Page 62 of Duty Devoted
Normal story. Wrong tone. His chest rose and fell too quickly, that careful control starting to crack like ice under pressure.
“She used to say—” The words cut off. He stared at the cloth in his hands, his pupils dilating in a way that had nothing to do with the dim light. “Said fixing things mattered as much as…as protecting them. But you can’t fix—some things can’t be?—”
“Logan?” I kept my voice low, watching the color drain from his face, and a bead of sweat rolled down his temple despite the relatively cool air. The cloth dropped onto the floor. “Look at me.”
But he’d already gone somewhere else. His breathing turned ragged, harsh in the quiet room. Sweat broke across his forehead in earnest now, and his whole body locked, rigid, muscles remembering some other moment. The needle fell from nerveless fingers, landing on the dirty floor.
“Stop the bleeding.” The words came out fractured, desperate. His hands moved toward me, but it wasn’t me he was seeing. “Pressure isn’t—no, that’s not right. The angle’s wrong. Carter, stay with me. Goddammit, stay with me!”
Understanding hit like cold water. He wasn’t here anymore. Wasn’t seeing my wound or this shabby room with its water-stained ceiling.
But he was definitely seeing blood.
He was trapped in memory, watching someone bleed out beneath his hands. The way he kept looking at his palms, turning them over like he could still see blood there, made my heart clench.
“You’re having a flashback.” I spoke clearly, though he showed no recognition. His eyes stayed fixed on something I couldn’t see, probably couldn’t imagine. “What you’re seeing already happened. It’s not happening now. You’re safe.”
His chest heaved, heading toward hyperventilation. Each breath came shorter, sharper, like he couldn’t get enough air. The muscles in his neck corded with tension, and I could see his pulse hammering visibly at his throat. I needed to help, but wrong moves could deepen the spiral. Touch could register as threat. Loud noises could trigger worse.
He sank onto the bed’s edge like his strings had been cut, lost in whatever horror had claimed him. His whole frame shook—not shivers but full-body tremors that started in his core and radiated outward. I crawled toward him slowly, letting him see the movement even though his eyes weren’t tracking, before my fingers found his wrist. His pulse hammered hummingbird-fast beneath my touch, probably pushing 140 beats per minute. Dangerous if it stayed there.
“Can’t stop it.” His voice cracked, raw with remembered desperation. “My hands keep slipping in all the—there’s toomuch—I can feel his pulse getting weaker. James is looking at me. He knows. Carter, stay with me, man. James…”
“Logan, listen to my voice. We’re in Puerto Esperanza. Second floor of a bar called El Pescador. There’s water damage on the ceiling that looks like a map of Europe if you squint. Peeling paint on the walls, probably lead-based, from the color. Good thing we don’t live here.”
Nothing. His eyes stayed fixed on horrors I couldn’t see. But I kept talking, using the same tone I used with patients in crisis—calm, steady, absolutely certain.
Even when, like now, I felt anythingbutcertain.
“Feel the wool blanket under your hands? Scratchy as hell. Probably hasn’t been washed in a year. There’s a stain near the foot that might be coffee or might be something worse. The mattress squeaks every time we move.”
His breathing grew more ragged, punctuated now by sounds that might have been words or might have been sobs. Time was slipping away. We had hours, not days. The boat wouldn’t wait, and Mateo’s men wouldn’t stop searching.
“Remember Elena’s coffee?” I switched tactics, pulling up shared memories like breadcrumbs leading him back to now. “It was so awful. But she was so proud when she brought it, like she’d given us liquid gold. What a smart kid she is.”
A flicker. Barely there, but I caught it—the slightest change in his expression, like someone swimming up from deep water.
“The juane in those big green leaves. Still warm from her grandmother’s kitchen. You said it beat field rations any day.” I touched his shoulder, gentle pressure, grounding. “You told me about the time Ty tried to cook fish over a campfire and nearly poisoned your whole team.”
His gasps slowed incrementally, though his hands still trembled where they rested on his thighs. I could see himfighting, trying to claw his way back from wherever the flashback had taken him.
“And that hurricane shelter where we waited out the storm? Just us while the world tore itself apart outside. The walls shook and the roof screamed, but inside, we were safe. You made me feel safe.” I let my voice drop lower, more intimate. “Your hands on me in that shelter. Your mouth. How you made me feel beautiful when I’d convinced myself I was anything but.”
Awareness washed back into his eyes like a dam breaking. His pupils contracted, focusing on my face with desperate intensity. “Lauren?”
“Right here. We’re safe. Both of us.”
He turned into me with desperate urgency, face finding the curve of my neck like it was the only safe harbor in a storm. His arms came around me carefully, avoiding the fresh stitches even through his distress. I pulled him close, ignoring the protest from my ribs, the pull of new sutures. He needed this more than I needed to avoid pain.
But he remembered and looked down at my wound. “You’re hurt.”
He stiffened, slipping away again, that thousand-yard stare beginning to return. I could see him getting pulled back under, and I couldn’t let that happen. Not again. So, I did the only thing I could think of—I kissed him.
Not gently. Not carefully. I pulled his face to mine and kissed him with everything I had, trying to anchor him to the present, to me, to now. For a moment, he was frozen, caught between past and present. Then I felt it—the exact moment he came back to me. His whole body shuddered, and suddenly, he was kissing me back with desperate intensity.
The kiss transformed from my attempt to ground him into something else entirely. Pure need stripped of technique. Hismouth moved against mine with desperate pressure, like he was trying to prove we were both still alive.
We both needed each other with a yearning that didn’t make sense, given the fact that we’d had sex multiple times just last night. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting as close to each other as possible right now.
