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“Me?” she whispered. Did she think he would break if she spoke normally? “You mean physically?”
“About my mistakes.”
“Mistakes?” She lifted her head. “You were doing your job, Mitch. You were deployed into an enemy country so you had to know you could have been killed at any time. So did your buddy. But I know you. You did everything you could to save him.”
He let out a breath. “I tried.”
“You were hurt, too, weren’t you? That’s why you screamed.”
“I guess.”
“Sheesh. It’s okay that you were wounded. You didn’t fail if you’re still alive.”
He inhaled the scent of sawdust and new plywood, rubbed a hand over the sheet on the mattress under him, soaked up the warmth of Cath’s body. “I’m grateful for that every day, but talking about this is hard.”
She lifted her head. “I know. It’s like dredging up sludge you want to keep buried.”
“Exactly.” She understood him. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve her. “Sometimes the nightmare is about being trapped in a tank turret. Sometimes it’s about seeing a villager getting blown up by a roadside bomb.”
“You’re still a hero in my book.” The smile in her voice washed over him, an invigoratingly chilly ocean wave. She nuzzled his neck, and electricity zinged to his toes. Mitch rubbed his hands up and down her back. He could stop now, and she’d never know the rest. He’d started this, and he had to finish. “There’s more, Cath.”
“More what?”
Scary things about me. “Anytime we were deployed, we had to be super alert and sometimes I still overreact in ordinary situations. It’s been getting worse the last few days.”
“I hadn’t noticed. When did it happen?”
“At your brother’s apartment when I investigated the garage. One time sleeping on the couch in the middle of the night. Outside the French Quarter inn this morning when a car backfired.”
“In case you haven’t noticed we have been chased twice”—she grasped two fingers—“shot at three times, counting our escape from the drug thugs. Had both my apartment and office burglarized. Someone tried to kidnap me.” She leaned back to look him in the eye. “You never know. Maybe I’ll start having nightmares.”
There were better things to share. “I thought you were too tough to get scared.”
“Who knows?” She laughed and traced his jaw with her fingertips. “Won’t these memories eventually fade?”
“The docs say so.”
Her deep sigh skittered across his neck. “Glad you were smart enough to go to them.”
“No choice really. I knew I’d be worthless to anyone until I got the PTSD under control.”
She propped her chin on his breastbone, her lips a whisper away from his. If this weren’t Cath, he’d think she didn’t know her own mind. Because she should be putting all kinds of barriers between them. “Thank you for explaining.”
“Thank you for listening.” He twisted his mouth. They sounded like a television show for couples counseling. “Now you can see why I’ll never deserve you.”
She stared at him, shaking her head. “Let me be the judge of that. You’re not worthless.”
“I was to my buddy. I was to my high school teammate. So far I am to my brothers.”
“That’s a bad attitude.”
“You only realized your own prejudices tonight, and now you’re an authority?” A lock of her silky hair fell over her cheek. He brushed the strand off her face, and his hand lingered on the curve of her delicate ear. If he didn’t watch out, her hair could become an obsession.
“Better late than never.” She covered a yawn.
“Turn off the flashlight.” He nudged her. “Go back to sleep.”
“Are you going to do that, too?”