Page 92 of Keeping Guard
She didn’t want Noah to see her eyes watering, so she looked around. “Where’s the bathroom?” She needed to get away from the three pairs of eyes suddenly focused on her before they stripped her bare, before they...no, before Noah saw that she wasn’t so okay with him leaving. She couldn’t remember, but she thought she’d promised him she wasn’t looking for...well, she couldn’t remember, so maybe she’d made him promises she’d thought she could keep and maybe she hadn’t.
Whatever. He wasn’t staying, not even for her.
“You okay?” Noah said.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she said, sounding snarkier than she’d intended. Or maybe she had intended to be a bitch. Again, whatever.
“I’ll show you where,” Nichole said, edging next to her. “Come with me, sweetie.”
As she walked alongside Nichole, she glanced back. Noah was watching her, and she didn’t like seeing the worry on his face. Worry that she’d put there. He had enough to deal with without her adding to it, so even though she was worried sick thinking of him on deployment, she had to hide it.
“He’s leaving, and I promised that was okay when the time came,” Peyton blurted as soon as a door closed behind them. She glanced around and frowned. “This isn’t the bathroom.”
“Did you really need a bathroom or just a place to rant on how stupid the male population has a knack for being?”
Peyton snort laughed. “That last part. So, where are we?” It was like being in someone’s living room. There was a leather sofa and two leather recliners, a TV mounted on the wall, and game controls were on the coffee table. Not a space she would have expected a dog therapy place to have.
“This is the family room. Sometimes a family member will come with the person going through training with their new dog, and they can come in here while the training session is happening.”
“That’s really thoughtful, having a room like this for them.” She was impressed with what Jack was doing.
“So, you’re not okay even though you promised you would be?” Nichole sat on the sofa, then patted the seat next to her.
Peyton nodded as she took a seat. “Yeah, I’m not okay. Not even close, but I can’t let him see that. I’m going to miss him so much when he returns to his team, but I’m going to let him go. I don’t really have a choice.”
“He’ll miss you, too. Don’t you see how he looks at you? Like you’re the air he needs to breathe. He just hasn’t admitted it to himself yet.”
Was Nichole right? Not that it mattered. As much as she wanted to hold on to him, she had to let him go. If he felt the same way she did, he’d come back. If he forgot about her, then she didn’t want him...shouldn’twant him. That was what she told herself, what she tried to believe.
Noah disconnected the call with his commander. He stared at the phone for a moment, then lifted his gaze to Jack. “That was Jacobson.”
“I gathered. When does he want you back?”
“Monday morning. I was kind of hoping he’d forget about me.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.” Until things had gone so wrong on his last mission, he’d thought he’d be in the navy, that he would be a SEAL until the day he couldn’t pass the physical requirements. Meaning another ten, fifteen years. Now... Now, he couldn’t fill in the blanks of what tomorrow looked like.
“What about your appointments with Dr. Meadows?”
“He said he talked to her this morning. She signed off on me returning on the condition that I continue seeing someone when I get back. Gave him a recommendation for a therapist she thinks will be a good fit.”
“That’s good.” Jack stood. “Let’s take a walk. We got things to talk about.”
“What things?”
“Your future, brother, and we don’t need interruptions if our women come back before we’re done.”
Our women.There was nothing more in the world he wanted than to claim Peyton as his and for her to put her claim on him. But he didn’t have that right until he got his head straight. He thought he was finding his way to that happening, but what did he know?
“I’ve been thinking about something.” Jack picked up a stick and threw it. Lucky, Rambo, and Maggie May took off after it. Dakota stayed at Jack’s side.
“About?”
“I want to create a place for our brothers and sisters to come. A place where they can just get away for a few weeks. I’ll call it Operation Warriors Center. I want two sections, the first for individuals, and eventually a place for our brothers and sisters to come with their families.”
“What will they do there?”
