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I’ve been worried about him for hours.

“I can go,” he says as soon as I open the door.

I motion him inside. “Get in here.”

He comes in, and his quiet is extra quiet. He stands in the middle of my kitchen like he doesn’t know what to do.

It feels important to keep my voice quiet. “Rob said you had a stomach thing. He texted Cassia. Cassia texted me.”

Travis’s normally flat expression almost turns into a scowl. “Rob’s a liar.”

“I figured.” Carefully, I take his hand. It’s cold. His hands were burning hot last night. “Come on.”

I take him to the living room where I sit on the couch, and I pull him down next to me, and then I tip him over sideways until his head is in my lap. He comes down without a fight, which tells me more than anything.

Six-foot-three of former Army Ranger curled up on my grandmother’s plaid couch with his boots hanging off the arm.

I put my fingers in his freshly showered hair.

“Heard it was a chimney fire,” I whisper. “Was it bad?”

“No.” He’s staring at my coffee table. “It was small. Nobody got hurt.”

“But…” I say, hoping I can open the door for him to talk.

He’s quiet for so long I think he isn’t going to answer.

“First house since I got out,” he says finally. “Smoke in a room. Hot walls. It got in my head.”

I keep moving my fingers through his hair. I keep my motions gentle and slow.

“Tell me,” I encourage.

So he does. He tells me about a road during his deployment, and an IED that took out the second truck.

“I got the driver out. Then I got the gunner out. That’s when my arm caught fire.”

He makes a rough sound. “You saw the scar. But I didn’t even know I was burned until after…”

His shoulders move on a big sigh, and heaviness settles in his muscles again. “I went back for Joey in the passenger seat. The door was jammed and the frame was bent. I did everything I could. No matter how I pulled, that door stayed closed.”

My hand stills in his hair. “They pulled me off,” he says.

I know anything I say will feel wrong, so I just let my touch be the only comfort I can offer.

“Joey was from San Antonio,” he says. “He had a daughter. She’s twelve now. He used to show me videos of her dancing. Every day. He was so proud.”

I exhale carefully.

“I haven’t told anybody about the door,” he says. “Not Rob. Not the Army shrink.”

“Why me?”

He turns his head in my lap and looks up at me.

“Because you let me see it was okay not to be fine.”

I bend down and kiss his forehead and leave my lips there.