According to Chase, Ava had been in Maddie’s room for hours. Josh paced his small hotel room. He trusted Maddie to be gentle with Ava, but still, his heart clenched, given what he now knew about Ava’s childhood. Should he check on them?
The package that had just arrived from DC gave him the perfect excuse. He could bring Maddie her new Raptor-issued cell phone and help her download her phone backup from the cloud. But it would be lousy of him to interrupt if she and Ava were working things out.
They were working things out, right?
What if, somehow in this mess, he lost them both?
He ran a hand over his face. Sometimes he missed military life. When he’d been in the Navy, he’d always known what he had to do. He’d kept his emotional life simple—leaving toddler Ava behind had been bad enough. He wasn’t about to fall in love and have his own kids.
Still, he’d been envious of the guys with families. Someone to go home to. He couldn’t see Ava and Lori without endangering them, so he’d done his best to turn off his heart. He screwed around when Stateside, but never, ever got emotionally attached.
His team was all the family he needed. Then Owen had been injured in Somalia, and when he was Stateside, Josh did his best to help the guy. He ended up leaving the service a year before Keith so he could monitor Owen, who was living with his aunt in the DC area. During that year, he’d done consulting work for the Navy, sometimes at the Pentagon and other times at the Washington Navy Yard.
One day, he’d been in the cafeteria at the Yard and he’d seen Dr. Trina Sorensen with a group of friends having lunch. He’d later learned she’d been with Erica Scott and Mara Garrett, but at the time, he’d had no clue who any of the women were. It was just clear that they were more than three coworkers having lunch. They were friends, the kind that might even be closer than family.
He’d felt a pang of longing for his SEAL team, who were God knows where at the time. He’d suddenly missed Ava and Lori, and even Ari.
Trina’s laugh had carried across the room, and he’d been…mesmerized. He’d watched her and had felt the cold vise that had gripped his heart for years loosen a bit. It dawned on him that he no longer had to hold back from getting involved. He wouldn’t be gone for long stretches of time anymore and could make his own family.
He saw Trina a few more times in the cafeteria in the following months. He was thoroughly infatuated, but never tried to speak with her, never sought her attention. He didn’t even know if she was single or liked men, for that matter. It was safe to want her. Wanting a nameless woman didn’t cut into his ability to monitor Owen. Didn’t make demands on his time or his heart.
He risked nothing, but had a reason to look forward to the days when he was at the Navy Yard. Strangely, he felt less alone.
Then Keith left the Navy and moved to DC to help out with Owen, and Josh felt some of that burden lift. He received an email from an historian asking about the Somalia op, and that was the one event he could never speak of. He replied, telling her he wouldn’t speak with her, and deleted her email.
Then one early August night a few weeks later, Keith called and said he wanted to introduce his best friend to his new girlfriend—the historian who’d been researching the Somalia op.
Nothing had prepared Josh for walking into that bar in Adams Morgan and seeing Keith with his Navy Yard crush. And the two were obviously crazy in love.
He and Trina had become genuine friends after that, and she lived up to the person he’d created in his mind as he’d admired her from afar, which had left him wondering what would have happened if he’d sent a different reply to Trina’s initial email. What if he had met her first?
He was happy for his best friend. Happy for them both. But that lingering question had haunted him.
Now, with the clarity of meeting Maddie, he figured he could guess what would have happened: absolutely nothing. Trina was an infatuation made deeper by being totally off-limits. There’d never been a spark between them, not like the pure chemical combustion he felt with Maddie.
He’d wasted years hating himself and closing his mind and heart from others because of that strange twist of fate that had gotten in his head.
He had no doubt it was all wrapped in with his abusive father and skewed sense of self-worth. Before he’d even joined the Navy, he’d convinced himself he’d never have a relationship without repeating his father’s and brother’s patterns, so later, when he decided maybe it was time to attempt a real relationship, he fixated on a woman he couldn’t have.
He’d seen a therapist a few times over the years—the Navy had provided therapists who specialized in special forces operators, and Raptor required it for all employees who worked as trainers—but he’d kept his focus on his military and training work, never delving into his childhood. Now he would make a commitment to not just go to sessions with Ava, but he’d do private sessions to work through his own crap. He’d be no good to Ava—or Maddie—if he didn’t prioritize his mental health in the same way he did the physical.
In a way, he supposed that was what Maddie had urged him to do when she told him to take time for himself. Maybe she sensed he’d been nearing his limit between Ava, Owen, Chase, starting up a new office, and taking on the volunteer trainings.
He huffed out a breath and picked up his new phone from the dresser top. He’d already configured the device and transferred his data. It only took a moment to find Ava’s therapist’s email address. Before he could think twice about it, he sent a message requesting an appointment for him alone before meeting for a joint session with Ava.
His hand shook as he set the phone down. Okay, so talking to a therapist about his family scared him. Good to know.
C’mon, man. You used to raid terrorist strongholds.
But back then, the people he’d cared about most had been raiding the stronghold with him.
He picked up Maddie’s new cell phone. Time to face an even bigger fear.
They were almost to the no-man’s-land scene in Wonder Woman when there was a knock on Maddie’s door.
Ava groaned. “It should be a crime to interrupt this movie now.”
Maddie hit the Pause button on the computer. “Agreed. If my brother gets elected, we can ask him to sponsor a bill.” She rose from the bed and crossed to the door. She rose on her tiptoes to look through the peephole and spotted Josh.
A new kind of warmth swept through her. The hours spent with Ava had dispelled her hurt more than she’d realized. She understood his protectiveness now, even more than she had before.
She flipped the dead bolt and opened the door.
He looked uncertain. It was sweet, really, the nervousness this big, achingly handsome man showed. “Um, if this is a bad time, I can come back.”
“You almost ruined the no-man’s-land scene,” Ava called out.
His brow furrowed. “You’ve watched Wonder Woman at least a half dozen times in the last two months. How could I ruin it?”
“Maddie promised me she cries every time she watches it, and I wanted to see that. But we had to pause right before the scene. The buildup is gone.”
“You cry every time?” Josh asked.
“You don’t?” She crossed her arms and gave him a teasing smile. “But then, of course you don’t. You’ve always been represented in superhero movies like that. I mean, you were an actual SEAL. They make movies about guys like you all the time.”
He held up his hands, and his eyes got big, like a deer in the headlights. “I didn’t mean—”
She laughed. “Relax. You ever see a grown woman cry while watching an action adventure movie?”
“Come to think of it, no.”
She nodded toward the bed. “Scoot over, Ava. Make room for your uncle.”
Ava shifted to the middle, and Maddie took her spot beside her. “You’ll have to rewind, or I’ll never get in the right mood. Maybe all the way back to the bar scene.”
Josh settled on the bed on the other side of Ava and gave her a quizzical look over his niece’s head.
Maddie just smiled.
“I’ve never watched this with a woman before,” Ava said. “It’s different, having someone to talk to about how it makes you feel. As a woman. I mean.”
To Josh, Maddie said, “We haven’t been watching so much as analyzing—we’ve both seen it too many times to need to watch closely. Except for the no-man’s-land scene. When it starts, you aren’t allowed to speak until it’s over.”
“Any more rules I need to know?”
“No nitpicking or disparaging anything.”
“I would never,” Josh said in mock outrage. “I mean…it’s Gal Gadot.”
“Right?” she and Ava said in unison.
Josh’s eyes widened. “You guys aren’t punking me, are you?”
She and Ava shared a look, then they both shrugged, which made Ava giggle. Maddie bit her lip to contain her smile. They still had a long road ahead, but at least they were driving in the same car.
Ava hit Play on the computer, which she held on her lap, requiring Maddie and Josh to squeeze in to see the screen.
As they settled in, he draped an arm over the pillow behind Ava, his hand resting free on the thick pillow next to Maddie’s shoulder.
When they reached the trench scene—where they’d been before Josh’s interruption—she pressed back into the pillows, bracing herself for both the tears and for letting others see her cry. Right on cue, she felt the pressure in her chest as Diana Prince climbed from the trench.
It was silly, but this moment meant so much to her. The strength and power and beauty of it.
She scooted back on the bed, and bumped into Josh’s fingers. He jerked away in response, and she reached up, grasping his hand to let him know it was okay. She gave his fingers a light squeeze, then relaxed her grip but left her hand wrapped in his.
They sat there together on her bed, watching a movie while holding hands, with Ava snuggled between them.