Page 62 of Holiday Wedding
“Dean,” I say, drawing out his name and meeting his gaze so he’ll see that I won’t back down.
There’s a long pause. He opens his mouth, but no words escape.
“I can take whatever it is,” I tell him. “I promise.”
His eyes are shadowed, haunted, when he says, “What if you can’t? What if it changes how you see me?”
That makes me pause, my mind spinning into overdrive. A million possibilities rise in my imagination, all of them terrible. What could scare a man as strong as Dean?
Then a thought, a bad one about why he won’t open up, occurs to me. Hesitant, I tell him. “If you’re worried that I’ll tell someone else, I won’t. You can trust me.”
A quick shake of his head. “It’s not that.” He squeezes his eyes shut and I will myself to be patient. I don’t want to badger him.
“I was…” He passes his hand over his face and rubs his eyes with his fists. “In the military for a while.”
I sit up and cross my legs. “I remember that you mentioned it before. Where were you stationed?”
“Afghanistan.” Another pause. Just when I think that’s all I’m going to get from him, he says, “Sounds like that, loud ones, make me feel like I’m right back there.”
I swallow and stare into space as I come up with my next questions. He’ll shut down if I press too hard, I know that, but I need to understand what’s happening. Seeing him so tortured was agony to me.
“But there’s no war in Afghanistan.”
His laugh is shockingly bitter. “No war? There’s always war, even if reporters likeyoudon’t call it that.”
Ouch.
He continues, “We were over there dying, just one by one rather than a thousand in a day, but no one cared about that. Who’s going to cry over a couple of soldiers blown up by an IED someone forgot to defuse?” He snaps off that last part, as if he didn’t mean to let it out, then clenches his jaw tight.
The silence following his outburst is deafening.
“Is that what happened?” I ask gently.
Tears well in his eyes. They gather and pool together until one breaks free to trickle down the side of his face. Dean nods mutely.
“Who?” I lower my voice to a hushed whisper, scared he’ll close up and won’t tell me. “Was it your squad?”
A terrifying thought occurs to me. “Were you hurt?” My eyes scan him, searching for wounds, and, sure enough, there it is. High on the side of his right arm, a gnarly scar, long, thick, and twisted, mars his beautiful skin. That’s why I hadn’t noticed it before. He always wears long sleeves.
He sees my gasp of horror and my hand cover my mouth. “It’s nothing. Just a scratch,” he tells me, dashing away his tears as if they offend him. “Nothing compared to the rest of my crew.”
“That doesn’t look like nothing,” I say. I zero in on the last part of what he said, my reporter sense telling me this is the meat of his story.
“What happened to the rest of your crew?”
His tears have dried up. No emotion is left in him besides a simmering anger. “Dead. All of them.”
I’m crying for these nameless strangers. I feel each of their passing like a blow to my chest.
“Who?” I breathe out, desperate for answers. “What happened?”
His throat works, but he doesn’t make a sound. He keeps staring up, like he can avoid this conversation as long as he doesn’t look at me. It’s a pivotal point in our relationship. I can sense it. Either he lets me in now, or I’ll be locked out forever. Dean’s not a man to waver. He’s decisive, driven, deliberate with every word and action.
I’d love to think that when we had kissed earlier it was because he was overcome by desire for me, but that’s not true. I saw the calculation in his eye, the moment when he decided it was worth the risk. This is an even bigger chance I’m asking him to take, to let me into his memories, his mind.
He won’t answer. He stays rigid and unblinking. I place my hand on his arm and squeeze. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to or if you aren’t ready, but I’m here to listen if you are. I want to know. To understand you better.”
When he opens his mouth to speak, I almost weep with relief.
