Page 40 of Saved from Obsession

Silence fills the space between us—I don’t want to push him or say the wrong thing, and he’s staring at his lap with a deep frown pulling at his features.

“I’m sorry.” Leo turns his head to look at me, reaching over to stroke his hand through my hair. His tone has softened again. “It’s just—I don’t even want to think about it. I dreamed that—that I failed you. And it washorrible.”

Oh. My heart constricts into a painful lump that rises up in my throat. “You couldneverfail me, Leo. It’s not possible. It was just a stupid dream.”

“It’s alwayspossible.“ His voice goes low and his eyes are shadowed. “I thought I couldn’t fail other people I cared about, and then I did.”

Could this have something to do with the reason Leo left the Army? I know something went wrong on his last mission, but that’s the only thing he’s ever said about it. “I’m sure it wasn’t like that.”

“Itwas, Georgia.“ His gaze meets mine, and I hate the grief and guilt I see in it. He pauses, taking in a deep breath before exhaling. “You should know about it. At least, the parts I can tell you. So you don’t think I’m infallible.”

His shoulders are hunched over, his belief about whatever he did—or thinks he did—dragging him down. Desperate to comfort him, I climb onto his lap so I’m facing him, wrapping my arms around his chest. I rest my head on his shoulder so he doesn’t have to look at me while he talks—I know from my own experience sometimes that makes it easier.

His arms go around me, and he presses a soft kiss to the top of my head. “It was our last mission. Well, we didn’t know it was at the time, but after what happened… none of us could go back.”

“We were sent to a country in the Middle East to help train foreign allied soldiers. It’s something we did a lot, and this mission seemed like it would be like the others.” Pausing, he sighs and continues. “The details are classified, so I can’t tell you more than that about the mission.”

“Everything was going as expected. We worked well with the men we were training, became friends with some of them. And one,” His arms tighten around me. “One of them ended up betraying us. He sabotaged the camp, the mission, everything.”

Leo goes silent for at least a full minute, and I can hear his heart pounding. Finally, he says, “A lot of people were hurt. Killed. Out of the six of us, Cole, Zane, and I got off lucky. Just minor injuries. But the others…”

He swallows hard, his voice catching as he says, “Rylan was badly injured. Finn, too. They had to be medically discharged from the Army.”

“Rylan?“ I can’t bear the thought of the friendly man who so patiently taught me self-defense being so terribly wounded.

“Yeah.” Sadness seeps into Leo’s voice. “He’s better now, but it took over a year of surgeries and physical therapy for him to get close to normal. And Finn, he lost his hearing in one ear. You wouldn’t know from talking to him, but it took a toll on him.”

There’s one more person on the Blade and Arrow team he hasn’t mentioned yet, and I have a terrible feeling Leo’s saved the worst part of the story for the end.

“Then there was Nora. She was—“ Leo goes silent for a few seconds. “She was attacked by the man who betrayed us. It was brutal. I can’t say more because it’s not my story to tell. But I was the one who found her.”

“I found her broken and bleeding. Our teammate so badly hurt by a man we all trusted. She’s never been the same. And if I had just found her sooner, I could have stopped it. If I had gone through that part of the camp just ten minutes earlier, Iwouldhave stopped it.”

Oh, God. My heart is breaking for Leo. His pain is so raw, so intense, the guilt embedded inside him, but it’s all wrong. From what he’s telling me, he’s done nothing wrong. There’s no failure other than the imagined one he perceives.

“Leo.“ I pull back from his shoulder to look at his tortured face.

“You see?” His gaze is defeated, like he thinks I’m going to judge him for this. “I failed my team. And my greatest fear now is I’ll fail you, too.”

“No.“ I grab his face and stare into his eyes. “That wasnotyour fault. If it happened just like you told me, it wasn’t your fault. You can’t see the future—you had no idea you were about to be betrayed by a traitor.”

When he tries to shake his head, I hold it steady, firming my voice as I continue. “You couldnothave known what was going to happen ten minutes earlier. You couldn’t, not with the information you had at the time. Just like I couldn’t have known there was a man waiting for me outside my apartment.”

“If I had known that man was there, intent on hurting me, do you think I would have gone out to the store? Left my apartment? Wouldn’t I have called the police or done a dozen other things that would have stopped him? Is itmyfault he hurt me?”

He flinches. “God,no. Ofcoursenot.”

“Right.” I let go of Leo’s face, but not his gaze. “But I did think that for months. That it was my fault. But it wasn’t, no more than it was your fault that you didn’t stop what happened to Nora.”

“And Leo… youdidfind her. What if you hadn’t, or it had been half an hour later? I wasn’t there, I don’t know, but I’m guessing it would have been even worse than it was when you got to her.”

Leo stares back at me, emotions working their way across his face. I can’t pinpoint all of them, but I can recognize the regret, guilt, hesitant hope, and the tiniest ripple of relief. After a long silence, he breathes out, “Sweetheart. I can’t even express how much it means to me to hear you say that.”

“So you believe me?”

“I’m trying,” he admits. “I don’t think I can just switch my thinking over that quickly. But you’ve given me some things to really think about. And you’ve given me hope that maybe the burden of guilt might not be as heavy as I thought it was.”

He shouldn’t feel guilty at all in my opinion, but at least this is progress.

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