Page 94 of Cowboy SEAL Christmas

“I don’t want you. Any of you.”

“What utter bullshit,” Jack said and actually laughed. “If that were true, you wouldn’t have busted your ass with us to get Revival up and running. You wouldn’t have stuck with us in that rehabilitation center when we all know you were cleared before we were.”

“Th-that isn’t true.” Exactly. He’d been given an option, because while his injuries had been extensive, they hadn’t required the same kind of rehabilitation, but it had been close enough that he’d been given an option.

“Christ, Gabe, where is all this idiotic denial coming from? Do you think Becca would ever forgive me if I said, ‘Oh, Gabe wanted to be left alone on Christmas Eve so we left him there’? She loves you, too, and more, she doesn’t need all of me to function. She doesn’t have some one hundred percent hold on my love or devotion, nor would she need it.”

“God knows Rose doesn’t even need a quarter of me to function. It’s not some all-consuming thing that takes you away from everything else. Love is just…there. No piece of pie you have to dole out carefully.”

Gabe wanted to argue with that. He’d only ever known people whose love was all or nothing.

Except here. Alex and Becca gave parts of themselves to this ranch, to this foundation, to friends and community. Rose had a whole slew of sisters she gave to with or without Jack.

And more, so much more, over a decade of friendship that had survived being SEALs and losing Geiger and their futures. They’d always given to each other.

But…but…

“Is this about your family?” Alex asked quietly. “Why you’re not seeing them on holidays?”

“They don’t love me.” He honestly couldn’t believe the words had come out, but there they were, flopping on the floor like a grotesque dying fish.

He figured Jack and Alex would try to argue with him. Try to tell him he had to be wrong, because families always loved each other, unless someone very much didn’t deserve to be loved.

Me. Me. Me.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

“That doesn’t mean we don’t,” Jack said firmly.

Horrible words. Horrible lies. But Gabe felt like he was being cracked open. Worse, somehow, than when Monica had said it. He could convince himself she didn’t know him. Could never understand him. She might, but he could work hard to believe she didn’t.

He couldn’t work up the same denial with Alex and Jack. They knew him better than anyone. Even if they didn’t know his family stuff, they knewhim. The boy he’d been, the man he’d grown into.

“You love her,” Alex said simply.

Bang.

“How do you know that?” he demanded, though his demand sounded more like a whisper.

“I know you. I love you. I’ve also felt the same kind of panic. Maybe not for exactly the same reason, but only love works a person up quite like this. Where you’re ready to burn it all down because your fear is bigger than your faith.”

“I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to trust it.”

“Why not?”

He turned away from them. The two friends who knew him, who could see through him, who’d built their own lives and weren’t walking away from him, weren’t letting him walk away from them. “Easier that way.”

“When do Navy SEALs need the easy way out?” Alex demanded.

“I’m not a Navy SEAL anymore.”

“Maybe not in practice, but in action, you’ll always be one. You know better than to let fear—any fear—rule you,” Jack said. “It’s hard. God knows civilian hard is this whole other thing from SEAL hard, but it’s still hard. Harder, I think, because it’s all about our insecurities, weaknesses.”

“Love means being vulnerable when we were taught to never show that, but allowing yourself love—giving and receiving it—it’s stronger, braver, harder than anything we ever had to do in the military.”

Funny, the man who’d never meant to join the military found those words the most enlightening. He’d wanted to prove something by becoming a SEAL—to Evan, to his mother. That he was worthy of their love. Worthy period.

He hadn’t. Not to them and not to himself. Instead, he’d found love in the failures. Losing a man, losing the SEALs. Admitting things to Monica. In all of those horrible, dark places, all the good in this life had sprouted.

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