Chapter 16

Grace kept looking at her phone. She liked Landon. She admired his courage. Even worse, she was attracted to him and far more intensely than she’d been to any man in a very long time.

Last night, when she got home, Grace did something she never thought she would do, she went online and ran a search. She shouldn’t have. It was none of her business and Landon was entitled to his privacy, but she couldn’t help it.

Several articles came up when she searched his name. One article mentioned he and Derek were the survivors during a terrorist attack in Afghanistan. There were some paragraphs dedicated to Derek’s injures. She realized how close Derek and Landon were to dying that day.

She skimmed through the rest of the articles, but most of them were a repetition or an update of the same news.

Grace continued her search and then found a small article on a news blog from Landon’s hometown. “Darla Cayley and Landon Petersen had broken their engagement. Three weeks after Landon Petersen returned from Afghanistan as a decorated hero, Darla Cayley announced the end of their engagement. The announcement came as a surprise since both of them had been dating for five years. Ms. Cayley wrote a Tweet saying that they had grown into very different people.”

Grace took a long, deep breath. This was probably one of the reasons why Landon left his hometown. Imagine coming back from hell, looking for the emotional support and assistance of your loved ones, just to find your fiancée is breaking up with you because of your condition.

It had taken a lot of courage for Landon to deal with the pain to move to a whole new town, having PTSD. It was a true test of his inner strength.

His flashback had been terrifying, but Grace admired how he had fought to get out of that dark place in his mind.

Then she had had that sudden urge to hold him, to try to erase some of the pain from those very wide dark eyes. She couldn’t help but hug him.

She had no intention of sharing the new information about his fiancée with anyone else, not even Steve, Diana, or Derek, although the last probably knew. Grace had intruded into something extremely personal and painful, more painful than she could have imagined.

She wanted to help him heal somehow, but the truth was she didn’t know how to achieve that. Wishing was not enough.