85. Ryan
Ryan
Jackson insisted on the walk, claiming I needed “vitamin D and exposure therapy”.
I hated the movement of people that kept setting off the alarms in my head, but the beach near his house was wide open, the horizon stretching out into an endless gray.
Jackson was a solid, physical anchor at my side, his presence a constant, low-level drone of safety.
We walked along the shoreline, the air smelling of salt and clean ocean instead of dust and diesel.
I kept my eyes scanning the dunes, mentally calculating the distance to the nearest cover, a habit I couldn’t break.
“It’s just the water, Ryan,” Jackson murmured, reading my tension over the steady, rhythmic pulse of the waves.
“No one here is trying to hurt you.” A rogue wave slammed into a pile of rocks nearby with a sudden, explosive crack.
My whole body flinched, my hands tensing into fists as I prepared for the blast. Jackson stopped instantly, pulling me gently against a massive piece of driftwood half-buried in the sand, shielding my body with his own.
“Breathe,” he commanded softly, the familiar instruction cutting through the spike of panic. “It’s just the tide, Ry. That’s it.” The sound of the nickname, Ry, hitting my ears for the first time since Brody used it, was a physical punch to the gut, but not in pain—in pure, overwhelming connection.
Brody had been gone for eight months, and in that single syllable, Jackson had closed the loop.
He didn’t ask me to be brave or to stop being a soldier.
I rested my forehead against his neck, pulling his scent, clean, crisp, and wholly civilian, into my lungs while the sound of the waves settled back into a peaceful lull.
The adrenaline slowly retreated. I pulled back, nodding once. “Let’s go look at the ducks,” I said, pointing toward the calmer water, giving him my unarmored, grateful smile.