Protecting What's Mine(84)

She felt a hand on her shoulder and jolted.

Linc sat next to her, and bath-fresh Sunshine burrowed under Mack’s arm on the other side. He didn’t say anything.

“Just got something in my eye,” she fibbed.

He stroked a hand down her back, and she wanted to tell him. To blurt out the words that bubbled up and demanded to be set free. She had feelings. So many of them now that she didn’t know what to do with them all.

Instead, she leaned her head on Linc’s shoulder and decided to just feel it all for a while before making any rash decisions.





39





Linc argued baseball with Luke and kept an eye on Mack as she joined in the conversation with Denise and Freida across the yard.

He felt a tug on the hem of his sweatshirt. “Chief Wink! Can I draw you a picture?” Lucia asked, peering up at him with those big, beautiful Vietnamese eyes.

“I’d love a picture,” he told her.

“’Den I need some paper,” she informed him.

“I brought crayons and four coloring books,” Gloria said, appearing behind her daughter. “But she’s insisting on paper.”

“Lemme ask Dreamy,” Linc said, pretending not to see the look Gloria and Luke exchanged. If everyone was surprised by his relationship with Mackenzie, they might as well hurry up and get over it.

He inserted himself into the girl talk as they debated whether or not Harper should run for Benevolence mayor the following year.

“Do you have some paper a three-year-old could commandeer?” he asked.

Mack smiled up at him in a new, soft, dreamy kind of way that made him want to kick everyone out and kiss her for the rest of the night.

“Sure,” she said. “There’s a notebook in the living room on the shelf by the fireplace.”

“Thanks.” He did kiss her then. He couldn’t help himself. He left her with Freida and Denise’s chorus of “oooh” and headed into the house, all three dogs on his heels. “Behave yourselves,” he warned them.

He found the notebook, a sketchpad actually, on top of a stack of medical journals and flipped it open. The charcoal portrait surprised and intrigued him. It was a young woman with laughing eyes and thick, black hair that kinked and curled in a celebratory riot around her face. He turned the page and found another portrait, a man with a buzzcut and lines around his eyes and the mouth that was pressed in a firm, flat line. He wore a uniform decorated with a load of military experience.

“Not that one,” Mack said, breathlessly hurrying into the room. “I forgot. The notebook’s on the end table.”

“Mackenzie, these are amazing.”

She looked like she was about to be sick.

“What’s wrong? What is it?” he asked, closing the sketchbook.

She bit her lip and picked up a spiral-bound notebook next to the couch. “They’re my dead,” she said finally.

“Patients you’ve lost,” he clarified, with the hope that the woman he was head over heels for wasn’t confessing to being a serial killer.

She nodded.

Linc was relieved. “They’re really good.”

Her shrug was jerky. “Thanks. I picked it up after First Responder Day. I used to sketch when I was a teenager. I thought maybe if I got them down on paper that maybe I wouldn’t have to carry them all around with me anymore.”

He got it. He carried his own shadows with him. All first responders did, and sometimes the load got too heavy.

“Who was she?” he asked, opening to the first sketch again.

“I don’t really know much about most of them,” she said, staring down at the woman on the page. “She was the last one I lost in Afghanistan. She was a medic and a translator and got caught in some crossfire. I knew she wasn’t going to make it back to the base. But instead of sitting there and holding her hand, I gave her plasma and worked on her injuries. I knew she wasn’t going to survive. Her heart stopped five minutes out and never restarted. And I didn’t know her name or who she was thinking about when she slipped away. I just knew that her blood pressure was too low and her heart had stopped.”

“That’s what you’re trained to do,” he reminded her.

“But it wasn’t what she needed. My medic on that flight, he leaned down and whispered in her ear the whole time. I thought I was annoyed that he wasn’t getting me what I needed fast enough because he was too busy trying to make this connection to this person who wasn’t going to make it. And that sounds horrible,” she confessed. “But I was mad at myself for not being able to offer that kind of comfort. I could fill her up with pain meds. But he was the reason she died with this little smile on her lips. He promised her he’d tell her mom that she was the best mom in the world. And I only did what I was trained to do.”

“Did he tell her?” Linc asked.

“Probably. I don’t know. After that flight, I decided it was time to be done. To do something else. My deployment was up. And I decided I wasn’t going back.”

His doctor always seemed to be moving forward, never looking back.

“And here you are,” he said. He wanted to flip through the pages and study the faces she’d drawn.

“With a backyard full of people and a house full of dogs,” Mack said, cracking a hint of a smile as Lola flopped on her back on the couch, legs in the air.