Page 14 of Strike Fast

“In a little while. It’s good to remember him. Hurts more if I don’t.”

Her words were like tiny daggers in his heart. Because she was dead on about that.

She frowned slightly, turning more fully toward him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He cleared his throat, glanced toward the band before turning his attention back to her. “How long ago did he die?”

“Three years ago.”

He nodded slowly, his heart beating faster. Another connection they shared. He was starting to lose count of how many they had. “It never really goes away, does it?”

Her gaze sharpened on his. “No.”

“And it’s tough to move forward, because if you do, it feels like you’re forgetting the person you lost, and the guilt is just as hard.”

Tess stared at him in astonishment for a moment. “Who did you lose?”

It shouldn’t have surprised him that she was so perceptive. He hadn’t wanted to talk about this, but she’d just opened up to him, so he had to give her something in return. “My best friend. Jason. We served together in the same A-Team. He was like a brother to me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. When?”

“Ten year anniversary is coming up in a couple weeks.” And he was fucking dreading it. May nineteenth was an entire day of torture he was forced to endure each year, when his demons were strongest and the temptation to slide back into a bottle had him on the verge of giving in.

Tess reached for his hand, startling him, and laced their fingers together. It was scary how natural it felt. How comforting. “Tell me about him.”

Because he was more comfortable with her than he had been with anyone in ages—other than his teammates, who still didn’t know all the details or how bad his alcoholism had been—Reid did. He told her about how he and Jason had met during Robin Sage and how Jason had pushed his ass through to the finish. How Jason had loved Adam Sandler movies and smoking cigars and bass fishing.

But he couldn’t tell her about how Jason had died after that last deployment to the hellhole in Helmand Province almost a decade ago. The pain of it was still too fresh. Too raw. He wasn’t ready, maybe wasn’t capable of baring his soul that way.

Tess’s expression was soft as he finished. “He sounds like a great guy.”

“He was.” Jason had been the best friend Reid had ever had. And when Reid had lost him, nothing else in his life had mattered anymore. He’d let the darkness take him, because he’d thought he didn’t deserve to be happy if Jason was gone. The guilt had damn near killed him.

“You still miss him a lot,” Tess said, sliding her thumb gently back and forth over the back of his hand.

Reid squeezed in silent thanks, and something about the way she watched him, that she truly understood where he was coming from because she had experienced loss, made him continue. “I…wasn’t in a good place after he died. Didn’t handle it too well, and I had a child on the way.”

He’d wound up a high-functioning alcoholic who got next level drunk when he went on a bender, which back then was all too often. Because the booze at least temporarily numbed the pain. “I got out of the army, eventually got my life together—” But only after a monumental struggle and the destruction of his marriage—“and applied to the DEA. I made a lot of mistakes before that, though.”

He didn’t tell her about the drinking, or how bad it had gotten, because it was still embarrassing as hell. And he didn’t want to scare her off. What woman in their right mind would want to get involved with a recovering alcoholic? Let alone one who had gone through what Tess had?

She squeezed his hand. “Everybody handles grief differently. We all make mistakes.”

How had she handled it? He bet she hadn’t tried to drown her sorrows in alcohol the way he had.

“And if it helps, whatever your faults, Autumn doesn’t hold them against you. She adores you. Anyone with eyes can see that.”

That made him smile. “She’s the reason I kept going.” Like corrosive acid, the survivor’s guilt had all but eaten what was left of his soul. Until Autumn was born and he’d found a reason to get his shit together. A reason to start living again. “I’d see that little face looking up at me, and that was all the kick in the ass I needed to get back up again.”

“Because you’re a warrior, and you love your little girl.”

“I love her to death.” There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her. He loved his job, but not even in the same realm as what he felt for his daughter. Push came to shove, he would give it up for her if he had to. And some days, it seemed like that was the right thing to do. He’d missed out on so much already, being away so often. He didn’t want to miss the rest, too.

“I noticed. And it’s adorable.” Tess cocked her head, that endearing little smile in place.

God, she was pretty, the night breeze gently blowing her hair around her shoulders, her cheeks the same soft pink as her lips. She didn’t wear much makeup. Didn’t need it, and it only would have covered up her natural beauty. Her low-maintenance style was just another thing that set her apart from every other woman he’d been with.

“She’s a lucky little girl to be that loved,” Tess said.

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