Page 43 of Silent Threat
“Can’t get much worse, can it?”
She didn’t tell him not to run in the woods when the path was slippery with rain. Good. Because he didn’t regret it. If he hadn’t gone for the run, he wouldn’t have found her.
Her glaze slid down to his muddy clothes. “Are you cold?”
She was semiwet. He was soaked through.
“Navy SEALs don’t get cold.”
She resisted rolling her eyes, but just.
“It’s all in the training,” he said.
Her clear amber eyes turned probing. “Must be difficult when someone with superhuman abilities is met with limitations.”
There went his almost-good mood. “You said we weren’t here for therapy.”
He was willing to give nature therapy a chance, but right now he needed a break.
“It doesn’t mean we can’t talk. You could talk to me as a friend.”
“My friends are either dead or scattered around the country at various VA hospitals and rehab centers. I’m not sure if I want new friends. Look what happened with the last batch.”
“What did happen with the last batch?” Her large eyes were solemn and serious. “I’d like to know, but you don’t have to tell me. Not even when we are in session. Since you already have talk therapy with someone else, we can make nature therapy a place for you to come for comfort. I’d like it to be your safe place where you relax and heal.”
The sea of bitterness he’d been carrying inside nearly made him laugh. There were no safe places.God, the things he’d seen. The things he’ddone. The things that had been doneto him.
He hadn’t even talked about that yet with Dr.Ambrose, his shrink. And he didn’t want to talk about it at all with Annie. But the way she was looking at him, with warmth, as if she honestly cared, with understanding, and with that promise of peace in her eyes ... If anyone could resist her, he was a stronger man than Cole.
“My spotter, Ryan, and I were sent in to take out the leader of the insurgents we were fighting,” he said. “They somehow figured out we were there. Still don’t know how. They had RPGs. We were both badly injured. Ryan called in for reinforcements. A chopper came. Picked us up. Ryan died five minutes into the flight.”
Cole rubbed his palm over his face, dropped his hand, and looked back at her. “As we flew over the top of the hills, we came under RPG attack again. I think the first batch of insurgents radioed ahead to alert the second batch. They were ready for us.”
His chest tightened and filled with something heavy, as if someone had poured liquid metal down his throat, and it cooled and solidified inside him.
“They shot you down,” she guessed.
They had. “Three guys died on impact. The rest of us were pretty badly injured. We had nowhere to hide. Darkness had fallen, but the chopper was on fire, a freaking beacon. The insurgents found us within the hour. We were captured.”
He couldn’t talk about the six months of torture that had followed. He couldn’t even think about it. Rage and grief filled him, dark images crammed into his brain. He could feel the sharp blades, the fire, the starvation, the bite of the whips. And when those things weren’t being done to him, they were being done to the others, while he was forced to watch.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
The floorboards moved as Annie came over to sit next to him. She took his hand between both of hers. He wasn’t aware that he’d been shaking until the shaking suddenly stopped at her touch. He opened his eyes again.
She was right there, looking at him, inches away.
He wasn’t sure what was happening. He knew what he was hoping for, but he was pretty sure she wasn’t going to dothat. He kept still instead of reaching for her and pulling her onto his lap, where he suddenly wanted her.
“You are the leaves on the top of this tree,” she began. “Just feel the rain and the wind. If right now, you’re twisting and tearing, it’s OK to feel that. Even if you feel like the storm is going to tear you right off and carry you away. Whatever you feel is valid. It’s completely OK to feel it. Instead of fighting it, give it room. Say,There you are, I see you. For this moment, let yourself be that twisting, tearing leaf.”
“You just said no therapy.”
“Just two friends meditating together. If you want.”
They had classes in meditation at Hope Hill. Cole sucked at it. Yet, for some reason, this time, he felt himself slip into the picture Annie painted with her words. Maybe because he did feel like he was twisting and tearing on the inside.
He’d never thought of himself as someone vulnerable. His current situation challenged his entire self-concept, his identity, everything that gave him self-confidence. He hated being reduced to a twisting and tearing thing, made to feel small and inadequate by his own body.
