Gracie.
The tattoo on the inside of Ash’s thick forearm, spanning from wrist to crook, spelled Gracie, and Olivia wondered how she’d overlooked it until now.
A patriotic pattern consisting mostly of subdued reds and blues, she’d taken it at face value—a softly shaded American flag, rippling in a strong breeze, with a cluster of ornate braided tassels running along the pole side. Long and twisted, the golden ropes flowed randomly across the face of the flag in an innocuous manner.
But if you looked closely, if you followed the intertwining tassels without the stars and stripes distracting the eye, you could see that those ropes created another pattern altogether. They overlapped and intersected in a decorative cursive script that, when viewed at a certain angle, formed a single, precious word.
Gracie.
“Go to sleep, darlin’.” Kissing the top of her head, Ash cuddled her closer, his strong arms secure. “I can hear you thinking.”
Swallowing, she tried to summon sleep. It was futile.
“I was thinking about, well, you know,” she said a few minutes later, hesitating. “This tattoo on your arm.”
He snorted, fully aware of her thoughts. Loosening his grip only slightly, he threw a muscled arm over his head, a telltale sign he was near sleep.
And not taking the bait.
“When did you get it?” she whispered, knowing he heard her. The sudden rigidity in his body told her so.
When he didn’t answer, Olivia didn’t push. She understood his need for distance. A child’s death was painful, no matter the passage of time.
“I got it a few months after she died.” Voice low and gritty, he squeezed her hand. The gesture reassuring, yet needy. “After our fight on the patio at the vineyard, when you called me a selfish bastard and told me I cared more about other people’s families than my own. The day I knew you’d left me for good.”
When she opened her mouth to beg forgiveness, regretting the ugly stain of her words, he stopped her. “You were right. I was selfish. I’d spent years searching for the acceptance and approval I couldn’t get from Marshall. I went everywhere The Unit sent me, and I did everything they told me to do, because in return, they gave me what I craved. Hell, they put me on a pedestal and cheered my abilities. Rewarded my efforts with rank and money. I couldn’t let go of that spotlight. Even once you got pregnant and I decided to retire, I still lived for the danger. Thrived on the adrenaline. I couldn’t make the personal sacrifice. I couldn’t get out in time to save you and our baby—” His voice broke, the heartbreaking sound loud in the dark of night. “I couldn’t see beyond my own hype. I couldn’t see it was really you I’d been searching for. You and our daughter. My own family. The one I failed to protect.”
“Shh,” she whispered. “Don’t talk. You don’t have to say anymore. I know, Ash. I know.”
“But you don’t.” He lifted his arm, indicating the tattoo. “Marking my body with the flag seemed symbolic, somehow. Of my purpose as a defender of freedom, of the American dream. As justification for breaking my promise to you. The reason I never held my own baby in my arms.”
Olivia felt remorse for asking the painful question and wished she could take it back.
When he rolled to face her, her breath caught at the look in his eyes. Normally flashing and bright, they were dull and distant. Mouth tight, the lines on his face were more pronounced, and she no longer saw Ash staring back at her.
Instead, she saw a soldier.
“Can I tell you something?” This monotone voice didn’t belong to Ash, either.
It belonged to a highly decorated operator in the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta.
“You can tell me anything.” She ran the pad of her finger across his brow, half expecting this strange man to bat it away.
“I saved the lives of thirty-two children that day, the day my daughter died. My team and I raided a Nigerian village and rescued thirty-two girls from captivity, from a life of brutality and slavery.”
Stunned by the admission considering his duties were strictly classified, she remembered the story dominating the news weeks before her due date.
A radical jihadist group kidnapping dozens of girls after storming a school, their convoy of trucks, buses, and weapons no match for insufficient security guards. She’d been in her eighth month of pregnancy and greatly disturbed by the reports.
“Had I known,” the stranger continued, “I would’ve traded those thirty-two girls for my girl. If given the choice of leaving them there to endure gang rape, hard labor, and a life of unspeakable cruelty, just so I’d be home to save my baby, I would’ve done it in a heartbeat. Aborted the mission and walked away with a clear conscience, never thinking twice about those thirty-two girls.”
Cupping his cheek, she frowned. “Of course, you would’ve. Any parent would choose their own child over someone else’s. There’s no sin in that, only biology. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re a good man.”
“No, you don’t get it. I was paid to be an operator first and foremost. A husband, a father, those roles came last. They would’ve yanked me from the team, reprimanded me to the fullest extent had I shown any reluctance for a mission. I wasn’t a good man. I was a good operator. I did bad things to be a good operator. I was no less violent than the targets we pursued. At times, I was more violent. More ruthless. And now, when I think about those thirty-two girls, I’m bitter. I’m pissed off. I’m fucking angry to the core that those fathers got their daughters back, but my daughter died. I didn’t protect her, Liv. I couldn’t save her. How could I save them and not her? What kind of man does that? What kind of father?”
Fat tears plopped from his eyes, one at a time as if forcing their escape despite him.
“Oh, do I have news for you.” She smiled, dabbing his cheek. “You’re a good man. The best I’ve ever known. And you’re a good father, too. There’s a Pepto-Bismol pink bedroom down the hall to prove it.”
He shook his head in protest, but she was undeterred.
“Our baby was going to die that day, no matter what. It’s awful, it’s inhumane, and I have a real beef with Rosa’s God over it. But it happened. Even if you’d wrapped me in cotton and shielded me with your body my entire pregnancy, it would’ve happened. Nobody could’ve saved her. Not me. Not a doctor. Not her superhero daddy. But the day your daughter died, you made sure thirty-two other daughters didn’t die. You were a father that day, Asher Coleson. A good one. There are thirty-two girls alive today because you made it so.”
He palmed his face and turned away, his broad shoulders shaking.
Rubbing his back, she didn’t intrude on his private moment, knowing he saw it as weakness.
“I cry in the shower,” she confessed, when his shudders subsided. “Once a week, I apply a deep conditioning treatment and give myself permission to cry for ten minutes. When time’s up, I feel better.”
It was another minute before he came out of hiding. When he did, she smiled, happy to see her husband’s face instead of a stranger’s.
“And then I have a fabulously good hair day.”
He twisted a strand around his finger. “Fabulous every day.”
“Thank you.” Her stomach growled, their skipped dinner hours ago. “Now I could really go for some ice cream. You fly, I buy?”
He laughed soundlessly. “I don’t know where I’d be without you, Livvy. Probably in a padded room, fighting the demons of my own doing.” He traced her smile. “Thank you for coming back to me.”
“No, thank you. You forced me to face my hate.” She brought his hand to her heart. “Yours. Safe and sound. For forever.”
“And mine,” he confirmed, copying the move with her hand. “All the way.”
His sweet, clinging kiss turned carnal, and she was sorely tempted to saddle up and take another ride, but… ice cream.
“Seriously, though,” she mumbled, against his mouth. “Can I interest you in some hot fudge? Because I want a double-scoop sundae in the worst way, and I’m not giving up until I get one.”
She yelped when he rolled over top of her, pinning her hands and nipping at the ticklish skin covering her ribs. “Only if I can eat mine off you.”
Body brimming with two different types of hunger, she said the one word guaranteed to get her ice cream. “Pancakes.”