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“I only mean that... Nothing. Never mind.”

“What?”

“I thought you were aiming for something a little bit morenotorious.”

But for her, it was notorious. She’d come in here and she’d... Well, she’d been different because she felt different, and Mike had responded to it. It was like Gideon had said. She’d wanted it, so now she’d done it. It made her feel bold. Like anything was possible.

“It’s a small town, that’s kind of the origin of all my problems. Everyone here knows me too well. But my makeover must’ve worked because he was pleased enough to see me. And believe me, in school he never noticed me unless... He was a popular guy.”

“And you want to go out with a guy who’s just now noticing you with mascara on?”

“Maybe I needed the mascara to signal some availability. Or to look...dateable, I don’t know.”

“You look great,” he said. “But you didn’t need all that. You’re just as pretty without it.”

Her stomach felt hollowed out. Why was he saying all this?

She cleared her throat. “If I didn’t know better I’d think that was flirting.”

Was she flirting? Was she just high on her power because she had been asked for a dinner date, and now she thought she could punch this far above her weight?

“It’s just the truth. It’s not flirting. I don’t know that I succeeded in doing anything like flirting tonight.”

“But you think you can...”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out. To relearn talking to people when I don’t feel like it. To relearn being out when I don’t necessarily want to be.”

“You liked it before, didn’t you?”

“I never really thought about it before. I was out because people wanted me to be. I was around people because they wanted me to be. I wanted to get laid, so I flirted. I wanted to win a medal, so I fought. I don’t know. It just seemed like everything was much simpler then. You would think that having your brain rattled around inside your skull would make you less of a deep thinker, not more of one.”

Her fingers itched, and she realized it was because she wanted to reach out and touch him. Wanted to soothe the lines on his face. Whatever this thing was that had been building between them, she wanted to take it deeper.

But she kept her hands at her sides.

“You had a near-death experience. It’s not surprising it made you reevaluate things. I didn’t have anything of the kind. I’m just getting older, and watching the people around me change. My sister Fia is making this successful business. Quinn is getting married. Alaina has a baby. I just... I was watching everybody do something meaningful with their lives and I wasn’t. I was just the same me. The same nervous, scaredme. And I didn’t want to be anymore. I can’t imagine how much more almost dying would do that to you.”

“I don’t know that it was the almost dying so much as everything that came after it.” He paused for a moment. “It wasn’t an easy road to recovery.”

“Your wife left you.” She hadn’t meant to say it like that. Like an accusation. But how could that woman have left him like this? It hurt her to think about. Made her chest ache.

“Yeah. She did. Well. I’m the one that physically left. Because she stayed in the house. But she...she asked me to go. And I did.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “She should have...”

He shook his head. “No. She shouldn’t have. She expected something different. Ipromisedher something different.” He cleared his throat. “I met her at an event on base. Her dad’s an officer. Kind of a cliché, I guess. But she was the daughter of a high-ranking military man, and she was attracted to military men. The Army brats get into what they know.”

“If she knew, then how could she divorce you after you got injured?”

He let two curves in the road stand between her question and his answer. “Because she looked at her dad, and saw a man who had endured the same things and come out strong, unchanged. Because for me the injury wasn’t the end of the story. Recovery is a whole different thing. Okay?” His voice was getting short now, and she could tell he didn’t want to keep going. “Hey, do you want to do that hike?”

“What?” The change in subject was so abrupt she nearly got whiplash.

“We’ll do the hike. I’ll take you up to hike, and we’ll camp.”

“Oh. Right. It is like a two-day thing, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. It is. I got all the equipment. I’ve been getting it all set up for the new property.”