Page 67 of Trigger Discipline

And that wasn’t even the worst of it. Gabriel couldn’t get over it, but he could justify taking a life like that. It was on even ground. A battle. His opponent had a gun and would do the same to him. Gabriel was just better.

That would haunt him, but not like the rest. The hands he’d gripped of not quite men, the lies he’d told them as they bled out thousands of miles from home. The burnt-out villages and slaughtered people—the ones who hadn’t done anything but chose to remain neutral in a fight they didn’t have a stake in.

The young men who chose death over the guilt of surviving.

It would be easy to say it was the violence of war that got to him, but that would be a partial truth. The reality was more nuanced. It was the local kids who used to run up to the newbies with their outstretched hands, begging for chocolate or some kind of trinket. The soldiers would give it to them, at first. But after a few weeks, their eyes hardened, and their faces became drawn; they didn’t trust the children anymore. Their outstretched hands and beguiling faces were the enemy too.

And then he came home, and he was supposed to be the same, normal, unaffected. To be the kind of person who didn’t flinch when the bells over the gas station door went off, or a man who didn’t hide in his shower, bourbon on his lips when the country celebrated with fireworks.

His superiors told him to get help. To talk to the shrinks, to not be ashamed, but he was. He was ashamed; he came home when so many didn’t, and he couldn’t even appreciate it. So, he drank and said he was fine. He lied to everyone. He lied to himself.

Until his lies caught up with him, and he lost another soldier.

Not to an insurgent. Not to a weapon. But to his own callousness.

And now he was here again, only this time there was no alcohol. No bottle he could bring to his lips to drown it all out. He was in the middle of a battle he couldn’t possibly win, with people he couldn’t bear to lose. Not again.

Never again.

Pressing down on the crochet hook, he let the end catch his thumb. It was familiar. Grounding. It had been a long time since he’d actually needed to crochet something to feel the calming effects, but he’d kill for a skein of yarn right now.

Focus.

Compartmentalization might make a therapist scream, but it was the only way he was going to get through this. He could take time to unpack his bullshit later, right now, he needed to get his priorities in line. Gabriel Lennox hadn’t survived multiple tours of duty, a battle with alcoholism and his own mind to die in an overpriced apartment in an alien invasion.

If he couldn’t find it in himself to rally for anything but spite, then spite it would have to be.

Shoving off the wall, he left the hook in his pocket and returned to the living room. Phin’s leg was rewrapped and resting on a pillow on the couch. Someone had helped him get his gear and shirt off. Tommy was using a bottle of water and a rag to help him clean up. Phin didn’t look thrilled about it.

“We found some water,” Blake said, offering him a bottle. Gabriel took it, unscrewing the cap and chugging the contents in a few gulps.

Blake looked better now, arms crossed, cracking his knuckles in that way he did when he was thinking. Someone, probably Tommy, had tended to his injury. It probably needed stitches and definitely needed a CT scan, but he looked much better, even with his hair crusted with blood, sticking straight up.

Judd was in the kitchen with Victoria going through their supplies. It looked like they had nearly a full case of water, some bags of chips, a couple of cans of tuna, and the real score: peanut butter and bread. Nothing in the fridge would be of any use to them, so they didn’t bother to open it.

It wasn’t much, but it would be enough for now. Grabbing another bottle, he tensed when the entire building shook with an explosion. No one mentioned it.

“You should get some sleep,” Blake said, leaning against the half-wall between the living room and kitchen. “And before you pull the whole ‘I’m the Commander’bullshit, I would like to remind you that I’m a civilian and I don’t care.”

That made Gabriel smile. For the first time since cradling Blake’s limp body in the street, he looked at him. For someone who tried to pretend like they didn’t see everything, he tended to broadcast whatever he was feeling on his face. Or maybe Gabriel had just spent so much time these last couple of days becoming fluent.

Biting back his instinct to brush Blake off, he gave him what he asked for: honesty. “I’m not sure I could.”

Blake’s face softened. He stepped toward Gabriel and touched his chin. First, with just his fingertips, the ghost of a touch that was more a request for permission. When Gabriel didn’t move, he began tracing his jaw. Then the ridge of his nose. His eyebrows. With the pads of his fingers and then the blunt edge of his nails. He tickled over the arches of his eyes and then around the edges of his lips, tugging a little on the apex until Gabriel’s eyes nearly fluttered closed and he leaned into it.

Just like the dawn when they spoke about the cabin in the mountain. It wasn’t the touch; it was the humanity. The soft anchor he needed against a background so jagged and vicious. It was the reminder of why he came in the first place, why he did what he did.

The clouds in his mind parted, and like the sun after the rain, he found himself looking at a whole new world. The thoughts from before banished, not because alcohol had numbed them, but because Blake had touched him with so muchmercy.

“You saved my life,” Blake whispered, the backs of hisfingers trailing along the stubble on Gabriel’s chin. “You deserve to rest.”

Gabriel’s eyes flew open, and he looked down into Blake’s sure stare.

He wasn’t just talking about sleep.

“Okay.”

CHAPTER 20