I scoffed. “Yeah, a temp job that I delayed while I came home so I could see you. Because that’s what I do, right? I put my career second while you make the decisions—while you apply for SOAR behind my back and volunteer for Afghanistan like it doesn’t affect me.” I ran over any attempt he made to speak, my fury overtaking my usual level-headedness when it came to Josh. “You are the one with the changes. Three years ago it was, ‘I’ll just do my required four years, and then I’ll get out.’ Then you went aviation, and I get it. You didn’t know that I’d be a part of your life, so I sucked up the fact that it would be another six years after you finished flight school. But this? SOAR? That’s not temporary, and it’s changing what our future looks like without so much as asking me, and that’s not fair.”
“This is what I have to do,” he pled, stepping toward me.
I retreated. “No. It’s not. You’ve never wanted to do it. Is this like that stupid Ducati? Do you need the adrenaline rush to feel alive? Is that it?”
His jaw tensed. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t, either, but you’re asking me for things I don’t know that I can give, things you never would have asked me to do nine months ago. Do you not want to be with me? Is that it?”
His mouth dropped in shock. “No. There has never been a moment since I met you that I didn’t want you—want to be with you. But you need to go run that dig. I’ll assess for SOAR. We’ll both live our…dreams.” He ended on a whisper, as if he could barely speak the lie, because he and I both knew SOAR had never been his dream.
“Separately.” My heart rebelled at the idea of building separate lives.
“Yes. This…this is what I want my future to be. Our future.” The flat tone of his voice sounded more like defeat than determination.
“What kind of future is that? The one where we see each other in passing between your deployments and my digs? Or maybe we can manage a hookup halfway between. Is that what I am now?” We stood on the edge of something I couldn’t fathom, and I had no clue how to bring us back. Not without him fighting for us equally as hard. “This isn’t how I want our life to be. How can this be the future you want?”
“I know it’s not fair of me to ask you to live like this, or how I can make you understand.” His eyes met mine, and the anguish, the honesty I saw there stole my breath. “I know that this choice—this moment—might cost me you, and it’s fucking killing me.”
“Then stop making these asinine decisions. Stop ripping me apart. Stop making these choices pretending like they’re all about me when they’re really about you! That’s why you want me to go on the dig, right? So I resent you a little less? So you feel righteous that I’m not sitting at home waiting for you to die? Because let me tell you, I had the same damn fear every day on that dig that I did while I waited at home. Maybe it was easier on you—” My mouth dropped. “Is that it? Did you figure out that it was easier for you to be gone while I was away?”
“No,” he whispered, apology streaming from his eyes. “Don’t you see that this is what’s best for you?” His head shook. “For…everyone.”
I ripped the necklace over my head and put it on the coffee table, the ring making an obscene sound of abandonment against the glass. “How do we build a future if we don’t agree on one? What? We just sleep together when we’re in the same state? Send emails?” He couldn’t mean it. There was something else there, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Was he looking for an out? “Josh, do you even still want to marry me?” The question ripped through my soul like razor blades, and the bleeding was instant, excruciating.
“I want that more than my own life. But you’re right. Living like this isn’t fair to you. The waiting. The worrying. The sacrifices. Not after what you’ve been through. Not after what I’ve promised you…all the promises I’m breaking right now.”
“Why do you have to do this? What we have…what we’ve fought for, it’s like you’re just throwing away everything we’ve wanted.”
“Sometimes the things we want aren’t the same as what we need.”
“I don’t believe that for a second. Need and want have always mixed into one when it comes to us.” There had to be an explanation, some reason that he would put us through this, jeopardize us. It had to be a sense of duty…
Or guilt.
Will.
Another shard of my heart broke, crumbled like tiny pieces of sand sifting through my fingers. Was he ever going to get past what had happened? Really and truly?
“It’s just something I feel like I have to do,” he whispered.
“No.” I shook my head. “No, it’s something Will had to do.”
His head snapped, his gaze widening. “December,” he warned.
“That ring?” I pointed to where it lay on the table. “I accepted it from Josh Walker. The boy I fell into lust with on the ice, and the man I fell in love with when he held me together. I don’t want to marry Will, or his dreams, as great as they were. You want it back on my finger? Then you act like the man I love, and not the man we lost.”
“That’s not fair.”
“None of this has been fair! We didn’t ask for any of this. We lost Will. We almost lost Jagger. We almost lost you. Hell, some days it feels like I did. But you have to stop punishing yourself for what happened. Joining SOAR isn’t going to bring him back.”