“How did your shit distract him?”
“I went down in the middle of a contact—a gunfight. Pulse out of control, I couldn’t fucking breathe. I fell. He turned his back on a blind spot to catch me and died in my arms instead.”
Moving hurts. I do it anyway and shift to face him, blocking out a vicious stomach cramp I know he sees anyway. “None of that sounds like your fault.”
“Then you’re not fucking listening. He was my squad leader. I should’ve told him I had a problem before we went out—fuck, before we were deployed.”
“It’s been going on that long?”
Mal looks away, breaking the intense eye contact he’s so good at. “It started after Jack got hurt. I thought it was in my head, that it would go away once I got busy again, but it never did.”
There’s so much shit to unpack there. I go with the most obvious. “Did you really think combat would make what happened to Jack easier for you?”
“I was trying not to think at all. War and sex are good for that. Why do you think I was loitering around Saltkiss Bay that night?”
The same reason I was. To feel something that wasn’t numbness or pain. To shut out the noise. And fuck, those few minutes with him on that beach had been worth more than a whole night with someone else.
“What happened to the rest of your team?”
Mal’s gaze fractures again. “The building we were in went up before we could get out. Vin was already gone, but the rest of usgot mauled a bit. Nothing bad enough to ground them, though. That was just me, and I guess I deserved it.”
I picture the vicious scar on his back and I sit up faster than my deprived body wants to, ignoring the nauseous ache I know I’m stuck with for a while now.
Not sure if he means to, but Mal follows, reaching for me, and I let him. I reach forhimand this time it’s my hands on his face, rubbing my fingers through the scruff on his jaw as if I have any right to. As if I haven’t spent the past few weeks using him to drown out my own twisted pain. “A bullet killed Vinnie, not your fucking heartbeat. And you didn’t deserve to lose the life you chose because you got sick.”
Mal doesn’t answer. He’s checking my pulse and the temperature of my cold skin. But I know he’s listening, even if he’s not ready to hear it. “Can I ask you something while you’re being nice?”
Wariness creeps over me. The urge to push him away. To blow from his bed andrun. But even without the bone-melting fatigue weighing me down, Mal has me in a thrall I can’t break.
I skate my thumbs over his cheekbones. Then I let my hands drop and answer his question with a slow nod.
Mal’s all-consuming stare returns. “I have a number for Marc Ramsey. Can I call him and tell him you won’t be at that fucking hospital for a few days?”
“I don’t work for Marc.”
“No, but I know you’re friends and he can handle this for you if you let him.”
Mal’s not wrong. About Marc. About any of it.
I acquiesce without words.
Mal rolls from the bed and leaves the room.
I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling, hating the scrape of my pulse while he’s gone. Whatever this is between us, howeverit plays out, he can’t be my crutch. Mal might not believe it, but he deserves better than that, we both do.
Unbidden, my gaze slides to the bowl he’s left on the chest of drawers he’s never stored so much as a pair of socks in.
Slides away again.
I can’t.
Not yet.
Not ever?—
No. That’s not true. This is going to pass, like it always does. But every time I lose this fight, there’s less of me by the end of it. What happens when there’s nothing left?
Mal comes back with his phone in his hand. That scraped feeling…it settles, but we’re far from done.