Jenny quirked an eyebrow. “Is this supposed to bolster my resolve? Because it’s not.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Resisting him is going to become more and more difficult the longer you see him. But that’s exactly what you need to do. Not to test him, not to gauge whether you guys could have something more substantial...but to prove that you’re worth more than you’ve ever given yourself credit for.” Tears began to shimmer in her best friend’s eyes and she let go of Jenny’s shoulder to fan a hand in front of her face. “Damn hormones.”

Jenny smiled through watery emotion of her own. “I really want what you and Mark have, Al. I know I shouldn’t be jealous, but I am. Totally.”

Ally folded her arms around her shoulders and gave Jenny a squeeze. “You’ll have it, sweetie. I promise.”

“I hope so.” And for the first time in a long time, she actually believed it might be true.

***

“I know you don’t see it yet, but we’re making progress here, Corporal.” Dr. Sherman slipped off his glasses, set them on the table to his left, and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“When are the dreams going to stop? That’s the kind of progress I want to see.” Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, Brody tapped his fingertips together anxiously. “They stop for a day or two, and then they come back all over again.”

“The subconscious is a complicated thing. It can hang onto things we don’t even know have impacted us.”

“Then how the hell is therapy going to help? How is anything going to help?”

Dr. Sherman gave a sympathetic smile. “Awareness is half the battle.”

Oh really. “What’s the other half?”

“Faith.”

“That’s bullshit.” Brody shoved to his feet and stalked across the office, his focus set absentmindedly on a tall willow tree, its limbs weighed down with silvery ice.

“Why do you say that, Brody?”

“You think I don’t want this to stop? You think I enjoy losing sleep and walking around like a fucking zombie all the time?”

“I’m not talking about wanting the dreams to stop—I’m talking about believing they will.”

What kind of crap was that? “So you’re telling me all I’ve gotta do is blow smoke up my own ass and Ernie’s lifeless eyes will stop keeping me awake at night?”

Dr. Sherman nodded agreeably. “To a certain degree, yes. It’d be most effective if you actually bought into the change, though.”

“I’m not buying into any of this, Doc. The only fucking thing that’s helped me at all is the company of a woman who lives all the way on the other side of Nebraska. You want me to keep talking? To open up? Well, how about this—she’s the only friggin’ reason I’m here right now.”

The older man’s eyes widened slightly and he waved a hand, inviting more. “Go on.”

Yeah, right. “I’m not talking to you about Jenny.”

“But she’s motivated you to continue seeing me. Maybe there’s some substance to that.”

Sure there was. He didn’t want to freak her out when he screamed like a little bitch in the middle of the night. Ideally, he’d have this shit wrapped up by the time she trusted him enough to share her bed again.

“Does she know what happened in Afghanistan, Corporal?” Dr. Sherman was a persistent son of bitch, Brody would give him that.

“The basics.” He lifted a shoulder and moved away from the window.

“And the dreams?”

A loud bark of laughter erupted from Brody’s chest. “I initiated her with that shit, Doc. A proud fucking moment in my life, let me tell ya.”

“How did she react?”

The memory of Jenny climbing into bed beside him, smoothing on her lotion, like dudes boohooing about dying in their sleep happened to her every damn day. Reed Fletcher might’ve shed a few tears in his pillow, but Brody doubted they were over anything more significant than his faded tan or his tiny, prepubescent balls.

“She rolled with it. Didn’t make a big deal of it or anything.”

“Did she acknowledge it or pretend it didn’t happen?”

Scratching a hand over the back of his neck, he reclaimed his seat and sighed. “She acknowledged it, but she was pretty chill about the whole thing. Just asked a few questions and didn’t push for answers I didn’t want to give.”

“How’d that make you feel?” Dr. Sherman leaned back in his seat, steeling his fingers, like he did every time they edged toward more intense conversation.

“Made me want to tell her more.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s the first person in too long who hasn’t looked at me like I’m crazy. And who makes me feel like the man I was before that last tour. If I tell her...” He shook his head, the potential outcome not something he wanted to verbalize, let alone envision. “If I tell her, I risk her seeing me for the mess I really am.”

“You’re not crazy, Brody.”

“I’m not?” He gave another bitter laugh.

“No. You just need to let go of the unwarranted guilt you carry. Nothing you could have done would have stopped that IED from going off the way it did, because you can’t change what you don’t know about.” The doctor gave another easy smile. Probably intended to be reassuring, but it missed its mark. “What you can change is the person you let that awful day turn you into. Will it come in the way of your relationships? Absolutely. Especially if you’re not upfront about what you’ve been through, and what you fear will happen as a result.”

And wasn’t that a shitty place to be? Caught between the fear of missing out on something really great with Jenny because he couldn’t fully open up to her...and the fear of scaring her off because he said too much.

“I need to talk to her,” he said more for himself than Dr. Sherman, but the man nodded anyway.

“From what you’ve said, it sounds like she’ll listen, if not welcome, the conversation.”

She would, without a doubt. But whether she’d want to keep seeing him afterward was another matter.

Ten minutes later, Brody climbed into his truck with a bigger weight on his shoulders than he’d carried into the session. Seemed ass backwards to him, but he couldn’t argue with Doc Sherman’s logic. If he didn’t come clean with Jenny, he might as well stop seeing her now, because he’d never have the kind of relationship with her that he wanted.

More than that, she deserved to know the truth about the kind of man he really was.

He grabbed his phone from the console and grinned like the stupid son-of-a-bitch he was when he saw her latest text: Please tell me you don’t man-scape.

He laughed out loud and thumbed a quick response. You just waxed some dude’s balls, didn’t you?

Ugh, yes.

Damn. He didn’t like that vision nearly as much as he liked the one of her working on another woman. Not your thing?

Clean is fine, but I prefer a man with a little roughage.

Hmm. Now was as good a time as any, wasn’t it? What do you think about cock piercings?

Three, two, one...

Holy shit. You?

Maybe? He hit send and squinted at the phone like her answer might reach through the phone and slap him across the face.

Tease. I hate you right now.

He laughed. Don’t worry, beautiful, it’ll still be there when you’re ready.

Might be a while.

I’m a patient man.

And hopefully she’d be as patient and understanding with him, too, because the baggage they both carried wasn’t going to unload itself with one conversation.

Call me later, Superman?

Looking forward to it, sugar.

Chapter Ten

Two weeks later...

“Shut the hell up, you stupid GPS!” Jenny yanked the device off the windshield and tossed it into the backseat. She’d been around the same block five times and if she had to hear that lady’s monotone voice tell her she’d reached her destination at a potted plant on the sidewalk one more time, she was gonna lose her shit.