Chapter 25
MAC
Sarah had a way of sitting that reminded me of a sniper. Still, patient, watching the target with a focus that never wavered. Three sessions in, and I’d stopped noticing her office exits. Progress, she’d called it. I figured it was because I’d memorized them already.
“Tell me about the nightmare,” she said.
I’d had one Tuesday night. The first in three weeks, which was in itself remarkable—three weeks without my brain ambushing me in my sleep.
But this one had been vivid, the old Kandahar sequence, the road and the dust and the sound that preceded the IED, the low whistle that nobody else heard, but I heard every time, waking or sleeping, the signal of something horrific about to happen.
“Same one. Kandahar. The road. The blast.”
“How did you come out of it?”
“I woke up. My heart rate was through the roof, and I was disoriented for maybe ten seconds. Then I used the grounding sequence.”
The one she’d taught me—five things I could see, four I could touch, three I could hear. My room. My bed. The creek outside. My hands, flat on the mattress, feeling the sheets. It hadn’t been new. The VA had taught me the same technique, but for some reason, it had never worked as well.
“It worked faster this time.”
“How fast?”
“Two minutes, maybe three. Last time it was closer to ten.”
Sarah gave me that almost-invisible nod that meant she was filing the information without assigning it value, just noting it. I appreciated that about her. She didn’t hand out gold stars. “Where were you sleeping?”
“My place. Alone.” A beat. “I was glad I was alone.”
“Why?”
“Because Arek stayed over on Friday, and if the nightmare had happened then—”
“What would’ve happened?”
I looked at the firs outside her window. Tall, straight, unmoving. “I would’ve scared him.”
“You’ve told Arek about your PTSD. He’s a physician who’s treated veterans. He’s seen you in an episode. Do you think he’d be scared?”
“Not of me. For me. Which is worse.”
Sarah let that sit. She had a talent for silence that rivaled mine, the ability to leave a statement in the air until it finished revealing itself.
“It’s worse because then I’m a burden. I’m a condition he has to manage. Another person draining him.”
“Is that what you are to Arek? A condition?”
“No. But it’s what I could become.”
“Could. Not are.”
“Not yet.”
“Mac.” She leaned forward slightly. “I want to point something out. Mere weeks ago, a nightmare would’ve sent you into a spiral that lasted days.
Hypervigilance, withdrawal, and possibly a full regression to isolation patterns.
This time, you used your tools, grounded yourself in under three minutes, and went back to sleep.
And instead of canceling with Arek, you’re sitting here processing it.
That’s not the behavior of a man becoming a burden.
That’s the behavior of a man who’s getting better. ”
I sat with that. The words didn’t land easily—they never did, the good ones, the ones that suggested I was more than the sum of my damage. But they landed. I felt them hit and stick, which was more than I could’ve said a month ago. “I want to talk about Boden,” I said.
“Okay.”
“He wants to visit this summer. Spend a few weeks on the mountain.”
Sarah’s expression didn’t change, but something shifted in her attention, a sharpening. “How do you feel about that?”
“Fucking terrified. Happy. Both at the same time, which I’m learning is apparently how I feel about everything good.”
“That’s not uncommon for people with your history. Joy and fear use similar neural pathways. The brain has trouble distinguishing between vulnerability to good things and vulnerability to bad things.”
“So I’m not broken, just wired wrong.”
“You’re wired for survival. We’re rewiring for living. There’s a difference.”
I filed that. Rewiring for living. I liked that. “He called me last night. Not texted. Called.”
That had been a shift. The texts had continued—daily now, sometimes multiple times—but the call was new.
Boden picked up the phone and chose my voice over my words, bridging the gap with an initiative that I recognized as Fay’s influence and his own courage in equal measure.
“He said he wants to come after school ends. Third week of June. Stay for four weeks, maybe longer. He asked if there was room.”
“On the mountain?”
“I have a guest bedroom in my main cabin and I have twelve cabins. Of course there’s room.”
“That’s not what he was asking.”
No. It wasn’t. Boden was asking if there was room in my life.
Room for a sixteen-year-old with a guitar, a list of questions, and five years of justified anger, plus the brave, stubborn willingness to reconnect.
Room for a son in a life I’d built for one.
“I told him yes. I told him there’s always room. ”
“And?”
“He said ‘cool.’” I couldn’t hold back a smile at the memory. “Teenagers.”
Sarah smiled. “How are you going to prepare?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. The main cabin is fine for me, but it’s sparse.
Military. Not exactly welcoming for a kid.
” I thought about Arek’s house, about the noise, the mess, the photos on the dresser, the warmth of a space that was shaped by the people living in it.
“I need to make it feel like someone actually lives there.”
“Someone does actually live there.”
“Someone who owns more than six plates and a cast-iron skillet.”
That earned me another smile. “I think the preparation will be good for you. Concrete, physical tasks with a clear purpose. That’s your language.”
“Building things. Yeah.”
“You build things for the people you love, Mac. The chair, the porch, the cabins. Now a room for your son. That’s progress.”
The session ended with the bilateral exercises.
Twelve minutes of following Sarah’s fingers, and this time she targeted the Kandahar memory directly.
Not the full sequence, but the sound. The whistle before the blast. She had me hold it in my mind while my eyes tracked left-right, left-right, and something happened that I couldn’t fully describe.
The sound didn’t disappear, but it moved, like a piece of furniture being shifted from the center of a room to the wall.
Still present, still visible, but no longer blocking the path.
The drive home felt different from how it used to.
The road up wasn’t an escape route. It was just the way home.
And home was temporary now, the ledge I was perched on between the life I’d been living and the one I was building, and for the first time, the in-between didn’t feel like limbo. It felt like motion.
Back on my mountain, I pulled out my phone to text Fraser. I’d seen him a few times over the last few weeks, but I hadn’t told him about Arek yet. I needed to. I wanted to.
You around tomorrow? Want to talk to you about something.
Tomorrow morning? I can be there at 9.
I can come down. Brianna’s?
Sure, that works. Everything ok?
I looked at the phone. At the mountain, the valley, the two chairs on the porch. At the life I was living, which was unrecognizable from the one I’d been living three months ago and better in every measurable way.
Yeah. Everything’s good. Really good.
Now I’m VERY curious. See you tomorrow.
When I walked into Brianna’s the next morning, Fraser was already there, a coffee and a bear claw in front of him, his long frame folded into a chair that was too small for him. I ordered a slice of apple pie and a black coffee and sat down across from him.
“Mac.” He grinned. “You look different.”
“I look the same as always.”
“Nope, you don’t. Something’s different. What’s going on? You’re…” He squinted at me across the table. “You’re almost smiling.”
“I’m seeing someone,” I said.
Fraser’s bear claw stopped halfway to his mouth. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I’m seeing someone.”
“You. Macallister Heald. The man who once told me, and I quote, ‘I have the social skills of a feral cat.’”
I ignored that remark. Fraser was just messing with me anyway. “It’s Arek.”
Fraser’s face showed a slow, dawning grin that spread across his face like sunrise. “Arek,” he repeated. “Arek Jacobson. The doctor.”
“Yeah.”
“The extremely good-looking doctor.”
“Fraser.”
“The extremely good-looking, warm, competent, universally beloved doctor who every single person in this town has been trying to set up with someone for a year?”
“Are you done?”
“Not even close.” He leaned back in his chair, the grin now fully established and showing no signs of departing. “How long?”
“A few weeks. Officially.”
“Unofficially?”
I thought about the grocery store. The handshake. The compass needle. “Longer.”
Fraser studied me with an attention that belied his casual sprawl.
Underneath the grin and the energy, Fraser was perceptive, a man who’d spent years reading fire behavior, which required the ability to see what was actually happening rather than what you expected.
He saw me now. Saw the change. And whatever he found made his expression shift from delight to something quieter, warmer.
“You’re happy,” he said. Not a question.
“Yeah.”
“Like, actually happy. Not ‘I’m tolerating existence’ happy. Happy happy.”
“Is that a clinical term?”
“Mac.” He leaned forward. “I’ve known you for six months now, give or take.
I have driven up that mountain every other week and sat on your porch and watched you build walls around yourself with the determination of a man constructing a bomb shelter.
And now you’re sitting in a bakery telling me you’re seeing someone, and your face is doing something I’ve never seen it do, which is relax.
” He picked up his coffee. “I’m not done being shocked, but I want you to know I’m really glad. ”
“Thanks, Fraser.”
“Can I ask…?”
I knew what he was asking. “I’ve never been attracted to a man before. Only Arek.”
“Yeah, I wondered. You okay with that?”
The label came, and with it, the easy acceptance. “I guess I’m bisexual, which is fine by me.”
“Good.” He raised his coffee. “To Arek. A brave man.”
“Brave?”
“Anyone willing to date you deserves a medal.” Fraser clinked his mug against mine. I couldn’t hold back a grin, and his smile widened. “That’s what I mean. You’re smiling now. Actually smiling.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it just yet. I’m not there yet.”
“No, but you’re making progress, Mac. Great progress.”
That, I couldn’t deny, but that didn’t make it easier to embrace. “Boden wants to come spend his summer break with me.”
We talked about my son and then about Calloway’s new book. Fraser caught me up on the town’s gossip, and it wasn’t until then that I realized the truth. “You knew already,” I said in the middle of telling him about the electrical work Cas Sicotte had done.
Fraser frowned. “Knew what?”
“About Arek. My truck has been parked in his driveway several times now, including overnight. There’s no way you didn’t know.”
Fraser sighed, looking guilty. Why, I had no clue because I should be the one wrestling with it. “I’m sorry. I wanted to give you the chance to tell me yourself.”
I groaned, rubbing my chin. “No, I’m sorry. I should’ve told you sooner. It didn’t occur to me until now that people would gossip.”
“The downside of leaving your mountain.”
“Yeah.”
He briefly patted my hand. “It’s okay, Mac. I know you didn’t hide this from me on purpose. You needed time, and that’s fine. I hate that you didn’t get the chance to truly tell me yourself.”
I considered it. Was I upset that the town had figured it out before I’d been ready to talk about it? A little, maybe. But not enough to waste energy on. “I’ll remember for next time.”
And so we sat in Brianna’s Bakery and talked about life, about this town and its people, about the man Fraser loved and the man I was falling in love with.
The normalcy of it—two men having coffee, one of them talking about his partner while the other gave him shit—was so ordinary and so extraordinary that I held it in my chest like a lit match, bright and warm and mine.
When I left, Fraser hugged me. A real one, not the back-slap half-hug of men performing casualness, but a full, tight embrace that lasted three seconds longer than expected. “I’m proud of you,” he said into my shoulder. “You know that, right?”
My throat went tight. I nodded into his shoulder, which was the best I could do, and Fraser accepted it the way he accepted everything about me—completely, without requiring it to be more than it was.
“See you soon, Mac. Say hi to Arek.”
Say hi to Arek. Another thing in my life that I added to the ever-growing list of new experiences. “Will do.”
This time, when I drove up my mountain, it felt like leaving instead of running.