Garnet (Gems of Wolfe Island)

The eggs taste good. So does the bacon, but the Danish is kind of dry. Maybe I just got a bad one. This is still The Four Seasons, after all.

Buck rejoins me and digs into his omelet.

“How is everything?” he asks.

“Fine.”

“It’s good to see you eating. You only ate half of your meal last night.”

“I wasn’t hungry.

He smiles then, his whole face lights up. “I guess you worked up an appetite between then and now.”

Warmth flows to my cheeks. I didn’t do anything. I lay there. But it was perfect. So perfect and exactly what I wanted and needed.

“Aspen?”

I swallow my bite of eggs. “Yes?”

“I want you to know something. Last night… It meant something to me.”

“It meant something to me too.”

“I mean… It wasn’t just a fuck to me.”

“To me either.”

He wrinkles his forehead. He’s trying to say something, but he doesn’t quite know how to say it. I get it.

“I don’t want you to think I was using you,” I say. “I mean, I suppose in a way I was. You make me feel safe, and that’s what I was after. But it was more than that for me too. I wasn’t using you, Buck.”

“I know you weren’t. I wasn’t using you either.”

I smile then, take a sip of coffee.

“You’ve been through so much,” he says. “I don’t want to push you.”

“You didn’t.”

“No, but thank you for saying that.” He smiles again. “It took every ounce of strength I possessed not to join you in the shower this morning.”

Warmth tingles through me. I open my mouth to speak but no words emerge.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he says.

“It’s just that I’m not sure what to say. Part of me really likes that idea, but…”

“And that’s the reason I didn’t do it,” he says. “Because last night was something special. Something unique that may not happen again.”

“You mean… You don’t want it to happen again?”

“God, that’s not what I said at all. It’s sure as hell not what I meant.” He rubs his forehead.

A slight smile curves onto my lips. “It meant something to me. It meant so much to me. And Buck… I don’t think I’m ready for it to be over.”

“Good. I’m not ready for it to be over either.”

“I’m not saying I want to… You know…”

“What? Have some kind of big relationship?”

“Right. I mean, maybe eventually.”

“I think we’re both in similar places, baby.”

“I’ve seen your scars, Buck. You may be right.”

His gaze falls to the table, to his nearly empty plate. “Don’t compare yourself to me. And don’t underestimate what you’ve been through, Aspen. No one should be put through what you went through. Sure, I’ve been through some shit as well, but not for five years straight. I had pockets of abuse and torture, but not five years of it.”

I look down at my plate and play with the remaining eggs, moving them around with my fork.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says.

“You didn’t. I just don’t like to think about it. There’s so much I don’t remember, so much I don’t want to remember. That’s why I can’t be in a relationship either. Not until I get to the point where I’m ready to face what happened to me. That’s the only way I can fully heal, according to the therapists.”

“If you have a lot more healing to do, I’m surprised you’re not still at the retreat center.”

“I left against medical advice,” I say. “They wanted me to stay. It was a safe place where I could do my healing without any threat, but I had to leave the island. I just had to.”

“I understand. More than you know.”

“Like leaving Afghanistan. For you, I mean.”

“Yeah. I think it probably was.”

I drop my gaze to my plate again.

We don’t say anything else for the rest of breakfast.

17

BUCK

“You should call him first,” I say.

Aspen shakes her head. “No. I have to see him. I have to talk to him. Calling him gives him a chance to say no.”

“Aspen…”

“No,” she says again. “It’s better to rip the bandage off.”

I open my mouth to argue, but then I think better of it. I stop fighting her. Reid told me she gets whatever she wants or needs. If this is what she wants, even if I think it may be a bad idea, I have to go with it, and I will be there to protect her every step of the way.

Brandon lives in a northern suburb of Denver called Westminster. As far as I could find out, he’s not married, but that doesn’t mean he’s single. I have an address and a phone number, and the address of his employer—a local news service where he works as a reporter.

We arrive at his townhome at ten a.m. It’s a nice looking place with a lot of greenery surrounding what appears to be a man-made lake. Mallard ducks and Canada geese swim in the water and waddle around the neighborhood.