He closed his eyes, his jaw clenched. “You can’t say things like that. Someone will take advantage of you.”
“Obviously not.” She eyed him expectantly and all of her bravado melted away as that tiny voice whispered doubts in her head. “Unless you don’t, you’re not...” She pursed her lips and shook her head, unable to finish asking if he wasn’t attracted to her.
“You’re beautiful, sweet thing. Your letters during basic and BUDs kept me sane.” Jack paused. “I’ll admit I thought about you more than I should have. In ways I shouldn’t have. But, Betsy, you’re Caleb’s little sister and where I’m going, I can’t put that life on you.”
Betsy accepted what he said, but it wasn’t surrender. Fate didn’t make mistakes. She grabbed his hand. “Then I’ll wait for you. Just promise you’ll always come home no matter what it takes.”
He took off the tags from around his neck and pressed the warm metal into her hand. “I promise.”
She knew there was nothing else to say then but goodbye.
They drove to the station in silence, and when it was time for him to board, Betsy gave him a fierce hug.
Rather than tell him she loved him again, she whispered in his ear, “Don’t forget your promise.”
“I won’t.” He brushed his lips lightly over the crown of her head and boarded the bus without looking back.
Betsy stood alone in the pale, sodium light of the station with his dog tags clutched in her fingers and kept her own promise. She didn’t cry until the bus was gone.
* * *
THAT WAS THE last time she’d seen him, before todday.
Now he was back and her stupid heart didn’t understand how much things had changed. How much he’d changed.
Betsy knew the only way this could end was badly—that was one thing her heart did understand.
And it didn’t care.
JACK COULDN’T FACE HER after what had happened.
He’d been so weak, so powerless, so broken. His failure had been splayed wide in front of her like an autopsy, but she hadn’t turned away from him, which was worse somehow. Maybe because it was obvious she thought he could be fixed.
But some things, once broken, couldn’t be pieced back together—parts were missing.
Like Jack. He wasn’t whole, and he never would be.
Despite what had happened last night, he had to face her again, if only to make her take that check. Jack knew he owed her, and the money was the only thing he had to give.
A small voice reminded him that wasn’t quite the truth. He had his wreck of a body, and if her kiss was any indication, she seemed to want it. She couldn’t look at his face, but she’d pressed herself up against him, her sweet, lush curves so inviting.
He knew she was still in love with the idea of him, still wanted the golden boy he’d been when he left. Maybe that was what she needed—the ugly truth to crush the fantasy.
So maybe she’d let him go. The fire in her eyes, the determination...
Now he was lying to himself. He wanted Betsy, and as far as he’d fallen, if she’d have him, he wouldn’t be able to say no. Touching her was bittersweet because it was the only time he could feel anything more than pain.
He eyed the whiskey bottle on the table, and when he would have reached for it, he stopped. Next to it was the envelope that held Betsy’s check, and it sat there like an accusation.
Jack swore and picked up the envelope instead of the bottle. He’d need it when he got home anyway.
It occurred to him that rather than see her again, the embodiment of the life that was lost to him, he could simply give it to Betsy’s mother and leave. He’d promised Betsy he’d come back, and so he had. Their accounts would be as even as they ever could be.
Yes, he’d leave before he shattered the image of the hero she believed him to be, and the heart of the girl who’d loved the man he’d been.
His decision made, he grabbed the envelope and headed to his car. Driving with the prosthesis wasn’t a challenge, and he knew that he’d fared better than most with the cutting-edge technology of the endo/exo implant—the titanium mesh implanted in his femur having actually become part of him. He’d had less downtime, fewer struggles, and logic told him that he had a lot to be grateful for.
But logic wasn’t there with him in the dark. It should have been; he’d been a SEAL—the best of the best. He stared death in the face and dared it to come take whatever it thought it could, and yet, when the flames came and he could smell the stench of his own burning flesh in his nose— He pushed the thoughts away, unwilling to face his cowardice.
When the house came into view, a sickening wave of nostalgia washed over him and turned his stomach. He remembered every night he’d spent in that house. The tree house at the back of the property where he and Caleb had hidden out from India when she was on a tear, his first real kiss in the closet in the downstairs family room during a middle school party, and Lula Lewis’s fried chicken on a Friday night after a home football game.
The house lived and breathed with memories that were better left undisturbed.
A sudden dread hit him. As if, if he took those last few feet, everything would change, but that was stupid. There was nothing behind door number one that could change what he’d come to do—what he had to do.
He moved forward, one foot in front of the other.
The brightly painted red door opened, and rather than Lula, it was Betsy standing there.
Her features were drawn and tight, some heavy burden tugging her shoulders down, the corners of her mouth, and the weight extinguished the light in her eyes.
Seeing her like that tore at him with sharp claws. That was exactly what he feared he’d do to her. He realized Betsy wasn’t the only one attached to an ideal. Jack needed to believe nothing could touch her, that she was safe from all the bad things in the world. Especially him.
“I came to give you this.” He thrust the envelope at her.
She drew her gaze up slowly, her regard burning him through to his bones. Suddenly he felt even worse about offering her the check than he did not reading her letters. She hadn’t said anything, hadn’t been angry, but it was all there in the pools of her eyes. The acknowledgment of everything he hadn’t wanted to say to her, but somehow she knew.
“I don’t want your money.” Betsy turned away from him, but he grabbed her wrist.
Jack found himself watching the scene from a place outside time. A place where his rational mind could protest what his body wanted and no one would hear it. Instead of releasing her when she turned, he pulled her into his arms.
She came to him easily, all soft sweetness. Betsy clung to him like a life raft in a hurricane—and he thought the description apt because he was ravaged by the storm the same as she was.
Touching her felt as if all of his nerve endings were on fire at once when before, they’d been numb. It was pain, it was bliss. It was everything he wanted and everything he feared.
If he could feel all of this from a simple embrace, what would it be like if he kissed her again?
The moment hung between them, gravid with everything they’d left unsaid and undone. The weight of a semi crushed down on his sternum, and the envelope burned his fingers.
She pulled away from him slowly as if moving through water. Betsy slipped her hand into his. She led him inside and toward the stairs.
Toward her