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“Oh, Benny. Again?” He nodded and she squatted down next to him. “You might want to take up soccer. You don’t need your arms for that.”
Benny laughed, his nose runny and his eyes red. “My mom is going to kill me,” he said.
“No, she isn’t,” Olivia said. She glanced over her shoulder at Marcy. “Is his mom here?”
“She’s on her way,” the coach said.
“Let’s get him off the ice and I’ll splint his wrist before we take him over to the emergency room. Can someone—”
“I’ve got him.”
Will appeared out of the crowd of kids and bent down to scoop Benny up in his arms. Olivia followed them off the ice, and when they reached the locker room, Will set the boy down on a counter next to the sinks.
“It doesn’t hurt as much as the last time,” Benny said. “Maybe it’s not broken after all.”
“Do this,” Olivia said, flexing her wrist. Benny tried and failed. “It’s broken.”
“How long will it take to heal?”
“We’re going to take an X-ray and see about that. But I don’t think you’re going to be playing hockey this winter.”
Benny turned to Will, who was watching them both from a distance. “Did you ever break your arm?”
“I did,” he said. “And my leg. I’ve even been shot. Twice.”
Benny’s eyes went wide. “You’re the army guy. Kyle’s uncle. Kyle is my best friend. One of my best friends. He said you got blown up in the war. Is that true?”
“Not exactly. And I’m a marine. That’s different than army.”
“Cool,” Benny said. “Can I see your bullet hole?”
“It’s in a place that I can’t really show right now,” he said. “I’d have to take my clothes off.” Will nodded his head at Olivia. “And there’s a girl in the room.”
“Oh, right,” Benny said, grinning.
They continued to chat about Will’s military career, Benny asking Will brutally direct questions and Will answering as best as he could. By the time Benny’s mother arrived, Olivia had splinted Benny’s wrist and given him a grape Tootsie Pop to keep the boy from dwelling on the pain.
“Take him to the emergency room,” Olivia said to Benny’s mother. “I want to take X-rays and then we’ll probably put a cast on it.”
“Another cast?” Benny asked.
“It’s the only way to fix it,” she said. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, I know,” the boy said, nodding.
“All right. I’ll meet you there, buddy.” She watched as Benny walked out with his mother, then she glanced over at Will. “Thanks for the help. And for distracting him.”
“No problem.” He leaned against the wall, observing her coolly. “You really are a doctor, aren’t you.”
“I better be. Or the patients I’ve been seeing this past year are going to sue me.” She held up her hand to him as she pulled her cell phone from her jacket pocket. “Hang on, let me call this in.”
He watched her silently as she pulled up the number for the emergency room at the hospital in the neighboring town of Laurium. “Hey, Sarah, it’s Olivia. I have Benny Johansson, seven years old, coming in with a fractured left wrist. I’m going to want X-rays.” She paused. “And order a full blood workup, as well. And give him a Popsicle. He likes grape.” She hung up the phone. “I better go.”
“Why the blood test?” Will asked.
“Just routine,” Olivia replied.
Will shook his head. “No, it’s not. I’ve hung around enough medics in the last nine years. Witnessed enough shattered limbs. You don’t order a blood test for broken bones.”
“I can’t talk about it,” Olivia said. “It’s confidential. I—I shouldn’t have made that call in your presence.” She silently scolded herself. “I really have to go now. I’ll—I’ll see you around, Will.”
He didn’t reply, and the silence was only broken by the soft sound of her boots against the tile floor as she walked away.
Olivia had imagined them meeting again. She’d created fanciful dreams of how it might go, and it had always been impossibly grand and romantic. But this hadn’t been anything resembling her fantasies. It had been real and raw, painful and confusing, like pulling sutures from an unhealed wound.
And still, she had to see him again. She needed to find out if there was anything behind that passionate kiss. Was he still harboring feelings for her or had he simply reacted without thinking? The last thing she wanted was to start everything up again with Will. She had to stick to the plan—find closure, for both of them.
She pressed her fingers to her damp lips. While Olivia couldn’t deny the rush of emotion that had flooded her body when he’d kissed her, that was to be expected. He was handsome and a bit dangerous, and had he been anyone but Will, she might have considered a nice little affair.
But Olivia knew that any type of intimate contact between her and Will would be a mistake. Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure that Will shared her opinion.
* * *
THE SUN HAD fallen below the horizon and the temperature hovered near zero. Will strode down the snow-covered street, his gaze fixed on the pavement ahead of him. He’d left Elly and the boys at the rink and told his sister he’d meet them at the pizzeria for dinner.
But first he needed the frigid air and snowy night to clear his head. What the hell had he been thinking? Running into Liv at the post office was bad enough. But then to chase her out of the rink and kiss her? He might as well shoot himself through the heart and be done with it.
He searched for ways to rationalize his behavior. His brain might still be a bit scrambled from his injury. Or maybe it had to do with the fact that he hadn’t slept with a woman in months. But Will suspected that it actually came down to the flood of feelings that raced through him when he looked at her.
He hadn’t really felt much of anything in years, not since that day he’d gotten the letter. In a war zone, emotion was something that could get a guy killed or permanently disabled. He’d forced himself to harden his heart and to lock his soul so deeply inside him that nothing he saw or did would affect him. It was the best way to survive his service and come out whole on the other side.
He’d seen so many friends struggle with PTSD, only to go home and find that home wasn’t a cure at all. It simply amplified the symptoms. Will was tough and he understood the pitfalls. But he’d always had the ability to put his emotions aside and focus on the job.
For now, his single focus was to get better, both physically and mentally, so he could return to the only place in the world that made sense: his unit in Afghanistan. Life there was lived in simple terms—black-and-white, good and bad, safe and dangerous.
Yet he couldn’t deny the attraction to a civilian life. He remembered a moment, sitting beside a bomb-pocked road in the Helmand Province. A butterfly had landed on the muzzle of his weapon and he’d watched it, its wings silently opening and closing in the dusty breeze. In that moment, he’d felt human again, certain that he still had a soul. Since then, the only time he’d felt the same was today, with Olivia. And though he knew he should keep his distance, he craved that feeling again.
He pulled his cap lower over his ears and rounded the corner. The town hadn’t changed much over the years. He wasn’t sure exactly where he was, but he’d find his bearings sooner or later, though the snow piled up in front of the buildings and the dim light from the streetlamps made it tricky.
He headed toward a bright light, and when he finally reached it, he stopped and stared up at the hospital. “Shit,” Will muttered. Was this where he’d been headed all along? He’d taken the most direct route, just a fifteen-minute walk from the rink.
It was as though some strange magnetic force had drawn him here. She’d left the rink a half hour before. She was probably still inside, setting Benny’s broken bone. He glanced around the parking lot and spotted her SUV.
There were things to be said, he mused. An apology, or maybe an explanation for his behavior. And there were things to be done—like kiss her again. He stared at the hospital and ruled out going inside. Over the past four months, he’d spent far too much time trapped by the sterile walls of a hospital, surrounded by the specter of death.
Will crossed to Olivia’s car and leaned against the passenger-side door, deciding to wait until she came outside.
The frigid wind bit into his face, and Will crossed his arms over his chest in an attempt to conserve his body heat. He’d weathered much worse in Afghanistan. Brutal conditions that wore a man down. But that had been before he’d been softened by days spent flat on his back in a hospital bed.
He tried the passenger-side door and found it locked, then circled the car, running his hands inside the wheel wells until he found what he was looking for—a magnetic key holder. He slid it open and found a spare key, then unlocked the passenger door and hopped inside.
As he stared out at the snowstorm, illuminated by the parking lot lights, Will thought about what he planned to say to Olivia. The military had taught him to always have a plan, a strategy, for every mission he undertook. A way in and a way out. But his brain just didn’t seem to work right lately. He’d never been impulsive or unpredictable—until now.
“What the hell am I doing?” he murmured, his breath clouding in front of his face. He reached for the door and at the same moment, the door locks clicked and beeped. At first she didn’t see him, but then she looked up and a surprised cry burst from her lips.
Will brushed his hood off his head and held up his hand. “It’s me. Will.”
Olivia pressed her hand to her head. “Good Lord, you scared me. What are you doing out here?”
“I didn’t want to wait inside,” he muttered. “How’s Benny?”
“He’s fine,” she said softly.
“Is he? Or are you just required to say that?”
“I’m required to say that,” she replied.
“Is it serious?”
“Yeah, if it’s what I suspect, it’s serious. But not life threatening. And that’s all I can say. How did you get here?”
“I walked,” he said.
“It’s freezing out. The windchill is dangerous and you’re still recovering.” She drew a deep breath and shook her head. “You need to get yourself a car.”
“I can’t drive,” he said. “My vision is still a little wonky from the concussion.”
She studied him for a long moment, then nodded. “Would you like to grab a cup of coffee?”
“I’d rather have a drink,” Will said.
“Well, I can’t drink since I’m on call until midnight. But I suppose I could find something nonalcoholic to enjoy.”
“Coffee is good,” he said. “I don’t sleep anyway, so what the hell. I’ll live dangerously.”
She reached out to start the SUV. Will watched her, his heart slamming in his chest. He relished the attraction between them and the desire that had raced through his veins the instant he’d kissed her. And though there could be no future in anything they shared, that wouldn’t stop him from wanting her. She was like a drug, a wonderful high that made him feel human again.
Then he reconsidered. Could he be so selfish? To take what he wanted without offering anything in return? He’d lived in a world of moral ambiguity for such a long time, Will wasn’t sure what was right or wrong anymore. “You know, maybe we shouldn’t do this.”
“We shouldn’t have coffee? That’s all this is, Will. Just two friends.” She glanced over at him. “We have a new coffee shop in town. It’s really nice. And warm. Why don’t we go there?”
He cleared his throat. “Maybe I should just tell you what I came here to say.”
“All right,” she said. “And then I have a few things I need to say myself.”
“You go first,” Will said.
“No, you go. I can wait.”
He took a deep breath and nodded. “All right. So.”
“So,” she repeated.
“I guess I want to say that...I shouldn’t have kissed you. I don’t know what got into me, but I regret what I did. And—and I don’t want you to think that I expect us to take up where we left off.”
“It was just a kiss,” she said.
“Yeah, but— It just—” It had meant something to him, Will mused. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it had moved him in ways he couldn’t explain. “I didn’t want you to think I had some plan to seduce you. That wasn’t why I kissed you.”
“It’s okay, I understand. It’s been over for years. And I know you’d never try to take advantage. I guess I’d just like to be...friends?”
“You really think that’s possible?” he asked.
Liv nodded. “Yes, I do. Well, maybe not if you keep kissing me. Or sneaking into my car and scaring the crap out of me.”
“I’m not going to do that again,” he assured her. “Sneak into your car, that is. I make no promises about the kissing you.” He couldn’t resist flirting with her. It wasn’t quite the same rush he’d gotten from kissing her, but it was close.
“Well, I think we can have a cup of coffee without tearing each other’s clothes off. As friends. Old friends.”
“Absolutely,” he said. He put his seat belt on and she started the Lexus. She pulled out of the hospital parking lot and headed back into town.
“Does it feel good to be home?” she asked, her gaze fixed on the swirling snow.
“It’s strange. This town is familiar, yet different. Like you.”
“I feel old. Please don’t tell me I look old.”
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured. “You do look older, but it suits you.”
“You look different, too. Manly,” she said with a soft laugh. “You’ve filled out.” She stole a sideways glance. “Elly didn’t tell me you’d been shot. Twice.”
“She doesn’t know,” Will said. “It happened a long time ago. And it wasn’t serious. Unlike with the bomb, I was in and out of the hospital in a week.”
“Tell me about the bomb,” she said. “You suffered a head injury?”
“An IED exploded behind me. I was wearing a bomb suit, but I was thrown about fifteen feet into a stone wall. I had head trauma and a detached retina. A bunch of broken ribs, a cracked vertebra and a punctured lung.”
“An IED? What is that?”
“Improvised explosive device,” he explained. “A homemade bomb.”
“And this bomb suit. You wear it all the time?”
“No, only when I’m defusing bombs. It’s made of Kevlar and weighs about eighty pounds.”
She gasped softly. “That’s what you do? You defuse bombs?”
Will nodded. “Yeah. I’m in an EOD unit—explosive ordnance disposal. That’s my MOS. My military operational specialty.”
