No Quick Fix (Torus Intercession 1)

I had made a mistake when I’d left, but I could fix it. I had driven my CO nuts, but I knew he would recommend the Navy reinstate me in a second. I was good at being a soldier. It was the transition from military to civilian life I was failing at.

The knock wasn’t a surprise.

“Just gimme a sec,” I said, swallowing down my heart and then muttering the rest under my breath so whoever was out there couldn’t hear. “I’m not quite done figuring out my life yet.”

“Open the door,” Emery demanded from the other side.

The hell? “Why aren’t you—”

“Did you hear me?”

“Of course I heard you, but you need to go back out there and—”

“Stop,” he said, simple but firm.

As though that was going to work. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Actually, the opposite is finally true, so open the door,” he insisted.

“Emery,” I sighed, taking a breath so I could say what was best for him and not for me. “I’m fine; you don’t need to check on me. I just needed a minute.”

“Open the door,” he repeated, lower, almost guttural.

I felt the sound in the pit of my stomach.

“Now, Brann.”

I cleared my throat. “I’m okay. I was…. Listen, I know you and Lydia need to talk and figure everything out and make plans to—”

“We’ve done all we’re going to do today.”

“Emery—”

“Open the door!”

“You should—”

“I’m so sick of you telling me what I should and shouldn’t do that I could puke.”

What? “I don’t tell—”

“You say what you think I want to hear, and it’s driving me nuts. You’re—” he rasped, almost choking on the words. “—driving me nuts.”

I took a breath, girding for what I had to say. It was time to sever the tie. “I’m really sorry. I was thinking that I should probably go, because I’m making you miserable and I don’t want to keep feeling like crap either, and—”

“Please, baby, just open the door,” he pleaded.

If he’d gut-punched me, the air would not have left my body any faster. Yes, the endearment was surprising, but mostly because I couldn’t ever imagine him ever using it to refer to me. Locryn Barnes, on the other hand, if he’d ever called me anything but my name, I would have died of shock. He wasn’t that guy. His brain didn’t move to soft places of the heart, because that wasn’t the part of his anatomy that drove him.

But, Emery Dodd had already shown me that his heart, his gentle, vulnerable though sturdy heart, was where he lived. It was evident in the way he talked to the students we ran into around town, to his parents and siblings when they spoke on the phone, and, of course, with his girls. I knew the man was tender to his core. What I’d never expected was that any of that compassion or affection could ever be turned on me in any but the most generic way. He cared for me, but like a colleague and nothing more.

Except that wasn’t what he’d said. He said baby, which was not something I’d ever heard him utter before. I jolted, bumping the door, the word running through me, the ache in his voice, the yearning, setting my whole life on fire.

“I’ve been so stupid,” he confessed hoarsely. “You’ve been nonsensical, doing the opposite of everything I know you wanted, but I’ve allowed it because I thought it was the right thing even though I knew better the whole time.”

I had no idea what to say.

“Putting myself through hell is one thing, but allowing my girls to be eaten up with fear and watching you turn yourself inside out—that’s unforgivable.”

“What?” I asked, turning around, facing the door now. “I haven’t been—”

“Yes, you have,” he heaved out the words, and it sounded like he hit the wood gently with his fist. “I see how you look at me, but I told myself it wasn’t what I thought, though I knew better from day one.”

“Emery—”

“I’ve been so fucking selfish,” he spat out, the self-loathing clear. “I allowed this to go on because facing it—the fallout of it—was going to be hard.”

I was back to not knowing what I could say to offer him comfort.

“I’m so sorry, Brann.”

“What? No. You don’t have—”

“Oh, the hell I don’t. I listened to your words instead of your actions.”

“No, that’s—”

“You die a little every day.”

I did, it was true. Without question.

“This isn’t working, Brann.”

My heart sank, and I found I had barely enough air to breathe.

“We’re walking around each other, the two of us, here, in this house, neither of us wanting to do anything irreparable… unforgivable… both of us treading water until it’s time for you to go.”

He was right. I would die before I let his girls down. I got up every day and said I could do it. I got up every day and performed an internal pep talk. For one more second, one more minute, one more hour, and one more day… I would pretend I didn’t care a fraction about Emery Dodd. I would ignore his presence to be there for Olivia and April. I could and I had, but it was, without a doubt, hollowing me out inside.