Page 88 of Silent Threat
“I’ll see you on Thursday,” Ambrose called after him.
Inanely, Cole thought,Not if I see you first.
He stumbled down the hallway.WTF?He hadn’t taken sleeping pills for the past couple of days. Annie had been in danger, and he’d wanted to stay sharp.
He glanced at his cell phone. Ten past nine. He made it across the exercise yard and headed to the woods. He didn’t go too far down the path, just to the first large tree. He sat at its base and leaned his back against the trunk.
He could actually smell burning flesh.
He’d gotten burned on his leg when the chopper had gone down, although not as badly as some of the others. Then he’d gotten burned again during torture. Later, he’d gotten tattoos to cover up the worst of the branding.
He could hear the whoop, whoop of the chopper, so realistic that he looked up, hands in tight fists.
Nothing but blue skies above.
Then he heard the RPGs. They’d exploded on the hillside before the chopper ever showed up. His flashbacks were coming out of sequence.
He kicked at the dirt, rage boiling through him. He hadn’t had flashbacks before he’d come to Hope Hill. Nothing like this. Instead of helping him, the therapies were just messing with his head, making him worse.
He tried to do the breathing Annie had taught him. He tried to meditate, focus on the tree behind him. When he couldn’t, he brought up Annie’s amber-colored eyes in his mind and focused on her.
He focused on her faint smell of lavender, and after a few deep breaths, he couldn’t smell burning flesh anymore. He focused on her smile, and the invisible chopper stopped whoop-whooping overhead. He focused on the way her soft lips had felt when he’d kissed her.
The chaos inside him settled.
The woods were all right. She had been right about that. The woods brought peace. She had given him this. So he wasn’t going to repay the favor by messing with her life. He was going to leave her alone.
He hadn’t realized he was so screwed up, butdamn. Ten minutes ago, he’d felt like a live grenade with the pin pulled.
He wasn’t getting better. He was getting worse. Decisions were going to have to be made.
Chapter Twenty-One
ANNIE WATCHED ASCole emerged from the footpath. He looked at her, his face closed, his body language spelling outIMPENETRABLEFORTRESS. As if he were back at the beginning, as if the past week or so of progress and therapy, the tentative connections they’d made, were gone.
“You OK?” she asked when she reached him, her heart twisting. Had Trev’s death hit him even harder than she realized?
“You going for a walk?”
She nodded.
“I’ll go with you.”
“Aren’t you just coming back from one?”
“I was sitting with a tree.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “Come along, then. Do you want to take your boots off?” The ground was dry today, the weather back to warm.
He shoved his hands into his pockets as he shook his head.
The silent no didn’t surprise her. His military boots were part of his armor. Trevor’s death had been a setback. The shock and grief would be a setback, one way or the other, for most of the people at Hope Hill.
Annie kicked off her Keds to show that nothing was wrong with being vulnerable either.
They simply walked together for an hour, enjoying the comfort of walking through nature with another person. Being alone with nature was one kind of therapy. Being not alone was another kind. The mere presence of another person at a time of trouble could make a huge difference to the psyche.
They offered nothing more and nothing less to each other than their presence, their silent support, the safety net ofI’m here if you need to talk.Some incredibly small things could, at times, make the greatest gift.
