Chapter 1
“Everly Holland. You owe us. Pay up, or pay the price.”
Everly ended the voicemail without listening to the callback number, deleted it, and blocked the number—for all the good it would do.
These collection agencies were like cockroaches.
For every number she blocked, a dozen more popped up.
This particular agency had been relentless about pursuing her, no matter how many times she offered to show them her husband’s death certificate.
She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, a twinge of pressure pulsing behind her eyes.
A headache was the last thing she needed right now, when she had so many things to get done.
She’d been a widow for six months, and her to-do list was somehow still growing.
Endless unwanted calls—this was the third one today—a pile of housework she’d been ignoring, and packing.
She bumped calling the on-post legal department to the top of her mental tasklist and turned her attention to the chores she could tackle right now.
Ding-dong. Ding-dong.
The doorbell chimed insistently, and Posie darted under the couch, like she always did when someone was at the door.
“Thanks for the moral support, cat,” Everly grumbled.
She hesitated and then crossed the short distance from the living room to the front door.
She scolded herself — not for the first time — for not investing in a doorbell camera.
Then again, why bother when she wasn’t planning to stay here for much longer?
“Can I help you?” she asked as she cracked open the door.
A squat, baby-faced man stood on the front porch, neatly dressed in a polo and khakis.
A large silver vacuum, the old-fashioned kind with a big bag attached to the back, sat next to him.
Everly groaned inwardly but tried to paste on a polite smile.
“Good afternoon, ma’am. Could I interest you in a free cleaning demonstration for Prism brand vacuum cleaners?” The man craned his neck, clearly trying to get a glimpse inside of the house. “Do you have any carpet that needs cleaning?”
Everly moved to block his view. She was in no mood to entertain a nosy salesman today. “No, I’m sorry. I’m very busy right now. No thank you.”
“Are you sure? It’s free.” His voice took on a plaintive tone. “I’m only two more demonstrations away from being entered to win a trip to Mexico.” He stepped forward as if he might jam his foot in the door. “Please?”
“I’m not interested!” Everly snapped.
“I’m sure once you experience the cleaning power of the Prism vacuum—”
She slammed the door shut before he could finish. “Sorry, not interested!” she yelled. After a few seconds, she tiptoed to the window and gingerly lifted up a corner of the blinds to make sure that he wasn’t waiting for her to change her mind and open the door again.
Everly watched as the salesman plodded back to the white panel van that was parked in the cul-de-sac, casting one more glance back at her townhouse before climbing into the passenger seat. He spoke to the driver, and then they peeled away from the curb and out of the neighborhood.
Good riddance.
Guilt pricked at her just a bit for cutting him off so abruptly.
Maybe she should have at least let him give his demonstration so that he could try to win a nice vacation.
But then would come the sales pitch, and…
no. She shook her head, willing that thought to move on.
She was done people-pleasing, no matter how much being assertive put her out of her comfort zone sometimes.
She’d learned enough these last few years to know that she had to put herself and her needs first.
She blew out a breath and went to check on Posie, who glowered at her from her spot under the couch. “You can come out now baby, the scary man’s gone,” she cooed. Posie merely turned herself so that her considerable rump was facing Everly.
“Okay, fine. Message received.” She let the skirt of the couch drop and dusted off her knees.
As luck would have it, vacuuming was next on her list of chores.
Maybe she really should have invited that salesman in and spent her Saturday afternoon doing something more enjoyable than cleaning.
Go shopping. Binge watch a tv show. Finish one of her paintings that she’d started and never completed.
With a sigh, she surveyed her surroundings.
Her own artwork used to adorn these walls, but the Decatur townhouse that she and Jeremy had shared for the last three years was mostly bare now, except for the essential furniture and a few dishes and cooking utensils.
Everything she valued had been packed away in a storage unit across town, waiting for her to begin a new life.
She just didn’t know where she wanted that life to be yet.
Everly climbed the stairs to retrieve her Dyson from the hall closet, surveying the second floor to decide what still needed to be done.
She didn’t bother to open the door to Jeremy’s room—she hadn’t touched it since the day the Red Cross had called to tell her there had been an accident.
Hadn’t opened the door except to put away the folded flag she’d received at his funeral.
She shoved away the memory of those dark days, even though her therapist probably would have scolded her for doing so. “Practice mindfulness, Everly,” Dr. Schafer always told her. “Acknowledge the thought, recognize it for what it is, and then let it pass from your mind.”
“Sorry, Doc,” she muttered to herself. “I just don’t feel like revisiting the past today.
” The crushing guilt. The sleepless nights.
The barrage of texts and phone calls that had become so overwhelming, she’d started ignoring them.
Eventually, people had stopped reaching out, and now she wasn’t sure how to bridge the resulting gap.
Everly blew out a breath as she descended the stairs and returned to the living room to plug in the vacuum cleaner.
“Sorry, Posie,” she called. “You’ll have to hang out under the couch for a few more minutes.
” She flipped the switch on, thanking her past self for choosing such a quiet vacuum.
Not that it stopped her cat from panicking every time she used it.
Bet the Prism machines make a lot more noise than this, she thought.
Ding-dong.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Everly flipped the switch back to off and stalked to the front door. This time, she was going to put that annoying salesman to work and relax for the rest of the afternoon.
She threw open the front door. “What?” she snapped.
“Hi, Ev.”
“Grant?” She gripped the doorknob with white knuckles and fought the urge to slam the door in his face, too. She’d expected a stranger, not a man she’d known for years. A man she hadn’t seen in months and had avoided since Jeremy’s death for a multitude of reasons.
Grant McDowell stood on her doorstep for the first time in ages, looking entirely too handsome in his familiar Army camouflage.
A smile crinkled the corners of his blue eyes.
“I was in the area,” he replied a touch too lightheartedly.
“Thought I’d stop by.” He motioned toward the open doorway. “Can I come in?”
◆◆◆
He’d faced ambushes, air drops, and the brutal silence of a comms blackout—but none of that had prepared him for this.
Grant hesitated on the threshold of the house that had once felt like a second home, sweat prickling under his collar in the afternoon Georgia sun, and waited for Everly’s answer.
The inside of his lip stung as he bit it, forcing himself to swallow the apologies and explanations that he wanted to blurt out.
The old Everly would have greeted him with warmth, welcomed him in without a second thought. The woman in front of him now…well, she looked as if she’d rather get a root canal than stand here for one more second. And who could blame her, after what she’d been through last year?
Grant had tried to keep in touch after the funeral, even after it became painfully obvious that Everly didn’t want to talk to him–the string of messages left on read and the calls that went to a full voicemail box were loud and clear.
Colonel Lockhart, STAG’s leader and a man who knew everything, missed nothing, and terrified just about everyone, had assured him she was okay when he’d finally worked up the nerve to ask.
He should’ve left it at that. But today–call it gut instinct, or just an aching need to see her that finally won out–today, the call that rang once and then went to voicemail was more than he could bear.
He’d driven all the way to Atlanta with no real plan, no thought beyond completing his obligation to Jeremy and seeing for himself that Everly was all right.
Even if that desire to see her made him a selfish bastard.
The doorknob clicked as Everly twisted it back and forth. Grant shifted on his feet, braced himself for her to tell him to fuck off and slam the door in his face. But she stepped aside with a heavy sigh and held it open for him. “Sure. Come on in.”
The dim interior assaulted his vision as he stepped inside, and she closed the door behind him.
He trailed behind her like a lost puppy, waiting for his eyes to adjust as he followed the familiar path to the living room.
She stood next to the couch, her arms crossed and her eyes as wary as those of a trapped animal.
As the spots faded from his vision, they revealed much starker surroundings than he remembered.
She’d replaced the airy curtains with blackout drapes that remained drawn, even in the middle of the afternoon. Most of the furniture was gone. The walls had been stripped bare, devoid of the photos and paintings that had been artfully displayed before—
—before her husband had been killed on a mission gone wrong.
“Are you moving?” he asked, because he didn’t know what else to say. Didn’t know how to start this conversation.
“Yes. Eventually. It’s…a work in progress.” Everly looked around the room as if realizing for the first time how bare it looked. Her gaze landed on him, and he saw her eyes flick up and down, her mouth a thin line. “You draw the short straw for a weekend shift today?”
Grant brushed a hand over his uniform. He should’ve thrown on civvies, but an unplanned STAG meeting had put him hours behind. “Just got called into the office for a bit. Last minute stuff. You know how it goes.”
“I do.”
An awkward silence permeated the air. Grant drummed his fingertips against his thighs, wracking his brain for something else to say. He’d figured that Everly wouldn’t be thrilled to see him; he hadn’t planned on her being reluctant to talk to him at all. He should have known better.
The small envelope in his pocket weighed heavily on him. He’d wanted to deliver it in person, because it was that important. A last favor to a departed friend. Still, he could have just as easily dropped it in the mail and moved on. He was starting to wish he would have.
Just then, a massive ball of white fluff emerged from under the couch. The biggest cat he’d ever seen strutted over to him with its tail perked up, then sat and stared up at him with pale green eyes.
“Hi, little cutie. Or should I say big cutie?” He crouched down and scratched the cat under its chin and was rewarded with a chirrup and a nuzzle for more. “I never realized you had a cat,” he said as he stood.
A smile tugged at the corners of Everly’s mouth as the cat began winding around his ankles in a figure eight, purring and chittering.
“We didn’t. Jeremy hated cats.” She uncrossed her arms and perched on the arm of the couch.
“I’ve been volunteering at the animal shelter on post for a few months.
Posie had been there for ages with no interest. She and I bonded right away, and I just had to bring her home. I call her my emotional support cat.”
Grant bent down again and scratched at the base of Posie’s tail. She chirped and licked at the air, then flopped onto her back, exposing her tummy.
Everly laughed and strode over to stroke the cat’s belly. “I can’t believe she’s doing this. She absolutely despises strangers.”
Just like that, the awkwardness dissipated. Grant gave Posie an extra pat of gratitude for breaking the ice. “How do you like volunteering at the shelter?” he asked.
“Better than I thought I would. It gets me out of the house. I still do freelance graphic design too, but business has been slow lately. Volunteering keeps me from sitting around in my pajamas all day.” She smiled up at him, their faces closer together than he’d realized.
His gut clenched. Her eyes, a deep mossy green that had enchanted him from the moment they’d met, were ringed with purplish shadows.
Her hair trailed over her shoulders, the deep brown almost black in this light, and the dark color highlighted just how pale she’d become.
Still, as always, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Everly cleared her throat and stood, breaking the brief spell. “Grant, what are you doing here? Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to see you again. But this is so unexpected.”
Straight to the point, then. He stood and pulled the envelope from his pocket. “I came to give you this.” He placed it into her outstretched hand. “Jeremy wanted me to mail this to you. It was one of the last things he ever said to me, right before the explosion.”
Her already pallid complexion had suddenly lost all color. “What is it?” she whispered.
Grant shrugged. “No idea. He didn’t tell me.” He’d never let curiosity get the better of him these past six months, either. Whatever Jeremy had been trying to send to his wife was between them alone.
She tore open the envelope with trembling fingers and peered inside, then let out a faint noise that might have been a gasp or a cry. She emptied the contents into her palm, and Grant instantly recognized the broad gold band that sat in her shaking hand.
Jeremy’s wedding ring.