That was it. The thing irking him.

She wore a sad, almost regretful expression as if . . .

No. She wouldn’t leave without him. Not after everything they’d been through. Everything he’d said.

But it wouldn’t be the first time his instincts lied to him.

The water had started to boil, and he returned to the counter, poured the coffee into the French press and waited for it to steep.

“That smells good.” His father’s voice rose from the recliner.

“Have you been there all night?” Colt said, walking over to him.

“Sleep better sitting up,” his old man said. “What’s your excuse? It’s five a.m.”

“Daylight’s burnin’,” he said, and smiled at the old phrase his father used to use to oust him from bed.

He expected a smile. Not a frown, the concern in his father’s eyes. “I know about the nightmares, son.”

Colt wanted to shrug off his words, to shake his head, offer a joke. But he had nothing as he stared at his old man, the fatigue lining his face, maybe even the pain.

He’d caused some of those lines, some of that pain, and . . . well, his nightmares started long before he led his team into an ambush.

“Tae—”

“Not just Tae. After you arrived, I sat by your bedside too.”

“You know what I went through at the camp.”

“No, actually, I don’t. Noemi won’t talk about it. Ranger filled me in a little. But what I know is enough to tell me that you live your life as if it doesn’t matter to you.”

Colt headed to the counter, to his coffee. “My life matters to me.” But even to his own ears his words sounded tinny. He strained his coffee through the press, grabbed a mug, and poured it into the cup, black.

Behind him, his father went quiet.

He turned, took a sip. The caffeine hit his bones, fortified them.

Walking over to the fireplace, he stared at a picture of the family. Their mother was absent in this photo, and it had always irked him a little that his dad chose this one to display.

The real last family photo was in his office, the one with their mother that last year she was with them. Colt had been five.

This photo, however, showed their family as he really remembered them. He, Ranger, and Dodge, three dark-haired boys, two with blue eyes, one with brown. Dodge stood with his hands behind his back, Ranger stood beside Larke, a smirk on his face, and then there was Colt. He wore his hat backwards, flashing two thumbs-up at the camera like an idiot.

Barry Kingston and his two amazing sons, a daughter, and one goofball.

“You’ve always lived your life a little on the edge of trouble, son,” his father said. “Even then.”