Trusting a Warrior (Loving a Warrior #3) - Melanie Hansen Page 0,105

for one moment how amazing you were, bud? Because you were, and I miss you.

He waited for her to ask, but tonight Ari was quiet for a long time. Geo didn’t push, just sat next to her, letting her take the conversational lead. At last she drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “Do you ever think it’s your fault?”

His breath froze in his chest. “Think what’s my fault, honey?”

“That your dad died.”

Geo paused. “My dad?” he asked carefully, wondering if he’d heard right.

“Yeah. Do you ever think it’s your fault he died?”

What?

“Some of Ari’s questions to you might be her way of expressing her own feelings,” Maura had said when he’d asked for her guidance early on. “Just listen, and use honesty and your best judgment when answering them. That’s all you can do.”

Tamping down his nausea at the thought of Ari blaming herself, Geo swallowed hard. “He’d been sick—”

Suddenly, a memory roared to life, the memory of a disappointed eleven-year-old boy and an impulsive, selfish prayer.

Just be honest.

“Well, a couple of months before he died, a friend’s dog had puppies, so I asked my mom if I could have one.”

He remembered how he’d been building up his courage for weeks, bolstered by the thought of having a warm, furry little creature to love, something that’d become a bright spot of hope and anticipation in those last days of his dad’s slow, inexorable decline.

“What did she say?”

At her hushed question, he drew his knees up and mirrored her pose. “She said no. Right away. Wouldn’t listen to my plan to take care of it, nothing. Just a big fat no. Period. The end.”

“Ugh. Were you mad?”

“I was furious. I thought it was so unfair.”

Looking back as an adult, Geo could recognize her decision as one of an exhausted caregiver who only saw a puppy underfoot as yet another burden, but in his childish selfishness and grief...

“I shouted that I hated her, and then I stormed outside and kicked some stuff over, like my bike and the garbage can. After that I ran to the park down the street and sat on the swings for a long time, thinking about my dad being sick, and I—”

He squeezed his eyes shut and blew out a long, slow breath.

God, help me.

“I prayed that he would just die already.”

“Oh, shit.” Ari clapped her hand over her mouth. “And he did?”

“He did, several weeks later.” Turning to face her directly, he waited until she met his eyes. “But because he was sick, Ari, not because I prayed that. Okay? That was me being mad, and for some reason praying that made me feel better, but I was a little kid. I didn’t have the power to make him die.”

Her lips trembled the tiniest bit before she broke their gaze and looked down at her knees.

Steeling himself, Geo asked, “Why, sweetie? Why did you want to know that?”

She shrugged. “Dunno.”

Despite her attempt at nonchalance, he could see her knuckles turn white as she clenched them together.

His instincts screaming at him not to let this go, he nudged her foot gently with his own. “You don’t know? C’mon, it’s me. We’ve had a lot of good talks, haven’t we? I won’t get mad, no matter what you tell me.”

Ari’s shoulders hunched in on themselves, and for a moment Geo thought she was about to bolt when suddenly she blurted, “I took Daddy’s lucky bear.”

His mind immediately flashed to the tiny tie-dyed bear Cade always kept in the front pocket of his ruck. Had he mentioned not having it on that last deployment? For the life of him, Geo couldn’t remember.

Carefully keeping his face and voice neutral, he said, “You took it out of his bag?”

“Yeah, I wanted to sleep with it before he left.” Ari dragged her head up to look at him, her eyes stark. “But I forgot to put it back. He went on deployment and he didn’t have his lucky bear...”

Lips trembling, she buried her face once again in her knees. His heart aching, Geo rested his hand lightly on her shoulder. “So you’ve been thinking that might be why he died?”

When she didn’t respond, he gave her a squeeze. “Honey, your daddy died because his brain got sick, just like my dad’s body got sick. Nothing we did made them die. Nothing.”

Another moment of absolute stillness, and then she shrugged his hand off and jumped to standing. “Gonna go warm up with the team.” Without another word, she jogged