Page 33 of Sweet Courage

Tipping her head back slightly, her gaze met his. “Yeah?”

“I did it.” The words felt strange in his mouth, heavy with a weight he hadn’t fully processed yet. He looked up at the towering iron structure of the wheel. “I didn’t forget. Not for a single second. Not what I was doing, or why I was up there, or how the mechanics worked.” It was the first time since the explosion—since the traumatic brain injury that had rewritten his life—that a high-stress, life-or-death situation hadn’t triggered the fog. “It was like working a rig on a forward deployment. The second I got my hands on the iron, my brain just mapped it out. The release valves, the pins, the physics of the jam. Even when my boot slipped… I just knew what to do. I never missed a step.”

For the first time all night, the tight, terrified lines of Kat’s face softened. A wobbly, beautiful smile touched the corners of her mouth. Once again, she rested her forehead against his shoulder. “Muscle memory,” she muttered warmly against his shirt.

“Yeah.” Hanson breathed out, the tight knot that had made itself at home in his chest miraculously loosened. “Muscle memory.” He let himself savor the victory for one more second—just him, the girl in his arms, and the quiet triumph of his own mind working exactly the way it was supposed to. Then, the protective instinct that had driven him up the wheel in the first place kicked back in. He gently eased back, though he kept one arm firmly wrapped around her waist. “Clint?”

Her expression shifted into something warmer and less complicated. “Stable. Ambulance already gone. Doc Conroy followed.” She settled back against his shoulder like she’d decided that was where she was staying for the foreseeable future and he had no objections whatsoever. “Sarah Sue says her father is very optimistic.”

He let that land. Let the relief of it move through him. “And Alice?”

“With Preston.” A pause. “Doc let her talk to Clint on her cell as soon as they were on their way. You know Alice, making sure you were okay before she left for the hospital was…well… she’s Alice.”

He almost smiled. “Yeah.”

Above them the Ferris wheel stood motionless and entirely unbothered by the afternoon it had caused, its red paint catching the late afternoon light with the cheerful indifference of carnival equipment everywhere. The teenage operator was talking to two men in what appeared to be official fair committee vests, his posture carrying the particular energy of someone providing a very detailed account of events they had not been fully prepared for.

“For what it’s worth,” Kat remained tucked into his shoulder, “I would not object to going the rest of my life without watching you do that again.”

“Reasonable.”

“I counted five seconds.”

“I know.”

“It felt like considerably more than five seconds.”

“I know that too.” He pressed his lips to her hair again, briefly. “I had the lanyard.”

“I know you had the lanyard.” A pause. “I was still counting.”

He held her a little tighter. She let him. Somewhere across the grounds a cheer went up—probably the cornhole tournament resuming, or someone’s livestock placing, or simply Honeysuckle deciding the afternoon had been eventful enough and it was time to get back to the business of being a county fair.

Standing in the middle of it with his boots on solid ground and Kat in his arms, it occurred to Hanson that all things considered, this was a very good place to be.

Chapter Fifteen

The Zoom window flickered once, then settled. Hanson sat in the late Mr. Sweet’s office with his forearms resting on the desk. The video feed lagged for a fraction of a second before Dr. Wallace leaned back in her chair on the other side of the screen. “You’re looking well, Hanson. Truly. The Texas life seems to be agreeing with you.”

Hanson glanced toward the window. Beyond the glass, late afternoon sunlight stretched over the yard. Somewhere outside, a truck door slammed, followed by a burst of familiar voices. “It is.”

“That was not the answer I expected when we started this.”

“No.” Hanson smiled faintly. “Me either.”

The therapist’s expression warmed, but her voice stayed practical. “Your memory strategies are holding?”

“Most days.”

“And on the days they don’t?”

“I use the cards. Or I ask. Or I slow down long enough to remember that being mad about it doesn’t help.”

“It doesn’t.” A pause. “The military environment—the noise, the unpredictability, the operational tempo—it’s not going to get easier for you. The gains you’ve made here are real, but they’re fragile under that kind of sustained stress.” She said it the way she said everything—directly, without apology, because she’d learned early that he preferred it that way. “You know that.”

“Yes.” He did know that. Had known it for a while.

“All right then.” She closed whatever she’d been looking at. “We’ll talk next week.”