Chapter Thirty-Six
Ember
The room was coming together nicely, each newly revealed tile joining in a gorgeous mosaic. I hummed, enjoying the soft echo as I used a small brush to remove the smaller debris from the new section we were working on.
“Are you sure you don’t want to break?” Ilyas asked. “I’m going to run to town while Dr. Trimble brings through his investors.”
I lowered my handkerchief from my hairline and caught the sweat off my forehead, then pushed it back up. How could I have forgotten that Luke’s father was coming through today to see how we were doing? “No, I’ll stay and work.”
“Alone?” he asked, concerned.
“I’m fine,” I assured him.
“You’re alone a lot, Miss Ember. You’re here alone, in your room alone, walking in the evenings alone. If you get much more alone, you’re going to be a certifiable recluse.”
“I know,” I said over my shoulder with a small smile. “I’m okay. I promise. I just want to say hi to Luke’s dad.” I turned back around, letting the tiles consume my vision, and I focused on the beautiful colors.
“Do you need anything? I’ll pick it up for you.”
“Oh.” I nodded, sweeping a small bit of debris off a darkish red tile. “Powdered creamer.”
He laughed. “Have you not learned to drink your coffee the real way yet?”
“I’d rather milk a camel.” I fake gagged, and he laughed harder.
“Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.” He rinsed off his hands in the corner by the archway that connected us to the next room.
I’d never develop a taste for the dark, sugar-brewed roasts they preferred over here. I missed smooth, silky cream too much.
I missed the States, really. Okay, mostly Josh.
Always Josh.
His smile, his eyes, the way his arms wrapped around me at the perfect moment, simply knowing what I needed.
A familiar ache settled into my chest, constricting my breaths for a few painful seconds. How had we gotten here? We’d made it through more than a couple should have to over the last three years, and now we were teetering on what…all-out collapse? Why? Because we couldn’t see eye to eye on his job?
Because you don’t see the same future.
“Miss Ember, are you okay?” Ilyas asked, now in front of me, snapping me out of my depressing thoughts. He’d done too much of that lately.
“Yeah,” I nodded with a forced smile. “Let me grab you some money.”
I reached into my back pocket and felt only soft fabric. Shit. You did not… A quick check of the other pocket, then the small, skinny ones in front, and I swore under my breath. It was a half mile walk back to my room…and my wallet.
“Ugh, it’s in my room.”
“No problem,” Ilyas said with a shrug.
“I’ve got it.”
That voice sent shivers racing down my limbs, and the ache in my heart morphed into butterflies of disbelief. Forty Turkish lira appeared in front of me in a hand I knew all too well.
I turned slowly, my breath catching in my throat as I looked up and met his eyes. Josh. His name was my only coherent thought, my every heartbeat screaming it. My first instinct was to throw my arms around him and forget every reason we were ripping each other apart. A myriad of emotions crossed his face as we stood there, eyes locked on each other. Joy quickly flickered to worry until he tilted his head, sighed, and gave me a half smile. “December,” he whispered.
“What are you doing here?” I shook my head. “Not that I’m not glad to see you. Crap, that came out wrong,” I verbally vomited. Fuck me, but he looked good in that Henley and vest. And he was in Turkey. Turkey!
“I came for you.”
So simple. So very complicated.
“How about I get your creamer?” Ilyas said and backed out of the room, a giant, goofy grin on his face.
I brushed the dust from my hands onto my already too dirty cargo capris, well aware that I looked like I’d been on the dig site all day. “God, I’m a mess,” I said, trying to think of something to say that wasn’t I’m sorry, I’ll do whatever you want, move wherever you want to, lose myself to support your crazy need for special ops stuff, just love me. It was so tempting to say, to heal the rift between us, but it would be shoving a Band-Aid on an arterial bleed.
“You’re perfect,” he said softly, tucking a sweat-curled strand of hair behind my ear. “Perfect and exquisitely beautiful.”
I barely stopped myself from kissing his hand as it skimmed down my face, his thumb dangerously close to my lips. “I can’t believe you’re really here.”
He smiled, and my heart skipped. “I’m sorry it took so long. I got to the airport about ten minutes too late. You’d already taken off, and then I had to go through all the redeployment stuff, and we just now got leave.”
And I think I might have melted. “You came after me at the airport?”
He nodded. “Yeah, well, I realized that everything we’re fighting about…none of it matters if I lose you.”
“But aren’t you supposed to be at SOAR assessment?”
He shook his head. “I declined. I’m not assessing.”
My chest felt like every rainbow in the world had crammed itself in there. “You did? You’re not?”
“I never really wanted it. I applied because it was what Will wanted, and I was going to talk about it with you when I got home. But then you said you were giving up all this”—he gestured to the ruins around us—“for me, and I couldn’t let you do it. I couldn’t let your career, your dream, get run over, not even for our relationship. You’ve already given up so much for me. So when you felt like you had to choose, I did the only thing I could think of—I took myself out of that equation. I’m so sorry. You deserved to make the choice.”
“I would always choose you.”
“I know.” He cupped my face in his hand and stepped closer, bringing our bodies to a near-touch. The small distance was sanity and ache all in one. “We’ve always said it’s you and me against the world, and these last few months, we’ve been letting the world win because we’ve been divided. You were right. I’ve been making decisions about my future based on guilt, while your future widened into this world you’ve worked so hard for. I got caught up in this idea that I had to be your foundation, and I was…cracked. Then in trying to fix myself, I forgot that what we’re built on isn’t just you and isn’t just me. It’s both of us. We’re strong because we carry each other. We build our relationship on equal ground, and I’m so sorry that I lost sight of that. It’s unforgivable.”
“Nothing is unforgivable. You weren’t trying to hurt me. I know you never would. You were trying to be a better man for me, but you have to know that you’re already the best. Even when you were wounded, and bleeding, and a little broken, you were…you are mine. There’s no one else for me.”
His eyebrows lowered with his voice. “I’m sorry I ever made you doubt it. Can I fix this? Did…” He sucked in a shaky breath. “Am I too late?”
“I’d wait forever for you,” I answered, slipping my ring out of my shirt on its chain to show him. “I love you. I have always loved you, and I will always love you. These last few months have sucked, but that’s what marriage is, right? For better, for worse? So maybe we get the worse out of the way now. There’s nothing you can say or do that could push me far enough away that I would stop loving you. I was…I am willing to wait as long as you need, but I’ll never give up on us, Josh. Whether I’m in Turkey, or you’re in Afghanistan, or we’re both at home, my heart is always with you.”
He glanced down at the ring and back to my face. My breath caught at the love that poured out of his eyes.
“I’ll put it back on, if you want. I never emotionally took it off. I’m sorry I even threatened it. It was childish, and untrue.”
Josh looked over my shoulder at the mosaic I was uncovering. “That’s lasted thousands of years under all this dirt?”
A smile tugged at my lips. “Yes. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
His eyes dropped to my lips. “Yes. And there’s no way I’m letting you ruin it with a piece of jewelry. Besides, I don’t need a ring on your hand to know that you’re mine.”
Josh brushed my mouth in a sweet kiss. Our lips lingered as our breaths mingled, restoring gravity to our world in the space of a heartbeat. I leaned into him and brought my hand to his neck, savoring the warmth of his skin. He deepened the kiss, and I moaned my approval, the sound echoing off the stone walls.
There was nothing in the world that compared to kissing Josh. Except maybe being kissed by Josh. He used his lips to tell me he loved me, the strokes of his tongue against mine to say how much he’d missed me, missed us.
I answered in kind, forgetting everything around me and abandoning all logical thought. There in his arms, standing in the middle of a room that was thousands of years old, in a foreign country thousands of miles from the States, I was home.
This was all that mattered.
Need spiraled through my nerves, tightening in my stomach as Josh’s grip turned more possessive, more demanding. It had been so long, and I was starved for his touch.
“Whoa…Red?” Luke’s voice barely broke through the haze of desire Josh wrapped me in.
Josh released me, and I peeked around his rather massive frame. “Hey, Luke.”
“What are you…”
Josh turned, and recognition lit in Luke’s eyes. “Ah, so the Flyboy has come to make amends?”
I stepped to the side and nodded. “It’s all good.”
“Good, because you’ve been the most pathetic, love-sick puppy I’ve ever seen these last few months. By the way, you left your wallet on my bed last night.” He waved it above his head, and I skipped over to retrieve it.
“Thanks,” I said with a smacking kiss on his cheek.
“Movie nights are my favorite, and next time the ice cream is on me, but I really wish you’d branch out from just strawberry.” He glanced over me to Josh, then back. “Call me if you need me.”
“She won’t,” Josh answered, his voice gruff.
Holy shit, he’s jealous. Of Luke?
Luke snorted back a laugh. “Relax.” His eyes drifted down Josh’s impeccable body, and I choked back a laugh when Josh caught on. “You’re far more my taste than your fiancée.” He gave Josh’s chest an appreciative pat and walked out, calling back, “Oh, and Dad is walking through in a half hour, so…you know. I’ll lock the door on my way out.”
“He’s gay,” Josh said.
I bit into my lower lip until my smile tore it free. “I never told you that?”
Josh shook his head.
“I guess it never seemed important.”
He wrapped his arms around me, and I laid my head against his chest, setting my breaths to the steady rhythm of his heart. “I love you,” he whispered into my hair. “Tell me I didn’t lose you. I need to hear it one more time.”
I tilted my head enough to press a kiss to his stubbled jaw. “You couldn’t lose me if you tried, Josh Walker. Though you’ve made me wonder lately if that was your motive.”
“Never. I just want what’s best for you.”
“You’re what’s best for me, and not just because I love you. You make me a better person. Stronger. You push me to achieve things I’d only ever dreamed of, and never hold me back. You’re my perfect match in every way.”
“No more stupid shit,” he promised. “I even sold the Ducati.”
I jerked back in his arms to get a better look at his face. “You what?”
He nodded. “I’ve been in counseling this whole time, too.”
I blinked. “Okay, the counseling I applaud, but the Ducati?”
His grin was enough to seriously drop my panties. “You hated the Ducati.”
“I didn’t…” I shook my head. “I hated the Ducati. I hated what it represented—a giant, flashy death wish.”
“I know, and you were right, so I turned it into something you’d love. I paid off our wedding.”
My jaw dropped. “You paid off our wedding?”
“Including the photographer.”
A stab of guilt went through me. “But you loved that thing.”
“No, I loved being a seventeen-year-old on that thing. Now, I love you. I will always love you, December.”
My eyes flew wide. “But the Harley? Oh, God. Please tell me you didn’t sell the Harley. I know I hate how dangerous they are, but you love it, and I have to admit, you’re sexy as hell on it—”
He cut me off with a kiss and then laughed. “I kept the Harley, but I’d sell it in a heartbeat if it made you happy.”
“No! No. You make me happy. Keep it. Just…you know…helmet.”
He kissed me softly. “Anything for you, future Mrs. Walker.”
“Say it again,” I whispered against his lips.
“Mrs. Walker. December Walker. Dr. Walker.”
This time his kiss was blatantly erotic. I melted into him, and he took complete advantage, kissing me deeper, with hotter swirls of his tongue until I whimpered, ready to give these tile mosaics a show they wouldn’t forget for another few thousand years.
“A half hour, huh?” he asked, worshipping my neck with kisses that sent chills rocketing down my arm.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“I can do a lot with a half hour.”
A giggle burst free. “And then what?”
“Then I’m yours for the next two weeks, if you want me. You can work, and I’ll watch, or I’ll help, or I’ll just study 5&9s in your room until you’re done at night. I don’t want you to choose between the dig and me, so you get both.”
This…this was heaven. Uncovering ancient relics by day and making love with Josh at night. The picture was exquisite. “You don’t mind? You’re using up all of your leave, and I won’t have time to vacation or anything.”
“I don’t need a vacation. I just need you. Your career is just as important as mine, and maybe selfishly, I want to understand what you do. This place”—he glanced around at the stone walls and back to me—“it’s part of you. Usually, you have to live where the army tells us to, handle deployments, and wounds, and…funerals, because you’re forced to live in my world.”
“Because I love you, Josh.”
“I know, and I love you,” he said, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Now show me around, December, because I’d like to live in your world for a little while.”
My smile radiated the joy that reached through my limbs to my fingers and toes. “The army, Colorado, Alabama, Tennessee, Turkey… It’s all our world.”
“Our world,” he agreed and sealed the promise with a kiss.
The world had never felt smaller because my heart had never felt so big.