There is so much blood. I’m kneeling in a pool of it, feeling it slowly congeal on my fingers where I’m still desperately pressing against the gaping wound in his chest, trying to stem the flow that is no longer there.

The ring he gave me when he proposed is no longer glistening gold, the diamond is coated in my husband’s dried blood.

Yet I’m still pressing down onto his no-longer moving chest, looking into his sightless eyes, screaming his name over and over again.

“Logan!”

I’m being shaken as I desperately cling to the dream, wanting to save him, calling to him.

“Wake up, Veronica. God damn it, wake up!”

I finally relinquish the dreamscape realizing it’s Logan that’s shaking me, Logan’s voice ordering me to wake up, while Pony barks like crazy.

My eyes slowly adjusting to the dimness of the bedroom, I meet Logan’s gaze. I press my palms against his naked chest—I need to touch him—when panic once again seizes my throat, reality and remnants of the nightmare merging together.

“God, Logan, you’re bleeding!” I scream, snapping into a sitting position, frantically searching for wounds. “You’re bleeding!”

He grabs my wrists, giving me a slight shake. “It’s just water. I was in the shower when you started screaming. I’m fine. Or I will be, when you calm down.”

I can’t seem to draw a normal breath, feeling my lungs seize and he curses under his breath, pushing my head down between my knees.

“Breathe, damn you,” he snarls. “Breathe. Focus on my voice and breathe.”

He guides me through it, his voice a calming influence in my currently-chaotic world, until I’m able to lift my head, lean it against his damp chest and listen to his heartbeat. It’s still fast, but steady and sure. Alive.

“Better?” he murmurs and I nod slightly. “Okay, I need to turn off the shower.”

I quickly clutch at him, unable and unwilling to let go, the dream is still too vivid in my mind’s eye.

“I’ll be right back,” he whispers, kissing the crown of my head, but I simply cannot let go.

Compromising, he tucks my legs around his waist, lifts me against his chest, and carries me with him to the bathroom, where he shuts off the shower and forgoes toweling off since I’m clinging to him like a determined monkey.

Back in our bedroom, he drops onto his back on the bed with a grunt, while I’m still clinging, fused to him, face buried against his neck.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks softly.

No. “Why were you in the shower?” I mumble against his damp skin.

There’s a pause, he’s displeased with my avoidance. “I tend to sweat when I run.”

I frown. He went for a run without me?

“I didn’t want to wake you.” He tugs at a strand of my hair in hopes of getting me to look at him. Fat chance, no matter how yummy he looks. “We’re having dinner at Wallace’s tonight, remember? I thought you’d appreciate a longer beauty sleep.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost six.”

His earlier words finally register, and I lift my head to glare at him. “Are you telling me I’m ugly?”

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers, his eyes crinkling at their corners as he smiles at me. But instead of making me melt, the smile puts me on guard.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he repeats.

“No.” I know it’s not healthy to avoid whatever’s brewing inside me, and I know I’m acting mulish and childish, but I simply cannot bring myself to tell him about the dreams. First, he’d feel guilty, and second...I fear that uttering words would make the dreams somehow more real.

He sighs, his eyes searching mine, and what he sees in them disappoints him.

I hate disappointing him, I hate hurting him, I hate making him feel like I don’t trust him, but...

“Sometimes I have nightmares of you dying,” he says, interrupting my bleak thoughts.

I scramble up, straddling his hips, placing my hands on his chest. He has my complete attention.

“Never when I’m at home, when you’re in my arms. But on deployments...” His hands on my thighs, he sighs, looking everywhere but at me. “When I’m not here to protect you, to keep you safe. I dream of you dying when I’m helpless to prevent it.”

“I’ll never leave you, Logan.” Not if I can help it. I run my fingers up and down the sides of his neck. Calming him? Calming myself? Both? I don’t know, I just need the contact. “I’m careful, I promise. I have my gun and my tazer, I take Pony with me whenever I can, and you taught him well.” I lean back down until out foreheads are touching. “And you taught me well. I might not be able to kick your ass yet, but I can hold my own with the occasional common lowlife.”

“I know,” he whispers, his gaze finally meeting mine. “I know, but you know fears aren’t rational.”

And everyone he’s loved had died. Left him forever.

I touch my nose to his, conducting a fevered inner debate whether to tell him. What to tell him, how to tell him, how much to tell him, whether tell him at all.

It’s a moot point after he’s shared his fear with me, really. Not that it comes as a surprise, this revelation of his. He’s always been protective of those he considers his, sometimes overly so. But I see the relief in his eyes, even over the sometimes crappy Skype connection, when he sees me breathing and bruise free. I feel the tension slowly leave him when he holds me for the first time as he returns home after a deployment. I know he had the windows replaced with bullet-proof, blast-resistant glass and installed the state-of-the-art, expertly hidden, security system himself the week after we moved in, while telling me the apartment needed to be fumigated.

He’s protecting me the best he can when he’s not here and worries until he comes back...

“I dream of you dying,” I say simply.

Logan cocks his head, his gaze keeping mine prisoner, as he softly brushes the pads of his fingers up and down my spine. Calming me? Calming himself? Grounding us, connecting us.

“Often?”

“It comes and goes. It happened a lot at the beginning.”

“Veronica.”

It’s a pained moan, but I’m on a roll.

“I dreamed of you coming home in a box or not coming home at all. I dreamed of being at your funeral, listening to Taps, receiving the flag, but I’m never with you when you go...Until recently. I don’t remember happening before, but it did last night.”

He flinches beneath me as guilt creeps into his eyes. It happened when he wasn’t here to wake me, to comfort me.

“Pony woke me,” I murmur, feeling tears burn at the back of my eyes. “He slept beside me.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” he whispers, wanting to spare me the tears, but I’ve come too far.

“You died in an explosion, on the street outside. It was a bomb I missed, it was my fault. And tonight you got shot because of me.” My throat closes up.

He scoffs, but there’s concern in his eyes. “Please, don’t you know I’m engaged to a brilliantly intelligent woman? She wouldn’t miss a bomb and she’d never get me shot. Don’t sell yourself short.”

He’s trying to make me smile, to make me feel better, but all I can feel is a fist tightening around my throat, my heart. “There was so much blood—” I choke.

He rears up, pulls me to him, tucks my head under his chin, and hugs me. Tightly. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “It was just a dream. I’m here, I’m fine.”

I nod. “I know, but as you so eloquently put before, fears aren’t rational. I know you’re trained, I know you can take care of yourself, but...”

He cups my cheeks, forcing me back, so our eyes meet. His gaze is anguished. “Veronica...”

“No!” I grab his wrists. “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you in the first place. I don’t want you to feel guilty, I don’t want you to think you have to leave the Navy because of this, because I’m being such a girl. I know what it means to you. They saved you, they gave you purpose, they kept you safe for me until I came back, they keep you safe now. I’m just worried about you, just like you’re worried about me.”

“I love you,” he murmurs. “Sometimes to distraction. It comes with the territory.”

“I love you, too, you know,” I whisper.

“I know,” he replies with a small smile.

“So...” I pull back a little, circling his neck with my arms. “I’m sure this should conclude the morbid, gloomy part of this morning’s program.”

There are no ready solutions for the fears and anxieties, save for moving into a cave away from civilization and live off the bounty of Mother Nature joined at the hip, and we’re both aware of it. He won’t leave the Navy, besides, I won’t let him, and I’ll keep sticking my nose into things that aren’t my business, while he’ll help me as much as he can when he’s at home. Anything could happen to one of us, heck, we could be hit by a car tomorrow, the trick is navigating the anxiety and not let fear rule you, to live life fully day by day, enjoying our time together to the fullest, enjoy what life has to offer and hope for the best.

I wiggle suggestively and grin at his body’s immediate response. “Want to move to the fun part?”

He swallows, his eyes dark pools of desire and need, fears and anxiety pushed back, but not forgotten. “I need to be at the base at ten.”

I roll my eyes. “Of course, you do, but until you have to leave...”

He flips me onto my back and rolls on top of me. “I can always use some more exercise.”



But you know how it is with fears. All it takes is a second for them to rear their shitty little heads.

After a congratulatory lunch with Dad and a promise for the three of us to get together for dinner one of these nights, because “It’s not everyday number one daughter gets engaged”, and still slightly pissed at him for brushing off his health concerns and not telling me the entire truth, when I know the entire truth (thanks, Mac, and your uncanny ability to seek out the gray area on the ethical compass), but he doesn’t know that I know, I’m in the process of mounting spy cameras at Hu’s supermarket. It’s one of the pro-bono jobs we can afford to do thanks to the Karsyn’s of the world, their fuckers of ex-husbands and their easily earned money, so I’m feeling pretty good about my life at the moment. And it’s in this moment of perfect contentedness with the world as a whole that the faint boom of an explosion causes me to immediately spit out my screwdriver, abandon the ladder, and go for my phone.

I’m about to press 2 on my speed dial, when rational thought seeps in.

The explosion sounded close, it was probably a propane tank, it’s been rather hot lately. And he’s still at the base, he texted earlier that he might be late for dinner at Wallace and Shae’s. Forget about the fucking dream. Dreams aren’t prophetic, don’t mix them with reality.

A couple of deep breaths later, I’m back on the ladder, setting the camera into place with shaking hands.

You can do this, Veronica, stop panicking. You can’t call him just for an update, don’t be a clingy mess and whatever you do, don’t have a freaking meltdown in the middle of a job.

Giving up on the cameras, I can’t do shit since I’m not focused on the task at hand, I reach for my phone just as it trills.

The screen is filled with the closeup of a sleepy Logan I took one morning a couple of months ago, because he looked so damn adorable all rumpled and slightly grumpy.

“I was just thinking—” I start, a smile in my voice, because if he’s calling, he’s more than alright, but he doesn’t let me finish.

“Are you okay?” His voice is all weird and shaky, the tone urgent.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

His exhale is loud and relieved. “There’s been an explosion at the Sea Sprite,” he says softly. “The news just hit, I thought—”

That I was in the vicinity. My reaction exactly. “I’m at the other end of the boardwalk, mounting cameras at Hu’s. Was it a propane tank?”

“They’re saying it was a bomb.”

Shit. I don’t believe in premonitions, but a frisson of dread skitters down my spine.