In the Likely Event(109)

The plane started to roll again, and Serena leaned forward, opening her bag and taking something out. She pressed it into my open palm and looked me in the eye. “He said to tell you that he loves you, and that he’ll be in touch when it’s time to take your shot.”

My heart jolted, and I looked down at my hand.

It was the chain and the taped tag.

I fell back against my seat and let the tears come as the plane headed down the runway, Serena holding my other hand as we launched into the air, leaving Nate behind.

“He’ll be okay,” Serena promised.

“I love him.”

“Anyone in the same room as you two knows that,” she said. “What’s the necklace, anyway?” she asked, leaning to retrieve her camera from her bag. She was lucky to have made it out, let alone with her equipment.

I gently peeled back the layers of the tape until my ring appeared. “It’s our shot.”

“That is gorgeous.” She blinked, then openly gawked through the eye that wasn’t swollen shut.

“Yeah, it is.”

Her brow furrowed. “Is that a dog tag?”

“Not sure,” I said, forcing the tape from the rest of the metal. “Nate told me he only took the ring on missions that didn’t have to be sanitized, but—” I slipped my engagement ring onto my right hand to keep it safe, then wiped the name clean of the sticky residue. “It’s not his.”

“It’s not?” She glanced my way, clicking through the pictures on her view screen.

“No.” I hadn’t been the only person Nate had been carrying with him.

The tag read TORRES, JULIAN.

“I was wrong,” I whispered. I’d always assumed that Julian was Rowell, which went to show just how little I knew about the time Nate and I had spent apart all these years.

“Look what I got about an hour ago.” She angled the camera’s screen toward me.

It was a profile shot of Nate. My heart clenched at the stubborn set of his jaw, the perfect sculpture of his lips.

“You know,” Serena said quietly, “I could publish this, and he’d be out of the unit.”

My gaze jumped to hers. One simple action would change . . . everything. We’d actually have a chance at being together. But at what cost?

“He’d probably be pissed—”

“No.” I shook my head, my fingers curling around the dog tag. “If Nate gets out, that has to be his choice.” I wouldn’t make that decision for him in New York, and I wouldn’t make it now. I would take him however he chose to come to me.

“And until that magical day?” Serena asked.

“I’ll wait.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


NATHANIEL


Fort Bragg, North Carolina

September 2021

I took a deep breath as I stood in the empty hallway, facing the door I’d been scheduled to walk through for the past two weeks. Foolishly, I’d thought making the initial call would be the hardest, but it wasn’t. Standing here, staring at the clinical letters beside the door, deciding whether or not to turn the handle, was infinitely harder.

The clinic didn’t have that oversanitized smell that came with hospitals, but we’d never been seen by typical doctors either.

“You can do it,” Torres said from my left.

“If I do, it’s over,” I replied, keeping my voice low. “You know they’ll kick me out of the unit.”

“Yeah. And then maybe you’ll start living for you. Get some help for those nightmares, too, so you’re not terrified to sleep next to your girl. You’re not your dad. You’re never going to be your dad. But still . . . you need the help. You should probably figure out what to do with that farm of yours.”

I glanced over at him, my hand reaching for the doorknob.

“You gotta let go, Nate,” he said, offering me a smile. “You’ve carried shit that isn’t yours for too long. That guilt? Not yours. The career you’re not actually that fond of? Not yours. But Izzy? She’s the one who’s yours. So if you won’t walk through that door for yourself, consider doing it for her.”

Izzy.

It had been six weeks since I’d left her at the Kabul airport so I could give her the one thing I knew she needed—Serena. I missed her with every breath, and yet I knew it wasn’t time yet.

If we had one shot, then I couldn’t blow it.

I took one last look at Torres and then I opened the door and walked through.

Dr. Williamson looked up from his desk with a professional smile and motioned to the chairs in front of his desk. “How’s it going, Phelan?”

Usually I would have told him I was fine. That I was sleeping, eating, and relaxing just like I was supposed to.

But lying hadn’t gotten me anywhere, so maybe it was time that I told the truth.

I sank into the chair and looked the doctor in the eye. “I’ve been talking to my best friend as a coping mechanism for the stress, the deployments, the . . . everything.”

He nodded, leaning back in his chair. “That sounds pretty normal.”

“Yeah, except he’s been dead for four years. Think you can help me?” I gripped my knees and waited for his answer.

“Yes,” he said. “I think I can help you.”