They made love two more times before leaving the magic of New Mexico behind. While the campground wasn’t anything special, it would always hold a place in Logan’s heart.

Never had he and Beth been so close. It was like they finally stepped off the elevator on the same floor at the same time. Since then, they’d been on the same wavelength, laughing and having more fun than he’d thought they could when they first started their journey.

He wasn’t too proud to admit when he was wrong and he knew, down to his bones, he’d been wrong about Beth. This new page they’d turned to was exactly what they both needed. It was freeing to finally feel like they understood each other.

It wasn’t about the sex. The sex was good and it had gone from intimate and sultry, to frantic in no time, then back again.

There was a connection between them now that hadn’t been there just two days ago.

It felt like they were a couple. Hell, they acted like they were a couple. They stopped at a gas station and held hands while walking inside. Beth popped on her tippy-toes to peck a kiss on his lips before heading into the bathroom. He patted her ass as she walked away.

The change didn’t bother him a bit. It seemed like a natural progression, which brought him back to being wrong about who she was and his initial intentions when they started their trip. He had been convinced he could keep things simple between them and she had insisted that they could be just friends.

They had learned to be friends in the last two weeks, but they’d also bonded in a different way. They were more than friends, but more than just the lovers they’d been a year ago.

He’d intended on using her to take him on a road trip, just to get out of his cousin’s hair, but the trip had become more than that. He’d had a lot of time to think, and discuss with Beth, where he saw himself in the future and where he thought he’d end up. He wasn’t sure yet where those roads would lead him—he still had time to figure that out—but his anchor was firmly back on the ground where it belonged. He didn’t feel that terrifying buoyancy of being aimless anymore, the loss of his leg sending his life plans floating into oblivion.

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye as she pulled into the main parking lot of the Grand Canyon viewing area. The smile had barely left her face all day, the excitement of getting to their destination crackling in the air around them. Even he felt a jolt of giddiness, the culmination of their trip at their fingertips.

He had plans for Beth Walker after this. With her not going back out to sea and him back home for good, it seemed like this was their moment to grab what they wanted to with both hands, and he wanted her. Anything else was extra.

They could live anywhere she wanted—he didn’t care where—just as long as they could figure out how to be together.

“It’s been a good trip,” he commented as they parked. “I didn’t think it would be this easy.”

She shrugged. “Sometimes, you just have to get in the car and drive. See where life takes you, you know.”

They met at the hood of the car, and she wrapped her arms around his waist, looking up at him, her blue eyes filled with adoration. He ran his fingers through her hair, the color of a live flame, and felt the warmth of her skin.

“I like where this trip took me,” he whispered, lowering his lips to hers.

They were in their own world, the parking lot neither busy, nor empty. Tourists meandered to their cars or to the viewing area at their leisure, passing he and Beth by with barely more than a glance.

None of them had any idea how far he and Beth had come just to stand where they were. Not just in Arizona but together, toe to toe, in each other’s arms.

“Me too,” she agreed after a moment. “Did you want to just hang out in the parking lot or should we go take a look?”

The look she sent him had a sassy edge to it, her eyes crinkled at the corners, her pouty lips turned up on one side.

“We did come all this way,” he said with a nod. “And it’s on my bucket list.”

Her brows raised and she laughed. “Your bucket list, huh?”

“Yeah, you know. See the Grand Canyon. Get a tattoo in—”

“No,” she interrupted, her hand flying up to cover his mouth, stopping his words. “Not that.”

Logan shook his head, pulling his mouth away. “No tattoos?” he asked, disappointed.

“You’re too beautiful to tattoo,” she argued, her cheeks pinking. “I like you just the way you are.”

The words warmed him to his core. The fact that she could say that and mean it, made him glow with love for her. His leg being gone didn’t change how she saw him as a man; she’d shown him that in spades.

More importantly, she’d shown him that he wasn’t any different than he’d been. Physically, yes, but it didn’t have to change who he was. He would have to make adjustments in his life, but he’d always be the same man deep down.

“We can come back to it,” he conceded, not willing to let the tattoo go that easily. He kissed her again and then pressed her forward. “Now, let’s get to it.”

* * *

It was positively majestic. The red and golds, like waves in the rock faces of the canyon, stretched as far as the eye could see. Beth had no problem stepping out onto the glass catwalk and looking down, the height far too dizzying for some people.

One woman stood at the entrance to the walkway, hand clenched on the doorframe with a look of abject terror on her face.

“Not scared of heights?” Logan teased as Beth eyed the young woman whose male counterpart was trying to push her from behind so they could see the vista. The woman was hunched over, her legs stiff with her hands gripping the edges of the door. To Beth, she looked like she was learning to ice skate, but on dry land.

“No,” she said. “I think I actually like them.” They walked along the rail, enjoying the horizon ahead and letting the other tourists mill around them.

“You think?”

She bumped her shoulder against his and he slid his arm around her.

“Rock climbing. Skydiving. They don’t bother me at all.” She looked back at the woman who hadn’t moved an inch, the guy complaining loudly about how much money he’d spent to get them there instead of caring for her, a line forming behind them. Beth’s eye twitched.

She hated people sometimes. Especially people like that man, who seemed to care for no one but himself.

She shook her head and motioned to the couple. “Not like they bother her.”

Logan winced, looking more at the man. “There’s always one.” He continued when she looked at him in question. “There’s always one, some blowhard that thinks he’s on the road to being a SEAL, ready to save the world. Then you get him up for a HAHO jump and he’s crying for his mama.”

“What’s a HAHO jump?” She asked, her love of learning sparking a deep interest in everything he had to say.

He took a quick second to explain, comparing it to the type of skydiving she’d done. It sounded cool and she was tempted ask if it was something they could do outside of the military, but she wasn’t sure he was up to it with his leg, and she didn’t want to push him.

They’d come so far already, she wanted him to realize on his own that he could do these things. Yes, he might need to make adjustments as he went, but he could still do them.

They made their way around the horseshoe-shaped walkway, looking down at the glass beneath their feet and four thousand feet below that, into the canyon.

“Can you imagine building something like this?” she marveled. “Being out here every day, standing at the edge of the world?”

“You want to see something cool?” a young man interrupted. He was about twenty and looked like he might have slept in his Volkswagen bus overnight. He wore a tie-dye T-shirt and old beat-up khaki shorts. The sandals on his feet sealed the deal. “You should head over that way,” he pointed out over the dry landscape. “There’s a super cool part of the canyon that echoes.”

Logan hummed noncommittally as the kid kept his eyes latched onto Beth.

“I can take you over there if you want,” the kid continued confidently. “It’s not a bad hike. You look like you can do it.”

Beth looked over her shoulder at Logan, her amusement pulling up the corners of her lips.

“What do you think, babe?” she asked, a laugh in her voice. “He said he wouldn’t mind showing us.”

Logan, however, looked less amused. His green eyes narrowed slightly as he waited for the kid to look at him. Between his glare, his thick arms crossed over his broad chest, and his beard, the kid didn’t stand a chance.

“My bad,” he muttered, his beady eyes darting between Beth and Logan as he took a step back. “Didn’t see you there.”

“He can be sneaky like that,” Beth explained, faking an air of bubbly she didn’t come close to possessing. “You wouldn’t think so, but he’s always surprising me. First it was subtle, you know. Like, hey babe, is that you standing behind that plant?” Logan put a hand on her shoulder, and she wasn’t sure if he was supporting her or warning her to stop. The kid, to his credit, was stepping backward and away, which had been her intention. “Then it was sneaking up on me and ripping open the shower curtain like we were in a scary movie.”

“Oh,” the kid stuttered, his eyes darting to Logan. Whatever he saw there made his eyes widen. “Okay.”

“I never even hear him. He’s like a ninja, I think. Sneaking around, ready to grab me at any moment.”

When the kid literally turned around and ran, Beth laughed and turned to wrap her arms around Logan’s neck.

“You big, scary ninja,” she accused, pressing her lips to his.

“You could have just said no,” he countered. “And avoided this whole thing.”

“But it was fun,” she said with a careless shrug. “Admit it.”

He spun her around and pressed her forward, out of the skywalk area, his hands never leaving her waist.

“It was fine,” he replied. “Let’s go see if we can find this echo thing without the help of your new friend.”

* * *

It wasn’t hard to find, just a short hike to an area that was nearly deserted.

She didn’t ask him once how his leg was, though she could tell it was bothering him a bit. He had a small limp, favoring the one side, but he didn’t let it slow him down. She naturally slowed, hoping to get him to follow suit, but he took the lead instead, making her catch up with him.

She didn’t mind. It was good for him to push his limits.

There was a group of people finishing up when they arrived at the edge of the canyon. Two men and two women in their forties laughed as they clutched the rail, listening to each other yell.

One woman leaned in, a hand on top of her head, holding her hat on as the wind whipped around her. She took a great, deep breath and yelled at the top of her lungs.

“I wish I was a better mother!”

Beth’s eyes widened at her confession as the words echoed back to them all, surrounding them.

The woman’s companions put comforting hands on her shoulders as a man took his turn.

“I want the promotion!” His voice reverberated around them.

That one took the woman, who had already yelled, by surprise. She tilted her head and put a hand on his cheek.

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“I didn’t want to rock the boat,” he admitted. “I know things are good for us how they are.”

Beth and Logan hung back, giving them some space. Beth took the time to marvel at their honest confessions, their raw vulnerability as well as their implicit trust in with one another. When she looked up at Logan, she thought he might be thinking the same thing. There was a wonder in his eyes, something that spoke of understanding and longing.

“I hate how I look!”

The words were a deep baritone, the other man making his confession. His female partner wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him, though Beth couldn’t hear their softly spoke conversation.

When they turned to leave, they spotted Beth and Logan. The men shied, embarrassed to have their confessions overheard. The women looked confident and smiled at them.

“Hi there,” the woman, who yelled about being a better mother, said with a smile.

“Ma’am,” Logan said with a nod in their direction.

“Sorry you had to hear all that,” she started.

Logan shook his head. “Your secrets are safe with us, right, Sugar?” He looked down and met Beth’s eyes, and she knew they were going to do the same thing.

They were going to stand at the edge of the abyss and yell their truths.

He felt it just as much as she did. There was a magical quality to the canyon. Something that begged for the natural truth of things. There were no pretenses, just craggy rock and life, the way nature created it.

Their confessions triggered something inside her too. She felt bolstered that he felt it too.

Beth nodded her agreement, her hand reaching down to find his. Fingers intertwined, they left the group of strangers and their uncovered secrets behind and stepped up to their own starting line: the edge of a great canyon, a yawning void that was ready and willing to hold their tiny, insignificant confessions.

“I can go first,” Logan offered, their hands still locked together as they looked out over the horizon.

Beth nodded, not quite ready to share her secret, holding on to that one last moment with it as her own. Once the words came out, they would no longer be inside of her, but they would be like a brick wall, standing between what he wanted and what she could give him.

Logan sucked in a breath and without wasting any time, in a voice she barely recognized, roared the words out.

“I want my life back!”

Beth understood his desire. He’d just started fighting to get his life back in the last few weeks. The first months after his accident he’d been solely focused on his physical recovery and rightly so. Now, it was time to focus on the rest.

She gave his hand a squeeze in support as his words floated back to them on a warm breeze. It was like the world replying, saying, You’re getting there.

He seemed relieved, like the words lifted the invisible weight he’d been carrying around. He wore a small smile as he took a more confident breath.

When he took an infinitesimal step back, giving her the floor, so to speak, Beth’s throat clogged.

This was the moment where everything would change. She’d hoped to put it off, enjoying what they’d built too much to throw a wrench in the middle of it. But this was her time; she could feel it.

The revelation was working its way to the surface, receding from where she kept it hidden for years. Like a worm that had burrowed itself as deep as it could, her confession worked its way out. With every moment, it dug itself out further and Logan watched her, waiting.

Finally, after squeezing her eyes shut for long moments and letting the truth bubble up from her depths, Beth leaned into the wind and opened her mouth.

On a pained howl, she finally let it all go.

“I can’t have kids!”

The words sounded softer when they came back and washed over her, like they were whispering in her ear instead of being pushed into the world.

She didn’t dare open her eyes yet and instead, just stood there, hunched over the edge of the world feeling depleted.

Until she felt Logan’s strong arms wrap around her from behind and he helped her stay on her feet, his strength seeping into her as he did nothing more than hold her. His lips pressed gently against the back of her neck, his nose tickling her nape.

She grabbed onto his forearms, where they rested against her stomach, and they were both silent. Their echoes were long gone, the wind taking them far away, but their secrets remained out in the open and now a part of the real world.

Beth took the strength he’d given her and bolstered herself up, turning around in his arms. This was her sad reality, one of her own making, but she wouldn’t cower away from it. She would take what they’d had, if that was how the chips fell, and hold on to her memories of Logan as the love of her life.

Sometimes, life was cruel and would give and take in the same hand. He was the man for her, but she couldn’t give him what he needed.

The sadness swimming in his eyes, when she met them, confirmed her worst fears.

He was already in mourning.

She just wasn’t sure if it was the loss off what they could have been, or the loss of the future he so desperately wanted that he was feeling so deeply.

* * *

For hours, their confessions floated between them and they studiously ignored them. She didn’t say a word to Logan about how far he’d really come in the last few weeks, how close he was to snatching his life back. She knew what his primal roar had really been about. Not just his leg, but the loss of his career and the goals he’d been working toward.

He’d get his life back. He was strong-willed and smart, and more than both of those things, he was capable. There was no doubt in her mind that he’d get his life back.

They left the Grand Canyon behind, driving to a campground close by, where they set up their tent in relative silence. They worked well together, getting the tent set up and their other supplies out and ready to be used.

Logan made a point to make one bed in the tent, pushing all the blankets and pillows together into a pallet for them.

Their eyes met and his seemed to say, See!

She gave him a half smile and a nod, stepping out into the warm, orange dusk, and aimlessly folded a towel.

“We should do laundry tomorrow.” His voice startled her, his words whispering over her skin as he now stood behind her.

“Sneaky ninja,” she said with a fond smile.

“Stinky ninja,” he replied, pressing a soft kiss to the back of her neck. “I’m surprised you didn’t smell me coming.”

It was true, after three or four days camping, they weren’t at their freshest. While they’d showered here and there, their clothes should probably be burned at the end of their trip. She had more clothes to choose from, having her luggage from the cruise ship, but most of them weren’t appropriate road-trip attire.

“I wouldn’t be able to smell you over the smell of myself,” she shot back.

His nose rubbed the delicate skin behind her ear.

“I think you smell like the fuzzy skin on a peach,” he drawled in a whisper, his hands squeezing her closer until her back was pressed against his chest. She felt his tongue drag up the side of her neck, hot and wet. “Taste like it, too.”

She reached behind her and held him by the back of his neck, holding him close. Like this, they were in their own world, their problems far away and insignificant, the fact that she could never bear his children or give him a family somewhere off in the distance where he couldn’t reach it.

For Beth, it was something she’d been living with for more than a year.

She hadn’t been immune to the chemistry of their first meeting, as she had acted. She’d been changed by him from the first time their eyes had met.

But she’d had to admit, even if only to herself and her sisters, that some things weren’t meant to be. A man that desperately wanted a family was not destined to be with a woman that was purposefully barren.

It didn’t matter that it was still daylight or that the campground was teeming with other campers. They still zipped themselves inside the tent and made slow, deep love.

Not the kind where clothes come off in a frenetic desperation but the kind where they watched each other. The kind where Beth opened herself to him in a way she never had before. He looked at her then and she showed him her soul, everything that she was holding inside and she hoped, the depth of her love for him.

It would be too painful to tell him how much she loved him now. Too painful to tell him and walk away, which is what she’d do in a day or two when the trip ended and they went their separate ways.

She could see the confidence in his steps now compared to where he’d been just a few weeks ago. There was a straightening of his spine, a swagger in his hips—that he’d taken back as his own—that she hadn’t seen since Andy’s wedding last year. He’d find his way, she had no doubt.

Holding him in her arms, his skin slick with sweat, her body clutching his inside her, she tried not to think about where her path might lead her.

Their epic road-trip may have put Logan back on the path he wanted to be on, but she’d lost sight of hers.

* * *

Beth had been quiet since the canyon. Not an angry or sullen quiet like he’d seen on her before, but something completely different.

They’d set up camp as usual but with far less banter between them, a contemplative look in her eye. She was lost inside of herself. He knew, because he’d been in that same place for months, living in a world he wasn’t sure he belonged in.

The second she’d made her confession, her words pouring over the ridge and then coming back to settle in his ears, a wave of guilt and shame hit him, hard and fast.

She couldn’t have kids. It was sad, because he’d love nothing more than to see tiny little Beth Walkers running roughshod over a home he’d built for them, but it wasn’t an end-all statement.

There were other ways for people to become parents without physically having the children themselves. He thought of his cousin Elliot Williams, adopted at the age of ten or twelve into a happy and loving family.

There were other ways and he was sure, if they tried, they could find them.

The guilt and shame he felt came when he thought about all the times he’d told her about the family he wanted in the future. How she must have felt when he expounded about how many kids he wanted, or imagining aloud what she’d look like pregnant.

He could have been more sensitive, though there was no way he could have known.

But he’d be damned if he didn’t connect the dots the second her words registered in his brain. It was like hearing them made everything click into place.

No wonder she ran every time they got an inch closer to being something to each other. Because she knew he wanted something she didn’t think she could give him.

He’d spent the last few hours trying to show her that whatever was going on with her physically wasn’t the be-all, end-all for them. He was confident that they could figure it out. As long as they did it together, he was ready to move forward.

They’d closed themselves off in the tent for the night, making an early night of it. The red, glowing dusk turned to twilight through the mesh window overhead and he laid on his back, his arm around her.

Beth’s head rested on his shoulder, her fingers absently toying with the hair on his chest.

His prosthetic, the one that just weeks ago he was so afraid for her to see, rested forgotten with their clothes. It wasn’t needed right now and because of Beth, he’d learned that it didn’t change how she saw him.

He was beginning to think that it didn’t change how he saw himself either, and that felt like an immense hurdle to have jumped.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, his voice soft in their little cocoon.

He felt her head shake, but she said nothing.

He couldn’t imagine that she wanted to talk about it. She had never mentioned it before, so he was sure she didn’t want to start now, but they were past that. She’d pulled him from the depths when he was in his downward spiral and now, if he had to, he’d do the same for her.

When he really thought about, their situations weren’t that different.

“It doesn’t change anything, you know?” he said. “You’re still you and I’m still me. What we have, this thing between us, it’s still exactly the same.”

Her cheeks shifted and even if he couldn’t see her, he knew she was smiling. It didn’t ease his mind. He’d seen Beth smile through angry tears and heartbreaking sadness. He’d seen her smile through an outright lie and while making a devious plan to jump out of a closet to scare her brother. He’d come to realize that a smile, wasn’t always so simple where Beth was concerned.

It was one of the things he loved about her. He loved that she could show such an immense range of emotions with just one gesture.

Her confession, screamed with such agony, her strong hand fisted at her chest, changed nothing for him.

“I did it on purpose.”

Her whispered words were nearly inaudible they were so quiet. He might have mistaken them for the rustle of plants outside had he not felt her breath across his skin.

“You did what, Sugar?”

“I had a hysterectomy.”

Like a bucket of ice water, he felt her words freeze his heart in his chest. Had he mistaken her revelation at the canyon as something it wasn’t?

He’d seen a pain in her eyes in that moment and assumed it to be sadness for what she couldn’t have. He’d thought she felt the loss of not being able to bear children, because she wanted to but wasn’t able.

But to have a hysterectomy meant she did it on purpose. It wasn’t a decision a woman made lightly without knowing the long-term consequences, and Beth had done it anyway.

If she didn’t want to bear her own children, she didn’t want to adopt them either. She didn’t want to foster a child who needed loving parents.

She didn’t want to be a parent.

That realization hit him like a cannonball to the chest and it took him a moment to breathe through it. Was that something he could live with? Would he let his dream of being a great father go, so he could keep Beth with him, where she belonged?

He knew he would. He wanted her in a way that was indescribable. It went beyond longing or wanting, the words benign in comparison to what he felt.

Incomplete, was what he was without her. Just the shell of who he wanted to be and could be with Beth by his side.

He’d just have to live that life without fulfilling his need for fathering children.

* * *

His silence was thunderous as they lay, still in each other’s arms. For how many times he’d told her that he wanted to be a father, she’d just thrown in the ultimate monkey wrench.

She was sure he was coming to the same conclusion that she had.

They could not be.

She could not give him what he so desperately wanted in life and she knew it. Now he knew it too.