Page 41 of Forsaken Hearts
“You already are.”
“No, I mean…” He exhaled slowly. “I’m not as damaged as you think.”
Summer’s gaze caught on him for half a second too long.
He saw the question in her eyes. Not judgment. Not fear.
Just that careful hesitation people got when they knew what went on at the Black Heart Ranch’s therapy program. Maybe she’d heard stories about veterans and PTSD and wondered things she didn’t know how to ask out loud.
Pope rubbed a hand across the back of his neck.
“I’m cleared, Summer.”
Her brows knit slightly. “What?”
“For the job.” He nodded toward the school. “Black Heart doesn’t hand out security work unless you can handle it.”
Guilt crossed her face. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” His voice stayed calm. “I’m just telling you I fulfilled all the requirements before they offered me a position. I’m okay.”
Kids funneled through the school entrance nearby, and neither of them spoke.
Summer’s throat clicked as she swallowed. “Did you think I didn’t want to be with you because I thought you were too damaged?” Her voice was a pained rasp.
He rubbed a fingertip down his nose again. “Yeah.” What else was he supposed to think?
She looked at the school and then back at him. “I didn’t see a future because…I couldn’t even get the father of my son to stick around.” Her laugh came out thin and bitter. “Honestly, though, I’m glad he didn’t. I didn’t need to carry around a man-child too.”
Pope reached into his pocket and fished out his phone. He scrolled briefly before handing it over.
Summer looked down at an old photo of four painfully young men standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of a bus headed for bootcamp, chests puffed out to look intimidating.
He pointed at himself in the photo. “I was the scrawniest one in the group.”
The corner of her lips twitched upward.
“Still, I was the only one who made it through.”
Her gaze lifted to his.
Sitting this close, he ached to cup her beautiful face and claim her perfect lips.
“A lot of guys got married young, right outta boot camp,” Pope said quietly. “They thought they were building perfectlives for their futures. I watched marriages fail over and over. Watched divorces rip through families.”
He remembered all of it too clearly. Young wives crying. Drunk buddies sitting in empty apartments after another marriage collapsed under the strain of military life.
He held her stare. “Their failures kept me from ever trying, not that I ever met a woman I wanted forever. What I’m trying to say is…I understand being gun shy.”
A shadow crossed the bright blue depths of her eyes and she handed the phone back. “We’re all broken, Vander.”
She pushed out a sigh and began to tell her story. “We moved across the country to follow my ex, Michael’s, dream. Not mine. He dreamed of small-town life in the mountains. The plan was to stay in town long enough to earn money for a homestead.”
She pushed out a snort through her nose. “As if he could grow our own food and support us by being a homesteader. I could barely keep a roof over our heads most months.”
Pope’s heart flexed at her words but he remained silent.
“Michael promised everything would work out once we got settled. Then I got pregnant.” She stared at the school doors as she spoke. “When Ben was born, Michael left us at the hospital.”
