Jacob watched as over Chris’s shoulder Sophie began directing the takedown of the rest of the rental equipment, pointing to the back of Gray’s truck.
She’d walked out of his world, but she was still running it. That was when he realized Chris was looking at him, waiting on an answer to a question he hadn’t heard. “I…Shit.” Jacob shoved his hand through his hair and grimaced. “I’m sorry. What?”
Chris smiled a little sympathetically. “She got you dizzy?”
“Something like that.”
Chris nodded. “She’s pretty amazing, you know. You’re a lucky guy.”
Funny, but he wasn’t feeling so lucky at the moment.
“I’d wish you good luck with her,” Chris said. “But given how she was looking at you last night and then how you two vanished, you don’t need it.” He slid the duffel bag off his shoulders and handed it to Jacob.
Jacob stared down at it, his heart suddenly thumping hard in his chest. He knew this bag.
It’d belonged to Brett.
He opened it and stared down at Brett’s personal effects. His diver’s watch, which Jacob had given him for his birthday seven years ago. The beat-up DS he’d played to distraction. An old, battered book of poems that Brett hadn’t actually read because he hated poetry, but it had belonged to his mom, so he’d carried it all around the planet. His lucky Dodgers hat.
That was it, Brett’s life in a damn nutshell, the only things left to honor a good man who was sorely missed.
Jacob was glad to have the bag and the memories that went with them even as it pained him to imagine Hud or his mom getting a bag of his things. Through a lump in his throat, he lifted his head and met Chris’s gaze.
“You really didn’t hear a word I said, did you?” Chris asked. “I told you that I don’t know why they sent Brett’s belongings to me. I was listed second. You were first. It was a mistake, and I knew you’d want to have his things.”
Jacob nodded and shouldered the bag, which felt like a million pounds. Brett hadn’t had any family. He’d had no one but his unit. Jacob had felt the same way, which was part of what had bonded them so tightly. He opened his mouth to thank Chris for bringing the bag all this way, but he found he couldn’t speak past the lump in his throat, the one that felt as big as a regulation-size football.
Chris clasped him on the shoulder. They hugged, and then Chris was gone. Jacob stood there, registering the low hum of everyday noise in the background. The water lapping the shore. The slight wind rustling the pines. The talk and laughter of the people nearby. A boat motor.
Normal life. And it was going on around him as if completely unaware he’d stepped off the merry-go-round.
He wanted to set the bag aside and force Sophie to talk to him. At the very least he could help finish the cleanup. He wanted to jump back into that “normal life,” the one that had just started to fit him like a glove.
But it was like a switch had been flipped inside of him and normal no longer applied.
“Where’s Jacob?”
Sophie turned at the question. The last of everything was loaded up and she was just about out of there. Her head hurt. Her body hurt.
Her heart hurt.
And Hud stood at her side, looking around. “Have you seen him?” he asked.
Yes, she had, and she was trying not to think about it.
“He was saying good-bye to Chris,” Kenna piped up. “And it looked pretty serious. Chris handed him a duffel bag that apparently belonged to someone named Brett. He died in the line of duty during an incident where both Jacob and Chris were injured and was like a brother to Jacob.” She winced a little and met Hud’s eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“How do you know all this?” Hud asked.
“Because I eavesdropped.”
Sophie hadn’t been close enough to eavesdrop, but she’d been able to read Jacob’s expression.
Devastation. “He thought of Brett as a brother,” she said quietly. “He feels like he’s lost two brothers in his lifetime.”
Hud blew out a breath and closed his eyes. “I haven’t been easy on him.”
Sophie thought of Jacob saying “I love you” so easily. How his eyes had told her he’d meant it. How he’d been willing to take what she could offer without asking or expecting more, all while giving Sophie everything he had. And she’d taken. And taken. Until she’d gotten spooked and let Lucas shake her, let him put doubts in her head. Doubts Jacob hadn’t deserved. Yet she’d used those doubts to walk away, to keep her heart safe.