“Better move back, Gramps! Just in case!” he hollered down once he had a better view of the ground. “Dad, get ready to move fast!”

He waited until his grandfather hobbled back toward the house and his dad gave him a thumbs up before he lobbed off the branch. It crashed down in the backyard, well enough away from Granny’s flowerbeds and the sandbox he used to play in as a kid.

The second branch took a little more effort to tie because the ladder only extended so far, but he finally got it fastened and went through the same drill. “Ready, Dad?”

This time his father saluted him and he laughed, glancing back at Gramps to make sure he’d stuck close to the house.

Gramps was on the ground.

“Dad!” he hollered and his dad’s attention snapped across the yard. He dropped the rope and ran, full sprint.

Brody hurried to unfasten himself and get down, all the while glancing over his shoulder.

Gramps wasn’t moving.

“Brody, hurry!” his dad yelled and, dammit, he would if he could just get off the fucking ladder.

Feet on the ground and the straps still fastened around his thighs, he ran to his grandfather and dropped to his knees, running through the protocol he’d done hundreds of times.

“Grandpa!” He shook the old man’s shoulder, but got no response. “Call 911 and go get Mom,” he shouted to his father.

The next several minutes passed in a blur of chest compressions, mouth-to-mouth, and his mother wailing from somewhere behind him. Sirens broke through his single-minded focus and the paramedics seemed to appear out of nowhere.

He crawled back on his knees as they took over, ripping open Gramps’s shirt for the AED. Suddenly he couldn’t breathe either. The fog began to tunnel in around him, darkness coming fast.

He saw Ernie lying on the ground before him. He saw Troy and his mangled body a few feet away. One leg gone, one arm bit off at the elbow. All around him, the smoke got thicker and the fire hotter. The shouting felt like gunshots in his ears and the smell of blood—some of it his—made him sick to his stomach.

“Brody,” Jenny cried softly in his ear and somehow her arms were around him, her heat at his back. She wasn’t supposed to be there. Not in this mess. Not where he couldn’t protect her. “Stay with me, baby,” she pleaded, pressing her lips to his temple and rocking him like his mother used to when he’d have bad dreams as a kid.

Only this wasn’t a fucking dream. This was his life. One screw-up after another.

“You did what you could,” she murmured. “You tried.”

But not hard enough. Never fucking hard enough.

Chapter Eighteen

No matter how she tried to see them—a tribute to life or a celebration of eternal salvation—funerals always gutted Jenny. Add in the Marine honor guard in their dress blues—Brody included—and she’d gone through all of the tissue in her clutch before the priest even began Brody’s grandfather’s graveside service.

She couldn’t look at Brody, standing at attention with the other pallbearers, including Sam. But then she couldn’t look away either. He’d become a stony, emotionless pillar since that morning in his grandparents’ backyard. He’d gone back to Omaha to get some things together for his parents while they stayed with his grandma and, even though she’d offered to go along, he’d refused. He’d tried to blame it on her work schedule, but she knew the truth—he’d needed the time alone.

His distance hurt, but she got it. Grief was a torturous, sometimes relentless bitch and not only was Brody dealing with the loss of his grandfather, but the renewed loss of Ernie and Troy and every other Marine friend he’d had to bury, as well.

Feeling so helpless sucked. Feeling so desperate to do something to get through to him, only to be turned away was nothing she wished upon anyone.

But she wasn’t just anyone. She was a woman who’d become an expert at steeling her resolve. A pro at giving and giving and giving some more. She might have vowed to never offer more to a man than she got back, but that was before Brody, and up until this past week, he’d given her more than she could have ever hoped for.

That’s why when she’d found him on the couch this morning, looking like he hadn’t slept at all, she’d refused to give up.

“You okay?” she’d asked, curling up beside him, sharing her warmth and whatever comfort he’d let her give.

“Yep. Fine.” But his eyes never left the ceiling and, when she pressed a kiss to his shoulder, he didn’t even acknowledge her. Just kept staring off into space, completely wrapped up in whatever was going on in that handsome, conflicted head of his.

He was that man again now, standing a few feet away, his eyes trained on something on the far side of the cemetery. Probably nothing at all. Just that place he had to go to in his head to keep it together. Or block it out. Whatever it was he had to do to make it through.

His Grandmother Caroline did better than any one else at the service. She kept her chin high and she even offered comfort to Lena when she broke down and Brody’s father couldn’t console her. Even when the honor guard presented Caroline with that pristinely folded flag, she stayed strong, shedding but a single tear as she thanked the stoic Marine with a tender pat to his cheek.

Would that be her someday? Receiving Brody’s flag?

God. A hard, painful lump swelled in Jenny’s throat and she bit her lip to keep from crying until she drew blood.

She’d fallen completely in love with him, this amazing, too proud man that had swept in and stolen her heart with his honesty and his flaws and his unrelenting strength. Despite his own fear, he’d given her a pair of comforting arms to fall into that first night in Vegas and so many nights since. They were the same arms she offered him now—and would continue to—no matter how hard he pretended he didn’t need them.

Taps rang through the air making her shiver, the honor guard marched out, and the priest sent Robert Brekowski up to eternal rest with a final petition. She did her best to hold it together when she hugged Lena and Caroline, but when Brody embraced his family, she lost it all over again.

And she was supposed to be his rock? Good Lord.

“You ready to go?” He approached her after he paid his respects and accepted handshakes and hugs of his own. All she could do was nod. Just being here is enough. I don’t need all the perfect words. She wasn’t sure it was true, but she told herself this over and over again.

When Brody finally led her to his truck, he helped her in, but he didn’t talk. Just got behind the wheel and drove them back to his grandparents’ home, where the rest of the family congregated. All neighbors and extended family since Lena was an only child.

“Thank you for being here today,” he finally spoke when they’d parked. “It means a lot. To me and my family.”

She swallowed back her lingering emotion, her hands twisted together in her lap. “I don’t know what to say. I...don’t know how to make this easier for you. Finding you like that this morning...”

He tossed his cover onto the seat between them and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Some shit you can’t fix, Jenn. It’s just gotta run its course. Or not. Who the fuck knows.”

She nodded, lips pressed together. “But I’m here either way. You know that, right?”

His heavy eyes swung her way and he smiled. A weak, unattached sentiment that made her heart ache all the more. “Yeah, babe, I know.”

Did he? She wasn’t convinced. Still, she smiled back, because maybe this was one of those fake it ’till you make it kind of situations. “You look handsome today, in case I haven’t already told you.”

This time the twitch of his lips was genuine, even if that same light didn’t meet his eyes. Reaching for the door, he winked. “Let’s go, sugar, we’ve got potato salad to eat.”