How much to admit? “Every time your team deployed and came home safe, it was like cheating Fate. Like it was only a matter of time before something bad happened.”
“I felt like that at the beginning of every mission, too.” His soft admission was threaded with understanding.
“I tried to keep that pessimistic side of me hidden from Noah.”
“Why?”
“He wouldn’t have understood. He comes from a long line of happy, optimistic people. Eventually, I couldn’t stand myself. I was being selfish. A baby would make him happier than anything, and I wanted to make him happy more than anything.”
“Do you regret it?”
For the first time, she spoke the truth aloud. “Not anymore. Not after how everything turned out. I can’t imagine my life without Ben.”
He flinched at the sound of her son’s name.
“Does it bother you?” she asked.
“What?” The wariness in his voice betrayed him.
“That my son is named after you.”
He shook his head and rolled to his back, throwing his arm over his eyes. His jawline was prominent and hard, his mouth pulled into a tight line. “Not bother. It humbles me. He was a good man. I did my best to protect him.” His voice had thickened. “It wasn’t enough.”
“I don’t blame you for what happened, you know.”
“Maybe you should.” He presented her his back and pulled the covers up around his ear.
She stared at the back of his head so intently she expected to see his hair catch on fire. He didn’t move. He wasn’t asleep, though. His body was too tense and his breathing unsteady. “What was your nightmare about?”
The silence that followed her question was oppressive. Finally, he asked, “What nightmare?”
“The one that woke me up earlier. You called out.”
“What did I say?”
“I couldn’t make it out.”
“It was nothing.”
“Liar.”
The huffy sound he made turned the tension down from incendiary to uncomfortable. “An old dream. This cabin … the ceiling is so low. It’s dark and smell makes me think of a freshly dug grave. Unless the weather is particularly nasty, I avoid staying the night.”
She ignored the niggling guilt over her wimpy survival skills. “Did something happen on one of your missions in Afghanistan?”
“No.” The word was barely a whisper.
She moved close enough to feel the heat radiating off his broad back. “Growing up in foster care then?”
“Yeah.”
She waited. If she pushed, he would retreat.
After a few minutes listening to the fire crackle in the silence, a soft rumble of words emerged. “I was eleven and on my third foster home. Early enough that I still had hope I would land with a good family that would want to keep me.”
“They weren’t good?”
“The parents were okay, but they had two kids. Both boys. Teenagers. I was big for eleven, but not as big and strong as they were. It started small. A few shoves. Blaming me for messes they made. Fighting back only made it worse. One day, I threatened to call Social Services on their asses. I wouldn’t have, of course, but they got scared and locked me in an old cedar chest.”
“For how long?”
“Long enough to pass out.”
“Oh my God, Bennett, you could have died.”
He’d been eleven. Still a child. Between his mother dying from an overdose and his stark existence in the foster-care system, Harper couldn’t help but think of Ben. It was her job to protect him and she’d do it with her life. Bennett hadn’t had a champion.
Without thinking beyond the moment, she scooched closer and put her arm around him from behind. It was like hugging a gargoyle, and she half-expected him to shove her arm away as if comfort were a communicable disease.
He didn’t. As the seconds ticked off, his body lost its edge. His hand glanced across hers and she caught it, linking their fingers and squeezing.
Her hug was an offering to the eleven-year-old Bennett. Yet the longer it went on, the less innocent the touch grew. She hadn’t been this physically or emotionally close to a man since Noah.
She was older—wiser was up for debate—and Bennett was more complicated than Noah had been. With Noah, she’d kept her own complexities and warring emotions under wraps, but she had a feeling that Bennett would not only sympathize but also empathize.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Who was she apologizing to? Herself? Bennett? Or Noah?
“No. I’m sorry for saying anything. It’s not important anymore.”
If it weren’t still important, he wouldn’t have had a nightmare twenty-five-odd years later. Instead of calling him on his BS, she snuggled closer, their fingers still entwined, and held him tighter.
* * *
Harper popped her eyes open. Daylight suffused the cabin. The fire had burned down, but her body was warm under the covers against Bennett. She’d been dimly aware of changing positions throughout the night like a dance, ending with him on his back with her head pillowed on his shoulder. Her hand was sandwiched under his on his chest, his heart tapping a steady rhythm.
It was achingly intimate. Part of her wanted to rip herself away from him, but another part wanted to drift back to sleep and ignore the messy world outside the cabin door.
A sigh interrupted the sleepy cadence of his breathing. She could tell the exact moment he exited dreams for reality. His body turned into a taut rubber band, thrumming with dynamic energy. She forced herself to stay relaxed against him.
He curled his hand around hers for a heartbeat before letting go and shifting out of the bed. As if she’d just woken, she hummed and stretched, watching him through slitted eyes. He stoked the fire. Jack sat by the door, not making a sound.
Bennett let him out and let in a blast of cold air. She shivered and pulled the covers over her nose, trying to capture the warmth he’d left behind. He stood by a window, the light limning his profile, and ran a hand through his hair.
The image that popped into her head was an abandoned toy soldier, still upright but grimly alone and cast aside. Her breath got stuck somewhere between her lungs and heart.
He moved to the door, the illusion broken. Jack trotted back inside, shaking himself. After giving Jack another can of dog food, Bennett approached the bed with a foil packet. She looked up at him with the covers still over most of her face.
“Can I interest you in a Pop-Tart?”
“What flavor?”
“Brown sugar. Frosted, of course.”
She snaked her hand out of the cover and took the packet. “I don’t want to get crumbs in your bed.”
“I won’t kick you out.” His slow smile could only be described as insinuating. Her insides went crazy, her heart dancing across her ribs, something slow and sexy like a tango. Before she could do more than stutter nonsense, he retreated to poke at the logs in the fireplace.
She ate one of the Pop-Tarts, but her throat was so dry she had a hard time swallowing. “I don’t suppose you have a hand-cranked coffeemaker stashed somewhere?”
He huffed a laugh. “I don’t even have instant, unfortunately. You miss it?”
“Desperately. Could you pass me my jeans?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Let me get them warmed up first.”
When he tossed them to her, they were dryer-fresh toasty. She shimmied them on under the covers and girded herself to emerge from her cocoon. Barefoot she ran on her toes to join him at the fire, squatting to hold her hands out.
“Was it this cold yesterday?”
“No. The clouds cleared and the temperature has fallen even with the sunshine.”
“Is it too cold to hike out?”
“Not going to get much warmer today. It won’t be so bad once we’re moving. I need to take a look at your blisters before we head out, though.”
Unable to unstick her gaze from him, she nodded, aware of him in ways that made parts of her tingle. Or was that the beginnings of frostbite? Bennett didn’t seem to be battling the same weirdness she grappled with. For all she knew, he cuddled up with women all the time.