The Way Home

Chapter 7

JESS DIDN’T GIVE HIM AN answer right away. Instead, she got up, stirred the fire, pronounced it ready, and loaded a stick that he’d sharpened with hot dogs.

He let her have time to think. She liked that about him. OK. What didn’t she like about him? Telling herself that no matter that her gut told her this was a good guy, the truth was she didn’t know enough about him to answer that question.

So they talked about the lake, about the Park Service—she was oh so good at the tour-guide shtick—and then, with their stomachs full and the sun warm, they both lay back on the blanket with a comfortable distance between them and indulged in the summer day.

“Where are all the mosquitoes Minnesota is so famous for?”

“They don’t like the sun. Walk ten yards into the woods, though, and you’ll find them—or they’ll find you.”

He seemed content to be lazy for a while. She liked that about him, too. J.R. had always been a neutron-charged mass of energy. He couldn’t sit or stand still. Ty, apparently, had an off switch… or at least, a low setting.

She wasn’t altogether sure, but he actually seemed to have fallen asleep. He’d thrown a forearm over his eyes and his other arm above his head. He had one knee cocked, and his breathing was deep and steady.

She could do with a nap herself. She hadn’t exactly slept well last night. Truth was, she’d hardly slept at all.

I’ll tell you about Maya. And you can tell me about J.R.

She kept replaying his words in her mind, too antsy to sleep. Being around him kept her on a mid-level adrenaline high. She was so aware of him. Of how his eyes softened when he watched her. How his smile came so quickly and how he could easily direct it at making fun of himself or teasing her. And this close beside him, she became hyperaware of the muscle and mass of him, the sweat and heat of him, the utter maleness that had been missing in her life for so long.

She rolled to her side and looked at him—the way she’d wanted to look at him for what seemed like a very long time. Only looking got her into more trouble, because there were so many physical complexities and perfections that it made her antsy in another way that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with chemistry.

She wanted him in her bed. There. She’d admitted it.

And that fact scared her as much as it excited her. And made her very, very warm, suddenly.

Careful not to wake him, she stood, then walked to the edge of the water. She’d worn her swimsuit beneath her clothes, so she stepped out of her shorts and tossed them and her top back onto the sand. Then she waded in slowly, biting her lower lip to keep from gasping as the cold water started to engulf her.

One thing about this lake. The air temp could be ninety degrees, but the water never got much above sixty. Swimming in Kabby was not for the faint of heart. Once fully submerged and with her body acclimated to the cold, though, it felt like heaven.

She was floating on her back and concentrating on not letting the water get into her nose when she realized she had company.

“Holy iceberg.” Ty waded slowly toward her, shivering and briskly rubbing his arms. “Who added the ice cubes?”

She laughed and righted herself, treading water as he waded deeper. “Just do it,” she said. “Dunk. Much better to rip off a Band-Aid than pull it off slowly.”

He looked doubtful, then took a deep breath and did a shallow dive in her general direction. He surfaced on a gasp.

She laughed again. “Not like the Gulf water in Key West, huh?”

He whipped the hair away from his face and sank up to his chin. “No. Not like the Gulf. You do this often?” he asked around chattering teeth.

“Used to. When I was a kid, we used to sit in an old-fashioned Finnish sauna for an hour or so, then burst outside and jump off the dock. Talk about a shock to the system.”

And speaking of shocks to the system… the water was crystal-clear. She could see all the way to the bottom and every detail of the man standing in front of her. Which meant he could see every detail, too—and he was looking. Even though her black swimsuit was modestly cut, she felt self-conscious and exposed.

“I can see why you love it here.”

“Summers are great. Winters are gorgeous but brutal.”

“I remember winter.”

She smiled. “It’s not a climate for everyone.”

“I miss snow,” he said absently, and she could tell he was thinking of home again.

“Rock, paper, scissors, huh?” she asked, resigned and weary of stalling. She also wanted to know more about him suddenly, even though it meant she had to take a chance at giving up something of herself. She valued her privacy, but this wasn’t about privacy. This was about trust.

He grinned and held up a fist.

She did the same. “One, two, three.”

On three, she made a scissors. He made a rock.

“Rock breaks scissors,” he said unnecessarily, and she steeled herself for his question. “Would you tell me about J.R.? How you met? How long you were married? What kind of guy he was?”

“That sounds like four questions.”

“Only one, with some suggestions for fleshing things out.”

She felt cold suddenly and headed back toward shore. She didn’t have to look behind her to know he followed. Reaching into the cargo hold of his kayak, she tugged out another dry bag, unzipped it, and pulled out two towels.

She handed him one, wrapped the other one around her shoulders, and huddled beneath it as she sat down on the blanket.

“We were high school sweethearts,” she said, taking the ripped-Band-Aid approach herself and spitting it out. “J.R. was the guy, you know? Captain of the basketball and football teams, cross-country skier. If it was physical, J.R. was in the mix. And he mastered whatever he decided to do.”

“He sounds like quite a guy.”

She nodded and used the towel to wipe her damp hair back from her face. “He was. It was like he was driven, you know? He didn’t have the best home life. His mom left him and his dad and J.R.’s older brother, Brad, when J.R. was only five. His dad didn’t make a lot of money—he worked in the Falls at Boise—and unfortunately, he drank up a lot of his paychecks. He walked out of a bar one night, got behind the wheel, and ran off the road into a power-line pole. The boys have been on their own ever since.”

“That’s rough.”

“It was very rough. But Brad looked out for J.R. Taught him to hunt and fish and camp—in fact, Brad has his own fishing and hunting guide business here on Kab. You passed it on the road to Whispering Pines.”

“How did J.R. end up in Special Forces?”

“His football coach, Mr. Latimer, became sort of a father figure for J.R. He was an Army vet who fought with Special Forces during the Vietnam War. He was also a storyteller. J.R. was enthralled by him. Ended up enlisting right out of high school instead of taking a full-ride football scholarship.”

“Which broke your heart.”

She crossed her arms over her up-drawn knees and laid her cheek on her forearm, then watched water droplets trickle off his hair and run down the broad expanse of his shoulders as the sun beat down and warmed them. “Yeah. Pretty much. But we kept in touch. I went on to U of M and got my nursing degree. We planned a wedding around his leave and got married in August, before nine-eleven. He shipped out to Saudi right before the Iraq invasion, ended up with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.”

When he didn’t say anything, she looked back out over the lake.

“I thought maybe he wouldn’t reup after that. He was in the hospital for a couple of weeks and in rehab for three months. Didn’t slow him down, though, and he’d found his niche. I tried to talk him out of it, but he applied for Airborne and then Ranger School—made both cuts with flying colors. I’d joined him at Bragg by then. Shortly after, he ended up back in Iraq.”

“Those had to have been difficult times.”

She ran the corner of the towel over her face. “Yeah. They were. But I was young and in love, and while I didn’t like his decisions, I supported them. It wasn’t like I hadn’t known being an Army wife would be tough, but I hadn’t been prepared for the loneliness and isolation. Or the fear. Always the fear that something would happen to him.”

She sifted a handful of sand through her fingers and watched it fall back to the beach.

“I didn’t even know he’d put in a request to apply for Special Forces. He’d been in training almost two years by the time I found out that he’d been fast-tracked through the system. He’d barely made it home from Iraq, and he was deployed to Afghanistan.”

And never came home.

“I don’t think anyone gives enough credence to how difficult it is for the wives and families,” Ty said quietly. “The long deployments. And with spec ops, never knowing where they are, how they are. Anyway, I know it was hard on my folks when Mike was deployed to parts unknown.”

“And you don’t think they worried about you?”

“Of course, they worried, but he was in combat. I was—”

“Flying through fire with a target on your back.”

He shrugged. “Like I said. Everyone had a job to do.”

And his career had been cut short so he couldn’t continue to do his. She had questions. She held up a fist. He gave her a crooked grin and did the same. She made scissors again. He made paper.

“Scissors cuts paper. My turn.”

“OK, shoot.”

She wanted to know about his back, but she had a bigger curiosity. “Will you tell me about Maya?”