Chapter 18
It didn’t matter that he hadn’t seen Ethan in three months, he recognized him instantly. And even if he hadn’t, Erin’s quick, audible intake of breath would have told him. There was no audio on the recording, but he didn’t need that, either. This was his son.
“He’s looking a little skinny,” he said.
“That’s more because he’s grown three inches in the last few months. He’s only a couple of inches shorter than me, now,” Erin said.
He knew she didn’t mean it that way but it hit him like a punch to the gut. She shouldn’t have had to tell him that, he should have known. He should have been here to watch it happen.
His jaw tightened. He should have pushed harder for a relocation.
A desk is a desk is a desk wherever it was, and as long as they would only let him instruct and push paper, what did it matter?
True, being where there was an airfield mattered, because at least they let him teach the basics of flight school, and he got to get in the air—although it wasn’t at all the same without the pulse-hammering addition of combat—but there were several places that fit the bill on this side of the country.
Hell, he could be stationed at Pendleton, barely ten miles away from this place, or from Erin’s house, once you got on the freeway.
He’d asked about it, way back, but they’d said no for whatever reason they had that they didn’t care to divulge.
And once his initial desperation had faded a little, he’d realized he might be better off a little further away, if only because Erin had made it so coldly clear that casual, unplanned drop-in visits would not be welcomed.
And judging by the tension that crackled every moment he was around her, that hadn’t changed.
“Smooth,” Rafe muttered, yanking Blaine out of his thoughts.
“What?”
Rafe reached out and backed the video up about thirty seconds.
He watched closely this time, and saw that one of the other boys who had come in with Ethan had engaged the man behind the counter in a rather animated conversation.
The second one stood looking at a nearby aquarium that apparently housed a reptile of some persuasion, drawing an occasional glance from the owner.
And while that had all been happening, Ethan had walked to the end of the main aisle and grabbed something off the shelf, stuffing it inside his jacket and quickly zipping it closed.
“So the first two were in charge of distraction, and Ethan handled the stealing,” Blaine said.
“How can you say it like that, so calmly?” Erin burst out.
“I believe he was admiring the tactics,” Rafe said. “As was I.”
She looked at both of them, appearing utterly nonplussed. “Tactics,” she muttered. “Sometimes I just don’t understand you. Either of you. I guess I just don’t understand men.”
“Back at you,” Blaine said, a little sharply.
“A little focus, please?”
Rafe’s words snapped their attention back where it belonged. “Sorry,” they both said, quietly and simultaneously.
“Having recently been there myself, I can say with certainty, it’ll keep,” Rafe said dryly.
Blaine speculated for a moment about what all Rafe and his lady—Charlie, Ty had called her—had had to work through. But only for a moment.
“I wonder what he took,” he said.
“Wondered that myself,” Rafe said, picking up his phone.
Oddly, both he and Erin turned away from the screen at the same moment, as if neither of them wanted to stare at that image a moment longer.
“Let’s go sit down, and work out what’s next,” he suggested.
She didn’t speak, but she did start toward the big, curved couch that faced the fireplace, where, he belatedly realized, a gas fire had come on by itself, obviously tied to a thermostat.
She sat in the section nearest the fire, as if she were chilled.
He took a seat a safe distance away, thinking vaguely that he didn’t link California with ever being chilly, even in winter.
“At least it wasn’t the poor hamster,” Erin said. “Ethan would take care of it, but those other two looked like they’d just torture it or stomp it and toss it in the trash.”
Blaine stopped himself from asking why, if she was so sure he’d take care of it, she’d never let him get a pet once they were settled, without a re-stationing in the future.
It would do no good to open that subject again.
And he wondered if he’d ever really understood her at all, this woman he loved.
Or maybe the woman he’d loved had never really existed at all. Maybe he’d made some assumptions, just because of their long history together. Maybe he’d never seen the real her.
But the woman he was seeing now was the same woman who’d been an absolute rock through the worst time of his life.
That wife of yours is something else, Captain Everett. If everybody had someone like her in their corner, we’d clear out this place a lot faster.
The words of the rehab therapist who’d finally signed him off as ready to go echoed in his head. He knew it was true, once he’d felt recovered enough to take in the way she handled things.
He remembered the time they’d tried to wheel him out of his room for some kind of medical test, and he’d watched in more than a little awe as his five-foot-six wife stood down a six-foot-two orderly until he called in the doctor who’d ordered the test. Then she chewed out the doctor, regardless of his rank, with that phrase that had almost become her trademark, that the right hand needed to talk to the left hand around here because he’d just had that test yesterday, ordered by a different doctor.
For the first time it struck him that perhaps that had been her battle.
He’d heard guys talking about great heroes who had fought one big, crucial, turning-point battle and then retired from the field forever.
They’d only had that one battle in them, but it had been a battle that had to be won and they’d won it.
Maybe he’d simply drained all the fight out of her.
Not the temper, though. She’d still take your head off if you tick her off enough.
“Are you going to say it, or just sit there staring at me like you’ve never seen me before?”
He blinked. She was glaring at him. “Say what?” he asked cautiously.
“Whatever you’re thinking.”
“I was just…remembering.”
“Remembering what?”
“That day you faced down Captain Francis. He ran the whole place, but you were so fierce you scared the guy.”
Her expression changed, the glare vanishing, replaced by a soft, warm look. “You were already going through so much, making you have the same test twice when there was no reason, it wasn’t to monitor anything for changes, was just…stupid.”
“I’ll never forget when you told him no matter who got their wires crossed the buck stopped with him.”
She grimaced. “You mean when he laughed at me?”
She’d thought that? “He wasn’t laughing at you. That was approval, not judgment.”
She was staring at him now, shock clear in her face. “How could you know that?”
“Because he told me. Told me how lucky I was to have a wife who had no fear of staring down the officer in charge if it would help me.”
Her eyes widened. “But I was afraid.”
“And you did it anyway,” he said softly. “Honey, what do you think bravery is?”
She stared at him wide-eyed for a moment before she said, “Bravery is what you did, all the pain you went through and never giving up.”
“I never gave up because I couldn’t, not when you were still there, fighting for me every step of the way. Literally and figuratively.”
“Funny thing about bravery,” came Rafe’s voice from behind them. “It comes in all kinds of forms, and they feed off each other.”
He was a little embarrassed that the rugged sniper had clearly overheard at least part of the personal discussion, but after a moment, remembering what the man had been through, putting his own personal life back together, he decided maybe he could learn something from that.
He’d have to have a talk with the man. After this was over and Ethan was home safe.
As Rafe joined them in the sitting area, Blaine refused to consider any other possible outcome for this. Ethan would come home, and he would be safe and unhurt when he did.
The rest was merely cleanup.