Page 46 of Building Courage

“Thanks.” The drill had released some of his pent-up frustration. But he had to get control of his anger before tomorrow night, or he’d have to cancel on Brynn. He had to be natural with her. Calm. She couldn’t know he knew what had happened to her. It might drive her away.

Removing his helmet, he took a seat beneath the lone tree at the back of the structure.

If she could live with it and move on, he needed to be able to do so, too. But some of his anger and frustration lay in the fact that the crap this dirtbag had dealt her continued to haunt her; otherwise, she wouldn’t be so…controlled, cautious…and still so…vulnerable.

He veered away from the thought. He needed to concentrate on what he was doing right here and now, but it was impossible.

Did Brynn work through things when she was taking photos? Had she worked through the worst of it by focusing on minute details of other people’s lives while she dealt with the trauma in her own?

Tomorrow, he’d need to concentrate on her, not his frustrated wish to be locked in a room with the asshole who’d attacked her and pound him into the ground.

At least he knew the fucker was in prison where he couldn’t hurt her or any other woman again. He hoped some muscle-bound, three-hundred-pound guy was beating the shit out of him every day.

Denotti exited the kill house and sauntered over to him. He could take Denotti into his confidence about everything. For all his wise-cracking bluster, the big Italian was a vault when it came to the personal stuff they shared. But Brynn would hate having her privacy breached. She’d moved across the country to get away from people knowing what had happened to her. He quashed the impulse.

“You been quiet all day, man. Something going on?” Denotti asked.

“No. What about you?”

“I met this chick, Ava, last night at McP’s. She and a couple o’ others came in for dinner. The other two were on the hunt, but she just ate and hung out for a few minutes. She’s a software engineer for a company in San Diego. She’s smart, really smart, and has a wicked sense of humor. I had to bring my A-game to keep up with her.”

“Sounds like you’re out of your depth, my man,” Tucker teased deadpan.

Denotti punched him in the arm, nearly knocking him over.

Tucker laughed, and some of the tension he carried released. He ignored the need to rub his arm, though it ached. “Did you get her number?”

“Yeah. I called her last night around ten, and we’re going out tomorrow night. She has a work thing tonight.”

“I’m having dinner with Brynn tomorrow night at her place.”

Denotti offered his fist for a bump. “Finally wearing her down, huh?”

“I prefer to think I’m growing on her.”

“Yeah, like moss on a rock.”

“Hey, whatever works.”

Denotti laughed. “Doesn’t it seem like it’s more difficult to hook up with women than it used to be,” he lamented.

“I think when we were younger and new to the game, we had lower expectations.”

“You mean, we were only out to get laid.”

“That, too. Now, we’re looking for different things.”

Denotti glanced at him for a second. “You could be right. You know, I’ve never had anyone, outside my folks, waiting for me when I got back from a deployment. The latest has always moved on by the time I got back.”

“Me, too,” Tucker said. “I think the key to the whole thing is to find someone as driven as we are. Someone who has a life outside of us and wants to share the downtime they have with someone who appreciates them, which should-could be us.”

“Fuck, Gilly. That’s the deepest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

Tucker buffed his fingernails on his tack vest, keeping things light. “I have my moments.”

Denotti shook his head. “You could be right.”

“Brynn’s as driven as I am about what she does; otherwise, she wouldn’t be learning to scuba and training herself to take underwater photographs to make that Australia trip. She did a road trip coming out here from New York that lasted nearly two years while she took pictures along the way.”

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