Chapter Sixteen
Ember
God, I was stiff. I rubbed the back of my neck, willing it to turn even the slightest of inches without screaming. I’d been too scared to hurt Josh to move a single muscle last night.
It was well worth it.
“Hey, want to grab breakfast for the guys?” I asked Paisley as we met in the hall, my yawn distorting nearly all of the question. Jet lag was a bitch.
“Sure, but only for me. They just took Jagger to the OR.” Paisley mirrored my yawn. “Ugh, no yawning.”
“How is he?” I asked as we made our way to the elevators.
“In and out,” she answered, pressing the button to take us down. “He knows I’m here but doesn’t stick around for long. He’s getting the pins put in his legs now.” Her hand swept over her belly. “He’s a wreck, but he’s my wreck.”
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders as the door opened.
“How’s Josh?”
“Not sure. He was still asleep when I snuck out this morning, and he was too doped up to really talk last night.” We made our way down the hallway to the cafeteria and loaded food into to-go boxes. “Want to come eat with us?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “I think I’ll go back to my hotel room and try to sleep. He’ll need me once he’s out of surgery, and Lord knows this baby needs the rest. Tell Josh I’ll see him later?”
I gave her an awkward hug, balancing the take-out boxes and lidded cups of orange juice. “Okay. Senator Mansfield?”
She drew back and shrugged. “He’s still here but keeping it low key. Jagger’s never been too open about his dad. I know the senator wants to see him, but keeping his distance right now might be the nicest thing he’s ever done for him.”
“I get it. You go get some sleep. Let me know when Jagger is out of surgery?”
“I will, I promise. They said it’s going to be hours.”
We said our good-byes and split paths, Paisley to the adjoining hotel and me back to Josh’s room. Waiting for the elevator, I noticed something…I smelled. When was the last shower I took? The night before the notification? God, it had been twenty-four hours already, but I still wasn’t expecting to smell like a sweat factory.
Okay, drop food to Josh, then get a shower.
Noise behind me made me look over my shoulder, where I saw four giant, sweaty guys in PT uniforms. Oh, that made more sense. Thank God, the smell wasn’t me. Still, a shower wouldn’t hurt.
I got off on Josh’s floor. He was half sitting up when I came in, a doctor and new nurse hovering close to his bed. “So we’ll get that done this morning and hopefully have you on your way back to the States tomorrow, if you’re feeling competent on crutches.”
“Thanks, Doc,” Josh said. The doctor nodded before heading out.
Josh gave me a relieved smile and patted the bed next to him. He was pale, more so than I’d realized in the lamplight last night. I perched carefully on the edge and placed the breakfast boxes on the rolling table. “What’s up?”
“They’re going to set my arm today and get me casted,” he answered.
“Good. That’s good.” I nodded my head like an idiot.
“Did you see Jagger?” Josh asked.
I rubbed the muscle of his uninjured thigh. “No. He’s in surgery. Not life threatening, but they’re setting the pins in his legs. Paisley wanted to see you, but she’s exhausted. You okay?” I asked. He’d flinched when I’d said Paisley’s name.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” He threw up a mask, like I hadn’t loved him for the last couple of years and couldn’t tell the difference.
I’d let him have his mask—for now. “Everything else okay?” I addressed the question to the nurse.
“Are you his wife?” she asked, her hair pulled obscenely tight.
“No, ma’am,” I answered.
“She’s my fiancée,” Josh added.
“Does she have access to your medical information?” the nurse asked.
“She has access to my bank accounts, my house, my car, my life, and anything else she wants, so I’d say yes.”
Did his eyes just narrow?
“It’s okay,” I said quietly. “She’s just making sure that she’s not violating privacy laws by talking to me.”
“Exactly,” the nurse said with a tight smile. “Everything else is as we expect it. If you’ll be the one at home with him, I can teach you how to change the dressing on his leg,” she offered.
“I’d really appreciate that.”
“After my arm is done?” Josh asked, eyeing the boxes on the table.
The nurse laughed. “Someone has his appetite back. Eat. Do you want another dose of pain meds?”
“Maybe something a little lighter? I’m not too keen on zombie mode.”
“Sounds good. We’ll come for you in about an hour?”
“Perfect, thank you.”
I opened the box as she closed the door behind her, but turned to see him staring at me. “What’s wrong, babe?”
He shook his head and blinked. “When I woke up this morning, you were gone, and I thought maybe I had dreamed you being here.”
“Do you dream about me a lot?” I asked with a grin.
“When we crashed, I was knocked unconscious…” His eyes fell away with his voice.
“Josh—”
He glanced at the open box. “Pancakes with strawberries. I love you,” he said with false excitement.
Subject not up for discussion yet. Gotcha.
“Me, or the breakfast?”
“Both,” he promised and leaned up for a kiss. I kissed him gently, lingering, enjoying every second that I had missed for so long. My heart jumped like I was fifteen again, chills racing down my arms as he cupped my face with his hand.
He was as familiar as my own skin, and yet everything felt new, like I was kissing him for the first time. “God, I missed you,” he whispered. His hand tunneled in my hair, pulling it free of the knot I had it tied in. “There are no words for how much.”
I pulled back, stroking my thumbs over his cheeks, avoiding the scabbed scrapes. His eyes held me prisoner, drawing me in with a force I’d never understood yet was utterly thankful for. The distance, the time—it hadn’t mattered, our connection was still there, still crackling just under the surface. “You scared me. When they came to notify us…” My throat closed.
“I know.” His eyes lost their light. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
I shook my head, my thumb grazing his lower lip. “No. Never be sorry for what you bring to my life, Josh. The good, the bad, the amazing…the tragic. It’s all worth it for you. For us.”
He placed a kiss in the palm of my hand, his eyes closing like he was in pain.
Because he is, you moron. “I’m so sorry. Let’s get you fed.” I dropped my hand and turned my attention to his breakfast before he could distract me any further. Fail. I cut his pancakes into bite-sized squares while he dipped the neckline of my V-neck T-shirt and my bra strap off my shoulder. My eyes closed with each kiss he laid on my skin, and I dropped the plastic knife when his tongue traced the indent from my strap. “Josh,” I tried to lecture, but it came out a little too breathy. “You have to eat.”
“Maybe I’d rather have you for breakfast.” His voice dropped, the same way my panties practically begged to. We’d never gone a month without jumping each other, let alone three, but for God’s sake, he was barely out of surgery. Down, girl.
I turned with a forkful of perfectly proportioned pancake/strawberry and syrup/whipped cream and held it to his lips. “I don’t even know if that’s possible.”
He raised one eyebrow, his look so smoldering I was surprised the fire alarms weren’t popping off. “Me wanting you? More than possible. More like a certifiable fact.” The energy streaming through me vibrated, and my muscles clenched. Josh leaned forward and took the bite. God, he was sex personified, and my body screamed to get reacquainted.
Don’t be selfish. He’s freaking injured.
“No, I mean possible in the you-just-had-your-spleen-removed-yesterday way.” I started to put another bite on the fork, but he caught my wrist and held my gaze as he licked the last of the whipped cream off it. So. Fucking. Hot.
A little whimper escaped before he pulled me toward him and crushed his mouth to mine. This was no gentle kiss like before. There was no sweet savoring, no lingering look. Josh kissed me breathless, all tongue, teeth, and strawberries.
I melted. God, I’d missed him—and this—so much. My fingers ran through his hair, the fork lost somewhere in the bedding, and I kissed him back with every single fiber of my being. I poured everything into it, the nights I’d missed him, the fear that had been my constant companion, the relief of having him in my arms again.
He groaned, and I forgot where we were, what had happened in the last forty-eight hours. It was just Josh, my Josh, and we were doing what we did best. His fingers left a trail of shivers down my neck, and I gasped as he set his lips there next, putting perfect pressure on the spot just beneath my ear that he knew drove me insane.
Josh slid his hand to my waist, and then slid it under my shirt. My stomach muscles tensed as his fingers ghosted over my skin, but it was his breath that caught when he dove under my bra to palm one of my breasts. “Perfect,” he whispered against my jawline as he rolled my nipple.
Liquid heat poured through me, but my common sense reared its head when I steadied myself on the back of his raised bed so I didn’t bump his shoulder. “Josh, you’re hurt.”
His hand slipped free, only to take mine under the blankets and press it against his insanely hard erection, with nothing blocking me but his boxers. A sound between a sigh and a moan escaped me. “I’ll hurt a hell of a lot more if I can’t have you. Three fucking months without you, December.” My body temp must have spiked another five degrees, because I was on freaking fire.
He took my mouth again, and I gave in to the need screaming at me, squeezing his length through the thin fabric.
Knock. Knock. Click.
I tore myself away from him, hands up like I was under arrest, and nearly fell off the bed. One-armed, Josh managed to lean and catch me, pulling me back in front of him just as the nurse came through the curtained partition.
Her eyebrows raised like she knew what we’d been doing, and my cheeks flamed. “I brought your meds. Name and birthday?” she asked.
Josh answered and swallowed the pills as she wrote in his chart. “Thank you.”
“We actually have an opening now, so we’ll be taking you to get your cast. Do you want to wheelchair it? If not, we can take the bed.”
Josh’s eyes darted to the crutches. Not so fast, rock star. “I’ll push the wheelchair,” I offered, tilting my head in a way that let him know I meant business.
His eyes flickered between me and the crutches before he sighed. “Chair it is.”
“Good choice,” the nurse replied. “I’ll go grab one.”
“I brought you wind pants,” I said when he plucked at his hospital gown. “They snap up the side.”
His forehead puckered in adorable lines, but I almost cringed when the gash above his eye strained at the stitches. “You went shopping here?”
I bit my lip and shook my head. “I bought them at home, but thought they’d be easy to get you into…and out of,” I finished with a slow nod.
He laughed. “Were you watching Magic Mike or something?”
“Hey, I just thought they’d be fun to rip off when you got home, and now look how useful my sexy purchase is.” I hopped down from the bed and rummaged through the small bag I’d left in his room, thankful I’d brought it from the hotel.
“Yeah,” his tone waxed sarcastic. “Real sexy, here. But hey, I’m alive, right?” his voice dropped to a whisper. “Can’t say the same for everyone else.”
I snapped up to see him examining the bandage across his thigh absentmindedly. All at once it dawned on me—he was going to have more wounds than the ones I saw…and I had no experience, no idea what I could say or do to help heal them. I’d gone so far into the deep end that this no longer qualified as a pool—it was the ocean, and if I didn’t get my bearings, I could end up watching him drown.
You are not your mother.
I stood straight and put the pants on the bed. Then I took his face in my hands and lifted it, leaning in to force him to meet my gaze. He did. I barely controlled my gasp as I caught him unguarded. Misery radiated from his eyes—pain, sorrow, grief…guilt. It was all laid bare for me to see for one precious second before he blinked it away. “You are alive. You are mine, no matter what.” I forced a smile. “And scars are sexy.”
Carefully, we got him buttoned into the pants and lowered into the wheelchair.
“Shall we go?” the nurse asked.
I moved to take the handles of the wheelchair, but Josh stopped me, gently clasping my hand in his. “Hey, babe, why don’t you check on Jagger for me?” he asked. “You won’t be missing much.”
I did my best to ignore the sting of his dismissal. This wasn’t about me. “Yeah, I can do that for you.”
“Great. Thanks.” He leaned forward, and I met him in a light kiss. Then he was gone, wheeled away to repair another broken part. Somehow it felt like if I’d been allowed to follow, I could have seen how to put him back together, too.
“I thought you were going to sleep?” I asked Paisley as I dropped into the seat next to hers in the waiting room.
She stifled a giant yawn. “I tried, I swear. But I couldn’t sleep knowing he was in there.”
“How’s it going?”
“They came out a little while ago and said it’s taking longer than they expected, but okay, I guess. They said he’ll have full use, but we’re looking at double casts for a while.”
“They’re alive.”
She nodded. “They are alive. I got in touch with Will’s mama. She’s not quite…sober yet. She’s a little angry that everything is in my name. I couldn’t give a fig about the money. It’s not like Jagger doesn’t have enough of it. But the choices… She wants him buried in Alabama.”
I swallowed, my throat instantly tight. “Is that what he wanted?”
“No. He wanted West Point. It was actually a stupid argument we had while we were together. He said that was where he became a man, and that’s where he’d spend his eternity.”
“You didn’t go there, so you couldn’t be buried there,” I guessed.
She nodded, her thumb spinning her wedding ring set. “We never really belonged together. I know that now. I knew it the minute Jagger put his arms around me.” Her teeth bit into her lower lip as she struggled for control, taking a shaky breath. “But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t love Will in a different way.”
“I know,” I said, wrapping my arm around her as she dropped her head to my shoulder.
“And I’m so relieved that Jagger’s alive. He’s the other half of me, but I don’t know how to reconcile that joy with the gaping hole in my heart—knowing that I’ll never see Will again.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I don’t know how to be strong for Jagger and still feel like it’s okay to miss Will…like I traded one life for the other.”
“You didn’t choose,” I whispered into her hair. “No one chose.”
“I can’t be a blubbering mess around Jagger. He’ll think… I just can’t.”
“You can. He’ll think that you’re pregnant, and as happy as you are to have your husband, you just lost one of your best friends—your first love. You have to feel that, too.”
“It hurts,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” I said, knowing nothing could fill the void. “That part of feeling sucks.”
“Jagger’s out of surgery. He’s loopy, but he’ll be okay,” I said as I walked into Josh’s room. I’d taken the time to shower, so at least I didn’t feel like a ’90s grunge star.
“Okay, thank you. Grayson called. He made it to Kandahar. They’ll take Carter to Dover tomorrow.”
I didn’t miss the fact that Josh called him Carter, whom he’d hated, as if he had disassociated that guy from Will, our friend. He wiggled the fingers of his right hand, sporting a new black cast that peeked out from the blue sling.
“What time are we leaving tomorrow?” It was already afternoon. It would be good to get him home, settled.
“I’m leaving now, if you’d like a ride,” Senator Mansfield said from the doorway. He still wore a button-down, but he’d rolled the sleeves at the elbow. “I’ve seen my son, and it’s not like he’s going to let me feed him ice chips, so my work here is done.”
“Thank you for the offer, sir, but I’d rather stay with Josh.”
“Ember, as much as I’d like you to stay, there’s no point,” Josh said, taking my hand in his.
My head snapped back like he’d slapped me. “No point?”
He shook his head. “No, babe. I’ll leave for Ramstein in the morning, and it’s a military-only flight. I’ll see you tomorrow night at home.”
My heart deflated. “Oh.”
“My son won’t be leaving for another few days. I pulled strings, made sure Paisley could go with Prescott”—Senator Mansfield shook his head—“Jagger, but couldn’t do the same for you. I’m sorry, I tried, but you’re not married, and my power ends at that line,” he finished with a very political smile.
My eyes flew to Josh. I couldn’t leave him. Not now. What if he needed me? What if he wanted to talk about what happened and I wasn’t here? What if I missed the only opportunity he might give me to see what was going on behind that mask of his? “Okay, let’s get married.”
“What?” Josh exclaimed, his eyes huge with what I refused to see as panic.
“Marry me. It’s not like we aren’t engaged, and come on, they have chaplains. Marry me, and I can stay with you.”
“No. Hell no. Not like this.” He squeezed my hand. “Ember, we’re getting married on the top of a fucking mountain in Colorado, surrounded by our family, not in some hospital chapel with a bunch of strangers and…Jagger’s dad. No offense.”
“None taken,” Senator Mansfield answered.
“We have Jagger and Paisley. That’s all the family I need. I could stay with you.”
He shook his head, and I saw it—the look of determination he usually saved for the ice. “No. You would regret it. Ember, I don’t care about the next twenty-four hours; I care about the rest of our life.”
“I won’t regret it,” I pushed.
“I would.”
He would regret marrying me? The same man who had wanted me under any circumstances our entire relationship suddenly had caveats and lines he was unwilling to cross?
Air rushed into my lungs. This is not about you. Not about you. NOT ABOUT YOU. I repeated the mantra in my head as I slung my bag over my shoulder. “Okay, Senator. Thank you so much. I would love a ride home.”
His eyes volleyed between mine and Josh. “I’ll meet you in the hallway.”
I waited until the door clicked softly behind him, and then tried to emotionally solder every raw, gaping nerve that was screaming in agony around my heart. I turned to Josh. “Okay, well, I’ll see you at home?”
“December,” he whispered. “I didn’t say that to hurt you. I would never hurt you intentionally.”
I nodded. “Of course. I know that. I’m fine,” I lied with a smile. “Where do you fly into?”
“Baltimore,” he answered after a pause. “Then straight into Fort Campbell.”
“Do you want me to pick you up?” I asked, terrified of the answer.
His shoulders sagged. “Of course.”
“Okay. Do you still have the international cell to text me with details?” Hold yourself together. Just a couple more minutes.
“Yeah.”
“Perfect.” I leaned forward and kissed him lightly, unable to stop myself from lingering just a second longer, thankful that he was breathing, speaking, alive—even if he’d just pulverized my heart. “Then I’ll see you at home.” I forced a smile and backed away.
“I love you, December. Thank you for coming all the way here.”
Yesterday I would have told him that of course I came. He was here, where else would I be? But today was different. Today I felt separated from him in a way I never had before, and even if it was an emotional overreaction brought on by jet lag, exhaustion, and fear…well, it still fucking hurt. “Thank you for letting me.”
I left Josh’s room and met Senator Mansfield in the hallway, who wordlessly led us to the elevator.
Once we were wheels up, gaining altitude out of Germany, the irony struck me—I’d come to Germany twenty-four hours ago to help heal Josh, and instead he’d inadvertently broken me.