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glared at him.
He shrugged. “Sorry, Gracie. I thought you liked terms of endearment.”
“But that’s not why you said it. You’re not nearly as charming as you think you are.”
“But I am charming,” he said, waiting for a kick in the shin.
She rolled her eyes instead. “I know you think so.”
“Honey, I know so.”
She let the honey comment go. “Funny, but I don’t recall you being this arrogant.”
He grinned. “And you’re as stubborn as you ever were. Just like my sister.”
“How is April? I seem to remember that she was getting married.”
Yeah, and Gracie was supposed to be his date, but he’d screwed that up. “She’s living in California with her husband, Rick, and their twin boys, Aaron and Adam.”
Gracie softened into that gooey-eyed look that women got whenever children were mentioned. “Oh my gosh! Twins?”
“Yep. She has her hands full.”
“How old?”
“They’ll be a year on Christmas Day,” he said, hearing the pride in his own voice. He’d never imagined himself ever having children, so he spoiled his nephews any chance he got. He had held them both just minutes after their birth, so there was a close connection. He would lay down his life for them. And for April—not that she needed his protection. She was one of the most competent women he’d ever known.
“I was in town visiting for the holidays when she had them. Her husband was deployed at the time so I went through the entire labor with her. It gave me a whole new respect for mothers.”
“Do you see them very often?”
“We Skype weekly.”
“She was always such a great person,” Gracie said with genuine affection in her voice.
Four years his junior, it had been exceptionally difficult for his sister when they lost their parents. And even harder for him to be away at college while she grieved alone, though she’d been taken in by a close family friend. He’d considered dropping out of school until she finished high school, but she wouldn’t let him. She did visit him often, though, and she had taken to Gracie instantly. They were only a year apart in age and were both strong, capable women, though they couldn’t have been any more different in their interests. April was a rough-and-tumble tomboy capable of drinking any man under the table, and she chose the armed services over college, marrying young. Gracie hadn’t been interested in marriage—at least not until she finished school—and they had never really talked about a family. He wondered now if she had ever considered it. Her ambition to be a fashion designer had always been her main focus. From what he’d seen in the media, she was a raging success, and her philanthropy was legendary.
“Is she still in the navy?” Gracie asked him.
“She and her husband both,” he said. “They’re both stateside right now, but tomorrow, who knows?”
“It must have been difficult for her when you were a POW.”
“It was.” At the mere mention of his capture that familiar sense of dread worked its way up from someplace deep inside him. But he instantly shoved it back down. It had taken intense rehabilitation to heal the physical trauma of his ordeal, and even longer to conquer the PTSD that had tortured his soul. To this day he still suffered nightmares, and occasionally woke in a panic, drenched in a cold sweat, his mind convinced he was still in the Middle East. But he was back to being a fairly centered and functioning human being. Giving in to his demons had never been an option, and he’d fought like hell to be well again.
Though he was usually pretty good at hiding his emotions, and burying the anguish, Gracie’s pained look said that after all these years, she could read him just as well as he’d read her.
For several seconds she was quiet, her eyes locked on his, then asked softly, “What was it like?”
The question threw him for a second. Aside from group therapy, and private sessions with his therapist, Roman had never spoken of his experience as a POW. Not even with his sister. No one ever asked. The physical scars pretty much spoke for themselves.
But despite their rocky past, he knew Gracie would never judge, or question his fortitude or bravery. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he just did, that despite everything that had happened between them, she genuinely cared.
So he talked.
“The first few months after my rescue were almost unbearable,” Roman told her. “I couldn’t stop thinking about the men who didn’t make it out alive. The ones who were killed in front of me, in cold blood. The survivor guilt was worse than the actual torture. I would have given my life for any one of those men. The scars will never go away, but I’ve made peace with myself. It wasn’t easy, though.”
She gazed over at him, her eyes filled with pain and regret. “I used to feel as though, because of everything that happened between us, if it hadn’t been for me, you would have never joined the military in the first place. Like, maybe if I wasn’t so hard on you...if I could have forgiven you...” She shrugged. “It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, I know.”
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