“I wish apologizing was enough. Do you feel like you succeeded? Are you all whole now?”
“Yes. It was exactly what I needed. I could have never looked at myself in the mirror knowing I stayed home when I should have been there. I couldn’t be the man you deserve unless I did it.”
“What I deserve? What I deserve is you, and I’ll take you in any way you come to me. Whole, damaged, ripped the fuck apart—you’re still mine.”
“Oh, is that so?” he spat back, his tone utterly ironic.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I’m not the only one making choices by myself, am I?” He gestured at me with a tight jerk of his hand before momentarily covering his eyes with it. “Maybe this is what I deserve. I left you when you asked me not to. I put you through hell constantly, and I hate myself for it. But I can honestly tell you that every single minute I was gone, you were in my head, in my heart. I may have doubted myself, maybe even our future, but I never once doubted you.”
My mouth dropped. “Me? Our future? All I’ve done is fight for us, Josh. Since the moment you deployed, I’ve been holding on to you by my fingernails. But I don’t let go. I don’t run away. I have faith!”
“Is that why you took your ring off? Because you still have all this faith in us?”
What? My gaze flicked to my bare left hand. “Is that why you got pissed at the hospital? Why you’re sleeping at Jagger’s?” I yanked the chain around my neck until my ring popped free of my neckline. “I never took it off. I wear it on a chain when I’m on the dig so I don’t hurt it or the artwork, but I never changed my mind. I never changed the vision of our future. Unlike you, apparently.”
He doubted us. That admission shook my foundation and suddenly, that crack dividing us felt like the Grand Canyon, with him standing on one side in that uniform while I wore myself thin trying to stretch across it to him.
His whole frame sagged, and his gaze dropped to the floor before coming back to meet mine. I saw the relief I needed, but also a lingering sadness in those brown eyes that cut through my anger. “You didn’t take it off.”
I shook my head.
“I’m an asshole.”
“It appears that way,” I answered. “You…you doubt us?”
“Not us,” he said, “but maybe where we’re headed. Do you want to take it? Do you want to run that dig?” He searched my eyes as if his very future hung on my next words.
“Yes. Of course I do. It would be absolutely amazing. But nothing is more important to me than you. I don’t want to leave you.”
His eyes slid shut momentarily. “You need to take it. It would be huge for you.”
“Yeah, it would, but our relationship is more important. I’m putting us first, because that’s what you do in a relationship. You compromise for the sake of the person you love. You put aside your selfish goals so you can build one future.”
“You’re staying because of me.” His head hung as if there was some kind of blame to be placed here…like being together was a bad thing.
“Not because of you, for you. For us.”
“It’s the same difference!”
Why was he so angry? “So what? You’d wanted to be stationed in Texas, right? Closer to your mom?”
“What does that have to do with it?”
He still wouldn’t meet my eyes, so I stepped around the table. “You chose Fort Campbell instead, so I could finish college. So we’d be together.”
“This isn’t the same.”
“You’re right. You moved your entire life. I’m only giving up two months. There will be other digs. I’m choosing you this one time.”
“That’s just where it starts,” he muttered. “God, he’d kill me.” His whisper was so soft that I barely heard it.
“What? Who are you—”
He didn’t let me finish. “This is just the beginning.”
“It’s one time. We need it.”
“And nothing I say is going to change your mind?” he asked, his mouth tightening.
“Nothing will ever change my mind about you. About us,” I said softly, hoping to soothe him. “This dig would be great, but we are extraordinary. It’s a tiny sacrifice—”
“I’m fucking sick of you sacrificing!” he shouted. Before I could respond, his head snapped up, the panic in his eyes quickly masked by aloof, untouchable ice. “I’m assessing for SOAR next week.”
A bomb detonated somewhere in the vicinity of my heart, and the fallout decimated everything in me. “Special Ops? But…” I didn’t have words. He’d never even hinted at wanting to fly for SOAR, and now he was assessing? For the first time, I felt like our relationship wasn’t even on the radar of his concerns.
Fuck, that hurt. This wasn’t the snap decision he’d had to make about deploying. No, this was a well thought out choice. Here I was, putting our relationship, our love, first, while he treated it like a side piece of baggage. The Josh I fell in love with, my rock, my whatever, never would have done that. Had he changed so much in the nine months since he’d deployed that we were no longer his priority? Red-hot rage tensed every muscle in my body. “Who are you, lately?”
He winced but didn’t pause. “This is the right thing to do. Just like you taking the job in Turkey is right for you.”