Chapter 11
LUNA
Luna had seen panic attacks before. She had seen flashbacks, dissociation, and even hyper vigilance.
They were all trauma responses that hit veterans so hard they forgot where they were for a few terrifying seconds.
But this was different. Rocco looked shattered, not scared or confused, but utterly destroyed.
The color drained from his face while he stared out the apartment window, as though he had just seen a ghost.
“Gunner,” he whispered again, barely audible this time.
Luna’s stomach tightened instantly. She moved toward him carefully, keeping her voice soft, trying not to spook him.
“Rocco,” she breathed. He didn’t answer.
He didn’t even blink. Every muscle in his body had gone rigid, his breathing turning sharp and uneven as he stared at the empty sidewalk across the street.
There was no one there—just passing cars and an old woman walking her dog.
But whatever, or whoever, Rocco thought he saw had rattled him badly.
Luna touched his arm gently, and the second she did, he flinched.
He didn’t pull away from her, just reacted to her touch like his body had forgotten where he was for a second, and that scared her more than anything else.
“Hey,” she said quietly. “Look at me.” His eyes finally shifted toward hers, and the rawness in them hit her straight in the chest.
“I saw him,” he whispered.
Luna swallowed hard. “Okay,” she said carefully.
“I’m not hallucinating,” he insisted.
“I didn’t say you were,” she assured, although she had thought it.
“But you thought it,” he said as though reading her mind. Shit. She had, but for half a second, not because she thought he was crazy, but because his trauma history made it the most logical explanation. Only now, looking at him, Luna wasn’t so sure.
Rocco dragged a hand over his face and started pacing her bedroom, all restless energy and barely controlled tension. “No,” he muttered. “No, that was him.”
“Rocco—” she started.
“I know what Gunner looks like,” he shouted, cutting her off.
“I know you do,” she soothed.
His jaw flexed hard. “He smiled at me.” Something about the way he said it made a chill crawl up Luna’s spine.
Luna crossed her arms tightly over herself as she watched him pace.
Even with all her training, she was unsure of how to help him.
She had never been this close to one of her “patients,” and adding a personal relationship to the mix was clouding her judgment.
She needed to treat Rocco as her patient again.
That was the only way that she’d be able to properly help him.
“Tell me about him,” she said softly. Rocco stopped moving instantly, and for a second, she thought he might refuse. But then, he exhaled hard and sat down on the bed.
“Gunner was—” He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck roughly. “He was my best friend over there.” The way he said over there told her everything. He was talking about his time overseas, and the kind of experiences civilians would never fully understand.
“We enlisted around the same time,” he continued quietly. “We were in the same platoon and the same unit. He was the one always dragging me into stupid shit.” Despite everything, a faint smile tugged briefly at his mouth, but then it vanished just as quickly.
“That night—” His eyes darkened immediately. “He tried to get me to go into town with them.” Luna stayed quiet, letting him get the whole story out, even though she had heard it all before, in their therapy sessions.
“I stayed behind because I was exhausted.” His voice roughened slightly. “He gave me shit for it before he left.” There it was again—his guilt. It always seemed heavy enough to choke him. Rocco looked toward the window once more before continuing.
“After the attack, they told me everyone was dead except Simpson.” His jaw clenched violently. “But then, Simpson died too.”
Luna stepped closer slowly. “And you believed what they told you.”
“Yeah.” He laughed bitterly. “Guess that makes me a shitty friend.”
“No,” Luna said firmly. “That makes you someone who trusted official information after surviving something horrific.”
Rocco looked unconvinced. “What if he tried to contact me?” The question hit hard because Luna could already hear where his mind was going. He was running through all the “What ifs,” and that was dangerous territory for trauma survivors.
“What if they got it wrong?” he continued, pacing again. “What if he was alive this whole time and I just ignored all the signs?” Luna could almost hear the question that he didn’t say out loud. What if he abandoned his friend? He didn’t have to say it, though.
Luna moved into his space before he could spiral any further, grabbing his face gently between her hands. “Listen to me,” she ordered.
His eyes locked onto hers instantly. “You did not abandon anyone.”
His jaw tightened. “You don’t know that.”
“Then we’ll figure it out—together.” The certainty in her own voice surprised even her, but she meant it. Because, regardless of whether Gunner was real or some trauma response, Rocco needed help through this; he wasn’t going through this alone.
Rocco’s hands settled automatically on her waist, grounding himself with her touch.
“I know what I saw,” he whispered. Luna believed that he believed it, and honestly, something in her gut was starting to twist, too.
Because the fear in Rocco’s eyes didn’t look imagined—it looked instinctive, like some deeply buried survival response had just snapped awake again.
Her phone buzzed loudly on the bed, making both of them tense. Rocco turned immediately toward the sound. Luna grabbed the phone quickly, her stomach dropping when she saw the screen. The call was from an unknown number and went straight to voicemail. A cold feeling slid slowly down her spine.
“Probably spam,” she muttered, though she didn’t sound convincing even to herself. Rocco watched her carefully now. Focused and dangerously calm in a way she suddenly understood wasn’t calm at all. It was military control—the kind people learned when panic could get them killed.
The phone buzzed again. It was a text message this time, and Luna opened it automatically and froze as a photo filled the screen.
It was taken from outside her apartment building—her bedroom window visible in the shot.
It was taken this morning, because she could see Rocco standing beside the window.
Her pulse stopped because below the picture was one sentence.
You should’ve died with the rest of us.
Rocco went completely still beside her as he read the message with her. This time, he didn’t panic. Instead, he seemed pissed as he took the phone from her and looked at the photo. “Fuck.”
“How did he get my number?” she asked.
“Isn’t your cell number on your business cards?
” he asked. He was right—it was. She liked her patients to have access to her if they needed her.
She felt safe giving them her personal number because her patients were all veterans, and most of them knew boundaries.
There were a few who used her number just to call and talk to her for a while, until whatever crisis they were going through passed, and she liked being able to be there for them.
“It is,” she breathed. He handed her phone back to her, and she immediately tossed it onto the bed as though it had offended her in some way.
“Maybe he called your office and got your number. But how would he know that we’re together?” he asked.
She huffed out her laugh. “Well, we certainly haven’t been hiding the fact that we’re dating.
I mean, we did go out to dinner, and then, there was that whole kissing thing at the gym last night.
If he’s been following you, he probably would have been able to pick up on the fact that we’re together, Rocco. ”
Luna quickly crossed the room and pulled her curtains shut, not that it would do her any good now.
If this were Gunner, then he already knew that Rocco was with her, in her apartment.
But the idea of someone spying on them, and taking photos of them while they were in the privacy of her bedroom, made her stomach churn.
“We need to call the police,” she insisted.
“For what?” he asked.
“To tell them that you have a stalker, and that he’s made a death threat against you,” she said, pointing back to the phone on her bed.
“No, he said that I should have died with the rest of my platoon,” Rocco reminded. “He didn’t threaten to kill me.”
“It’s the same thing,” Luna insisted.
“No, it’s not,” he countered. “Listen, let’s just sit down and think this through.
Then, we can call the cops. I just need a second to get my head on straight,” he said.
She knew that this had to be sending him into a tailspin, and her jumping to the conclusion that someone wanted him dead wasn’t helping.
But the idea of anyone thinking that Rocco should have died with his platoon made her world spin a little off kilter.
Rocco seemed to sense how upset she was. He crossed the room and wrapped her in his arms. Here, she was the one who should have been comforting him, and he was holding her. “We’re going to get through this, remember.”
She nodded, “Together,” she added.