Page 27 of The Spice Is Nice

“I’ll handle it.”

Ash studied me for a second longer than comfortable, then nodded and went back to his plate. He didn’t ask why I’d clenched my jaw or why my hands had gone to fists on my knees. Ash made an excellent ranch manager, a military man like us who understood that some things lived under the surface and came up in their own time.

After I finished eating, I took a walk outon a slight ridge of the hill, the one with a perfect sunset view. I stared at the valley below and let the truth settle over me like a cold sheet, thinking about the Hollis family. Ron and Dana Hollis, the parents. Tanner Hollis, the youngest, I’d watched Seth shove against a wall in an alley. And Private First Class Caleb Hollis, who’d been standing six feet from me on the deck of a destroyer when a cable snapped and took him out of the world, leaving me there with his blood on my shirt.

At long last, I was going to face what I came to Montana to face. I was going to the home of the friend I’d failed to save, and I was going to look his parents in the eye, and I had no idea how to do that without breaking.

Footsteps crunched on the leaves and brush behind me. “I heard Ash talking about the Hollis Ranch,” Ivy called, coming to my side.

“Yeah.” I patted the ground beside me, and she joined me there.

“I want to come with you.” Her voice was practical. Her shoulder brushed mine and jolted my body with electricity. “After what Tanner told us in the alley, and what I saw in the motel room. The Hollis property was circled on one of Seth’s maps.”

I should have said no and told her it was a ranch errand, that I’d handle it, that she didn’t need to come. But the word that came out of my mouth was, “Fine.”

Her gaze locked onto the side of my face, searching. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Colt.” Of course she couldn’t just let me wallow. “Talkto me. Above all else, we’re friends. I know you well enough by now to know when something is wrong. You bristle at the name Hollis. Tell me why.”

I’d brushed off everything since the Navy, with deflection and distance and the quiet assurance that I was fine, that the thing that happened on the ship was dealt with and processed and behind me.

But Ivy had been in a closet with me a few days ago. She’d trembled against my chest and let me hold her through a very intimate moment. In the alley last week, she’d told me about the worst parts of her past. She’d handed me pieces of herself that she’d never given anyone, and the least I could do was give a part of myself back.

“In the Navy,” I started, my voice hoarse and strange to my own ears. “I lost a good friend. His name was—Caleb Hollis.”

She gasped, her hand landing on my bicep. “Oh God. Colt.”

“Yeah. The older brother to Tanner, the kid Seth had pinned against the wall in that alley.” I swallowed hard, staring at her hands. The words were coming now whether I wanted them to, pulled out by the woman by my side. “After being discharged from the Navy, I hiked the Pacific Trail and tried to walk the grief out of my body, and when that didn’t work, I looked up where he was from. Silver County. Forest Grove. I found this ranch program for veterans, and I thought if I came here and worked the land he’d grown up on, breathed the air he’d grown up breathing, maybe I’d understand why he was gone—and I was still here.”

“You came to Montana for him.”

“I came to Montana to figure out how to face his family. I’ve been here a year, and I haven’t done it yet.” My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs and willed them to stop. “We were on a destroyer in the Pacific. Two days before the accident, I flagged a fraying cable during a routine inspection. The Chief Petty Officer looked it over and told me it was within acceptable limits. He had more experience on a ship, so I said, ‘Yes, Petty Officer,’and moved on. Two days later, Caleb was standing six feet from me when that cable snapped.”

She squeezed my arm. I noticed her face, her concern, wet eyes too.

“One second he was there, telling me about his family ranch back home, and the next he was—” I stopped. The scene replaying in my head. I could never describe the sound of the cable snapping. “The investigation cleared me. Cleared the chief, too.”

I shook my head. Her other hand caressed soothingly down my back. Between my shoulder blades, flat and warm through my shirt, the pressure of it unraveled what I’d been holding in.

“Why didn’t I go over the chief’s head when he did nothing about the cable? I deferred to authority because that’s what you do in the military, and Caleb died because I followed the chain of command instead of my gut. If the cable had only swung five feet in my direction, I’d have traded places with him. Gladly.”

My jaw clenched, eyes burned. I hadn’t cried since the memorial service. The effort of not crying was its ownbrand of madness.

“And tomorrow, I’m driving a horse trailer to his parents’ ranch. What am I supposed to say to them?”

Ivy pulled me by the shoulders to face her. In the dim light under the pines, her blue eyes were bright with tears that she wasn’t trying to hide. “You tell them the truth. That’s all you can do.”

“What if they hate me for not doing enough to prevent the accident?” The question came out raw. Unguarded.

“Then you’ll survive that too. But I don’t think they will. You should share some nice stories about him, too, like laughs you shared, things that will fill them in on his life in the Navy that they never got to see.” She squeezed my hands. Her tears spilled over, two quiet tracks down her cheeks that caught the last light. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”

I reached up and cupped her face and wiped her tears away. “There isn’t anyone else I’d rather share it with.” Then I covered her lips with mine, the soft kisses not out of desperation to feel her come undone with me again, but out of a need for comfort—and connection.

“There’s no one around to see us kissing,” she breathed when she pulled back.

“I don’t care.” And I continued, taking pleasure in the simplicity of it—just us, her mouth on mine at sunset. Kissing because I was alive, and I could, when an old friend couldn’t.