After everything he’s been through, a part of me doesn’t want to burden him with my secrets. How much can one man take before he finally breaks? I know I need to tell him about his mother. I know I need to tell him about the baby. Listening to him tell me about Jared and how much it killed him, knowing that his friend would never experience anything with his unborn baby, I know Cole will be devastated learning about his own child. He’ll hate his parents, he’ll hate me and all of that love and trust I see shining in his eyes when he looks at me will disappear.

Cole wants answers. He deserves answers after sharing so much of himself with me. He’s a proud man and I know it’s killing him to rely on crutches and other people to get around. Even if I don’t have the power to heal his knee, I can do everything I can, use everything I’ve learned to make him realize that he’s still the same strong, amazing man I’ve always known. I’ll prove to him that walking with a limp doesn’t make him less of a man. I’ll build him up as high as I can and hope that what I have to tell him doesn’t make him crumble.

The truth shall set you free, right? Unfortunately, my truth, when it’s finally revealed, will do nothing but lock me away in a prison of my own making.

“DID YOU JUST growl at me? Don’t make me put you back on the treadmill for another game of catch.”

I half glare, half smile over at Olivia as she puts her hands on her hips and taps her foot. She’s so fucking cute standing there, cracking the whip over me that it’s impossible for me to be angry. She’s wearing my favorite pale blue scrubs with her hair back in its usual ponytail and all I can think about is pulling that rubber band out and watching her hair spill around her face.

She wasn’t kidding when she told me that she got a sick thrill out of torturing her patients. She smiled sweetly at me as I shouted and cursed my way through a session on the treadmill, tossing a medicine ball at me so I couldn’t use the handrails. Now, she’s got me seated on a stool with wheels, making me push and pull myself all around the room using only the muscles in my legs. I have sweat dripping down my face and back and it feels like someone is stabbing my knee with a Goddamn knife.

Thinking back to what I went through during BUD/S SEAL Training, I feel like the biggest pussy in the world that this piddly shit is close to breaking me. During ‘Hell Week,’ the third week of basic conditioning in BUD/S, the largest number of trainees drop out. It consists of 5 ½ days of cold, wet, brutal training on fewer than four hours of sleep. Running, swimming, paddling, carrying boats on your head, sit-ups, push-ups, rolling in the sand and slogging through mud leaves you soaking wet and chilled to the bone. Constantly covered in itchy fucking sand that chafes your skin raw, the ocean wind cuts through you while the saltwater burns every tiny cut on your body. I made it through that week without a whimper or complaint. One hour with Olivia in the gym and I want to cry like a fucking baby. She’s got me doing my therapy in the gym located in her housing complex. When we lived together, I worked out in this room every day and then I went home to her. I’m trying not to think about how I’ll be leaving here when we’re done and going back to the guesthouse alone, instead of walking two blocks to the house we shared.

“You’re doing great,” Olivia encourages me as I grunt with the effort of pulling myself towards her. “I had a guy who had a hip replacement quit after fifteen minutes.”

I pause, looking up at her. “Hip replacement? What was he, like eighty?”

“Seventy-four, but still. You’re doing much better than him.”

She gives me a cheeky smile and I keep my growl in check this time.

Wonderful. I’m doing better than fake-hip-grandpa.

Instead of thinking about how out of shape I am, I focus on my family, using the anger I feel towards them to motivate me. When Olivia left the other day, I immediately got in my car and headed over to the main house. As my shitty luck would have it, my mother was out of town visiting my father at some fancy golf resort. Conveniently, all of my calls, voicemails and texts have gone unanswered. I’ve only seen my father once since I’ve been back and it wasn’t the happiest of reunions, so I’m not exactly rushing to give him a call. I was a little shocked to find out he’d retired from his position as Chief of Staff for UC San Diego Health System while I’d been away. I thought for sure my father would be one of those men who continued working until someone found him slumped over his desk from a heart attack. My father is most definitely not a quitter and his retirement at such a young age stinks of something foul. My mother, of course, brushed off my concerns, saying he was overworked and ready to relax and enjoy his family and the next phase of his life.

Bullshit.

My father had fifty-plus years to enjoy his family and he never once took the opportunity. What the hell would make him do so now, when Caroline and I are both adults and have our own lives? Trying to maintain a relationship with my father has always been strange and difficult. He left the child-rearing to my mother and the nannies she hired to keep us out of her hair and his standard reply our questions was always “Go ask your mother.” He never seemed to care one way or another what happened with Caroline and I, constantly adopting my mother’s opinions about what we should do with our lives. He always seemed inaccessible, sequestered away in his study when he was at home, sitting behind a huge oak desk that made approaching him nerve racking. Every once in a while, I’d catch him staring at me with a softness in his eyes that confused me, but as soon as I opened my mouth to try and have a personal conversation with him, he’d turn and walk away. It was almost like he was afraid to show any sort of weakness where his children were concerned, me in particular. I assumed it had something to do with the fact that I never conformed to the lifestyle he wanted me to lead, entering the military right out of high school instead of taking on his legacy of running UC San Diego’s medical center.