Out here under the vast sky, Jack listened to the man he loved as he talked in detail about what he’d done and what had been done to him. And Jack held him so close there was no gap between them. Riley cried. Out there where none of the kids could hear him, where his family wasn’t a witness, where only Jack was there to see, Riley cried.

And every tear broke Jack’s heart.

* * * * *

They went to bed, and Riley seemed lighter, as if a great weight had lifted.

“We talked about you when I was in that place with Tom…”

“All good things, I hope.”

“Told him all about how I was a bastard and you fell for me anyway.” Riley turned on his side, and Jack spooned him from behind. The clock showed it was midnight, and Jack was beyond tired and on to exhausted. He smiled against Riley’s skin.

“Not a complete bastard,” Jack said. “You had redeeming qualities.”

Riley yawned and snuggled back. This was Jack’s favorite time with Riley all sleepy and both of them talking softly in the privacy of their own room.

“What qualities were they?” Riley sounded disbelieving.

“You were very tall,” Jack deadpanned. Riley elbowed his arm. “What? I like tall men.”

“What else?” Riley asked. Sleep edged his tone, and Jack knew it wouldn’t be long before Riley was asleep.

“Your eyes, all crazy brown and green and gorgeous. And your family, they were a winning extra to your weird self. Apart from Eden,” Jack laughed. “She was way too normal. Then there was the money, I mean you had loads of it, and you had a plane…” He trailed off as he realized Riley had succumbed and was sleeping, his breathing deep and even.

Jack pressed a kiss to Riley’s warm skin, pulled the covers up over their shoulders, and relaxed. Tonight had been a roller coaster of emotions, but Riley was here and he was alive. Jack could support Riley getting out the other side of this.

But the thought of losing Riley to another man…

No. Just no.

The shouting when it came had Jack sitting bolt upright in bed and searching for the fire, the danger, the emergency, or whatever had Riley calling out in his sleep. Riley was curled tight on his side in a fetal position, his back to Jack, and some of the noises he made sounded inhuman.

Jack made to touch Riley but pulled his hand back at the last moment. You were supposed to leave people in nightmares alone, weren’t you? After a while, Riley settled back to sleep, but Jack found it hard to fall back to slumber himself. Riley had cried, he’d told Jack everything he was holding inside, but the nightmares hadn’t left.

And that scared Jack more than he would admit. To Riley, or to himself.

Chapter 14

None of the columns in the damn spreadsheet made sense. The raw data appeared reasonable, but as soon as Riley placed the numbers into Excel, it seemed like nothing made sense at all. Jack came up behind him and kneaded the tight muscles in his neck and shoulders until Riley was putty in his hands.

“Figures getting to you?” Jack asked.

Riley rolled his shoulders and leaned back into Jack. He’d been analyzing data from home today, and one of the benefits was being near the family. Hayley had brought him in contraband cookies on her way out to school, he’d helped to feed the twins and got covered in mashed banana, and he’d spent a good twenty minutes talking to Max as he arranged all his Thomases in a row on the landing outside his room. Tomorrow he was out in the field again for the first time since the kidnapping, and he couldn’t help but be nervous.

“Sean is out in the kitchen,” Jack said. “Asked to talk to you.”

Riley looked up from his work, surprised, “Eden’s here?”

Jack shook his head as he put his Stetson on, “Nope, just Sean.”

“What did he want?” Riley pushed himself away from the desk.

“He didn’t say.” Jack left the room, and Riley wasn’t far behind. He stumbled when Jack suddenly stopped and turned to face him. “Don’t forget, Eden is in love with him,” he warned.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Riley lied.

“It means all you want for Eden is for her to be happy, and Sean is a good guy.”

Riley nodded. Sean and Eden were happy—they’d gone through a lot, Sean with his accident, the PTSD—but Riley had only judged Sean because he wanted Eden happy. Jack was right.

Jack cradled Riley’s face and kissed him on the end of his nose. The touch was so perfect, so Jack, that love welled inside Riley until he could do nothing except cling tightly to the man who held his heart. He just wished he could feel more, that he could be physically intimate with Jack, but there was something frozen inside him and he couldn’t break it. They separated, and Jack picked up his coffee and wrapped cookies that he always took with him on mornings he was at the school site.

“Bye,” he said and left without offering Riley anything in the way of backup. Bastard. Riley caught Jack’s eye as he walked past the window, and dammit if the man wasn’t smirking.

“Hi, Sean. Coffee?” Riley asked.

Sean stood up and extended a hand, which Riley shook. “Jack already made me some.”

Riley made his own coffee and decided conversation was probably a good place to start. “Is Eden okay?”

Sean frowned. “Why wouldn’t she be?” he said defensively. “Every time we meet up, you—” He subsided. After a few deep breaths, he began talking again. “Sorry, no, she’s fine, working hard with the hospital charity.”

Riley indicated they should sit at the table, which gave him a moment to calm his thoughts. “What happens every time we meet up?” he asked. He’d been trying hard with Sean. He liked him, and he and Eden were good together, even if the proposal a few years back had amounted to nothing in the way of a wedding.

“It’s my problem,” Sean muttered.

“Sean—”

“You and me? That’s not what I came to talk about. I have something to ask you, but first I have something for you.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a sheaf of paper bound with a plastic cover. He carefully nudged it across the table.

Riley turned it around and looked at the front sheet through the clear plastic. “The Roadside. Equine therapy and PTSD. By Sean Harris,” he read out loud. “Is this for Jack?” Seemed like it would be with a title like that. He recalled that Sean had written a couple of horse books before they first met him to do the interview when Hayley had first joined them at the ranch. Jack had read them cover to cover. In fact, Jack had mentioned only last night that he needed to get Sean’s input in the school area and have a conversation about the California cowboy’s take on equine therapy.

Sean shook his head. “No, it’s for you.”

Riley was confused. “Me? I don’t understand.”

“I want to marry Eden,” Sean blurted out.

Riley heard the words, but they didn’t register as he was still wondering why Sean had given him a book on horses. Then the words caught up with him. He said nothing, just looked from book to Sean and back again.

“But you’ve proposed to her already, and she said yes,” Riley said. He offered the words cautiously, like he’d somehow missed something vital in this whole conversation.

Sean pushed back from the table and began to pace the small area between chair and sink. “I asked her, and we said when I got back from Afghanistan we’d set a date for the wedding. Hell, that wasn’t going to happen, was it?” He indicated his face. “She’s not going to want to marry this.”

Riley stared up at him. He was used to the scarring that twisted from Sean’s eye down to his cheekbone. The pupil had a different color haze to it, and Riley was well aware that Sean’s eyesight was impaired. He’d been in a fight at a restaurant, and lost an argument with a mirror. Of course, the mirror was heading for Eden and Sean had pushed her aside, which kind of made Sean a hero in Riley’s eyes, even if it was Sean in the argument in the first place, but that was neither here nor there.