“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.”