was that about? Coach had said Adam had saved men—that, she could believe. He was brave, and he cared about other people. In the Marines, surely his fellow soldiers were like brothers to him. But whenever she asked Adam for details, he would deflect and avoid, just as he’d been doing every time the subject of his military service came up. People were looking at him with speculation, since his back was to the room. And suddenly, she had to get him out of there.
“Hey, Adam, Emily needs us to get a heavy tray in back. Give me a hand.”
He moved so swiftly to the swinging door, she felt the breeze of his passing. She followed him into the kitchen.
He looked around the deserted room. “Where’s the tray?”
“I lied. Let’s go outside.”
Soon they stood out in the alley, beneath the light above the back door, hearing their own breathing and the distant sound of Christmas music coming from somewhere.
The question just spilled out of her. “So why don’t you like being called a hero?”
“Because I’m not,” he said tiredly.
“Maybe it would help to talk.”
He stared down at her, then he reached up and very gently touched her cheek. She leaned her face into his palm and was surprised to feel the sting of tears.
“Oh, Adam,” she whispered. “I wish . . . I wish things had been different for you.”
Her heart broke with a sort of guilt at all the gifts she’d been given in her life: a good family, a career, friends. “Tell me what secret you carry inside you.”
He hesitated, and she thought he’d refuse once again.
“I’m part of the reason a dozen good men are dead,” he said at last, his voice filled with quiet sadness.
She put her gloved hands on his waist, wishing she could see more than the shadows on his face beneath his Stetson. “Tell me. Please, tell me. I want to know everything.”
“Why?” he asked, smiling down at her sadly. “You shouldn’t have to live with this.”
“I want to share everything with you.” The moment she spoke the words, she regretted them. It was too soon. Or was it? Her heart felt oversized in her chest, full of sorrow and hurt over what he’d borne, and yet still he’d become this wonderful man. She almost held her breath, wondering if he’d push her away now, if he’d think she was getting too close.
“It was a routine mission until we started being shelled,” he said in a hushed voice. “I called in the air strike on our position, knowing it was a Danger Close target. I might have saved some of the others after the bomb fell, but I’m no hero, Brooke.”
She leaned into him, focused on his pain. “I know there’s more. Tell me. Tell me what happened. Keeping it inside can only tear you apart.”
He rested his hands on her shoulders and suddenly his breath seemed to catch, and a spasm of pain twisted his features. “They told me the wrong bomb size,” he whispered. “I calculated the coordinates for a 250-pound bomb, but they dropped a 500. The blast radius—” And then he broke off with a choked gasp.
She pressed her lips together to keep from crying out, knowing it wasn’t what he needed. He wouldn’t want to hear her protests that it was an accident, that he wasn’t the one who made the mistake. He knew all that, but the grief and the guilt still made him bleed inside.
“If I wouldn’t have called in a strike, more of my men would be alive,” he finished.
“You can’t know that, Adam.” She kept her voice calm and gentle. She wanted to insist, You were under attack! Without the bomb, something else bad would have happened, maybe even your own death! She felt a swirl of nausea in her stomach at the thought.
His hands gripped her shoulders almost painfully, but she knew he didn’t realize what he was doing.
“I don’t like being called a hero,” he said, giving a sigh, even as his fingers relaxed. “And now you know why.”
“But Adam, did you ever think Coach already knows the facts and thinks you’re a hero anyway? Can’t you search for this kind of stuff online?”
Then he stared down at her, and the light above them caught his square jaw, the way his Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. “Maybe.”
And then he buried his face in her neck, and she clutched him, trying to share all her strength.
She kissed the side of his head,