Page 101 of Cowboy SEAL Homecoming

Chapter 23

There was dust and sand everywhere, choking the air, burning his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He couldn’t see, he could barely breathe, but he knew he had to keep moving or his men would die.

They would die, and that would be on his head even if he died too. His legacy. A failure. The cause of so many deaths.

Mom’s voice. No, not that car. Afghanistan. That car. A grenade. Had to get out or down or something.

So he pressed forward. Except he didn’t have his pack or his gun. He didn’t have anything to fight with. He was in this swirling mass of a desert, defenseless, with men to save, and he had nothing.

Something touched him and he whirled to fight it off with his bare hands, but he was knocked flat, and after a few disorienting moments, he realized he was…

Montana.

Home.

Not a soldier. Not a SEAL. Not anymore.

He blinked up at the figure before him. Jack.

“Hey,” he offered, though the response came out scraped raw.

“Care to explain?” Jack asked in an even tone that failed to hide the myriad emotions in his expression.

“Nope.” Alex swallowed, trying to coat his dry throat with something, anything. He realized then he was sitting on the floor of the bunkhouse, breathing heavily, heart pounding wildly, fictions mixing with truths in his brain.

“Did I…” He’d felt a touch and he’d tried to fight it, hadn’t he? He tried to focus on his surroundings and clear the fog away. Tried to breathe and think and…

Fuck, this was so not good. Not with a bystander. Not in the middle of the day. In the bunkhouse.

“Did you go after me?” Jack supplied, still maddeningly even and so Jack. Cool and vaguely furious. “Kind of, but I knocked you down when you lunged at me, which is a reflex I’m not particularly happy about myself.”

“I’m fine.”

“No. No, that is increasingly not true. For any of us.”

Alex couldn’t believe that. Maybe it was true things weren’t going quite the way he wanted them to be going. But that just meant he needed to try harder. Focus more. He had to be more aware of his surroundings and do better at noticing when things weren’t quite copacetic.

That didn’t mean things were getting worse. It just meant he needed to be more careful. He’d gotten lenient. He’d been enjoying things too much lately and letting his guard down. He needed to focus again and work on being in tune with everything.

He needed to finish this fucking bunkhouse. They needed to get men here. Once that mission was completed…

This didn’t have to mean something, and it didn’t have to be a big deal. He got up off the ground and brushed the dirt off his pants. They’d made good progress on the bunkhouse. That’s what was important. If the whole idea of exercising himself into not having nightmares was making him have them during the day, well, then he would change what he was doing.

It wasn’t getting worse. He refused to accept that.

“Alex. This is not good.”

“It’s fine,” Alex returned, looking around and trying to remember what he’d been working on.

“Look. Nightmares are one thing. We all have them and probably always will, but the middle of the day? Anyone could’ve walked in here. Becca could have been the one to walk in here.”

“What are you saying? I’m some kind of threat to Becca?” Alex demanded, a sick feeling he refused to name sinking into his gut.

“I don’t know. All I know is I walk in here and you lunged at me. Maybe if I thought you took that seriously I wouldn’t be concerned, but you refuse to accept that this isn’t normal.”

“It was nothing. I must’ve dozed off. I’ve been working really hard.” He’d change that. He’d fix it.

“Alex, you were wide awake. You were moving through here like you were in some fucking war zone. Having, you know, been there with you when you’ve done that, I know.”