed to handle his own shit so everyone around him could handle theirs. He’d had to be strong for his dad, prove he hadn’t been damaged by being in that car. Had to be strong for Jack and Gabe because he’d failed them already. Had to be strong for Becca because she deserved better than a broken soldier.

And he couldn’t be.

He thought the admission would break him, turn him into dust where he stood, but something loosened inside of him. Something eased.

“You know that through that gate, a ways down the hill, is Shaw property. Colin’s at school. Monica’s there.”

Alex stiffened, but Gabe’s and Jack’s grips on his arms didn’t ease.

“You gotta make the choice,” Jack said. “It has to be yours.”

“And if you can’t make it for yourself, make it for us. For Becca. For the people who love you and can’t watch you kill yourself like this.”

“She said she loved me,” Alex offered, because even now he wasn’t sure he could wrap his head around that. That she’d looked him in the eye and said she’d loved him.

“No shit, Sherlock, and even two bitter ex-SEALs aren’t stupid enough to think you don’t love her right back.”

“You told Monica I was going to…”

“Becca just asked her to be there. You make the choice if you go, if you talk.”

“Becca…” Something bitter and sharp poked at him. “So you three sat around and concocted this intervention. Forced my hand and—”

Jack and Gabe let him go. They stepped toward their horses. “We went to Becca. We asked her to set it up with Monica.”

“And she jumped at the chance?”

Gabe and Jack exchanged a look. Alex glared at Jack then Gabe when they didn’t answer. “Well?”

“She told us not to hold our breath,” Gabe offered, raising his eyebrows in challenge. “She said you made your choice and she doesn’t think you’ll ever change it.”

It didn’t hurt. Why would it? He had made his choice, and she had made hers. She couldn’t give him time to fix things. That was her deal, not his.

“We want the Alex we know and love back, not this shadow,” Gabe said, softer now. “Whether Becca says it or not, that’s what she wants too.”

“But the next step is up to you. Not us. We just had to try and help. That’s all we ever wanted to do. Not fix it for you. Not take away your control. Just lend a hand, a shoulder, help.”

“Take it, Alex.”

He didn’t say anything, and Gabe and Jack both shook their heads, Jack muttering something about Becca being right.

Fuck it. He’d prove them all wrong. He’d go right over to Monica and prove to them all some therapist could not fix what was wrong with him.

He angrily flung open the gate, led his horse through, and then got on. And then he rode, hard and fast and without a whole lot of thought to safety. Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance as the sky darkened around him, and all he could think was he wanted to ride like this until he was far away.

He wanted to run until he had control again. He wanted to be far away from Blue Valley, where time always seemed to slip through his fingertips.

He was panting when he reached the old Shaw cabin Monica was renting. What was he doing here? He could handle this himself. It would happen. He just needed more time. He stood and stared at the house, trying to talk himself out of this whole thing.

But he thought of taking a swing at Gabe and Jack and falling flat on his face and…

Maybe he couldn’t fix a damn thing. He didn’t think Monica could either…but he was here, wasn’t he? Becca thought he’d made a choice, and standing here, he could only think about all those times she’d stood up to him or the guys despite her nerves and her insecurities. She’d stood up to her mother.

And what she’d never once done was run away like he wanted to.

Whatever epiphany he’d been working toward with that was cut short when the front door opened. Monica smiled at him.

He hated shrink smiles.

“Why don’t you come in? If you decide not to talk, that’s fine, but you’re giving me the creeps standing in my yard, doing nothing.”

He felt compelled to move forward at that. “Sorry,” he offered.

She gestured him inside and he paused at the threshold. “I’m not here to talk. I’m here to prove a point.”

Her smile didn’t falter, though it changed. “Sounds about right. Want anything to drink?”

“No.”

“Want to have a seat?”

“No.”

Still that pleasant smile didn’t leave her face, even as she perched herself on the arm of the well-worn couch. “You didn’t come to talk, but maybe you’d be okay with listening for a little bit?”

Alex shrugged. He was here to prove a point after all—that he didn’t need this. Why not listen?

“See that picture?” she said, pointing to the fireplace mantel and a picture of a man in an air force uniform.

“My father,” Monica said conversationally. “You remind me of him.”

“All us military guys alike?”

“Not by a long shot. But he was a leader, much like you.”

Alex didn’t know what to say to that, especially since he remembered all too well her saying her father had come back from Desert Storm a changed man.

“It took me a long time to understand him. A lot of years, a lot of maturity, and a lot of studying and working as a therapist. It’s a strange thing to help people because of the person you couldn’t help, and a stranger thing to finally understand him through other people.”

Which didn’t make any sense to him. He’d always understood his father. A good man. An uncomplicated man. Said what he meant or said nothing at all.

It hurt a little, because even in this mental fog Alex knew he wasn’t being honest. Not with the people around him, and not with himself.

He was a mess. He was broken. He was unfixable.

“My dad, and a lot of men like him, survive the military thinking everything is under their control. The good things were because of him, and bad things were really because of him. Because if he had to admit that shit happened because of bad timing or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he’d have to admit and accept he had no control out there, and that’s fatal to a soldier, isn’t it?”

Each word hit with startling accuracy, like bullets. Piercing through the skin and the heart. Alex stood completely still, staring at the picture of a stranger, but he felt every blow.

“He held on to his control even when he was retired, because it was his comfort zone. His safety blanket. Because thinking we have control, for those of us who want it, is safe. It’s easy. It’s a hell of a lot harder to realize it doesn’t matter what we do or decide or want, the universe doesn’t give a shit.”

It was that damn same realization again. That it didn’t matter. That he couldn’t fix anything. That Monica was absolutely right. The universe around him definitely did not give a shit what he wanted, what he was trying to do.

“So you’ve got this all coiled inside you,” she continued, curling her fingers into a fist and tapping it to her stomach, dark-blue eyes making unerring contact. And it didn’t escape Alex’s notice she’d gone from using my father or they to you.

Still, he didn’t stop her. He didn’t know how.

“And you push it down, and you control it, but see, your brain isn’t under your control. Not completely. Not when you sleep, so that’s when it kicks your ass. And it will. It just will—until you stop trying to control it into submission.”

How? he wanted to ask, and yet the word wouldn’t form.

“It’s hard to convince a man who survived that way that it isn’t your world to shape,” she said, and maybe it was the emotion in her voice that kept Alex from stopping her. “That you can’t keep everyone safe, and you can’t always be fine. I tried to convince him he was not worthless without a mission. You are not pointless. I think that is the hardest thing for men in your position to understand and accept.”

Alex felt a lump in his throat, and when he swallowed, it didn’t dissolve. With no mission, he was pointless. Hell, it felt like with a mission, he was worthless. He didn’t know what to do if he wasn’t saving people. If he wasn’t fixing the bunkhouse or building this foundation. If he was doing that, he wasn’t this broken thing.

This broken thing that seemed to envelop him deeper and deeper, stronger and stronger, until he could barely function in his denial. Because he wasn’t a stupid man, even if he was a stubborn one.

Things weren’t right. He wasn’t right, and he didn’t know how to change that. He’d run into gunfire and hell, but he’d always, always run from all this emotion inside of him.

“So that’s all it takes to fix a person?” he asked hoarsely. “Accept you’re not pointless without a mission?” How the hell would he ever do that?

“I can’t make you who you were before, Alex. No therapist could,” she said gently. “But none of us are what we were before war touched our lives. I can’t fix you. You can’t fix you in the military sense of solving a problem. You are not a problem. You are not defective, and believe it or not, therapy isn’t here to fix you. It’s here to give you the tools to deal with the way you’ve changed. This, here, is you.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance, lightning flashing in the windows, but the rain hadn’t started yet. He had time.

“There are so many things you have to offer. You don’t have to be perfect, or feel in control, to offer them. It’s a tough lesson, and you can’t expect it to happen overnight.”

It was those words more than all of the rest that cracked something open inside of him that had been locked tight for a long time. Maybe since before his navy days. Maybe since his mom had died. To consider his father hadn’t wanted him to be in control after Mom died, he’d just wanted him there. To consider Gabe and Jack didn’t need him to be the perfect leader anymore, they might just need him to be a friend. To consider Becca might…mean what she said. That she didn’t need him to be all right, she just needed him to let her in.

“I know you’re no stranger to hard work, Alex. Healing is hard work. It will take time, but if you allow yourself to open up to the conflict you’re feeling instead of shutting it all down, some of that healing is going to happen.”

Then Monica smiled a real smile, none of the fake-pleasantry stuff. “Love is also a great help in that department. The giving of it and the receiving of it. You have a lot of people who love you.”

People he’d given his love to but he hadn’t exactly opened to receiving. No, he’d run away from that. “I need to go.”

“Well, whenever you’re ready to make another appointment, you let me know.”

Even in the midst of all this feeling, that rankled. “Was that what this was? An appointment?”

“It was whatever you want it to be.”

Whatever he wanted it to be.

He wanted it to be a start.

* * *

It was raining. Becca watched it pour in sheets against the window, a worried frown frozen on her face. She knew Jack and Gabe were worried too, but they were dealing with it by drinking and playing cards at the kitchen table while the dogs snoozed underneath.

Becca hadn’t been able to stomach it. Maybe if it hadn’t been storming she could have pretended like she didn’t care if he didn’t come home. She wouldn’t even be remotely tempted to call Monica and see if he was there and safe.

“I’m going to go check on the horses,” she called in a rush, and was sure neither Jack nor Gabe believed her.

“You know he was a Navy SEAL, right?” Gabe called. “Pretty sure he can survive a thunderstorm.”

She wasn’t so certain Alex could survive anything right now. She wasn’t going to go looking for him though. She was just going to…check on the horses. Like she said.

She went over to the line of boots and shoved hers on, pulled on a coat, and flicked the hood up. She sloshed through the mud and rain toward the stables. The air was cool, the rain itself colder, but the heat of the day lingered enough to make it bearable.

The animals were still her refuge, and maybe if she talked to them, she could figure out how to cope with all this hope inside of her. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t quash it. She loved him, and she wanted him to be happy and smile again and…

Ugh.

She made it to the stable and pulled open the door, practically stumbling inside. Alex looked up from where he was standing next to Pal. He gave the horse an absent pat and then stepped out of the stall.

“Everything all right?” he asked in that awful empty tone he’d been using all week.

She bit back the Where have you been? I’ve been worried half to death. “That was going to be my line for you.”

“You’re soaked.”

“Yes. It’s raining quite hard.”

He blinked, looked out the door behind her, and then he started walking into it. Without another word, just stepped out into the downpour.

“Alex, what are you doing?”

Because he wasn’t walking back to the house, he was just standing there. Face upturned to the sky, getting absolutely soaked. She stayed inside the building, though stray drops of rain blew into the doorway where she was standing.

“I’d say I finally found some perfect timing.” He turned to face her, eyes locking on hers even through the rain. “Remember when I said no rain-soaked speeches?”

Becca swallowed, her heart tripping over itself. “Yeah.”

“Maybe I lied. Maybe I lied about a lot of things. Lies are cowardly. I always thought that, but it’s funny when you can lie enough to yourself that you’re downright convinced you’re not telling any lies at all.”

She stepped forward. As much as she wanted him to keep talking, they couldn’t have a real conversation in the rain. “Let’s go inside.”

“No. You deserve rain-soaked speeches and far better than me.”

She took another step toward him in the squelching mud. “We deserve each other. There’s nothing better than that. What could be better than the man I love?” Because she wasn’t going to shout nonsense at him over the rain. If he wanted to talk, they would get straight to the heart of the matter.

Rain poured down his face, but he didn’t blink. “You don’t still love me,” he said, something like flat certainty in his voice.

“Like hell I don’t.”

He stepped toward her, and there was so little between them now all she wanted to do was close it. Eviscerate that space between them. This was too much, being apart, fighting, trying to give up and failing.

She wanted him. She loved him.

“I’m broken,” he said, his voice raspy and barely audible over the steadily pounding rain.

“Aren’t we all?” she returned, her voice a little broken itself. She knew it was a thing for him to admit that. Big. Important. “You think I don’t have a few screwed-up pieces inside of me? It’s called being human, Alex. You’re the only one who’s holding yourself to an impossible standard of righteous perfection.”

“A lot of people have been saying that. About the perfect thing. I didn’t think I was trying to be perfect. I was just trying to be…”

“Perfect. So nothing could ever go wrong again.”

“You know, my mom was killed by a drunk driver.”

Becca nodded, because she did. Burt had told both her and her mom, though he’d never been much on sharing the details.

“I was in the car.”

It hit her hard, so hard the word what whooshed out of her on a gasp.

“I was in the car. But I was on the opposite side and in the back, so I was fine. Barely a scratch. I was eight, and I just… For a long time, I’d just go through the day, over and over again, trying to find a way to change it. To find what I could have done to fix it.”

“Alex.”

“Eventually, I…moved on, or whatever. I decided I couldn’t fix that, but I could fix other things. I could help people. I could save people. With the right skills. Because fixing it, finding the right skills, it means you don’t ever actually have to deal with the grief or the loss or the pain. You keep doing, and you don’t have to feel. That’s been so much of my life, and I don’t know how to let it go.”

He tried to wipe the rain off his face, and she couldn’t help but wonder if there were tears mixed in, because she was definitely crying herself. Crying for that little boy and for the man who thought he could fix anything.

“Maybe you don’t have to let it go so much as…accept you’re going to save people in a much different way now. Because you will still be helping people. This thing we’re building is going to help people.”

“I think, maybe, I might need to let it help me a little too.”

“I would agree, and I would also suggest maybe you could let me help you a little bit. Especially with the emotion part of things. I’m not afraid of them. I’ll hold your hand through them.”

He reached out, pushing wet strands of hair off her forehead. “I don’t know how, but maybe it’s a skill that you learn like any other. You think?”

She nodded.

“I can’t promise to make everything right. I can’t even promise that I…I’ll always know what to do. I don’t know how… I…” He took a deep breath and let it out, the rain pelting them at an even steadier pace. “This is a really shitty rain-soaked speech.”

“You’re touching me, so it’s going pretty good.” She’d remember this moment always. The moment he didn’t try to make promises or fix anything, the moment he admitted he didn’t know how. It was everything.

He kept brushing his fingers across her temples, down her cheeks. “I don’t know how to be a man who isn’t in control of everything, but I guess I have to learn. No, not I guess. I have to learn. Maybe you could help out with that?”

Everything inside of her soared, and she didn’t care that she was drenched or cold. Not with Alex asking for help, opening himself up. “I could help, and I want to.”

“Okay, good. Good.” He visibly swallowed, running a hand over her wet hair, cupping the back of her head, and bringing her mouth to his. But before he kissed her or let her kiss him, he pressed his wet forehead to hers.

“I love you, Becca.”

She tried to choke back a sob, but he probably heard it even over the din of the rain. She leaned into him, clutching his shirt. “I love you too,” she managed to squeak.

“I won’t always be perfect or even very good at this whole thing, but—”

“You just have to love me, Alex. That’s all. Love me. Talk to me. Let me in. It’s not so hard, I don’t think. Not if we both want it and are willing to work for it.”

“I’m more than willing. More than. Hard work isn’t what scares me, but I don’t want to disappoint you, and I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’ll probably do both. I think it’s okay if we tell each other when we do and work to do better. I think that’s…that’s love, when it’s working. When you can tell each other what you want, what you need. And you know what I need right now?”

“What?”

“To get the hell inside. It’s pouring.”

He laughed against her cheek, pulling her in tight against him. “Thank you,” he whispered into her ear.

“For what?”

“For loving me. And telling me when it didn’t work and not stopping loving me when I was an ass.”

She linked hands with him, pulling him toward the ranch. “As rain-soaked speeches go, it wasn’t half-bad, but I’d like to be dry now. And possibly naked.”

“And you think men have one-track minds.”

“Turns out women do too. Or at least this woman.” She kept tugging him toward the house, wanting to be inside and dry and warm and, yes, naked.

But mostly she wanted to curl up with him in bed, knowing he’d stay. Knowing he loved her, and knowing that even if things were hard again, they’d tell each other. They’d give, and they’d hurt, and they’d probably get mad.

But together.