It didn’t even occur to me that Garrett might have been behind this. He was the one who got me the job with the agency, making it possible for me to be a nurse again. Even though Garrett was supportive of me and stood by me alongside Parker through the events of the last year, Cole was still his friend first. He wasn’t happy with the way Cole left and hated what happened to me in the months after, but he made it a point to shut Parker down when she called Cole’s character into question. In his own strong, calm way, Garrett stood up for Cole and the decision he made to leave, saying that there were reasons behind his actions and leaving it at that. I refused to question Garrett further about it at the time because knowing Cole had any reason to abandon the life we’d built hurt too much.

“Fuck no,” Garrett replies. “I didn’t even know he was back stateside.”

The irritation in his voice is evident. Cole was like a brother to him and he didn’t take it well when Cole shut him out and left without a single word. I knew enough about war in general and SEAL missions in particular to comprehend that the things they’d seen and experienced brought them together in a way I would never fully understand. Having spent many nights lying beside Cole as he thrashed and screamed, I knew that he was haunted by nightmares only Garrett could relate to. I tried, I really tried to get Cole to open up to me. I let him know that he could tell me anything and I would help him any way I could, but he would always brush it off like it was no big deal. He was stubborn and strong, things I’d always loved about him. Looking back on it now, though, I realize his failure to share his nightmares with me made it easier for him to walk away.

“I never thought he would come back,” I say, absently picking a piece of nonexistent lint off of my scrubs. “When he said good-bye, it was like even he knew he wouldn’t survive whatever he was going to do. It was so final, so cold and detached.”

“It’s just something I have to do, you wouldn’t understand. You deserve better than this, Olivia. Better than me. You have a whole life ahead of you to live. I don’t have that luxury and, honestly, I wouldn’t deserve it even if I did.”

I’m still in a state of shock at having been in the same room with him, breathing the same air, so close that I could see the small scar by his right eye that I used to run my finger over. I honestly never thought I’d see him again. When he left, it was like he had died. One day he was here and we were planning our future and the next, he was gone. All of his things had been removed from our house while I was at work, and it was like he had never even been there to begin with. I felt like the military wife who got that dreaded visit from the chaplain notifying me my man was missing in action. Nothing to bury, nothing to mourn, just a giant, gaping hole where he used to be. Instead of accepting his absence and moving on, I let anger and confusion fester inside of me until just thinking about Cole made me want to scream.

“You know there’s one glaringly obviously suspect in all of this, right?” Parker asks, bringing me out of my thoughts. “This stinks of something the She-Devil would do.”

I shake my head in disagreement. “Cole’s mother would never do something like this. She made it quite obvious that she wanted me as far away from Cole as possible, which begs the question: how in the hell did I get assigned to Cole at all? She has her hand in every single part of that family’s life. There’s no way she didn’t do her research on the temp agency and run a thorough background check on whichever nurse they told her they were sending. She would’ve put the kibosh on that as soon as she saw my name. I wouldn’t have been allowed through the gates if she knew I was the nurse assigned to him.”

Parker looks away from me and raises an eyebrow at Garrett. “What about Charles?”

“Cole’s dad?” Garrett questions. “Last I heard, he was forced into early retirement because he started making careless mistakes his wife wasn’t able to cover up anymore. The way it sounded to me, I’d guess dementia or early onset Alzheimer’s, but the press release issued by the hospital gave the standard ‘he’s ready to relax and enjoy his family.’ I don’t see him having the mental capacity to organize something like this right under his wife’s nose.”

I’d met Charles Vargas the same day I’d met his wife. He was a tall, handsome man in his early sixties with salt and pepper hair. I could easily imagine Cole looking exactly like him when he got older. While Vivien assessed me with a shrewd, cold gaze, Charles had an easy smile and was extremely polite—until his wife gave him the look, whereupon his kind eyes would immediately cloud over and his laidback nature turned stiff and detached.

In the public eye, Charles Vargas was the head of the household, but Vivien ran that family with an iron fist behind closed doors. Aside from a few offhand comments about how they never agreed with his decision to join the military, Cole didn’t speak about his parents much, but it only took one hour at the dinner table to figure out how things worked in that family.

“If anyone meddled to get you assigned to Cole, I’d say it was Caroline. She’s always been one to defy her mother and do whatever the hell she wants,” Garrett explains.

I always hoped that Caroline and I would be close. Cole’s younger sister was a little flighty and sometimes a little too dependent on Cole, but he clearly adored her and I thought maybe she could be the one person in that family who’d be on my side. For a time, she was. Cole and I made it a point to spend time with her when she was in town and she always joked about how we were so cute together she could puke and how she couldn’t wait to hold one of Cole’s babies.