by Kait Nolan
The girl grinned. “Much better. Go knock his socks off.”
On impulse, Ivy hugged her. “Thanks, kid. Is he downstairs?”
Ari shook her head. “Maybe he’s late?”
It was a half hour past when they’d agreed. He’d been early last time. But she shrugged off the vague worry and headed down to the guest lounge to hang out for a bit. When he hadn’t arrived by the end of tea time, Ivy started to get worried. She wanted to call, but of course, with the communication issue, they hadn’t even bothered swapping numbers. Because they were idiots.
Pru, clearing up the glasses from the other guests, shot her a sympathetic smile. “Why don’t you borrow my car and go out to check on him?”
“You really don’t mind?”
“Not at all. And if you cross paths, we’ll set him straight.”
On the drive out of town, Ivy managed to convince herself that he’d found a groove with his own book and lost track of time. She hadn’t even known for sure what day it was until Ari told her. With every mile her anticipation grew, the book high melding with her excitement over seeing him again and a little bit of dread over that serious discussion she wanted to have. The temptation to sing the whole way was strong, but she needed to figure out what to say. She allowed herself one motivating anthem of Madonna’s “Crazy For You” before focusing on the issue at hand.
“Harrison, the last two weeks have been amazing. You’re pretty damned amazing, and I want to see you again. No strings. I know neither of us came here looking for this. I just…don’t want you to slip out of my life because we didn’t swap contact information.” Her fingers drummed the steering wheel. “That’s not threatening, is it? He gets to set the pace. I just want his freaking phone number and email address.”
He wouldn’t say no. Harrison Wilkes had made it clear he was into her.
Ivy was singing again by the time she made it to the cabin. “Don’t Stop Believin’” again. And that was a nice bit of circularity since it had sort of brought her to him in the first place.
But as she pulled into the drive, it wasn’t Harrison’s Jeep parked out front. An older model Explorer had the back hatch open. A woman came out of the cabin, juggling a caddy full of cleaners and nudging a vacuum cleaner.
“Can I help you?”
Ivy shoved away the confusion and went for a smile. “I’m sorry. I was looking for Harrison Wilkes. He’s staying here. We were supposed to meet in town for dinner tonight, but I think we maybe got our wired crossed. Do you know what time he left?”
The woman hefted the vacuum down the steps. “No guests here now. The last one checked out.”
“Checked out?”
She nodded.
This made no sense. They had plans.
“Was there a note of any kind?”
“Not that I saw, but if you want to step in and look around while I finish loading up, you’re more than welcome to.”
Ivy climbed the steps, a leaden cloak of dread replacing her elation. The interior was pristine. No crackling blaze in the fireplace. No books scattered on the coffeetable. There was nothing set out on the counters. It was an empty cabin, waiting for its next guest.
Maybe he’d gotten tired of being so cut off and wanted to come into town to stay? Ivy headed back outside. “Do you happen to know when the last guest checked out?”
“Couple days ago. I got the order to come out and clean yesterday, but I couldn’t make it until today on account of my son had a doctor’s appointment.”
Two days ago. He’d checked out two days ago. He’d left no note, no forwarding address, hadn’t been by the inn to see her. He was just gone, without a trace.
Harrison Wilkes, the man she’d fancied herself in love with, whom she’d wanted to talk to about pursuing a real relationship, had ghosted her.
Shit. Shit Shit. I forgot to talk to Ivy. Why the fuck didn’t I get her number so I could call or at least send a freaking text?
Not that he could send a text since his phone had been sent sailing into the lake when Ty took exception to their intervention. He hadn’t dared leave his friend alone to get it replaced. It had been a harrowing few days, with little sleep and a lot of worry. He’d just lost track of time. He’d meant to call the inn on his way out of town to leave a message for Ivy, but the cell service was shit, and once he’d gotten to Georgia, things had gone so sideways with Ty, he couldn’t think of anything else. But he’d never imagined he’d forget to call until hours after he was meant to pick her up.
Swiping Ty’s phone off the nightstand, he found Porter in the contacts. He answered on one ring.
“Ty?”
Glancing at the bed, Harrison stepped out into the hall. “It’s me.”
“Why are you on Ty’s phone?”
“There was an incident with mine. It’s out of commission. Listen, I fucked up and forgot to let Ivy know I wasn’t going to be back, and I missed picking her up this afternoon. I need you to get a message to her that I had an emergency, and I’ll get in touch with her as soon as I can.”
“Sure thing. How soon do you suppose that’ll be?”
“Not sure. Ty’s been down since yesterday. We’ll see if he decides to rejoin the land of the living when he wakes up and go from there.”
“Keep me posted.”
The lump on the bed made a noise like a wounded buffalo.
“Sounds like he’s waking up. Thanks, brother.” Harrison hung up and went back into the bedroom. “You alive?”
Ty rolled onto his back and draped an arm over his eyes. “Debatable.”
“You wanna be?”
He went still, the unsteady rise and fall of his chest the only thing indicating he was still awake. “Pretty sure Garrett would come back and haunt my ass if I said anything but yes.”
After the last few days, that was progress.
“There’s Gatorade and aspirin on the side table there.”
Sucking in a breath, Ty shoved himself upright and winced. “Do I have anything to apologize for?”
“You mean before or after you got blackout drunk and tried to take a header into the lake?”
“Shit. How far did I get?”
“Not far.” They’d made sure of that. Harrison wondered if he’d remember any of the last three days.
Ty tossed back a few pills with his Gatorade and wiggled his jaw. “Did I get into a fight?”
“Not exactly. I had to cold cock you to get your service weapon away from you.”
He slowly lowered the bottle. “Did I try to use it?”
“Not on us.” Harrison wouldn’t soon forget the image of his friend with a gun barrel pressed to his temple.
Ty closed his bloodshot eyes. His voice, when he spoke again, was choked. “It should’ve been me.”
“What should’ve?”
“I was the one who was supposed to be sitting shotgun that day. It should’ve been my leg blasted off. Me who died in that chopper. It was my fault.”
Because he knew too well the guilt, Harrison kept his tone brusque. “Bullshit.”
“But—”
“Did you plant that land mine? Did you tip off insurgents about the route? Did you pull that trigger against your own men?”
“Of course not.”
“You did your fucking job. You defended your position and did everything you could.”
“I couldn’t save him.” Ty dropped his head, his shoulders shaking.
Harrison reached out and grasped his hand, relieved when Ty held on instead of pulling away. “Sometimes you can’t. It’s part of war.”
“I can’t go back. I can’t do another tour with that in my head, on my heart. I can’t have anybody else’s life in my hands like that.”
“No shame in that. I couldn’t go back either.” Harrison sucked in a breath, bracing himself. This was what he’d come for, why Porter had dragged him here. Because he’d walked through this fire and come out the other side.
“I lost three of my men.” Harrison swallowe
d past the razorblades in his throat, wishing he didn’t have to voice this again. “It was dead of winter in Afghanistan. Bitter cold. We came up on this woman, bleeding. She was hysterical, didn’t speak a word of English, and all we could really get out of her is ‘child,’ and she kept pointing over the side. There was a car that had slid off the road. It was barely hanging on the side of that mountain. Driver’s side door was open, and we could just see a carseat in the back. So we mobilized for a rescue.”
Even now, after going over the setup a thousand times in his head, Harrison couldn’t see the tell, couldn’t find the clue that would’ve had him making any other decision.
“I’d gone back to the Hummer to radio our position and let command know we were gonna be a bit late, when the first shot rang out. My guys were over the side, all roped in. Fucking sitting ducks for the sniper hidden across the gorge. All three of them were dead in seconds, and I barely made it out. You wanna talk about guilt? About failure? I’m the one that made the call. I’m the one that put them on that mountainside. I’m the one who went to each of their families to tell them how I didn’t smell an ambush.”
More than anything else, those visits had nearly killed him. So he understood exactly why Ty’s trip to see Bethany Reeves had sent him off the rails. If not for others doing for him exactly what he was doing now, he might’ve come to a different end. “I wish I could say it gets easier. It doesn’t. It’s a pain you have to learn to live with.”
“How?”
Harrison thought of what he’d been doing. Of how he kept writing different versions of what happened, trying to exorcise it, trying to make everything come out different. It hadn’t helped. Not really. Because what had happened was irrevocably a part of him. So much so that a woman who’d been a total stranger had seen it, in his eyes, in the lines of his face, down to the marks on his soul. She’d looked at him and seen hero material.
He didn’t feel like a hero, but Ivy made him want to try. There was no going back to that mountain road and changing what happened. He’d been telling his stories through his books, but he’d been telling them for himself. He thought of the emails and wondered if that was the answer. Instead of story as therapy for him, story as service for them. He found himself wanting to do more. Wanting to tell stories for guys like Ty. Those guys coming home, who needed to see the same shit happening to someone else, somebody they could relate to. Somebody who could hear, “It wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could have done,” and then realize that was true.
He needed to show them his truth. Which meant he had to accept it himself.
“You have to accept the fact that awful shit happens with no rhyme or reason, and you weren’t to blame for those who died when you lived.”
“I don’t have the first clue how to do that.”
“Neither did I. It’s not an easy thing to let go of. But on the bad days, the days it feels like that can’t be true, I remember what the wife of one of my men told me when I went to see her. She said if we hadn’t stopped to try to help, if we hadn’t immediately tried to save the child we thought was in danger, then her husband wouldn’t have been the man she fell love with. We had no way of knowing it was a set up, so we did the right thing based on the information we had. Period.”
“That helps?”
“Sometimes. In the end, you have to find a new mission.”
This was his.
Even as Harrison thought it, ideas bombarded his brain.
Maybe there were guys out there who needed to see Coop do more than just keep going. Just like Harrison, he’d been surviving, not living. If Harrison had taken nothing else away from his time with Ivy, it was that. So maybe his readers needed to see Coop walk away, to choose life instead of death, instead of duty, to give themselves permission to do the same.
But what would that look like? How did people live far from the front, where death was less of a certainty? People whose every day wasn’t shaped by the movements of troops or the acquisition of critical intelligence? They’d lead far simpler lives, where their biggest concerns were having basic needs met. And maybe, without the bitter mistress of duty, there’d be time for a woman.
What would it take to turn Coop’s head? What sort of woman could make him see that there was more to life in the Quadrant than war and encourage him to embrace it? A sharp-eyed, whip-smart beauty with silky brown hair and eyes like winter forests, perhaps.
Of course it came back to Ivy. It seemed almost all his thoughts lately came back to her.
She’d have a field day profiling Coop. The idea of it made him smile.
Maybe he’d ask her when she was done with her own book and had a chance to actually maybe read his stuff. That was a terrifying thought. She was good. Terrifyingly so. He was…well, far better than adequate, but he’d have been lying if it didn’t admit he was a little professionally intimidated by her. Or maybe it was less fear of how she’d like his writing and more about what reading it would reveal about him.
Maybe they could discuss the whole thing over dinner. After he explained his disappearing act.
“What kind of mission?” Ty’s words interrupted his train of thought. “I’ve been in the Army since I was eighteen. I don’t know anything else.”
Harrison dragged his focus back to the conversation. He wouldn’t be able to shake loose to drive back to Eden’s Ridge for a while yet, but as soon as he got a minute, he’d try to get a message to her. “Why’d you go into the military in the first place?”
“I was a skinny ass kid. Bullied growing up. I wanted to become somebody who was in a position to protect others.”
In Harrison’s head, Coop traded in his proton rifle for a futuristic six-shooter and a badge.
“Have you ever considered a career in law enforcement?”
Chapter 14
Ivy spent the trip back to the inn in a state of disbelief, trying to generate some alternative explanation where Harrison hadn’t just walked away from her without a word. But all she could remember was the distance he put between them the last night they were together. He’d declined to stay, citing her need to work. And then he’d made it even longer until she’d see him again. Had he planned to leave even then?
No. She couldn’t have been so wrong. Could she? There had to be some explanation. Right? Somehow, some way, there was an alternate reason for the fact he wasn’t there. But good as her imagination was, she couldn’t find a rational way to dismiss the fact that he’d checked out. He’d checked out. Himself. So it wasn’t like he’d been in an accident and couldn’t call. He’d left, like the proverbial thief in the night, and hadn’t even had the decency to write a note or leave a message at the inn or even send up a freaking smoke signal to say, “Hey, it’s been great, but I’m out. Sorry.”
Apparently, she wasn’t worth that courtesy.
“That son of a bitch.” Her snarl of anger came out more like a wail. As the road began to blur, she realized she was crying. Damn it.
Had this whole affair been a lie? A way to get some tail before he went on to wherever he next had to go? Had he laughed at how easy a mark she was? The lonely writer who was so desperate for human connection, she’d throw herself at a veritable stranger. She’d been honest with him, vulnerable with him. And this was how he repaid her? Was he even a writer? There’d been no books listed under Harrison Wilkes when she’d searched online. Was anything he’d told her real?
She took a corner wrong and jolted as the two right wheels bumped up over the curb, eyes burning so badly, she could hardly see.
Somehow, she made it back to the inn without wrecking the borrowed car.
Pru looked up, startled, as she came through the door. “What—”
But Ivy just passed her the keys and went upstairs. As soon as she saw that big, comfy bed, she knew she couldn’t stay here. Not here in this room and not here in this town, where everything would make her think of him. So she packed her bags, hauled them downstairs, and went to seek out her hostess.
>
Pru was in the office with Ari. The pair of them were practically bristling with questions, but neither said a word.
Ivy swallowed and forced the words out of a throat that felt like broken glass. “Is there any possible way someone could drive me to Johnson City to pick up a rental?” She should have done it earlier in the week, but she hadn’t thought she’d need transportation just yet. She should have known better. Hadn’t her life taught her to always have an escape plan?
“Flynn can drive you. But Ivy are you sure?” Pru looked like she wanted to say something else, but stopped herself.
“I’m sure.” Maybe she owed them some kind of an explanation, but she just couldn’t. She only wanted to be gone from here as fast as possible. Let them take in her tear-stained face and draw what conclusions they would. They’d be close enough to whatever constituted the truth.
Flynn, bless him, didn’t ask. And once she’d secured the rental, he quietly squeezed her hand. “Be careful.”
Unable to speak, she just nodded and squeezed back.
On the four-and-a-half hour drive back to Nashville, she cycled between crying and fury—at him for leading her on, at herself for not seeing what was happening. She’d always prided herself on being such a good judge of character. Failing so spectacularly was an insult to her pride as much as his actions were an insult to her heart. Both made her feel stupid.
She wanted the comfort of home, where she could lick her wounds in private. But when she pulled into her garage going on eleven-thirty that night, she didn’t feel any relief. The little house she’d proudly bought with royalties from her first book just felt empty. Unable to face that, she fell face-first into bed and went straight to sleep, barely remembering to take off her shoes.
That night, her dreams were full of Harrison—or rather, his back, as she kept arriving places, only to find him walking away. She woke with gritty, puffy eyes and wet cheeks sometime around eight. Her body ached like the flu. The idea of facing the unpacking and the laundry and the grocery shopping and all the things that went along with coming home from a long stint away was too much. She dragged the comforter she’d cocooned herself in during the night over her head and vowed to go back to sleep. But a sound from somewhere in the house had her eyes popping open.
