The Marine's Family Mission. Victoria Pade

when she got back, so she’d given Trinity lunch, fed the baby and put them both down for naps. And now, while the kids slept and she couldn’t be out of earshot, she was indulging herself with a much-needed phone call to Carla—her best friend since kindergarten, her confidante, the only person she’d talked to about what had begun to happen to her in the aftermath of Afghanistan.

      “It’s not a bad idea when you desperately need help and he’s someone who can give it,” Carla hedged. “But it sounds like your mother steamrolled you into agreeing to let the guy move into the basement, and what I want to know is if you’re going to be able to handle being with him.”

      Emmy didn’t know.

      Since the wedding—and until the hailstorm—she’d been sure she was in control of the emotional backlash from the school collapse. Yes, some things had changed for her, but she’d found ways to manage her anxiety pretty well. A lot of people didn’t like small spaces, so she wasn’t the only one to avoid them, and who wouldn’t be afraid of the idea of being underneath something that might fall on them—like the broken tree limbs in the orchard?

      For the most part, though, she’d considered herself perfectly fine until seeing the devastation of the hail damage had brought the fear back. Not a lot of it—she took heart in that. But now seeing Declan Madison again did make her worry that more might break through.

      “I didn’t have a panic attack at the first sight of him,” she said, putting as much optimism into her voice as she could.

      Panic attacks when she saw him didn’t make any sense to her, but soon after her rescue from the rubble, her reaction to Declan Madison had morphed from deep gratitude into the first of that emotional turmoil.

      When the bomb had hit the school in Afghanistan, she’d been alone in a supply closet, packing her cameras and equipment. The explosion had flung her, knocking her unconscious.

      When she’d come to—before she had any conception of what had happened or where she was—all she’d known was that both of her feet were trapped under a lot of weight. She’d worked to get them out, and when she had, bricks and mortar had crumbled with the movement, enclosing her even more.

      She’d been left with her knees to her chest, in a space about the size of a barrel. There was no room to move—when she tried, more debris fell on her.

      It had been pitch-black except for a speck of light that she’d been able to see above her, and that had given her hope that she’d somehow ended up near to the outside.

      She’d shouted for help, not knowing if there was aid available or if she’d be rescued by friend or foe.

      For four hours she’d been entombed, and all she’d known was that periodically her surroundings would shift, crumble and fall in, closing the space around her even more. She’d been terrified that at any moment the whole thing would collapse on top of her.

      Then her shouts brought a voice from outside and the sounds of digging in to reach her.

      When that dot of light had finally grown bigger, the first thing she’d seen had been Declan Madison’s face.

      Relief had flooded her, followed by more stress as he tried not to cause a cave-in while working at opening a space to pull her through.

      He’d been diligent, assuring her that everything was going to be okay, that he’d get her out.

      He’d barely made a two-foot gap in the wreckage when something overhead shifted more drastically. Acting quickly, he’d shoved his upper half in to grab her under the arms and had yanked her free just as a collapse did occur, dragging her out of harm’s way a split second before she would have been crushed.

      As he’d helped load her onto a gurney, then into an ambulance, she remembered thanking him—again and again and again—before she was rushed to a hospital. It was only later, after she’d been treated, after she’d been diagnosed with a concussion and had been given a bed so she could be watched overnight, that her appreciation had been eclipsed by something new and terrifying.

      Declan had shown up at the hospital, and at first she’d only heard his voice asking where she was. That alone had caused uneasiness in her, but when she’d glanced in his direction and had actually seen him, the simple sight of that face had mentally thrown her back into the dark, dusty cranny amid the crumbling rubble.

      And rather than associating Declan Madison with the relief of being freed, instead, in her mind, he instantly became a fast ride right back into the heart of her terror.

      Mandy—who had been outside the school with Topher and Declan and hadn’t been hurt—had been with her in the hospital, at her bedside. Emmy hadn’t wanted her sister to know what she was feeling. In fact, she’d been ashamed of it—children and teachers had died in the attack, others had been scarred or maimed for life, there were little kids in beds around her stoically accepting their irreversibly changed lives, while she’d suffered nothing but a headache and a few cuts and bruises. Yet she was ready to crawl out of her skin with one look at the very person who had saved her. Thankfulness should have been the only thing she’d felt, and instead she was fighting terror.

      Hiding it, she’d told her sister that she was tired and needed to rest. She’d asked Mandy to leave and take Declan with her.

      So Mandy had left without knowing about that first distress, and Emmy had kept every other incident of it to herself ever since—except for telling Carla.

      “So that’s stuck—no panic attacks when you saw him at the wedding and none yesterday either,” her friend said.

      The wedding had been six months after the bombing. By then Emmy had reset her career. She’d talked poor Carla’s ear off about her nightmares, her problem with small spaces, the flashbacks and anxiety, and she’d been doing much better. But she hadn’t been sure what would happen if she had to see Declan Madison’s face again.

      Then she had. And while it had raised some memories, it hadn’t made her hyperventilate, it hadn’t caused all-out panic. In fact, worrying about it had been worse than anything that had happened when she had actually seen him.

      Partly in order to celebrate that, and partly to control the worry that the panic still might hit, she’d had a whole lot to drink—beginning with champagne while the wedding party dressed and continuing at the reception. The more she’d had to drink, the calmer she’d felt, until she’d found the courage to approach Declan, to thank him again the way she knew she should have before leaving Afghanistan.

      “No, no panic attacks yesterday either,” Emmy confirmed.

      “No symptoms of the PTSD at all?”

      “I hate when you call it that. That isn’t what it is. I’ve taken pictures of the kinds of things that cause PTSD—they’re big and devastating and life changing, they aren’t just a few hours being scared until somebody finds them and everything is okay again.”

      “I know that’s how you see it, but—”

      “That’s how it is,” she insisted, refusing to accept her friend’s opinion. “What I have is just fallout from a bad experience, and it hardly ever even happens anymore.”

      “Okay—it hardly ever happens anymore, you’re over the Afghanistan thing and seeing Declan Madison at the wedding and again yesterday didn’t cause anything bad,” Carla repeated as if she was temporarily conceding to Emmy’s arguments. “But what about what did happen at the wedding? Do you want to be under the same roof with a guy who seemed interested in you and then spent the night with somebody else right next door to you?”

      “That’s definitely the other half of why I was hoping I might not ever have to see him again. But I guess going into this knowing I’m not his type is something,” she said facetiously.

      “So spending time with him now won’t send you out into the arms of another Bryce?” Carla pressed.

      Emmy laughed humorlessly. “There definitely won’t be another Bryce.