Chapter 13
Walking away from Ivy the other night had taken all Harrison’s self control. It had been harder than leaving her at the inn the first time, harder to go back to the echoing emptiness of the cabin, knowing he wasn’t likely to find what he’d originally come for. But it had still been the right thing for both of them in the moment. She needed to work. He needed to get his head on straight. Because he was having all kinds of way-too-serious, way-too-fast thoughts, and if he’d stayed, he wouldn’t have been able to resist sharing them and scaring her the fuck away.
The obvious answer had been to remove himself from temptation. And he’d meant what he’d told her. He needed to think about what she’d said over dinner.
“Maybe the answer lies in not trying to rewrite the past but in writing a different future. Maybe in order for you to leave the war behind, your hero does, too.”
Cooper Royce believed in the mission. Even when the mission was hopeless. He knew there was no end to the war, not in his lifetime. But still he fought because he believed it was the right thing to do. He had to have purpose because…Harrison had to have purpose. The point of the books had been to explore those million-and-one what-if scenarios and to let his men live on in some small way. He’d done that. So what purpose was left? For him? For Coop?
Harrison didn’t see himself just writing for the sake of writing. He enjoyed it. But he needed a stronger raison d’être to keep exploring the hell he’d been through. Then again, that was Ivy’s point. That maybe he—and Coop—needed to explore new frontiers. What would those be? Coop had far too strong a moral compass to walk away without a good reason. But he, like Harrison, had been feeling the strain of that endless, slogging fight, without making a difference.
You made a difference, at least for a few people.
He’d saved the dozen or so fan emails he’d received from struggling servicemen. Guys who’d left the military and struggled to adapt to civilian life. They’d all taken comfort in seeing their difficulties normalized, in reading his stories and recognizing themselves. Harrison didn’t think he deserved their praise. He’d written the books for himself. For his men. He hadn’t expected to touch anyone else.
The first one had made him weep. A former Marine, who’d lost both legs to a roadside bomb in the Middle East, had been on the verge of suicide when he’d fallen into the world of the Aegis Quadrant. He’d connected with Coop and seen something that made him willing to keep going, keep fighting to live another day. That email had been the thing that kept Harrison from going down the same path. There’d been others, each one a surprise, touching him at a soul-deep level. They’d somehow found the strength to keep going because Coop had. Because his indomitable spirit wouldn’t allow him to do anything else. Because, at the end of the day, no matter how much he’d lost, somehow, he still managed to hold on to the rarest commodity in the galaxy—hope.
But Harrison didn’t know how to keep selling that. Because, truth be told, he’d been losing it himself, fighting this battle with his demons. If there was nothing to life but that, what was the point in staying the course? How could he not feel like a fraud putting that message out there? He hadn’t been doing more than surviving. And he hadn’t even realized it until Ivy.
She’d woken him up, kickstarted the lump in his chest that had died three years ago. She made him want to write a different future for himself, one that was a real life, not the shadow he’d been living. One that included her.
The knock on the door had Harrison shooting to his feet, his heart leaping in his chest like a puppy with a brand new ball.
Ivy.
He’d made it halfway across the cabin before he forced himself to slow the fuck down. She didn’t have a car, so it probably wasn’t her. Unless she’d had somebody take her to get a new one so she could surprise him? Fueled by that idea, he crossed the last few feet to the door, fighting the mile-wide smile that wanted to take over his face.
The sight of Porter on the porch drained away his excitement. The reaction wasn’t fair to his friend, but Harrison wasn’t feeling particularly rational just now. He stepped back automatically. “I really hope you brought beer.”
“No.”
The single, terse word had Harrison shaking off thoughts of a surprise booty call and zeroing in on Porter as he stepped inside, moving fast. His jaw was set, his eyes grave.
Harrison tensed, waiting for the blow. “What happened?”
“Ty went to see Garrett Reeves’ widow.”
“Shit.” Harrison scooped a hand through his hair thinking about his own personal missions of visiting the families of the men who’d died under his command. They’d been worse than anything he’d seen in combat. “How bad is he?”
“Bad. Sebastian tracked him down, scraped him off a bar stool, and took him back home, but he could use some backup. Some of us who’ve been where he is.”
And now he understood why Porter had come. “Are we talking intervention or suicide watch?”
“Both.”
In all likelihood, this would involve peeling back the scab he’d worked so hard to build and exposing everything he’d been trying to get past. Reliving the trauma in a way even writing about it hadn’t forced him to do. Harrison didn’t relish any of it. But his brother-in-arms needed him. Nothing else mattered.
“I’ll pack my things.”
* * *
Somewhere during thelast fifteen thousand words, Ivy’s eyelids got replaced by sandpaper. She didn’t give a damn. The book was finished. Or at least the first draft of it. There’d be revisions and line edits and galleys to proof before it ever made it to stores. And that was only if her editor actually went for it. But she had a finished book with a beginning, middle, and end. One she was actually pretty freaking proud of.
She should really email it directly to Marianne so she’d call off the hit man she’d probably hired by now. It was what Ivy had promised. And, really, she hadn’t slept properly in days and had consumed well past the legal limit of coffee. She needed someone’s balanced opinion to tell her if this book was really as good as she thought or if she was just flat crazy. But it wasn’t her agent’s opinion she craved. All she could think about was showing it to Harrison. This book had only been born because of him. She was dying to know what he thought of it. And, book aside, she just wanted to see him. She wanted that weekend of one-on-one time he’d promised as her reward.
Loading the book on a flash drive, Ivy snatched up her coat and headed for the stairs.
“Hey, Ivy.”
She whipped around and saw Pru’s daughter coming out of one of the rooms, a load of towels in her arms. “Hey, Ari.”
“Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
“To see Harrison.”
“Dressed like that?” The sincere shock in the girl’s voice had Ivy pausing to look down.
She wore flannel pajama pants, a Tennessee Titans t-shirt with a coffee stain down the front, and bedroom slippers. It occurred to her she didn’t remember the last time she’d showered. “What day is it?”
Ari shook her head. “Oh honey.” Wrapping an arm around Ivy’s shoulders, the girl steered her back toward her room. “It’s Friday.”
“Friday? Oh, then he’s coming here.” She checked her watch. “Ohmigod. He’s due in like twenty minutes.”
“C’mon. In the shower. I’m bringing you some of our creams from the spa. It’ll help with those bags under your eyes.”
Recognizing her own judgment was compromised, Ivy let herself be herded. Back in her room, Ari whistled. “Wow.”
Ivy hadn’t actually noticed the mess before now. The bed was a snarl of covers. Dirty clothes trailed over half the furniture. A couple of trays loaded with more than a dozen empty coffee cups were lined up in the floor along one wall. Only the space around her laptop was anything resembling tidy.
Embarrassment began to set in. “I’m really sorry about this. I’m not normally this much of a slob, but the book was going so well, and I just didn’t notice. I’m done now, so I can pick up?—”
“You finished the book?”
“The first draft anyway.”
“That’s awesome!” Ari gave her a celebratory squeeze. “Now, go get in the shower. I’ll deal with things out here. And if he gets here before you’re ready, we’ll keep him busy.” Without waiting for an answer, she shoved Ivy into the bathroom and shut the door behind her.
Because it was easier than arguing, and because the euphoria associated with The End had faded enough for her to register that she looked more like she’d slept in a barn for a week than in a nice, cozy inn, Ivy stripped and climbed into the shower. As soon as the hot spray hit her knotted muscles, she groaned, suddenly aware of every ache she’d blocked out during the long hours of sitting. Bracing her hands against the shower wall, she dropped her head and let the water beat at her back. Which just had her thinking about the shower at the cabin and all the deliciously wicked things they’d done in it.
But it wasn’t the sex she’d missed—although that was amazing and she didn’t want to think about going back to battery-assisted orgasms—it was him. He fascinated her. Behind that tough, taciturn attitude was a man who took care, did the right thing with little thought to himself. As independent as she’d always been, Ivy had never imagined she could find that so appealing. But he made her feel rooted and cherished and generally amazing. And she wanted more. She wanted this to go on past the right now. Was he ready to hear that? Could he look past the right now and into the future? She was ready to find out.
By the time she’d soaped, shaved, shampooed, and otherwise made herself presentable, Ari—and possibly a team of house elves—had worked miracles on her room. The bed was made with fresh linens, the trays had been whisked away, and the laundry was piled in a corner. She’d even unearthed clean clothes from Ivy’s suitcase and laid them out on the chair. A little jar of face cream sat on the bedside table with a note propped on the side: Use me.
Ivy dabbed some on and dressed. Then, because sanity had returned, she emailed the draft to Marianne before walking out the door again. Ari was waiting in the hall.
Ivy stopped and held out her arms. “Am I presentable now?”
The girl grinned. “Much better. Go knock his socks off.”
On impulse, Ivy hugged her. “Thanks, kid. Is he downstairs?”
Ari shook her head. “Maybe he’s late?”
It was a half hour past when they’d agreed. He’d been early last time. But she shrugged off the vague worry and headed down to the guest lounge to hang out for a bit. When he hadn’t arrived by the end of tea time, Ivy started to get worried. She wanted to call, but of course, with the communication issue, they hadn’t even bothered swapping numbers. Because they were idiots.
Pru, clearing up the glasses from the other guests, shot her a sympathetic smile. “Why don’t you borrow my car and go out to check on him?”
“You really don’t mind?”
“Not at all. And if you cross paths, we’ll set him straight.”
On the drive out of town, Ivy managed to convince herself that he’d found a groove with his own book and lost track of time. She hadn’t even known for sure what day it was until Ari told her. With every mile her anticipation grew, the book high melding with her excitement over seeing him again and a little bit of dread over that serious discussion she wanted to have. The temptation to sing the whole way was strong, but she needed to figure out what to say. She allowed herself one motivating anthem of Madonna’s “Crazy For You” before focusing on the issue at hand.
“Harrison, the last two weeks have been amazing. You’re pretty damned amazing, and I want to see you again. No strings. I know neither of us came here looking for this. I just…don’t want you to slip out of my life because we didn’t swap contact information.” Her fingers drummed the steering wheel. “That’s not threatening, is it? He gets to set the pace. I just want his freaking phone number and email address.”
He wouldn’t say no. Harrison Wilkes had made it clear he was into her.
Ivy was singing again by the time she made it to the cabin. “Don’t Stop Believin’” again. And that was a nice bit of circularity since it had sort of brought her to him in the first place.
But as she pulled into the drive, it wasn’t Harrison’s Jeep parked out front. An older model Explorer had the back hatch open. A woman came out of the cabin, juggling a caddy full of cleaners and nudging a vacuum cleaner.
“Can I help you?”
Ivy shoved away the confusion and went for a smile. “I’m sorry. I was looking for Harrison Wilkes. He’s staying here. We were supposed to meet in town for dinner tonight, but I think we maybe got our wires crossed. Do you know what time he left?”
The woman hefted the vacuum down the steps. “No guests here now. The last one checked out.”
“Checked out?”
She nodded.
This made no sense. They had plans.
“Was there a note of any kind?”
“Not that I saw, but if you want to step in and look around while I finish loading up, you’re more than welcome to.”
Ivy climbed the steps, a leaden cloak of dread replacing her elation. The interior was pristine. No crackling blaze in the fireplace. No books scattered on the coffeetable. There was nothing set out on the counters. It was an empty cabin, waiting for its next guest.
Maybe he’d gotten tired of being so cut off and wanted to come into town to stay? Ivy headed back outside. “Do you happen to know when the last guest checked out?”
“Couple days ago. I got the order to come out and clean yesterday, but I couldn’t make it until today on account of my son had a doctor’s appointment.”
Two days ago. He’d checked out two days ago. He’d left no note, no forwarding address, hadn’t been by the inn to see her. He was just gone, without a trace.
Harrison Wilkes, the man she’d fancied herself in love with, whom she’d wanted to talk to about pursuing a real relationship, had ghosted her.
* * *
Shit. Shit Shit. I forgot to talk to Ivy. Why the fuck didn’t I get her number so I could call or at least send a freaking text?
Not that he could send a text since his phone had been sent sailing into the lake when Ty took exception to their intervention. He hadn’t dared leave his friend alone to get it replaced. It had been a harrowing few days, with little sleep and a lot of worry. He’d just lost track of time. He’d meant to call the inn on his way out of town to leave a message for Ivy, but the cell service was shit, and once he’d gotten to Georgia, things had gone so sideways with Ty, he couldn’t think of anything else. But he’d never imagined he’d forget to call until hours after he was meant to pick her up.
Swiping Ty’s phone off the nightstand, he found Porter in the contacts. He answered on one ring.
“Ty?”
Glancing at the bed, Harrison stepped out into the hall. “It’s me.”
“Why are you on Ty’s phone?”
“There was an incident with mine. It’s out of commission. Listen, I fucked up and forgot to let Ivy know I wasn’t going to be back, and I missed picking her up this afternoon. I need you to get a message to her that I had an emergency, and I’ll get in touch with her as soon as I can.”
“Sure thing. How soon do you suppose that’ll be?”
“Not sure. Ty’s been down since yesterday. We’ll see if he decides to rejoin the land of the living when he wakes up and go from there.”
“Keep me posted.”
The lump on the bed made a noise like a wounded buffalo.
“Sounds like he’s waking up. Thanks, brother.” Harrison hung up and went back into the bedroom. “You alive?”
Ty rolled onto his back and draped an arm over his eyes. “Debatable.”
“You wanna be?”
He went still, the unsteady rise and fall of his chest the only thing indicating he was still awake. “Pretty sure Garrett would come back and haunt my ass if I said anything but yes.”
After the last few days, that was progress.
“There’s Gatorade and aspirin on the side table there.”
Sucking in a breath, Ty shoved himself upright and winced. “Do I have anything to apologize for?”
“You mean before or after you got blackout drunk and tried to take a header into the lake?”
“Shit. How far did I get?”
“Not far.” They’d made sure of that. Harrison wondered if he’d remember any of the last three days.
Ty tossed back a few pills with his Gatorade and wiggled his jaw. “Did I get into a fight?”
“Not exactly. I had to cold cock you to get your service weapon away from you.”
He slowly lowered the bottle. “Did I try to use it?”
“Not on us.” Harrison wouldn’t soon forget the image of his friend with a gun barrel pressed to his temple.
Ty closed his bloodshot eyes. His voice, when he spoke again, was choked. “It should’ve been me.”
“What should’ve?”
“I was the one who was supposed to be sitting shotgun that day. It should’ve been my leg blasted off. Me who died in that chopper. It was my fault.”
Because he knew too well the guilt, Harrison kept his tone brusque. “Bullshit.”
“But—”
“Did you plant that land mine? Did you tip off insurgents about the route? Did you pull that trigger against your own men?”
“Of course not.”
“You did your fucking job. You defended your position and did everything you could.”
“I couldn’t save him.” Ty dropped his head, his shoulders shaking.
Harrison reached out and grasped his hand, relieved when Ty held on instead of pulling away. “Sometimes you can’t. It’s part of war.”
“I can’t go back. I can’t do another tour with that in my head, on my heart. I can’t have anybody else’s life in my hands like that.”
“No shame in that. I couldn’t go back either.” Harrison sucked in a breath, bracing himself. This was what he’d come for, why Porter had dragged him here. Because he’d walked through this fire and come out the other side.
“I lost three of my men.” Harrison swallowed past the razorblades in his throat, wishing he didn’t have to voice this again. “It was dead of winter in Afghanistan. Bitter cold. We came up on this woman, bleeding. She was hysterical, didn’t speak a word of English, and all we could really get out of her is ‘child,’ and she kept pointing over the side. There was a car that had slid off the road. It was barely hanging on the side of that mountain. Driver’s side door was open, and we could just see a carseat in the back. So we mobilized for a rescue.”
Even now, after going over the setup a thousand times in his head, Harrison couldn’t see the tell, couldn’t find the clue that would’ve had him making any other decision.
“I’d gone back to the Hummer to radio our position and let command know we were gonna be a bit late, when the first shot rang out. My guys were over the side, all roped in. Fucking sitting ducks for the sniper hidden across the gorge. All three of them were dead in seconds, and I barely made it out. You wanna talk about guilt? About failure? I’m the one that made the call. I’m the one that put them on that mountainside. I’m the one who went to each of their families to tell them how I didn’t smell an ambush.”
More than anything else, those visits had nearly killed him. So he understood exactly why Ty’s trip to see Bethany Reeves had sent him off the rails. If not for others doing for him exactly what he was doing now, he might’ve come to a different end. “I wish I could say it gets easier. It doesn’t. It’s a pain you have to learn to live with.”
“How?”
Harrison thought of what he’d been doing. Of how he kept writing different versions of what happened, trying to exorcise it, trying to make everything come out different. It hadn’t helped. Not really. Because what had happened was irrevocably a part of him. So much so that a woman who’d been a total stranger had seen it, in his eyes, in the lines of his face, down to the marks on his soul. She’d looked at him and seen hero material.
He didn’t feel like a hero, but Ivy made him want to try. There was no going back to that mountain road and changing what happened. He’d been telling his stories through his books, but he’d been telling them for himself. He thought of the emails and wondered if that was the answer. Instead of story as therapy for him, story as service for them. He found himself wanting to do more. Wanting to tell stories for guys like Ty. Those guys coming home, who needed to see the same shit happening to someone else, somebody they could relate to. Somebody who could hear, “It wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could have done,” and then realize that was true.
He needed to show them his truth. Which meant he had to accept it himself.
“You have to accept the fact that awful shit happens with no rhyme or reason, and you weren’t to blame for those who died when you lived.”
“I don’t have the first clue how to do that.”
“Neither did I. It’s not an easy thing to let go of. But on the bad days, the days it feels like that can’t be true, I remember what the wife of one of my men told me when I went to see her. She said if we hadn’t stopped to try to help, if we hadn’t immediately tried to save the child we thought was in danger, then her husband wouldn’t have been the man she fell love with. We had no way of knowing it was a set up, so we did the right thing based on the information we had. Period.”
“That helps?”
“Sometimes. In the end, you have to find a new mission.”
This was his.
Even as Harrison thought it, ideas bombarded his brain.
Maybe there were guys out there who needed to see Coop do more than just keep going. Just like Harrison, he’d been surviving, not living. If Harrison had taken nothing else away from his time with Ivy, it was that. So maybe his readers needed to see Coop walk away, to choose life instead of death, instead of duty, to give themselves permission to do the same.
But what would that look like? How did people live far from the front, where death was less of a certainty? People whose every day wasn’t shaped by the movements of troops or the acquisition of critical intelligence? They’d lead far simpler lives, where their biggest concerns were having basic needs met. And maybe, without the bitter mistress of duty, there’d be time for a woman.
What would it take to turn Coop’s head? What sort of woman could make him see that there was more to life in the Quadrant than war and encourage him to embrace it? A sharp-eyed, whip-smart beauty with silky brown hair and eyes like winter forests, perhaps.
Of course it came back to Ivy. It seemed almost all his thoughts lately came back to her.
She’d have a field day profiling Coop. The idea of it made him smile.
Maybe he’d ask her when she was done with her own book and had a chance to actually maybe read his stuff. That was a terrifying thought. She was good. Terrifyingly so. He was…well, far better than adequate, but he’d have been lying if it didn’t admit he was a little professionally intimidated by her. Or maybe it was less fear of how she’d like his writing and more about what reading it would reveal about him.
Maybe they could discuss the whole thing over dinner. After he explained his disappearing act.
“What kind of mission?” Ty’s words interrupted his train of thought. “I’ve been in the Army since I was eighteen. I don’t know anything else.”
Harrison dragged his focus back to the conversation. He wouldn’t be able to shake loose to drive back to Eden’s Ridge for a while yet, but as soon as he got a minute, he’d try to get a message to her. “Why’d you go into the military in the first place?”
“I was a skinny ass kid. Bullied growing up. I wanted to become somebody who was in a position to protect others.”
In Harrison’s head, Coop traded in his proton rifle for a futuristic six-shooter and a badge.
“Have you ever considered a career in law enforcement?”