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“It’s worth a try.” I kissed the top of his head. “Whichever way you decide to go, just let me know how I can help.”

“You’ve already helped more than anyone else has ever even tried to.” He lifted his head and pressed a kiss beneath my jaw. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

He settled on my shoulder again, and we lay in silence for a while. I didn’t know if he was still thinking about it all, or if his mind had wandered elsewhere. Hell, he might’ve fallen asleep, though his breathing hadn’t slowed enough to make me think he had.

“Can I ask you about something?” I ran my hand over his shoulder. “Sort of but not completely related to what happened?”

Nolan shifted again, and we faced each other on our sides. Brow pinched, he said, “What’s on your mind?”

“Well…” I slid my hand up his chest. “You mentioned before that you had a full ride scholarship before you enlisted.”

He tensed, studying me cautiously as he gave a slow nod. “Yeah. I did.”

“If things had happened differently, and you’d gone to school, what were you going to study?”

He blinked as if that wasn’t what he’d expected me to ask. Then his eyes lost focus. Turning onto his back, he gazed up at the ceiling. “It probably sounds stupid.”

“Try me.”

He slowly drew his tongue across his lips. “For a long time, I wanted to go to veterinary school. But I did an internship at aclinic during my junior year, and…” He shook his head. “I can’t do it. I can’t stomach seeing animals in pain.”

That tracked. As stressed as he’d been when Arrow had gotten sick, and as meticulous as he was about caring for his cats, not to mention how thoroughly he’d rehabbed them after finding them as starving kittens—yeah, I could totally see him wanting to be a vet, and also balking because of the suffering animals.

“That makes sense,” I said. “You obviously love animals.”

“I do. And I’d love to be able to help them like that, but I just—I’m not wired for it.” He laughed softly. “Kind of ironic, I went into a career field where I learn all kinds of ways to kill a person, and my entire job revolves around bombs and missiles and shit. But ask me to see hurt or sick animals all day? Can’t do it. I wonder what that says about me.”

“Would you be able to work in a job where hurt and sick people came to you all day?”

He turned a puzzled look on me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, in our line of work, a lot of what we’re taught feels pretty abstract. Even what I’m doing, I do a lot of drills that involve taking down suspects and active shooters, but how often do I actually go hands-on with someone? Next to never. You’re working in ordnance. You load bombs and shit on planes. The planes come back with no bombs on them. That’s… a little different than shooting someone in the face, you know?”

He squirmed as if trying and failing to mask a shudder. “It is. Still bugs me. Some of the guys I worked with would watch the videos of our bombs getting dropped. After the pilots came back from missions. I… I couldn’t do that.”

“No, that doesn’t sound like you.”

He shifted onto his side and faced me. “You said you go hands-on next to never. But it has happened?”

I nodded. “Now and then.” I thought about it, then chuckled. “A commander once gave me a black eye after the Navy Ball.”

Nolan’s eyes widened, and he laughed. “No shit?”

“No shit.” I draped an arm over his waist just because I liked touching him. “At my last command, there was a big problem with DUIs.Bigproblem. The year before, there were like seven after the Navy Ball, and two of them happened off-base, which is messy. So that year, we set up checkpoints at all the base gates. Nobody went off post without getting stopped.”

He grimaced. “Bet that went over well.”

“Yeah, some people were less than pleased about it,” I said. “One of the junior enlisted guys was married to a law student, and she got absolutely hammered at the Ball. At the checkpoint, she starts screaming at us, quoting chapter and verse about constitutional law, unlawful searches…” I rolled my eyes. “I finally told her, fine—we’ll take down the checkpoint. And if anyone gets killed because someone drove off-base while intoxicated, we’d bring her in as a witness to testify that she explicitly told us we needed to take down the checkpoints.”

Nolan snorted. “What did she say to that?”

“More self-righteous bullshit. And I mean, I get it. I’ve never been completely comfortable with the idea myself. Fourth Amendment and all that. But… the first time we did it, my checkpoint alone stoppedthree different peoplefrom driving off-base with afuckloadof alcohol in their systems. That kind of spooked me, you know?”

He nodded solemnly. “Yeah. One of my bases did it, too. It always kind of rubbed me the wrong way, but they only ever did it on New Year’s Eve, Super Bowl Sunday, and the night of the Marine Ball.” He half-shrugged. “And they even said, if you don’t want to go through the checkpoint, fine—just stay in the barracks or the on-base hotel until the next day.”

“That’s what we did, too. One of the ship’s COs got all pissy about the whole thing, too, but he shut his mouth after the Super Bowl one year. We dropped six different Sailors off on his quarterdeck, so fucked up they couldn’t even stand. Luckily only two of them had tried to drive, and we basically said, ‘they’re your problem, sir. Good luck.’” I mock saluted, which made Nolan laugh.

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