I bit down on my lower lip, unable to imagine the kind of world he’d seen.

“We were outside a small village—a village that looked like any number of them we scouted in the past, but it was different. Turned out to be heavily armed, and not all of them were a part of the cause. There was a roadside bomb.”

I flinched. Oh my God, a bomb? You didn’t live in America for the last decade or so and not be familiar with the destruction a roadside bomb, even the small ones, could wreak.

“It was an ambush,” he added quietly, almost like an afterthought. “These things happen a lot. One minute everything is going smoothly, and then the next, the whole world is blowing up. Our group was scattered. Reece took a shot to the gut. I got him out of there.”

The next breath I took felt funny. “You got him out of there?”

“Yeah.”

And that was all he said about that, but I knew there had to be more. It wasn’t as simple as getting someone out of there when bombs were going off and people were shooting at you. “Was . . . was that something that kept you awake at night?”

He didn’t answer for a long moment. “Some nights . . . I dreamed that I didn’t get to Reece in time. Then other nights, I saw the things that went down that day. Crazy how the brain holds on to those kinds of images.”

My chest started to ache. “And whiskey helped with that?”

“Sometimes,” he murmured. “It sort of dulled everything—dulled the detail.”

I wanted to ask more, but then he asked a question that caught me off guard.

“Did you like doing the whole beauty queen thing?”

My eyes went wide. “I . . .” I didn’t want to answer the question because I didn’t like to even think about it, but I doubted Jax liked to talk about people shooting at him and bombs, so I owed him. “I liked it sometimes.”

Okay. That wasn’t a lot, but that was something.

“Sometimes?” he prodded gently.

I sucked my bottom lip between my teeth and then closed my eyes. “Sometimes it was fun. I was a little girl and I liked dressing up. I felt like a fairy princess.” I coughed out a dry laugh. “So it was like playing dress-up every week and it made . . . it made my mom happy when I had my hair done and all the makeup on and I was onstage. And it made her really happy when I’d win, especially the big titles.”

“What kind of titles?” he asked into darkness.

“Grand Supreme is one.” I had to open my eyes, because I could see myself on the stage, turning and blowing kisses and folding my hands under my chin. “When Mom was happy it was like she loved me. I know she loved me, but it was like she really loved me then.” I wiggled my hips again, trying to find a spot without flopping onto my back. “But there were times when I wanted to be . . . I don’t know, just be a kid. I wanted to play, but I had to practice walking, or I wanted to hang out with my dad, but he didn’t like going to those things, and sometimes I wanted to spend time with . . .” I trailed off, closing my mouth.