Chapter Thirty
Josh
“Are you certain you want to do this?” Captain Brown asked me from behind his desk.
The gravity of my decision made it hard to breathe, to force out the words that I knew needed to be spoken. It wasn’t a question of what I wanted. It was a matter of what was right. Of what Will would do. What Captain Trivette would do. A matter of being the kind of man Ember deserved, even if she’d hate me for this. “Are you certain there’s not another date?”
He grimaced. “I am. This is the last one.”
Damn it. “Then, yes, I am.”
“And you’ve thought this through?”
“Every day since I realized it was a possibility, sir.”
He fumbled through my file. “You’ve been cleared medically, flights have been good, psych released you.”
As long as I keep Dr. Henderson’s deal. “Yes.”
He leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers on the glass topper of his desk. “I’m not going to pretend to know what it was you went through over there, or what kind of mark that leaves on you. But I’d be a shit commander if I didn’t ask you one more time. So, are you absolutely certain this is what you want?”
Ember’s face flashed through my mind. She’d understand. She had to. And if she doesn’t? Fuck. At least she’d be better off. She deserved to love a whole man, and if I didn’t do this, I wouldn’t be. Ever. “I’m sure.”
He nodded and signed the top paper. “Okay. We’ll see you tomorrow. If you change your mind, Walker, just call me.”
I stood. My heart tore, suddenly at odds with what I’d been contemplating the last two weeks. Stop. “Thank you, sir.”
“For the record, I think what you’re doing is incredible.”
“It’s nothing more than what any other soldier would do, sir.” Before he could say anything else about how damn brave or selfless he thought it was, I got the hell out of his office. It was the last thing I wanted to hear, and it sure as hell wasn’t true.
“You tell her yet?” Rizzo asked, standing in the hallway as I closed Captain Brown’s door.
“No.”
He whistled low.
“Yeah, I know. She’s had a ton on her plate, deciding about going on this dig next week. I’ve even caught her trying to get out of it, and I’ll be damned if I let that happen.”
“You can’t tell me this is about her going on a dig.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s about us both doing what we need to. Ember and I have always been amazing together, but it’s because we’re both strong enough to stand on our own when we need to. It’s a hell of a foundation.”
“Pretty harsh timeline, though,” he muttered as we walked into the sunlight.
“Yeah, well, we had no control over that, either.”
Rizzo laughed. “Yeah, let me know when the US Army starts asking when things are convenient for us.”
“Maybe it’s when we stop making things so much harder on ourselves.”
“Yeah, like you dropping a SOAR packet?”
My steps faltered. “It’s just a thought. One discussion with one of their recruiters.”
“Yeah, well, thoughts become actions. For what it’s worth, you’re exactly the kind of pilot they’re looking for.”
“Still just a thought.”
We said good-bye in the parking lot, and I drove home, stopping along the way to pick up the last of the things on my list.
It had been two weeks since I’d been cleared to fly, and they’d gotten me up nearly every day. The first time had been the worst, but I hadn’t panicked. I’d pushed past it just like the pain.
Maybe I’d vomited once we’d landed, but I’d gotten through it.
I was back at it the next day. I focused all of myself on the controls, the flight, the technical aspects of flying, and did my best to forget that I’d almost been killed in that crash. Not so easy, yet I found that if I compartmentalized, it worked out.
I wasn’t going to let a little fear fuck over the soldiers who needed help. If they were bleeding, dying on the ground, I could risk bleeding, dying in the air. It was only right.
But driving home now, knowing what was about to happen…God, dying and bleeding sounded preferable.
“That smells so good,” Ember said as she walked into the house a few hours later.
“Don’t give me the credit. I cheated.” I waved the two bags from the local Italian restaurant and savored her laugh.
Takeout was all I’d had time to do, considering how I’d spent the hours after telling Brown my decision.
She dropped her bag and walked over to me in the kitchen, her legs three miles long in those shorts. “Hiya, babe.” She grinned and looped her arms around my neck.
“Hey, yourself.” I wrapped my arms around her waist and tried to take in everything about her in that moment. Ember’s hair trailed down her back, brushing my arms, the shorter layers framing her lightly freckled cheeks. Her eyes sparkled with happiness, drawing me in like always. Her mouth, those perfect lips, formed a contagious smile. She felt like a piece of heaven in my arms, the realization of every dream I’d been too scared to even think possible. And she was mine.
For now.
“What?” she asked, her trouble-radar working perfectly.
“I just really love you.” I swept my hands down her back to her tiny waist. “There’s nothing about you that I don’t love.”
“I love you, too,” she promised, but the suspicion was still there.
I kissed her, melding our mouths together in the sweetest way possible, taking my time. She leaned into me, her grip tightening on my neck as she kissed me back. I let her go just as her breath hitched, memorizing the sound.
She pulled back, quirking her head to the side. “Okay, I know something’s off. What is it?”
“Tell me how your day was first.” I dished food onto our plates, my appetite suddenly gone. She grabbed a bottle of wine from the fridge. “Whoa. That bad?”
“Ha,” she said, no amusement in her tone. “I told Luke I couldn’t go on the dig.”
I nearly dropped the damn plate. “You what?”
She avoided my eyes, instead concentrating on opening the bottle. “I told him it just wasn’t the right time.”
My stomach churned, and it took every ounce of self control in my body to keep my voice level. No. Not for me. Not because of me. “What did he say?”
She popped the cork. “That I was making a mistake, and he’d hold off until tomorrow to tell Dr. Trimble so I could change my mind overnight.”
Overnight. You can fix this. “You need to go.”
She poured the wine into two glasses. “Seriously, we’re not having this conversation again. This isn’t the time. You’re still healing—”
“I’m fine!” I lied. Her eyes flew toward mine, widening. Fuck. “I’m sorry. I’m fine,” I said softer. “I need you to stop assuming that I’m not. I’ve flown, I sleep, I eat, the nightmares have stopped. I need you to know that I’m okay.”
“I do know,” she replied in a near-whisper. “Maybe I’m not.”
“Maybe I need you to go.”
She flinched. “Why?”
“Because I need to know that I didn’t cost you the future you’ve worked your ass off for. I can’t let your dreams get crushed under mine. Now more than ever.”
Her eyes narrowed, her head tilting slightly. “Josh. What are you talking about? What did you do?”
I carried our plates past her to the table, setting them in our places. “Let’s have dinner, then we’ll talk.”
“Let’s talk now.”
“December—”
“What is it?” she pushed. “Why especially now?”
I hated everything about this, the way her voice pitched higher with worry, the frantic darting of her eyes, as if she could find something different about me. “I just think you might get pretty pissed at me soon.” Pissed enough to run, like you should.
Was I really about to do this to her? She’d been through so much, and I just kept heaping it on. She didn’t deserve it.
I didn’t deserve her.
“Did you bring that bike back? Is the Ducati in there?” She stormed past me.
“Ember, no!” I called, but she’d already thrown open the garage door. I leaned over the kitchen counter, my hands gripping the granite so hard I was surprised I didn’t bleed.
“I swear, Josh, if you took that thing out of storage again, I’m—” She halted midsentence, and in that exact moment, I hated myself. I hated the life I’d chosen, the risks I took, the bags that she’d just found packed in our garage. I hated myself for loving her, for going after her in the first place, for putting her through this. Again.
“Why are your duffels packed?” she asked so quietly I barely heard her. I pulled air through my lungs, forcing my heart to beat.
“Because I’m leaving.”
She stood across from me, the island separating us, her stare burning a hole through my very soul. “Where are you going?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I could block it all out, skip this, make everything perfect. But nothing was perfect in the world we lived in. It was all broken puzzle pieces slammed together, the edges jagged and tearing while we pretended it clicked, pretended that if we loved each other enough, the rest would fall in line. “You know where.”
“You’re going to have to say it.”
I sucked in a breath and looked up. My resolve nearly cracked there, with her eyes begging me not to confirm her worst fears. “December…”
“Say it.”
“Afghanistan.”
Her whimper damn near broke me. She looked away, her face showing so many emotions at once that I wasn’t sure even she knew how she felt. God, we were twin souls in that. “When?”
“Please don’t hate me.”
“Josh, when?” she snapped.
“Tomorrow.”
Her head whipped toward me, her every muscle going rigid. “What? You’re going to have to say that again, because I think you just told me that one, you’re going back to war, and two, you’re leaving tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “That’s just not possible. I refuse to believe that’s possible.”
“I wasn’t officially cleared to deploy until this morning. Tomorrow is the last flight out to bring personnel. We only have two and a half months left in the rotation. Any later and there’s really no point in going.”
“Then don’t fucking go!” She slammed her hands onto the counter, and I cringed.
“I have to.”
“Were you ordered? Because I can’t believe that someone would order you to go back this soon after you almost died in that crash.”
Here it was, the line I knew she’d never understand me crossing, the wedge I wasn’t sure she could get past, or if she even should. This would be her reason to walk away. But she’d go to Turkey. She’d live her dream. “I volunteered. Rizzo and I both did.”
“You volunteered.” She drew out each syllable, looking for meaning I knew she couldn’t find.
“They’re short pilots—”
“It’s the army. They’re never short pilots. They can take them from whatever other unit has them. Don’t use that bullshit excuse on me. You’re going because you want to go.”
“That’s not it.” I stepped toward her, and she skirted around the island, keeping it between us. “You’ve seen it—the times I’m not here. It’s because parts of me are still there, Ember. My guys are there, my unit. What the hell kind of man heals up and then stays behind while his unit is at war?”
“The kind who lives! The kind who doesn’t promise his fiancée a wedding she might not get to have, because he’ll die this time around.” She choked on the last few words.
I wanted to tell her that I wouldn’t die, that her worry was unfounded, dramatic even. But how the hell could I do that when I knew what she said was the truth? When part of me felt like coming full circle would end with her holding my flag? “Would you want that man? The one who knows he’s capable of helping, of being where he’s needed, but does nothing? Who stays at home while others die in his place?”
Her chest heaved as her head hung low. Finally she looked up at me. “When it comes to you, to how much I love you, Josh, I have no morals. No honor. I would lie, cheat, murder, steal, dishonor everything I hold dear if it meant spending my life with you. No measure of duty, or God, or country could ever make up for losing you.”
“I can’t sit home while others risk their lives. This is the right thing to do, and you and I both know that what’s right and what’s easy are never the same thing. We’ve always chosen the hard road, but, baby, we’ve always come out on top.”
“Until we don’t. You’re playing Russian roulette every time you go, putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger. You’ve nearly died twice. Lightning has struck you twice. What the hell happens when you go and this time you don’t come back?”
Words failed me. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t know, either. But this… How could you just spring this on me? How long have you known it was a possibility?”
“At the barbecue, Major Trivette said something that triggered me, about how Alice would have been the first back on the line, and I knew he was right. And that was the honorable thing to do. So Rizzo and I both asked the next day, and Captain Brown told us about the last flight out, but I swear, I didn’t know for certain I would even be capable of going until they’d gotten me back in the air. I’m current, ready for missions as of this morning.”
“And there was no point in this process where you thought you might want to tell me?”
“I didn’t know it was a definite possibility. There was nothing to tell.”
“Don’t you dare start lying to me now.” She grabbed the glass of wine on the counter and downed it like we were still in college. “You made this giant decision without so much as asking my opinion.”
“I already knew what it would be, and if there had been time to discuss it, we would have. They cleared me and needed the manifest all within the same hour.”
“Then get to a phone, Josh!” She leaned on her elbows, resting her forehead in her hands, and let out a primal cry. “How could you do this?”
The tears I saw hitting the granite fractured pieces of what was left of my soul and cracked my resolve. God, how could I do this to her? Leave again? After what she’d just been through? But how could she love the guy who didn’t go?
“Because it’s what we do.” Do not yell. I looked past her, to where Will’s West Point ring box still sat on the fireplace mantel. “It’s what Will would have done.”
“Yeah, well, we can’t ask Will, because he’s dead.”
“Because of me! Because of my choices. I have to make up for that somehow.”
“Were you going to use that same argument with my dad? Because I’m not sure if you noticed, but he’s dead, too, and you had nothing to do with it. That’s just what happens. War kills the people we love, either in body or soul, but they’re both equally devastating. So please don’t stand there and talk about what they would have done, because they didn’t get to make the choice. You are making the choice.”
“How many more people die if I don’t go? Trivette, Will…how many more bodies should I add to my tally?”
She looked away.
“I know the timing is shit. I know I should have asked you, talked to you. But what if that had changed my mind? What if while trying to keep your love, I became something you loathed? God, please, December. Forgive me. I’m so sorry, but there was no other way.”
She turned her back on me but straightened her spine. “Two and a half months?”
“That’s it.” Was there a possibility that she’d accept this? God knows I wouldn’t have. Had it been Ember, I’d have tied her to a fucking chair to keep her safe, and I was the worst kind of hypocrite for expecting her to let me go.
I could risk my life in a heartbeat, lay everything on the line, but I could never chance her life. In that regard, she was so much stronger than I could ever dream of being. Where I’d give my blood, she gambled something so much more precious—her love. And I was the ungrateful bastard taking it half the way around the world.
“That’s ten weeks. You typically flew five days a week, so that’s fifty days of flying. Countless lives you could save.”
“Yes.”
“Countless chances for you to be killed.” Her head started to shake. “No. I can’t. It’s too soon.”
“December—”
“Don’t do this.”
Fuck. My. Life. “Please, don’t ask that.”
She turned toward me, and the sight of her tear-streaked cheeks and reddened eyes destroyed another chink in my armor. “Don’t say good-bye again. I’m begging you.” Her face twisted, and she drew her lower lip between her teeth. “I can survive almost anything, but not another good-bye. Not now.”
“I wouldn’t be the man you loved if I stayed.”
She crumpled, her shoulders sagging as sobs wrecked her. “I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it as long as you’re not dead. I know it’s wrong, and I’m supposed to stand by all proud that you’re such an incredible man, and you are. God, you really are. You have more integrity than anyone I’ve ever known. You’re strong, courageous, selfless, everything an amazing officer should be.” She walked around the island until we stood toe to toe. “And maybe this makes me a wretched person, or even a coward, but Josh, I’m begging you. Choose me. Choose my love over your integrity, just this once. I promise I’ll be ready when the next deployment comes, just…not this one. This one already tried to kill you. I don’t know how to hand you over to it again.”
She shredded my soul with her words, and I reached for her, tunneling my hands through her hair. “I can’t—”
A knock at the door interrupted us, Paisley’s knock. “Come in,” Ember called out, wiping her tears away furiously. “It could be the baby or something,” she whispered, and I nodded.
“Hey, we were just wondering if y’all wanted to…” She stopped mid step in our living room, seeing us over the half wall. “Oh. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Jagger was feeling well enough to stand at the grill for a while and burn some burgers, but why don’t we do it tomorrow night, instead?”
Ember laughed, the sound nearly hysterical. “Oh, that could prove problematic.”
“Everything okay?” she asked.
Ember’s eyes dropped to the swell of Paisley’s stomach, and she forced a sad smile. “Yeah, we’re okay. Just maybe tell Jagger another time?”
Jagger. Shit. I had to tell him, too. “Yeah. Another time. And I need to steal a couple of minutes from him in the morning.”
Her gaze darted between us, but she nodded. “Of course. You two have a lovely evening.”
“Thank you for inviting us,” Ember told her just before Paisley shut the door.
The silence was deafening, as though we had expended every word we had, and now all that hung between us was the poison they’d left behind, killing us both. Ember turned to me and tucked her hair behind her ears. “Okay.”
“What?” I asked.
“I said okay,” she snapped, then squeezed her eyes shut. Her lips pursed, and her hands fisted in front of her on the counter. “Seeing Paisley…” She shook her head and drew a choppy breath. “Jagger. He’d be dead if you hadn’t been there. Paisley would be raising their baby alone, and I can’t imagine…I get it.” Anger vibrated from every line of her body, like she was at war with her words, but she still got them out.
My breath stuttered and my heart split, one side elated that she understood, that I’d fallen in love with a woman so supportive that she was willing to shove her feelings aside for mine. The other part of me hated that I’d brought this incredible woman so low that she was sacrificing her very nature for what she thought was my best interest.
What the fuck had I done to her?
“What time do you need to report in the morning?” she asked, still focused on the counter in front of her.
“Early,” I whispered, walking toward her.
She nodded. “Okay. Okay…okay.” Each repetition got softer, until it was barely a murmur. Her hands opened and closed, like she was trying to grasp something she couldn’t catch, couldn’t hold on to, until her fingers started to shake.
“December…” I whispered her name like the prayer it was and took her face in my hands, overwhelmed by her, by everything she was willing to sacrifice in the name of our love. I was the ultimate selfish asshat, demanding things I had no right to. She was my everything, my reason for existence, and I was her number one source of misery. “God, I love you.”
“Don’t. Don’t talk about loving me in the same breath you want to say good-bye. I may understand why you’re doing this, but it doesn’t mean that I agree, or that I’m happy about it.”
“It doesn’t change how much I love you,” I promised.
“Love has never been the issue between us, Josh. Loving you is second nature to me. But as proud as I am that you’re the kind of man to do this, to be the hero and volunteer to go back…” Something rare and precious died in her eyes. I saw the change happen, the moment my choice changed her. “A part of me hates…” Her eyes drifted shut. “Hates what you’re doing to me, to us.”
Hates me. That’s what she meant. Her words reverberated in my head as if she’d shot me with them. She had every right to. She’d never wanted this life, but I’d forced my way into hers, past her defenses, her protests. My chest tightened with an unbelievable pressure, like my heart took her side and was ready to claw its way out of my chest, abandon me, to be with her. Of course a part of her hated me. Hell, I hated myself. “Is your hate deeper than your love?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I hate that you made this choice without me. I hate that this is what you need, like I’m not enough to make you whole. I hate that I change everything about my life to accommodate yours, because there’s not a lot of room for an ‘ours’ right now. I hate that the minute you walk out that door, I’ll just be waiting for someone to knock on it again, and I hate how much I love you. But never in a million years could I hate you. And I almost wish I could!”
She didn’t pause, didn’t really end the argument. One minute she was yelling at me, and the next second she was in my arms, her fingers in my hair, her mouth pressed against mine. What the hell? She caught me completely off guard for maybe two seconds, but the feel of her lips was all I needed, and we were on the same page.
She’s using this to vent, hiding behind it just like you used to.
Fuck, but I didn’t care. I swept one arm under her ass and lifted her into my arms where she belonged. If I only had one last night with her before I ripped our hearts apart, I was going to make every second count. Every kiss. Every touch. Every time she cried out my name.
I was going to love her like I’d never get the chance to again.