Chapter Thirty-Two
Josh
“For the record, I think this may, in fact, be the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever seen you do,” Jagger said as I took my duffel out of the back of my Jeep.
“Volunteering?” I clarified as I shifted it over my shoulder painlessly. Part of me wished it hurt, wished I hadn’t been cleared, that this had never been an option.
“No. Going back is the definition of badass, heroic, courageous. We’re talking movie-worthy shit. I only wish I was healed enough to go with you. But sneaking out on Ember? That’s bullshit.”
The parts of my heart that still functioned ceased for a few beats as I thought of her sleeping next to me, her hair spilled around her like flames, her lips swollen from my kisses. “She knew. I didn’t sneak out. She told me she couldn’t do another good-bye, and she shouldn’t have to.”
“And that shit with the lease? Are you just burning your relationship to the ground, or what?”
I swallowed, my throat tight. “She deserves a choice, and I keep taking them. This, leaving? It’s what I’ll always do, and it’s not fair to her. I love her too much to destroy her. So, if over these next couple of months that we’re apart, she discovers that she’s”—my shoulders dropped—“that she’s worth more than this, then it’s easier. She should be home from Turkey just before I redeploy, and she has options. I fucking owe her that much.”
“You want her to leave you.”
My eyes slid shut as I thought about a life without her. “She deserves so much more than this. She deserves everything she’s ever dreamed of, and…” I took a breath to steady my next words, but it didn’t help. “She deserves a man who can put her first. Who isn’t obligated to anything else in this world besides her.” Blood boiled in my veins when I thought of another man touching her, kissing her lips, holding her love. “God knows I don’t deserve her. I never did. And we both know I’ll never be able to leave her. She’s the only woman I’ll ever love.”
“You’re being stupid.” He leaned against the Jeep, his walking casts almost reaching the bottom of his cargo shorts, and crossed his arms. “That girl loves you more than anything. She chooses you every day, and I bet if you went home right now, she’d forgive this idiot move you’re making, but I can’t say the same in two months.”
God, I wanted to see her, to wrap my arms around her and promise that I’d be home soon. I wanted to tell her to have a good time in Turkey, to soak up every second that she could—she’d worked so hard for it. “If I go back there now, she won’t go to Turkey. Everything she worked for will be flushed down the drain because of me. There’s zero fucking chance I’m going to let that happen. If it takes me…losing her”—agony ripped through me, making me almost physically ill—“for her to have her dream, then I’m going to have to risk it.”
“I love you like a brother, Josh. But I want to smack some sense into you. Ember will always choose you. She’s proven that time and again, but you have to be an option.”
“We’ll see what happens in a couple of months.”
“You’re Josh and Ember. If you guys don’t make it, there’s zero hope for the human race.” He pushed off the Jeep and grabbed me into a hug. “Be safe. Save lives. Don’t fucking die.”
I hugged him and let him go. “Take care of her for me, and hopefully I’ll see you before Mini-Bateman is here.”
Jagger grinned. “You’d better, since you’ll be the godfather.”
“Really?” Godfather. Kick-ass. “That’s amazing. I’m kind of speechless.”
“Just get your ass home, because something tells me you’re going to have a mess to clean up.”
“Yeah, I know it. If she’s even still interested. Chances are she’ll realize that I’m holding her back and our futures aren’t exactly compatible.”
“Love makes everything compatible. You’ll find a way, but if you’re so hell-bent on this stupid fucking…break—”
“We’re not on a break,” I snapped. She was mine and I was hers…until she decided otherwise. No bullshit breaks. Wait. Were we? Had I inadvertently implied that we were? And I’d just shoved her straight at Luke. Shit. Fuck. Damn it. I rubbed my hand over my eyes and shifted my bag. It was time to go.
“Right, well, whatever. Just use this time to figure out how the hell you can compromise, too, because it seems to me like Ember’s the one doing the majority of the bending. Figure out where the hell you can bend, too, or you just might lose her.”
“Walker!” Rizzo called from the hangar door.
“Gotta go,” I said to Jagger. “You sure you can get my Jeep home?”
“Yeah, I’ll have Private Newbie and his friend over there drive me.”
“Take care. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone,” I tried to joke.
“You’ve cornered the market on stupidity for both of us, Walker.” He pulled me into a hug. “Godspeed, brother.”
“Welcome back,” Lieutenant Colonel Dolan greeted me as I hauled my bag into the barracks. How the hell did I get here? What the fuck am I doing?
“Thank you, sir,” I answered.
“I was pretty surprised to hear you were coming.”
“I’m healed, and we have a mission, sir.”
He assessed me with knowing eyes. “That we do. Well, get settled and let me know if you need anything.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I lifted my bag over my shoulder and walked down the hall until I reached my room, where I knocked. “Come in,” I heard a voice say.
The door opened—to a brand-new kid, straight out of flight school who’d been on the flight before ours. I’d seen him a few times at Campbell. “Can I help you?”
“You can get the hell out of my room,” I answered.
The kid’s eyes widened. “Uh, this is mine? I’ve been here two weeks.”
There were only eight months between our graduation dates at Fort Rucker, but somehow I felt older, weathered. “This is my room. I got my ass blown up, and now I’m back. Once you do the same, you can have it, but for now, the room on the end is empty, now move.”
The kid scurried, packing up his few belongings. “Uh, I packed up some stuff when I got here, it’s in tough boxes in the storage locker.”
“Thanks,” I muttered. At least I knew where my shit was.
Fifteen minutes later, he’d vacated, and I stared at the room I’d spent three months in. I had an instant, overwhelming need to burn it to the ground. Why not, you just fucked your entire life.
After I retrieved my footlocker of stuff and unpacked, I crawled up onto my bunk and lay down. I needed to catch a couple of hours of sleep and try to get myself on the right time schedule. I stared up at the ceiling.
Three days of traveling had left me exhausted, but sleep wouldn’t come. I ran my hand above my head, into the small opening construction had left in the wall, and sighed. They were still there. I pulled out the two worn pictures of Ember and shone my small flashlight on them.
Her smile warmed me in one, her eyes bright with love. The other, she hadn’t known that I’d taken while we were in Breckenridge a year or so ago, but the wistful look on her face as she’d looked out over the mountains was too breathtaking not to capture.
“I’m so sorry,” I told her. My thumb stroked her printed cheek, and I wished I was still close enough to really touch her, to pull us from the brink of disaster I’d brought us to. To undo the last three years and make all the right choices from the start, the ones that would protect her instead of putting her through another hell.
I had nightmares that night, but they weren’t about the crash, or even Will’s death. No, they were of the look on her face when she realized I was leaving, and my brain’s prediction that she wouldn’t be there when I returned.
I would have rather had the other ones.
My alarm went off after a shit-filled, five-hour attempt at sleep, and I climbed off the bed. I got dressed as Skype fired up, wishing there would be a certain redhead on the other end.
Instead, a middle-aged psychiatrist with glasses answered. “Ah, Josh! Good to see you.”
“Hey, Dr. Henderson.”
“Well, how does it feel to be back?”
I glanced around at the walls, my pinned pictures of Ember, and the smell of deployment. “Like I never left.”
My fingers traced over the map on my iPad. There were forty-five hundred miles between Kandahar and Ephesus. Hell, I could even drive, if I wanted to see the inside of an Iranian prison.
Ember had been in Turkey for a week now. I’d checked in with Jagger, made sure she’d gotten on the plane. He’d assured me that she had and reminded me yet again that I was a fucking moron. Maybe, but she was in Turkey. That’s what mattered. She was the closest she’d ever be during a deployment, but I’d never felt farther away from her. Was she set up there okay? Did she have everything she needed? I knew her internet was limited, so it wasn’t like I could even really check, but the worry was killer.
Was there someone there she’d rather be with? Someone who didn’t go to war or leave her alone for a year at a time? Someone who came home at five p.m. and didn’t force her to choose between the career she wanted and the one he already had? Someone who deserved her a hell of a lot more than I did?
I logged onto Facebook in a moment of supreme weakness and clicked her profile. Hell, at least it said we were still engaged. Her latest picture filled my screen, her hair in a knot on her head, her tank top and shorts dust-covered, and her smile wider than I’d seen in way too long, glowing.
She was happy in Turkey.
Happier than she’d been with me since the deployment started.
I flipped to the next picture and saw her standing in front of a huge ruin, another man’s arm wrapped protectively around her waist, and my pulse pounded.
Luke.
“They’re just friends. Shut the fuck up, or you’ll drive yourself mad,” I whispered to myself, shutting off the iPad.
She’d looked so damned…ecstatic. I wanted that for her—to live her dream, that kind of happiness filling every day of her life. She’d never have that if she stayed with me. Marriage for us would have way too many days with good-byes and tears that tasted like fear and missed holidays. Life with me meant struggling to get her PhD at one duty station, years of time we’d miss together, and burying our friends along the way.
The friends I’d killed.
Every tear she’d cried when Will had been killed was there because of my choice, my decision. Because I’d played God, and inadvertently chosen Jagger’s life over his.
It should have been me…but then Ember would have been alone.
Where the hell was the right choice?
God, she deserved that life she’d dreamed of, and I could never give it to her. But I could give her the freedom to choose it, if I could only kill my heart and give her up.
The threads of my soul were pulling apart under the strain, one half wanting to give Ember the freedom she deserved—the life she deserved with someone a hell of a lot better for her than I was. But the selfish half of me was screaming to hold on to her—to the love that had carried me through—because the thought of living without her was unimaginable.
But if I didn’t find a way to let her go, I’d end up breaking my promise to her father and crushing her dreams under my obligations.
I slipped Will’s ring from its home in my pocket and rolled it between my fingers like I could somehow channel him.
“You’re on today, too?” Rizzo asked, interrupting my thoughts as he kicked his heels up onto the table next to me in the office.
“Yep,” I answered, trying to shut off my brain.
“Well, I guess it’s only fitting. I mean, you were my last flight, too.” He cracked a smile, and I couldn’t help but give a little laugh.
“Yeah, let’s just keep it in the sky this time, shall we?”
“Nervous?” he asked.
“A little,” I admitted. We’d been here almost two weeks and had finally come up on the actual flight rotation. I’d been okay with the break. It wasn’t even the fear of flying—I’d gotten over that back at Campbell—but I was a little anxious to see how I’d react in the field.
“Good. It keeps you humble.” He punched my shoulder. “You submit that SOAR packet yet?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly.
“Is that what you really want?”
I shrugged. “It isn’t really for me.”
“It’s a hell of a life to live for someone else.”
“It’s a hell of a debt to pay.” Whether or not I wanted to, it was the most I could do to earn the life Will had given me. It wasn’t fair to Ember, and she would never understand what I’d done. Hell, I barely understood. Besides, if they invited me, it’s not like I had to assess. I’d see where Ember stood on the subject and go from there.
“And how is Mrs. Walker? I’ve missed cookie days.”
Like he’d ripped a scab off my heart, I weakened, emotionally bleeding out. At least it was internal and no one could see. “Not sure. She’s working in Turkey for a couple months.”
“Ah, international traveler. She’s a good woman. You should definitely lock that down.”
Unfortunately, I’d done the fucking opposite. “What happened to no women until you’re out?”
He scoffed. “Ah, man. That was my personal philosophy. I’m not hunting them down. You already found the right one, and given the level of shit you’ve put her through, and she’s still standing? Yeah, keeper.”
Any response I might have made was cut off by the radio call. It was go time.
Adrenaline flooded my system as we ran for the bird. The gravel flew under my feet, and my leg held steady, just as it had over the miles I’d been running the last month.
My copilot started the run-up, and I did a double take. Logically, I’d known Trivette wouldn’t be sitting there, but CW3 Stiver’s bulky frame still caught me off guard. He was efficient as we finished the checklist and waited for the official request to come in.
Six minutes after the initial call, we were airborne. The sky was crystal clear and perfect for flying as we headed toward the coordinates. I handled the controls while CW3 Stiver took the radio, coordinating the extraction.
“How’s our LZ?” he asked.
“We’re red,” the voice answered.
Fuck. There were two Alphas down there who needed immediate surgery.
“What do you say, boys?” Stiver asked over the coms.
“Let’s do it,” one of the medics answered.
I glanced over my shoulder at Rizzo. He gave a sardonic headshake and then sighed. “I’m in.”
Stiver took the controls and looked at me. For the first time in my career, I hesitated. I brushed my hand over the picture of Ember on my kneeboard—I’d replaced the blood-stained one. This wasn’t about the rush, it was about those lives on the ground that I could save…or die trying. “Let’s go.”
It’s a good day to die. I couldn’t say it, couldn’t bring myself to form the words, but that didn’t mean they didn’t race through my brain. Everything but the mission fell away, and my focus sharpened on exactly what mattered at the moment—saving those soldiers. I didn’t flinch or hesitate again.
We completed our mission, and in the process of rescuing those soldiers, I saved a little bit of myself as well. Maybe if I did this enough times, I’d be almost whole, almost enough to fight for Ember.
Or maybe she was right, and each mission was an amped-up game of Russian roulette. Maybe I was ushering in my own demise.
At least it wouldn’t be hers.