Protect Me Not ((Un)Professionally Yours 2)

“You’re a damned disgrace to their memories, Ty. You should be loving and living and laughing. It’s the best way to honor the people you’ve lost. This last year—on the few occasions I’ve seen you with Vicki—I’ve noticed how you look at her. How you almost smile when she laughs or says something funny. She’s good for you, you dumb fuck.”

Ty felt exposed and raw, not even sure he had the voice to respond to his friend’s scathing, yet brutally honest, diatribe. For a guy who seemed so dopey and happy-go-lucky most of the time, Chance was pretty fucking observant.

“Look,” Chance said, his voice and expression softening. “I know Skoobs is a bit out there, but he’s really good at what he does. Ignore all the hippy bullshit and really talk to him. He can help you. He has been trying to help you for years, only you’ve never given him a chance.

“You could have something special here, Ty. With Vicki. She’s lovely. She cares about you. She just about threatened to castrate me on the way to the hospital yesterday because she thought I would blab about the kiss. If you’re wondering why everybody is—rightfully—singing your praises today, look no further than the penthouse. Because that little lady, half-concussed and wounded though she is, went to bat for you yesterday.”

Every word out of Chance’s mouth struck Ty like a bullet—the guy wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. Ty was a fucking coward. He chose to hide in his apartment, spend his time alone, and ignore life because he couldn’t face the unbearable possibility of losing anyone he cared about again.

After he had lost his family, it had been so easy to retreat from the world. Dylan had kept him grounded. But then, less than a year later, he’d lost Dylan as well. In the worst possible way.

He couldn’t bear to think of it. He’d attended the requisite PTSD counseling sessions at the VA center while he was recuperating from his injury.

By the time he had accepted this job, Ty had believed that—mentally and emotionally—he was in a healthy place. He’d had nightmares for a very long time about how he’d lost Dylan, his best friend since childhood, and his brother in every way but blood. But over the last few years, that pain had blunted. He could go weeks now without writhing in guilt whenever he thought about his dead friend.

Chance had a point about the pictures he kept on the living room wall. Ty considered it a wall of remembrance, but it really was a shrine. All it did was remind Ty that he was still alive, while everyone he had ever cared about was gone. In his parents’ case, he was eaten up by remorse and sorrow for not being there during the last few years of their lives. But when it came to Dylan, Ty’s guilt was a special kind of hell.

Dylan had died saving Ty’s life. He’d seen the sniper waiting to ambush them and had taken a bullet for Ty. Dylan had been killed, and Ty—who had been injured in the same attack—had been sent home. Ty had never quite recovered from the emotional scars of knowing that Dylan had died so that he could live.

And now he felt shame, because Chance was right, he was wasting the gift his best friend had given him. Dylan wouldn’t want him to live like this. They had grown up together, gone to college together, then enlisted together. And then…they had nearly died together. For a long time, Ty had wished that he’d died instead of Dylan.

Dylan had had a wife, a baby he didn’t even have the chance to meet, parents, siblings, so many people in the world who loved him. While Ty had no one. It hadn’t been fair.

After Ty’s medical discharge, with nobody who truly loved him left in the world, it had been easy to hide in plain sight.

Alive, but not living.

Until this last year, when a slip of a woman had started wriggling her way beneath his defenses.

“What do you mean she went to bat for me?” he asked as Chance’s final statement sank in.

“You know exactly what I mean. She wasn’t about to let you martyr yourself out of some sense of misplaced guilt. At the hospital yesterday, she told everybody who would listen what had really happened. She made me call Colby and Brand so that she could speak with them. She didn’t have to, Brand is smart enough to figure it out for himself, but she was determined to make them listen to her. Seriously, if you don’t snatch that female up, I may have to—”

“Whatever you’re about to say, Chance, don’t,” Ty warned, his voice dangerous. Chance laughed.

“Just sex, you say?” he asked with a chortle. “Mate, you need to figure your shit out. Because you’re deluding yourself badly.”