Page 18 of Surrendering To The Forbidden Mountain Man

He had stuff to handle.

Ben:

Want me to go talk to him?

Me:

No.

Ben:

Want me to hit him?

Me:

Also no.

Ben:

Offer stands. Love you, sis.

The clinic is closed on Sundays. No patients to distract me. No vitals to take, no diagnoses to make, no other people's crises to absorb. Just this apartment with a cold coffee mug on the counter and a box in the closet with two items that a forty-four-year-old man turned into evidence of my pathology.

Fixation. He used that word. Stood in my kitchen with his jacket zipped and his operational mask locked in place and called twelve years of love a fixation.

Anger is easier than grief. Anger lets you get dressed, brush your teeth, make a fresh pot of coffee. Anger lets you open clinic charts on your laptop and review patient notes for Monday because Mrs. Henderson's blood pressure has been creeping up, and Kyle's ribs need a follow-up check, and the new patient from Durango needs a referral to the orthopedic clinic for his shoulder.

Work. The thing that kept me upright through six years of Denver trauma shifts. The thing that kept me moving when my mother died. The reliable constant in a life built around unreliable men.

No. That's not fair. Reid isn't unreliable. He's terrified. And those two things look identical from the outside but they run on completely different wiring.

By noon, the charts are done. The apartment is clean. The laundry is folded. His flannel is still on the desk chair. Smells like cedar. Every time I walk past it my chest tightens, and every time my chest tightens the anger flares hotter because I am not going to grieve a man who's still alive and living four miles away.

A knock at the door at 4 PM.

My first thought is Ben. My brother has the restraint of a golden retriever when someone he loves is hurting. He'll have driven over with a six-pack and a speech he rehearsed in the truck.

But when I open the door, it's not Ben.

Reid is standing on the landing. No jacket. No toolkit. No flannel pushed up to his forearms, no military posture, no operational stillness. He looks like he hasn't slept. His hair is pushed back, silver catching the afternoon light through the hallway window. His eyes are red at the edges.

In his hands is my shoebox. The one from the closet. The cream envelope is visible through the gap in the lid, and beside it, something new. A second envelope. Thicker. Worn at the edges.

"Don't close the door," he says. His voice is rough. "Please."

My hand stays on the knob. The anger is right there, fuel-hot, ready. But so is everything else. Every single feeling I've carried for this man since I was old enough to carry feelings, all of it compressed into the three feet between us.

"Thirty seconds," I say. "Talk."

"Can I come in?"

"Thirty seconds. Here."

He nods once. Accepts it. Holds out the box.

"I brought this back. But I added something." He opens the lid. The cream envelope, the graduation photo, both there. Next to them, a second envelope. Larger. Yellowed. Unsealed, the flap tucked inside. "This has been in my footlocker since I was thirty-two. Bottom compartment, under my service records. It's a letter I wrote you the night before I deployed the last time I was home on leave. The night you walked into Hank's bar in a red dress."

My breath catches.