The Returning Hero (12 page)

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “If Sam was here, this never would have happened, Brett,” she told him, her voice barely more than a whisper. “But we are here, together, and somehow we’re helping each other through. Can’t we just enjoy being together without feeling guilty?”

He nodded. “I’ve always thought of you as part of my family, Jamie. I guess I just don’t want to be responsible for losing another family member.”

Jamie touched his cheek, let the sheet fall away to her waist. “You’re not going to lose me, Brett. I promise. But I’m also not going to lie to you and say that I don’t love Sam still, because I do. So much. But the way I feel for you…”

“We can’t,” he insisted.

“We can,” she said firmly, not about to let them ruin what had happened because they were afraid. Because he was scared of losing something that he wasn’t even in danger of losing.

They stared at each other, and she knew how hard it was for him because it was just as hard for her.

“You’re not betraying Sam.”

“If sleeping with his wife isn’t betraying him, then I don’t know what is.”

“Come here,” Jamie said.

He looked like he was going to resist, but he obeyed, moving closer. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be with her, she knew that, but she also understood that his morals could ruin what was so fragile, so new, between them right now.

“Take off your top and get under the covers.”

Brett went to protest but she shook her head before he could say anything. “Just do it for me, please.”

He followed her instructions and pulled the covers up over them both, but he still looked awkward. Jamie pushed him down on the pillow then lay her head on his chest, arm around him.

“I need this, Brett. After last night, I can’t deal with arguing or not having you here beside me. Because then I might start to feel guilty about what we did, and I’ve accepted the decision I made.”

She listened to his breathing, focused on the inhale and exhale of air and the way it made his chest move.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Brett told her.

She traced circles on his skin, fingertips needing to touch. “You won’t hurt me, Brett, and I won’t hurt you. But if you walk out on me? That will hurt. Because I don’t want last night to have meant nothing. If we’re talking about betraying Sam, then that would be it.”

“As in you don’t want what we did to be a one-night stand.”

“I don’t want it to be a one-night anything,” she admitted, moving so she could rest her chin on his chest and stare at him. “What we did wasn’t because of loneliness or selfishness, it was because it felt right, and I know you feel the same.”

Brett reached for her hair, stroking it. “I just don’t feel right, being in this room, seeing the photos of him, knowing that I’ve just stepped in and somehow taken over his life. Slept in his bed with his wife. It’s not okay.”

Jamie smiled at him, needing him to be honest with her, needing to hear the words that he’d been holding trapped inside.

“You stepped in to look after me, and what happened between us? It just happened. But if you want me to…”

“You’re not taking down his photos because of me.”

She laughed at the seriousness of Brett’s tone. “I’m not taking down any photos, but what I was going to say is that we can always stay in the other bedroom. If you need to, I mean.”

Brett groaned. “Can we just go out for breakfast? Walk somewhere?”

“You bet,” she said, leaning forward to kiss him.

What started as a light peck became deeper, their lips moving softly, brushing together, before Brett cupped the back of her head so she couldn’t get away, mouth more insistent.

“It doesn’t seem to matter what I tell myself,” he muttered, breaking the kiss, “I just can’t get enough of you.”

“Breakfast,” she told him, pushing herself up and dragging the sheet with her so she could escape to the bathroom without him seeing her naked in the bright light. “Before we end up staying in bed all day.”

It wouldn’t have been a bad thing, but they both needed to get out of the house. There were too many memories in this room that were haunting Brett, and if she were perfectly honest, in the full morning sunshine, there was something not so easy to ignore about being with another man in the room she’d shared for years with her husband. No matter how much she wanted it to feel right, she knew that going out was exactly what they needed to do. A quick shower and a little makeup and she’d be ready to go.

She’d already been through losing her father, and then as good as losing her alcoholic mom for years at a time. So losing Sam and then losing Brett? Not something she had any intention of letting happen, especially not now that they’d spent the night together.

* * *

Brett clipped Bear’s leash on and dropped to his haunches, looking the dog in the eye as he ran his fingers through his fur. He missed his own dog like crazy, was so used to having a constant companion by his side.

“You’re doing pretty well with everything that’s going on,” he told the canine.

He received a low whine from Bear in return.

“It might not be guns and explosives, but it’s still tough, huh?”

“Are you talking to yourself or the dog?”

Brett cleared his throat when he realized Jamie had walked into the room. “The dog, of course. Talking to myself would just be weird.”

“He saying much in response?” she teased.

Brett looked her up and down, knowing there was no way he’d ever be able to resist her so long as he was staying in the house with her. When he wasn’t with her, he was thinking about her, and when he was with her…
damn
. No amount of good intentions would ever help him when they were together.

“Let’s go,” he said, before he had any longer to think about Jamie and the way she was making him feel.

“Are we going to walk all the way there?”

He laughed. “You make it sound like it’s a hike.”

“I’m the girl who always takes a car. You seem to keep forgetting that.”

“You have a dog now, and a guy with you who likes to feel like he’s earned a cooked breakfast. So Bear and I vote for the walk, that’s you outnumbered.”

Jamie sighed and took Bear’s leash from him, smiling as their hands collided. “My dog, remember? I’m the one who’s supposed to be up for walking all the time.”

Bear was looking up at them, studying them each in turn, and he felt sorry for the poor dog, listening to them banter. There was no chance he’d ever figure out what they were saying, and he’d been so used to understanding commands when he’d been on the leash for work.

“He’s all yours, let’s go.”

Brett waited for her to shut and lock the door behind them, before walking slow to match her pace. The sun was shining down on them already, another hot Sydney day. He’d spent days and weeks out under the scorching sun, working with his dog and the other guys, patrolling for explosives constantly, but that sun had never been enjoyable. It had drained them all and made them grumpy, made their skin dry and their throats burn. This sun made him feel free.
Alive.

“Brett, I know you don’t want to talk about what happened….”

He glanced sideways, seeing the frustrated look on Jamie’s face as she clearly tried to figure out how to talk to him about something she was obviously so desperate to know more about. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to her, it was just that dredging up the past wasn’t always worth the pain, or the reality. He’d been in a black hole that could have swallowed him alive, his thoughts so dark they’d almost consumed him, and going back wasn’t good for him or her.

If he shut his eyes, he could still smell the burned flesh, still feel the searing pain of the fire as it shot up his leg and across his back.

“I just…” She paused and stopped walking, arms crossed like she didn’t know what to do with them. “I just want to know if it happened fast? If he suffered. I’m sorry.” She blew out a big breath. “I’ve been wanting to ask someone that question for so long, and I think you’re the only one who can answer it because everyone else just wants to fob me off and pretend like it wasn’t anywhere near as horrific as I know it was.”

Brett started walking again, because if he was going to talk then he needed to keep moving, needed something else to focus on to help him say the words. He’d thought she wanted to know about his experience, what he’d been through, but she wanted to know about Sam and he could hardly hold that back from her. She deserved to know.

“When we were working that day, it was just like usual,” he began, wondering how the hell he was going to say what he needed to say, but continuing anyway. It wasn’t something he’d ever talked about, but it was a scene that had run though his head constantly ever since it had happened. He could see it as if it were yesterday—shut his eyes and pretend like it was that day all over again. “We were with a unit of SAS guys, providing support, and I was working with Sam. We both got our dogs out and started doing our drill, but we knew there was something off almost immediately.”

He was staring straight ahead when Jamie slipped her hand into his, and he didn’t resist. Because talking about that day was beyond hard, and it was something he’d never done before. Brett needed her strength.

“His dog identified the explosive immediately,” he continued, ignoring her because now he’d started talking he needed to get it all out. “His dog went dead still, and for a split second we looked at one another, because we knew it was bad, that we were in a hot spot, that Bear had only frozen like that for one reason. We called out to the guys not to move, and then Teddy indicated another one.” He paused. “You have to understand that sometimes, most of the time, our dogs just raise their tails slightly, move differently, in a way that only their handler would ever notice. But we all knew what Bear had detected that day, and we all knew how badly things could end. That we might never see another day.”

Brett swallowed down the lump of emotion choking his throat and blinked to force the tears back. He didn’t want to cry, didn’t want to
feel
again, but the memories were crashing into him like they’d only just happened.

Jamie was squeezing his hand tight, like she wanted to take some of the pain for him, but he knew she already had enough pain of her own to deal with. He just wanted to tell her like it was, explain to her what had happened so they could both move forward and never have to talk about it again.

“From that moment, it was like everything moved in slow motion, before becoming such a fast blur that I don’t even remember the details.” He looked at her, saw that Jamie’s eyes were filled with tears, just like his were from going back in time to that day. “All I know is that I was blown back so far my body was slammed down close to the 4x4, and Sam was gone. So was Teddy. To this day, no one can understand how Bear managed to survive the blast, or how either of us didn’t lose limbs. But it was fast, so fast that I don’t know how or why I ended up so far from the bomb.”

Jamie’s hand in his stopped him from moving as she pulled him to a halt. She had the leash in her other hand, and she let go of Brett’s hand for a second so she could loop her arm around his neck and draw him into an embrace so warm, so loving, that he was powerless to pull away.
And he didn’t want to pull away.
Because no matter how guilty he felt, this felt so right, too. He needed Jamie as much as she needed him. He liked that he could be honest with her when he needed to be, that they understood what the other had gone through, on some level at least.

“Thank you for telling me,” she murmured, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you, for being honest with me when no one else could.”

Brett shut his eyes. Sam’s blood covered him, bits of his best friend burning and blasted all around them. There were so many pieces of him, so much flesh that when Brett had woken up, he’d vomited until there was nothing left in his stomach. And his dog, his beautiful dog had been killed on impact, too.

But they weren’t memories he was ever going to share with her. If he ever needed to get them off his chest, he could tell Logan, a fellow soldier who’d seen enough on his tours to cope with what he’d hear. He’d never let Jamie suffer through those particular memories with him, the blatant truth of that day. There were some things she needed to be protected from, and that was top of the list.

Jamie pulled back then, looked into his eyes and didn’t break contact even as she kissed him.

“I need you to know that I want you here, Brett. It might be weird, that we’re together and all that, but all I know is that this is right. That having you in my life seems right and I don’t want to lose you.”

He nodded, but he still wasn’t convinced that what they were doing was any part of okay or right. It wasn’t that he didn’t have feelings for Jamie, because he did. His problem was that he felt too much for her, and he knew that he’d never, ever want to walk away. That this wasn’t just about comfort or friendship.

“When you say you want me here, do you mean that we keep this just between us, or…?”

She ran her hand down his arm before looping it through so they could walk arm in arm. “I think we should tell Logan. I mean, I don’t want to lie to him and I don’t want to come between your friendship. We need to be honest with him.”

Brett blew out a breath. “Logan is not going to be okay with this.”

“I know, but we need to tell him.
I’ll tell him
. I just don’t want this to be any more awkward than it needs to be, and the longer this goes on, the harder telling him will become, because he’ll think we’ve been lying to him all along if we don’t come clean.”

“Maybe we should text him, tell him to meet us for lunch or something after our walk tomorrow?” Brett suggested. “He might take it better if there’s a lot of people around. You know, so he can’t knock out every tooth in my mouth.” After the way Logan had warned him off the other night…it wasn’t going to be pleasant, no matter how or where they did it. Logan was going to be furious, not with her, but with him.

Jamie laughed but he shook his head.

“What?” she asked.