Page 113 of California Wild

Not visibly. Not dramatically. Just… went still. The kind of still you only noticed if you were already hyper-attuned to her—which Jesse was.

He felt it before he saw it. The hesitation in her fingers, the sudden silence in her breath, the soft shift in the air as her touch paused over his ribs.

Then—her voice. Quiet. Careful.

“I don’t recognize this one.”

Jesse’s stomach went tight.

Fuck.

Of course she noticed. Hayley had always noticed. The smallest things. A new scar. The way his shoulders held tension after a mission. The nights he didn’t sleep but pretended he did.

He stayed still, jaw locked, pulse thrumming under his skin.

She propped herself up on one elbow, lifting just enough to look at him. Her green eyes searched his face—soft, curious. Openin that dangerous way that made him feel like she could see straight through him.

“Jesse?”

His throat went dry. He blinked once, trying to find the words. He didn’t. He couldn’t.

She dragged her fingers across the ink again. Slow. Deliberate. Not trying to make it hurt—but knowing it did.

A date. Coordinates. A line of script in an old Tagalog dialect she wouldn’t recognize.

A marker.

Of that day. Of the fucking camp. Of the kid with the stuffed animal covered in blood. Of the medic who told Jesse to walk away. Of the look in the boy’s eyes that would haunt him until his last breath.

They’d flown out of Ambon the next day. Their extraction point. Safe zone. Final debrief before heading back to San Diego. The city had been hot, sticky, busy with scooters and open-air markets. The team was allowed a single night off-grid before the Navy flew them home.

That’s where he got the tattoo.

A hole-in-the-wall shop, one of those back alley places run by a guy who didn’t ask questions. Isaac and Dom had gone to grab beer and grilled skewers from a vendor. Colson was on the phone back home. Zach had passed out in the barracks, dead to the world.

Jesse hadn’t planned it. He’d just walked.

Walked and walked until the weight in his chest turned into footsteps and then a door swinging open.

And when he’d left the shop two hours later, he hadn’t felt lighter.

But at least the pain made sense.

Now, lying here in the low glow of early evening, Hayley’s hand hovered over that truth inked into his skin—and he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

Her voice broke through again. Quieter this time. “Jesse.”

He exhaled slowly through his nose.

“It’s nothing.”

A lie. A fucking lie. But safer than the truth.

Her hand stilled completely. And he felt it—that shift. Like a door starting to close between them.

The warmth in the room dimmed just a fraction. That tiny, flickering crack between what they were and what they’d been trying to rebuild.

This was what always happened.

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