Her voice broke. “That’s changing now, Reese. You are changing.” Never had she wanted to hold a man more than him. In Reese’s expression Shay saw the devastation, the fall from grace, that he had experienced. She knew if she held him, loved him, it would help put the torn pieces of him back together again. It was a knowing so deep in her heart that it drove tears into her eyes. Removing her hand from his arm, she added in a trembling tone, “You don’t see yourself. But I see you. Everyone you come in contact with, Reese, admires and respects you. Surely, you’ve realized that?”
He winced and looked away from her. His hands tightened around the mug. Finally, he forced himself to turn and look into her moist eyes. “I have, but I’m afraid, Shay.”
She stared at him, uncomprehending. “Afraid?” Of what? Shay knew PTSD had insidious, octopus-like tentacles that toxically moved into a person’s head and emotions. It destroyed their self-confidence. It made them question themselves on every level. It beat them down. Reese was the last person she would ever think was afraid of anything. He’d had the courage to support her, and had reaped the respect of the other vets, which was not an easy task. Charlie doted on him, praised him to the rafters, bragging about his accounting abilities. Even her own father respected him! That had blown Shay away.
Reese gritted his teeth for a moment, trying to put what he felt into words. “I’m afraid to hope,” he rasped.
Her heart tore open. His low, unsteady voice devastated her as nothing else had in a long time. Shay gripped his arm. “Because of that monster ripping you up inside?”
“Yeah . . . that. I’m afraid it will come back. That this miracle that’s happened inside me, the anxiety gone, will return.”
“No, it won’t,” Shay said. “Taylor treated me a year ago and it’s never returned. I know what it’s like to feel on tenterhooks, waiting for that horrible anxiety to come blasting through you again. But it won’t.” She struggled to control her own, unraveling emotions. But she would not let go of contact with Reese because Shay knew it helped him. His eyes were cloudy with self-doubt, recrimination, regret. Oh, she knew all those feelings only too well. She had them herself.
“I know how tough it is to hope again,” she whispered. “I’ve hoped so often, and every time, it’s been crushed in front of my eyes. It made me feel so ashamed. I know what you’re saying, Reese. Every time we try to get up, someone smashes us back down again. They look at us as either vermin from the street, or they see us as weaker than they are. They don’t understand how we got there. You can’t, unless it’s happened to you. I get all of that.”
Reese gave her a quick glance. “I’m half the man I used to be, Shay. Even if my anxiety stays away, I’ve lost two years of my life. I destroyed my marriage. I couldn’t remain in the Corps.”
Anger and desperation curled through her at his words. “I accept what happened to you, Reese. I didn’t know you before, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is how you’ve conducted yourself here at the Bar C since you’ve arrived. You’ve worked hard and consistently. You’re a team player and the vets have embraced you wholeheartedly as one of them. You’re not what you were before. You’re climbing out of that hole.”
She swallowed. “You have to realize how much you’ve helped me, Reese.” Shay wasn’t prepared when he lifted his head, his eyes widening with shock as though he hadn’t believed how much he’d helped her when she’d told him before. “When you arrived here, I saw a wounded man and a vet. From the moment you walked in that door”—she jabbed a finger toward it—“you have conducted yourself with honor, Reese. Never once have you let anyone down. You know the value of working in a team environment. You care about all of us. I see it every day in large and small ways. You never ask anything for yourself, but you’re always willing to put yourself out for any of us.” She saw his eyes glitter with what she thought were tears, his mouth a hard line, as if holding back so many, many unspoken feelings.
“I wish,” he began hoarsely, “that you’d met me when I was healthy and whole, Shay.”
Startled by his words, she sat paralyzed for a moment, only now beginning to realize the depth of damage done to Reese by the PTSD, by whatever event he’d managed to survive. It haunted him like a demon: the horror of what had happened, of how he handled it, of how he’d survived whatever the event was. Unconsciously, she moved her fingers across his shoulder and down his arm.
“There is no one who doesn’t respect you, Reese. No one.” She stared into his moist eyes, watching him fight back tears. There was such devastation in his expression, hope buried in the carnage of his PTSD. Shay wasn’t sure who would win that battle within Reese. And that’s when she realized that only time . . . time . . . would decide the outcome of that war that he carried within him. Every day was a battle for a PTSD-ridden vet.