She had no idea how he was going to change those memories now, but his continued demeanor, too damn composed for normal Garrett mode, confirmed this wasn’t going to be some cozy fireside chat. Sage struggled to borrow his calmness as he wove their fingers tighter together. More silence stretched while he stared into the grate where so many logs had burned into ash while they loved the night away.
“How much do you know about my relationship with him?” Garrett finally asked.
“With Wyatt?” At his short nod, she tilted her head and continued. “Well, I’ve only met him once. He seems like a generous man, though there are parts of him that are closed off, that’s for sure. He seems proud of you, but he’s afraid to show it somehow.”
Garrett snorted. “Afraid to? How about just won’t?”
Sage peered harder. “I’m officially lost here.”
He stabbed his free hand into his hair. As he lowered it, he balled it into a fist. “Guess I never told you how I used to idolize him more than Dad.”
Sage felt her eyebrows jump. “You didn’t.”
He nodded. “I tend to leave that part out of the life story most of the time.”
Sage searched her memory for a recollection of Wyatt Hawkins. When she’d met him during their trip to Iowa just before Garrett proposed, it had been during a big family barbecue at the home in which Garrett grew up. Wyatt and his wife, Josie, hadn’t traveled far. They lived next door. Like Garrett, his dad, and his two brothers, the man was tall, tawny-haired, and all muscle, even for a guy closing in on his late thirties. Josie seemed completely smitten with him. Wyatt clearly returned the sentiment, always kissing his wife or pulling her onto his lap. But around the rest of the family, the man was guarded, even a little aloof.
Like a man who had to keep a lot of secrets.
Comprehension hit her like a tidal wave. “Damn,” she murmured. “He’s ex Special Forces, isn’t he?”
Garrett preceded his confirmation of that with a resolute jut of his jaw. “When I was a kid, Wyatt was larger than life. I didn’t watch the Transformers or the Ninja Turtles or fucking G.I. Joe; I had a real-life version of them rolled together in my uncle. He upped when he was nineteen and was damn near plucked out of Basic for the Special Forces track. A lot of folks said they’d never seen anyone like him. The guy loved being a soldier. He was stationed with the fifth SF group, down in Kentucky, before getting sent to Ranger School and graduating top of his battalion.”
A grin peeked through his lips, turning back the clock on his face by at least five years. “They threw this wild-ass party for him when he made Triple Canopy in record time.” He broke out in a full chuckle, making Sage break into a grin as well. “Not every day a town had a guy who kicked ass in Jump School, the Special Forces funnel, and the Ranger course, right? The bash went on for days, and they used a cleared field on the west side of the farm for what was quite possibly the biggest mud football game ever played. I was only eleven, but I could’ve died that day thinking I’d hit heaven.”
Sage laughed softly. “I can imagine you had.”
The faraway haze in his eyes got a little thicker. “For a bunch of years, we didn’t see him a lot. His deployments were long. But man, when he got a chance to make it home…it was better than Christmas. I’d beg Mom to let me skip school. I’d spend the days at Wyatt’s heels, worse than a damn puppy, drinking up his charisma, letting him kick my ass in mock ‘training battles.’”
“Oh boy,” Sage murmured. “The dynamic duo, Hawkins style.”
“Yeah.” Garrett laughed. “Yeah, it was…well, it was awesome.”
She repositioned one of her hands to run her fingers over his coiled knuckles. With the same care, she studied his face. His rugged features had never snagged her breath more. Finally, he was letting her see everything—a landscape of emotion as years of memories bombarded him.
“So what happened?” she asked at last. When he gave her only a tighter scowl, she pressed, “Garrett, what happened?”
The dark haze in his gaze went as thick as grenade smoke. “Iraq happened.”
Sage nodded. “And he was likely in the thick of it.”
“No ‘likely’ about it.”
She winced. “How bad?”
He took in a heavy breath. “I’m not sure. He never talked about it in full. From what I can snap together, he survived at least three roadside attacks. The one that sent him home for good took out everybody in his unit but him.”
“Whoa.”
His face, now in profile, settled on a strangely serene expression. It was almost like he prepared to bow his head and pray. It scared her. She knew that look. It happened when someone went on agony overload and had to detach from what they talked about in order to remain sane. She’d never seen it on Garrett’s face before, even after he returned from missions that had been brutal to his body and psyche. But right now, recalling how the war had taken his beloved hero from him, the grief gouged deeply.
She squeezed his fingers harder to let him know she was still there—with everything she was worth.
“By then, it was no secret to any of us that the war was carving bigger pieces out of him. But I was thirteen and filled with all the never-surrender bullshit the man himself had filled me with. I thought that as soon as Wyatt was home for good, I’d single-handedly turn him back into Soldier-God Hawkins. Only this time, it would be better. There’d be no deployment to take Wyatt away from me. We could just—” The church-worthy expression dissolved off his face. He huffed heavily and closed his eyes, revealing the tears collecting on his lashes. “Well, we didn’t. Wyatt decided the National Geographic channel and Jeopardy marathons were more exciting than hanging out with the kid who still remembered the night he’d scored five touchdowns in the mud.
“Slowly, he realized he was pretty much being a broke dick. He started helping Dad run the farm, but he picked all the one-man jobs that didn’t require him to speak to anyone. He also told Mom not to let me play hooky anymore, because by that time I’d made it damn clear to anyone who’d listen that I wanted to make SF when I grew up.”
Sage unhooked a hand long enough to give a reassuring stroke down his arm. “I’ll bet he was really proud when you did.”
Garrett shrugged on shoulders taut with bitterness. “I have no idea if he was or not. Frankly, I stopped caring—especially after one pretty memorable summer night.”
Until now, the conversation had clearly been uncomfortable for him. But his uneasiness took on a new strand of tension with that statement. Sage had the distinct impression that the celebrity confessional was about to get an R rating. Or worse.
“Memorable…how?”
For the first time since they’d sat down, Garrett looked like the words in his mouth were chunks of something vile.
Oh, yeah. This was going to get awkward.
“We all pitched in and got Wyatt a new Nintendo console for his birthday. He’d play on it at night when the flashbacks from Iraq kept him up, which was pretty much every night. When I couldn’t sleep myself, I’d sneak down the rain gutter and join him for an hour or so. It was barely a connection, but I clung to it. I hoped we’d work our way back to at least a friendship.”
“Of course you did,” Sage assured.
“Well, that night…I only got as far as the barn.”
She accessed more memories. “The big brown storage one, between the two houses, right?”
“Roger,” he confirmed.
Sage’s instinct started kicking in. There was no way it couldn’t. The nervous flicks of his gaze, the color climbing his neck, the finger he drummed on a knee… Oh, yeah. This wasn’t just uncomfortable for him. It was torture.
She tried to ease things for him with a thoughtful tone. “You only got to the barn…because Wyatt was inside?”
He took a prolonged second before answering. “Yeah.”
“Was he alone?”
He rolled his head as if she’d punched him. “No. Josie was in there with him.”
She could’ve filled in that blank too. With that new slice of the image, she started filling in details for herself—but didn’t voice them aloud. Garrett needed to tell her himself. The words needed to come out of him, if his perception of them was ever going to change. If he was ever going to heal.
“What were they doing?” She rubbed his knuckles again in a gentle coax.