Page 90 of All of You

What a fool.

I especially avoided Major Flint because I knew what was coming—he’d essentially called this. He’d warned me. He’d known my heart was soft and easy and just waiting for someone to give it the time and attention it needed. He’d known that the tour and hell, maybe even the fame, had drawn me in.

He knew his cousin, too. I’d been arrogant enough to think I knew her better than he did—that he was wrong about her. I’d had dose after healthy dose of humility in the last few years, and I’d wanted to be right about this, about her.

Damn it.

Bridgette texted me at least twice daily, begging me to talk to her, to tell her how I was doing, what I was thinking, what was going on, when she could come up to Nashville and slash Whit’s tires. I’d responded to the first message telling her I was fine, that I was sad, but fine.

I didn’t want to sit down in it with her, or with Thatcher, who looked like he was ready to hear my tale of woe whenever I wanted to lay it out for him. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to one-foot-in-front-of-the-other until it didn’t feel so empty right under my breastbone.

“Lieutenant Holder, I’d like to see you before you head out,” Flint called to me as he passed my desk where I was gathering my things for the day.

I’d avoided everyone’s subtle prods, the whispers and glances of more than a few soldiers who had to have seen the show and put the pieces together that Whit Grantham’s boyfriend (though former echoed in my head) was me.

“Roger, sir,” I said, praying this was something official and not the inevitable comeuppance.

I finished loading my bag, shutting down my computer, locking my file drawer, and then made my way to Flint’s office. I ducked my head in, hoping to get away with that and not the whole sitting down and heart-to-hearting.

“Sir?”

“Plans tonight, Holder?” Flint said, not looking up from the planner set in front of him.

“Uh, not sure, sir. Probably something low key?—”

“Good. Come to the house. Erin is making homemade pizza. I already told her you’d be there.”

“Uhhh… I’m not sure I can,” I said, my stomach clenching at the thought of an evening with him and Erin, sickeningly in love and determined to help me.

“Nonsense. I’ll see you there in half an hour. I’m walking out in ten.”

I pulled up at Flint’s house to find Erin sitting on the back steps, evidently waiting for me, since she stood and smiled as I parked next to the garage. Flint’s car wasn’t home yet, but he was minutes behind, if that. I didn’t have a full minute to take a deep breath and steady myself before Erin had pulled open the door to my truck.

“Come here, you,” she said, that sweet voice at once comforting and a harbinger of doom.

I hopped down, and she pulled my shoulders into a rough, quick hug, then released me. “You okay?”

“Yep,” I said with a curt nod, wishing that’d be the end of it.

“Okay. Come in and fix your pizza. Crusts and fixings are ready—you just have to build it.”

She led the way to the door, then into the kitchen, and I had to appreciate her way with me, or really everyone. She was a tender-hearted person, incredibly empathetic, but she understood me well enough to know, or maybe she could just see, I didn’t want to sit and talk.

She was good at giving me something to do, and topping a pizza after a long day with an unsatisfying lunch hitting bottom over six hours ago meant I was more than ready for food. That my dinner would be some of her food was an unexpected delight for the day.

Before I’d finished spreading the sauce over the homemade and shaped crust, Flint came through the door. I focused on my pizza as Erin went to greet him and ignored the pang their murmurs and Flint’s low laugh caused.

“Beer?” he asked after delivering his keys to the hook where they stayed by the door and dumping the empty container he’d used for his lunch and coffee in the sink.

“Sure.”

“Me too,” Erin said, as she swirled sauce from a pan on the stove over a large pizza already sitting on a stone.

Somehow, we made small talk for a few minutes before Flint crossed his arms, leaned back against the counter next to Erin, and leveled me with the look I was all too familiar with.

“How was your weekend?” he asked, like it wasn’t a grenade.

“Eventful.”

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