Chapter Twenty-One
Josh
The front gate to the cemetery was closed at 0600, so I drove around to the back, where I’d seen a small opening in the gate yesterday. The parking lot was mostly empty, except for the spots closest to the Starbucks on the far side.
I parked our rental next to another white sedan, whose owner had obviously had the same thought, and walked toward the back of the cemetery, cursing the still-tender wound in my leg. Ember was going to be pissed if she woke up and found I’d driven the car, let alone left her without a note. But she’d looked so peaceful, and she’d been getting about as much sleep as I had lately, which meant none. If I wasn’t waking her up with nightmares, then I was usually making love to her, taking respite in those small moments where she was all that existed to me. But I’d woken up an hour ago and snuck out like a teenager past curfew and drove around the post, simply elated in the power of being behind the wheel of a car again. I’d gravitated here naturally after a while.
The light morning fog had an eerie effect as I took the small, worn path between the hedges and the gate post. It felt different here this morning than it had yesterday. Yesterday, this place contained all the grief in the world, the voices of those silenced too young. This morning, it felt quiet, peaceful.
I turned to the left and walked among the newer stones, reading some of the names to myself as I hobbled by. Too young. They were all too damn young. Michael Adams was only twenty-four, just like Will.
I continued the path until I came upon Will’s grave and stopped in my tracks. Standing there, a sweater wrapped around her from the morning chill, was Paisley. I started to retreat, but the gravel crunched under my feet and she turned. Fuck.
“Josh?” she called out.
I half waved and headed over, the wet grass immediately soaking my running shoes. “Hey, Paisley.”
She gave me a small smile, her eyes swollen to nearly unrecognizable proportions. “I didn’t want to leave without spending a little more time here.”
“Yeah. I wanted to take a couple of minutes, too.”
“Did you want to be alone? I can go for a walk.”
I shook my head. “No, you don’t have to leave. I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to wake Ember.”
She laughed, pathetic as it sounded. “Jagger’s still knocked out. He’ll only take the pain meds at night, now.”
I’d never wanted to run away from someone so badly, like the joggers who were sporadically making their way through the cemetery as we stood there. Then again, this leg was barely supporting me to stand, let alone run.
“Why are you avoiding me?” she asked, looking up at me with raised eyebrows.
“What? I’m not.” I bold-faced lied to my best friend’s wife.
She made a pfft sound. “Sure you are. You wouldn’t see me in Germany. You only come over at home when I’m gone, like you watch the window for my car to pull out—”
“I do not.” You do.
“—or something, and yes, you do. The first time I saw you face-to-face was at the funeral yesterday. Now you’d better tell me what I did to irk you, Josh. Whatever it is, I preemptively apologize.”
I shook my head. “Of course you would think it’s your fault.”
“It’s not?”
More runners crunched their way down the gravel path behind us.
“No.” I looked down at the freshly placed grass seeds that would grow over Will from now on. “I killed him.” It was the faintest whisper, but she heard it.
“You did not kill him. He died at war. This is not your fault.”
“How can you, of all people, say that? You loved him more than any of us. How can you not realize that I basically traded his life for Jagger’s, and then again for mine?”
She tilted her head. “You knew it was Jagger when he went down. You went in for him, like any medevac crew would have, friend or not. Will agreed to the extraction, right? He didn’t say, ‘no,’ or, ‘hey guys, this isn’t a good idea,’ right? He went in with both guns blazing because that was his mission. You did not force him into that valley, Josh.”
There was no blame in her eyes, only absolution, understanding—no forgiveness, because she honestly didn’t think I’d done anything wrong. “There’s more.”
“Okay, tell me.”
I wavered for a second but pushed ahead.
“After the first deployment, I had this one-bullet policy. I wasn’t going to let myself be taken alive. Ever.”
“Josh,” she whispered, lightly touching my arm.
“During the firefight, Rizzo was working on keeping Jagger alive. It was mostly just Will and I, and when this guy came around the back…I had Ember’s voice in my head, begging me to come home. So I made this split-second decision and fired two bullets into his chest. I used all of my ammo, didn’t save the last bullet.”
She didn’t shy away, simply held my gaze in a way that was neither comforting nor threatening. She just listened.
“When the next guy came around, I was out. Will saw him first and shoved me to the ground, taking him out. He saved my life.”
“Sounds like Will,” she said.
I nodded and forced myself through the hesitation over the next part. “He was standing over me, reaching for my hand to pull me up when the shots were fired.”
Her eyes closed, twin tears tracking her cheeks.
“Damn. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—”
“Finish. Please, Josh. I want to know. I need to know.”
“I couldn’t even tell Jagger. Will fell on top of me, shielding me as he took two more rounds. I managed to get his weapon as the firefight ended. Reinforcements showed up, but Will…he bled out before they could get him to the medevac.”
“That’s exactly what he would have wanted, Josh,” she said, more tears falling. She swiped them away. “Don’t mind me. I’m a pregnant, hormonal mess over here.”
“You lost your best friend.”
Her eyes squeezed shut, and her breath was ragged for a second. “I did.”
“If I had just saved that last bullet, if he hadn’t pushed me down to start with…”
“If Jagger hadn’t been there,” she countered. “If those troops hadn’t come in contact. If your copilot hadn’t been killed. Josh, there are so many what-if’s, and any one of them could have changed the outcome. Maybe Will would be alive. Maybe you’d be dead, and Ember and I would be standing over your grave instead. Would you want to put her through that?”
I shook my head, the image already firmly planted there. “No.”
“If you hadn’t gone in, if Will hadn’t been there to pull you out, to climb the helicopter, and kick in the glass, Jagger would have died. There was no way you were kicking through that glass with your leg, and your medic would have been in too many places at once.”
“I’m just so sorry,” I said, my voice breaking. “I’m so sorry for what I put you through. I can’t even say that if I’d known, I would have chosen differently. It was Jagger.”
She took both of my hands in her smaller ones. “Josh. You were exactly where you were meant to be. You saved Jagger. Will saved Jagger, and then he saved you, the overachiever that he is…was. If I had a choice to make, I would have chosen Jagger, too. There’s no shame in that, not when he’s my husband, the father of our unborn son. I do not blame you for what happened, because you were supposed to be there. Will was supposed to be there, and if you take a second to look around, you’ll see that now Will is exactly where he is meant to be.” She pointed to the row in front of us, to the stone that sat directly in line with where Will’s would be. “Do you understand now? He’s with Peyton.”
I made out Peyton’s name carved into the simple, white stone and felt a piece of my soul slide home, making the puzzle one piece closer to whole. “Peyton.”
Peyton. Her name played through my mind, spoken in Will’s voice as a blood-muffled gurgle.
She nodded, a smile lighting her features. “He never stopped loving her. Not ever. Jagger is my person. Ember is yours. Peyton was his. He could have lived longer, gotten married, had kids, but no love would ever compare to what he felt for Peyton. You didn’t get him killed, Josh. He was just called home to the woman who was too stubborn to reciprocate that love in life because she was scared to lose her best friend.” She shrugged. “I like to think that now they have a chance to be happy.”
She wrapped her slight arms around me. “I love you, and I understand. There is nothing to forgive, Josh. This—” She pointed to the ground where Will laid. “This was never in your hands.” She looked toward the sky and then behind us. “Hey, you. Good run?” she asked.
I turned to find Ember standing close behind us, dressed in running clothes, her eyes bright with unshed tears that she tried to smile away. She failed. “Yeah,” she answered, walking to Paisley’s other side.
Fuck. How much had she heard? I felt a tearing, a rending of sorts in my heart, but couldn’t figure out why.
“This place is perfect for them, isn’t it?” Paisley asked.
“Hallowed ground,” Ember whispered.
“It is,” Paisley agreed. “I should get back to Jagger before he wakes up. See you guys at takeoff?”
“T-minus four hours,” Ember answered with a smile. They hugged good-bye and Paisley left, the gravel crunching under her feet as she headed back toward the gate.
“December,” I said, reaching for her. She sidestepped me and popped one of her earbuds back in.
“I’m going to finish my run. I’ll see you back at the hotel?”
“I have the car. We could grab Starbucks over there,” I offered, throwing out the one thing she could never resist—coffee.
“No thanks.”
Alarm bells sounded in my head.
She walked past me, just out of my reach. “Ember, what’s wrong? What’s happening here? Is it because of what you heard?” I was thankful that she knew, as much as I hated it.
“What I heard? No. God, Josh. Weeks. Not once have you…” She shook her head and backed away. “I’ve been trying so hard to get through to you, for you to open up to me. You know what? I’m glad you found someone to talk to. I guess I just foolishly thought that it would be me. I’ll be fine. Just give me…a run.” She shrugged, her face crumpling, and darted off before I could say or do anything.
A month ago I would have chased her, swept her into my arms, and fixed my fuck-up. A month ago, I hadn’t been broken, physically unable to run or pick up the woman I was soul-wrenchingly in love with, because my body had been whole. A month ago I hadn’t crashed my helicopter and killed more people than I wanted to think about…including two of my friends. A month ago I was a different man.
A month ago, I never would have let her go.
But this me? Yeah, well, maybe she was better off running.