Again.
Chapter Three
“What’s up, bro?” Brock clapped a hand on Nolan’s shoulder.
Vince hawk-eyed him. “Yeah. Look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Nolan swallowed. “Feel like I have.”
Petrowski looked up. “Don’t tell me. You just saw that woman you always used to talk about.”
Brock leaned in. “You mean the one he never got over? The reason he won’t go on dates, least not second ones?”
Nolan tensed his jaw and gave a slight nod.
“No way!” Vince stood and eyed Mandy from afar.
“Dude! Seriously?” Brock’s eyes widened.
“Yeah.”
Chance eyed the lot over Nolan’s shoulder. “That her?”
Nolan nodded, turning with his team and commander to watch Mandy.
Joy and sadness played ring-around-the-rosy with his heart as he watched her interact with the children and tend their scrapes and bumps despite her injury.
Chance moved to stand next to Nolan. “Didn’t y’all part ways so she could go to med school when you joined the military?”
“Yeah.”
Petrowski pivoted. “As natural and calm as she was with those children back there, obviously she realized her dream.”
Nodding, Nolan pulled out his beret and settled it on his head.
“At the expense of your relationship, though,” Brock said.
“I encouraged her to go. At the time I couldn’t have offered her as much as medical school.” Nolan shrugged, but the niggling feeling of failing Mandy and the hard goodbye they’d had the day he left wouldn’t recede. “She’d have lost her funding had I not kept up my end of the bargain.” Had he fought for what he wanted—made a way for him and Mandy to be together—her dreams would have been flushed down the drain by those in authority, who wanted nothing more than Nolan away from her.
To get in their way would have resulted in Mandy losing her chance to do the one thing she’d always dreamed: help salvage the lives of children.
As she’d done amazingly today with outstanding bravery and grit.
“What I did was for the best. For both of us.” Now whom was he trying to convince? Needing a moment of space, Nolan stepped away from his closest friends and eyed the horizon where purple streaked into pink above the bridge that sat cockeyed over Refuge River. In fact…
Reunion Bridge. The hair on Nolan’s neck and arms prickled.
No coincidence. God had meant them to meet again.
Why?
And why when he was in the midst of having to use every bit of time and energy to be proactive at finding a way out of being taken from his team? And from Refuge, a town he’d come to love. And now from Mandy, right when they’d reunited. Nolan wished Joel was here. And Manny. They’d help him make sense of it all.
He could look to Petrowski, but Aaron was in the same boat as Nolan and then some. Aaron—a single dad and trying to be there for his little boys and his “big” ones, the Pararescue team.
No, Nolan couldn’t burden Petrowski further. He’d find a way on his own and trust in God’s help.
One by one, the guys knuckled his shoulders and cupped hands on his back, then turned as a unit and started walking off.
Nolan took a step to follow, then turned back. Unable to leave or even look away just yet.
“Ready, Briggs? Or you gonna stand here and gawk at that gorgeous doctor all day?” Petrowski said moments later.
“Gorgeous is right.” Mandy had always been pretty. But this woman Mandy had grown into could kick any guy’s testosterone into high gear. And his pulse. Yeah. Definitely his pulse.
One more moment. He’d linger. He’d look. But the more he looked, the more he couldn’t look away. His heart had hoisted to her the moment he’d seen her again. And heard her voice. And looked into her mesmerizing cat-shaped eyes. Shimmery green. Like sleek, waxen southern Illinois soybean fields.
Eyes that still held a decade-old hurt.
Memories he’d forgotten assaulted him in waves as he remembered all they’d shared.
He faced Petrowski. “Even before we were sweethearts, we were inseparable growing up. Neighborhood buddies. Confidants.” Nolan smiled, recalling a particular blackberry bush burglary. “Partners in crime at times. Best friends.”
Soul mates.
The thought shook something loose. A determination he didn’t know he possessed blasted forth. He lifted his binoculars, aimed her way.
An unseen pressure moved them back down.
Chance grinned. “Dude, that borders on stalking.”
Nolan lowered the binoculars and tucked them away, wishing he could do the same with the film of memories reeling through his mind right now.
“You still have a thing for her?” Vince reached for the binoculars. “Lemme see why.”
Nolan laughed and knocked away his hand. “Not on your life.”
“You two have a history.” Petrowski’s world-wise eyes smiled. “Strange you’d meet again. Here. This way.”
“What kinda history?” Brock waggled his reddish brows.
Nolan shook his head. “Not that kind. She was a good girl.” Who fell for the bad boy. At least that’s what Mandy’s mother and her pastor claimed. Their influence had been like a tumor in his and Mandy’s relationship, metastasizing it with the poison of pious principles.
Nolan hadn’t shared Mandy’s family’s faith. Therefore she was off-limits, according to them and the Bible they quoted. The book he’d wanted nothing to do with because he feared it would judge him as harshly and unmercifully as they did.
Now, as a new Christian, he understood completely. But at the time, their judgmental precepts had incited and incised him.
“Where are they transporting?” Nolan asked Petrowski and forced his feet to move. He observed a Red Cross volunteer finishing up paperwork with Mandy and directing her to the far end of the parking lot with waiting ambulances.
“Refuge Memorial for now. Completely swamped from so many bridge victims being brought in. So patients will be diverted elsewhere.”
Nolan shucked off his jumpsuit, glad he’d worn jeans and a T-shirt beneath. “So all injured are being taken there initially?”
Zips sounded as Aaron shirked his own suit. “Far as I know.”
“I can go talk with her there. We never had proper closure.” Nolan wadded his suit and tossed it in his rucksack.
Aaron tilted his head. “And, according to her response back there, you need to.”
“Exactly right.” He couldn’t let this go. Not again. He didn’t realize the impact of that open wound until the moment they’d laid eyes on one another after a decade of zero contact.
They needed to talk, if nothing more than to ease shut the chapter of a very painful book. He’d seen it in her eyes.
He’d hurt her. Majorly wronged her.
And he needed to make it right.
“How