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“Start what?” she asked softly.

He exhaled through his nose and looked away.

“The part where I wonder if people think I can’t do the job.”

EIGHTEEN

Jodie didn’t say anything right away. Mac listened to the sounds of the camp settling—a tent zipper, somebody’s cough, the generator over by the barn running steadily. A moth kept hitting the lantern with tiny fluttering sounds.

Dummy. Should’ve kept your mouth shut.

He’d spent years learning how not to say things like that out loud, and now she was going to tell him he was wrong. She’d be kind about it. That was the worst part. She’d put a hand on his arm and tell him nobody thought that, and he’d have to sit there and let her.

“Mac.”

“Yeah.”

“Will you tell me what happened?”

He kept his eyes on the sleeping bag. “You already know what happened. You read my file.”

“I know what’s in your file.” Her voice stayed level. “Those details are not the same as knowing what you went through. How it felt. What it did to you inside.”

Nobody had ever asked him that. Not the doctors, who only wanted numbers, or the board, who wanted the numbers summarized so they could make a decision about his future. Neither had Kyle. He’d read Mac’s medical history, said fine by me and moved on to the next page of the interview. Mac had been grateful for that at the time and had maybe never stopped being grateful.

Twelve years in uniform and four more in red serge, and not one person had asked him what it had been like.

“It’s not a happy story,” he said.

“I didn’t ask for a happy story. I asked for the truth—your truth—whatever it may be.”

Mac looked up. There was no challenge in her expression. No pity, either. He could have handled pity. Apologize with a smile, make a joke, move things along until everyone was comfortable again.

Instead, Jodie simply left room for him to talk, which in some ways was worse.

She’s not going to let this go.

Mac shifted against his sleeping bag and rubbed his free hand over his thigh.

“My file probably says exertional heatstroke.”

Jodie nodded. “It does. Medical limitations after, and medical release.”

Mac shrugged. “That’s pretty much the whole story.”

She blew out a breath. “No, it isn’t.”

He gave her a tired smile. “You don’t know that.”

“I know you.”

Mac looked away from her, toward the side of the tent.

Careful.

She’d known him eighteen months. She’d rearranged his summer assignments around a weakness he’d tried very hard not to make anybody else’s problem. And she didn’t tell him what she was doing. Which meant she didn’t know him and now he was angry about that.

You can be angry and still love her.