It's Always Been You by Jessica Scott Page B

him a little bit hungry for something he couldn’t have.
    He fiddled with the radio, needing something to fill the silence and derail his thoughts from the dangerous direction they were taking. “Remis, Bisco, and Hooch. Why?”
    “I want to mark them off on my tracker.” She pulled out a tiny notepad from her shoulder pocket and jotted down the names.
    “Tracker?”
    “I’m keeping tabs on every file that I’ve pushed out to commanders and how long they’ve had it.”
    Ben glanced at her. Her eyes were hidden beneath brown Wiley-X glasses. “That seems a little…”
    “Anal?”
    Ben lifted an eyebrow and suddenly found the leather of his steering wheel fascinating. “You said it, not me.”
    Olivia turned her head toward the passing traffic. The muscles in her neck tensed. “I’ve had problems with packets disappearing,” she said quietly. “Commanders not turning them in, sergeants not getting the required paperwork. Then I’m stuck answering for them and bad soldiers are still here. There was one time a commander decided to retain an NCO…”
    Her words faded. There was a memory there. A subtle undercurrent to her words. A tension beyond her usual stiffness. It filled the cab of his old truck, an insidious thing.
    “It still bothers you.” He turned toward the Country and Western store where she could get her Stetson.
    She clenched her jaw. It was a long time before she answered. “It doesn’t matter now.”
    He glanced over at her. “Must have been a big deal for you to be upset about it after all this time.”
    “I don’t think I’ll ever get over it completely,” she admitted. She lifted one shoulder and dropped it. She looked over at him, her mouth pressed into a flat, cynical line. “I failed to protect a family. The boss didn’t listen to me.” A deep breath, filled with regret. “A week later, the sergeant’s entire family was dead in a murder–suicide.” She paused and he heard her sharp intake of breath. “It still hurts. I wish it didn’t but it does.” A painful admission.
    “That was the case you told me about.” He didn’t bother to hide the sympathy in his voice.
    Her fingers tightened in her lap, her eyes dark with emotions as raw today as they must have been the day it happened. She hadn’t dealt with their deaths. Not at all. He could see that in the bleak emptiness looking back at him. “It’s all said and done now. Not much I can do about it except learn from my mistakes.”
    “Why do you do that?” he asked suddenly.
    “Do what?”
    “Brush things off.” He rolled to a stop at a light. “You get so fired up about things, so passionate, but when something hurts, you brush it off.”
    “I don’t like remembering painful things,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t help anything.”
    “Neither does running from the memories,” he said. He looked over at her, surprised by the vulnerability in her voice. “Everyone makes mistakes, Olivia.”
    Her smile was sad and filled her eyes. “My mistakes got someone killed,” she whispered.
    “You didn’t make the choice to go home to an abuser,” he said.
    “It’s so much more complicated than that,” she said. “The army protected him when they should have protected her.” She paused, looking away. “I could have done more.”
    She looked so lost, so alone. He reached for her then, because he couldn’t stop himself. He brushed his thumb over her cheek. A gentle touch. Something he shouldn’t have done but something he wouldn’t regret. “You can keep telling yourself that,” he whispered. “But it won’t make it so.”
    Silence wound between them. Her skin was warm beneath his touch. Her breath huffed over his knuckles. Her lips were parted, a tiny space that he had a sudden longing to taste.
    He searched her eyes, looking for what, he didn’t know.
    A horn blared behind him, jolting him out of the moment.
    She looked away, but not before he noticed the flush creeping over her skin.
    “Do you