Page 29 of Luck Be Mine
“All right.” Her mind went blank. What else? God only knew how long he’d be gone.
Hunt stood and took her hand. “Come with me?”
She rose and let him pull her to the recliner.
He sat and tugged on her hand. “Sit.”
“Do we have time?
“To have a quick conversation? Yes. They aren’t going to leave without me.”
She settled in his lap and used her right hand to touch the skin of his neck. His warmth always drew her. She needed to absorb his presence to hold her over. He’d been right here for too long, and desperation roared to life. Determined, she pushed the emotion behind a closed door. This wasn’t the year they’d spent apart. This was a small deployment.
“This is going to be hard for both of us,” he whispered against her ear.
She struggled for an answer, then opted for truth. “We both have to figure out how to get past the fear. Me for you and you for me. We can’t exist here.”
He leaned his head back and shut his eyes. “I can power through the job, but not with you.”
She let him sit with the confession for a minute and didn’t offer false comfort.
He spoke quietly and she had to lean to hear him. “I wake from sleep and believe you’re dead. It’s like I’m still existing in those moments when I first found out.”
She caressed his neck in comfort. “I have my own bad dreams. I didn’t want to die, to lose everything we had. I replay slamming into the wall over and over in my dreams.”
Hunt grabbed her hands. Her left hand, still numb, stayed limp in his grasp. She couldn’t make her fingers curl to hold his, so she squeezed his fingers with her right. “We are existing in those moments.”
She put her forehead to his. “Yes, we are. Our brains are trying to work out how to reject the trauma. We’re not there yet.”
Hunt frowned. “This is the first step, but I’m leaving a lot for you to cope with.” He cupped her head, kissed her lips, andtucked her close to him again. “I game out all possible scenarios. Always. It’s who I am. But I can’t with you.”
“Those decisions come from your heart not your logic.”
“I don’t like it.”
Cait turned her head to kiss his hand. “If we’re going to make this work, we’ll have to power through. We may make mistakes, but I’ll be the first to say I’m sorry if anything gets screwed.”
He put a finger over her lips. “Not this time. First time is a freebie. So are all the rest of them. Honestly, we can’t worry about messing things up. Do the best you can. This husband thing is screwing with my head. I’ll probably get stuff wrong, too.”
“I am proud of you. You mean everything to me, and I love you. Quit worrying about getting the husband thing right, because I sure as heck don’t have the wife thing nailed either.”
His eyes locked to hers. “You focus on recovering, resting, rehabilitating. You mean so much to me. I don’t want you taking backward steps. Jackie will kick my ass if that happens.”
She laughed silently. “I’ll protect you. I want us past this.” She laid her head on his chest for several minutes, but the clock ticked silently, and his tense muscles said he wanted to move. “How do I send messages to you?”
“Similar to what we did in Afghanistan. Email the secure account. We can talk via secure chat, or I’ll text you when I’m able. Don’t expect a lot of conversation.”
“No, I only want to know you’re alive. OK is a good message. But if you are on the USS Gerald R. Ford, you have to take pictures. I’m trying to draw it, and the official photos don’t do justice to its size.”
He raised a brow. “Pictures would be a no-go, Doc. I’m not officially there.”
“Drat. Don’t tell me. You’ll be in trouble.”
He smiled with a Hunt-loves-Cait upturn of his lips. She patted herself on the back for easing the tension between them.
He took the rest away by holding her close and kissing her like the light between them would extinguish if he didn’t leave a lasting impression.
Overwhelmed, she pulled away and carefully stood. He helped her with the last few inches and kept a hand on her until she was stable. “Go prep your bag.”
