Hallowed Ground (25 page)

My eyes fluttered shut as the wind roared past us, tears slipping down my cheeks nearly unnoticed. I was so tired. Tired of the fear that hadn’t left me since the moment he’d told me of the deployment. Weary to my bones of the eggshells we’d surrounded ourselves with since he’d been back. Exhausted from lack of sleep, lack of understanding, lack of knowledge. I was holding on to Josh so tightly that every inch of me had been scraped raw.

We pulled into the driveway, and I slid from the bike before he turned it off, already headed inside with my helmet in hand before he called my name. “December.”

I shook my head, all the fight simply…gone.

The air-conditioning hit my face, chilling the tear tracks, and I wiped them away with the back of my sleeve on my way to the bedroom. I stripped quickly, wanting every piece of that motorcycle gone. What a beautiful start of a night. I’d finally felt like we were connecting again on the level we needed, only to end it worlds apart.

“Talk to me,” Josh said, shutting the bedroom door behind him.

“No point.”

He took my face in his hands, tilting it to his. “There is always a point.”

“Why? You won’t listen. Maybe I’m not enough of a rush for you, or whatever it is you’re seeking—whatever it is you need.”

His eyes, deep brown in the dim lighting, searched my face, widening in a panic. “You’re everything I need.” His mouth crashed to mine, hard and insistent. My cry was muffled against his lips, but he jerked back. “Babe?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head free of his hands and backing away. “No. You’re not going to sex your way out of this.”

“It was just a race.”

“It wasn’t just a fucking race!” I yelled. “It’s everything! It’s the bike, and the speeding, and the sex, and the nightmares. But most of all, it’s the ‘I’m fine’ and the silence. God, Josh, that’s the killer. You act like I don’t know you well enough to see that you’re not fine. None of this is fine, and you won’t let me in. You won’t let me help, and that’s not a partnership. That’s not a marriage.”

“What do you want me to say?” he asked, raking his hands through his hair.

“Something! Anything that’s real. You can talk to Paisley? To Jagger? But I’m left wondering what’s going on in your head…in your heart.”

“I have always loved you. I will always love you. That will never change.” He stepped toward me, and I retreated.

“Then give me something to hang on to.”

“You don’t want inside my head.” He moved back until he leaned against the closed door.

“Yes, I do! I’m not some weak little girl, Josh. Don’t treat me like one. The distant look in your eyes, the way you drive, even the way you make love to me…you’re not fine. We both know it. And I’m trying. I swear, I’m trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do—where I’m supposed to push, where I’m supposed to give you space—but I can’t because you won’t even tell me if I’m in the ballpark. Am I supposed to just stand here while you self-destruct?”

“I am doing the best I can.” Every line in his body was tense, like he was ready for the fight…or to flee.

“Then talk to me. Let me help you.”

“You can’t,” he said softly, his eyes dark with a sadness I couldn’t seem to touch, to heal.

“Let me try. Please. Don’t shut me out.” I reached for him, and he stepped to the side, avoiding my touch. “Josh, please!”

“Damn it! Has it ever dawned on you that I don’t want you to know? That you are the last person I want in my fucking head? It’s with me every second, every day. No matter what I do, it’s there, waiting…festering. The only time I can escape the thoughts, the memories, the nightmares is when I’m with you. When I’m kissing you, holding you, inside you. You are the last safe place I have in this world, and you’re going to have to forgive me if I’m not ready to give that up and trade it for the look in your eyes when you realize what an ugly mess it is in here.” He tapped his heart. “Forgive me if I’m not ready for you, of all people, to see me as broken.”

“You’re breaking me.”

He sucked in his breath.

“Every time you keep me in the dark, every story I hear secondhand, every reckless act you pull, every time you reach for me out of need instead of desire…you break off another piece.”

Pain contorted his face for a second before he swallowed and looked away. “I’m sorry for that. You deserve better.”

“Josh.” I whispered his name as I moved forward, cupping his cheek in my hand. “I deserve you. But I deserve all of you, and not just what you’re willing to let me see.” He stared at me so long that I finally realized he still wasn’t going to say anything. “You really can’t let me in, can you?” I whispered.

“Let’s go to bed.” His voice dropped.

Just when I thought my heart couldn’t hurt any more, another slice opened me up, bleeding and raw. We readied for bed in a tense silence that didn’t dissipate once we’d climbed beneath the sheets.

“I love you,” he whispered to my back.

I turned over to face him, the contours of his face lit by moonlight through the window. “Then let me in, Josh.”

His eyes closed as if he was in pain. “I can’t.”

I closed the distance between us, putting my palm to his cheek. “You know the thing about the crater today? That giant impact?”

“That tiny, red-haired meteorite,” he added, looking at me as the memory softened both of us. But in my case, it was more like a slow breakdown of everything I’d used to hold myself together the last month.

“That meteorite wasn’t so small to start with. Half of it burned up in the atmosphere, just trying to get to Earth. The rest of it… It almost all vaporized upon impact. It made that impact, for good or bad, but all that’s left of it are tiny, scattered pieces.”

His lips parted, little lines forming between his eyebrows. “December.” He said my name like a prayer, a plea, but when nothing else followed, I rolled onto my side away from him.

I slept like crap, and when Mom texted in the morning, I took it as a sign and packed my bag in silence.

I was in a cab for the airport before he’d even realized I was gone.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Josh

The sunlight streamed through the window, hitting me in the face as I opened my eyes. No matter how late I slept, I was still exhausted. Always exhausted.

Ember must have beaten me out of bed, because her side was empty. I rested my forearm over my eyes after I saw the time on my cell phone. Ten o’clock. Damn, that fight had been brutal. I should have gotten up early, gotten her coffee. I should have done a lot of things. Instead I’d given in to my pride, my need for that thirty-second thrill, my stupid craving for the speed, and I’d let Evan push me into a race.
Like he even had to push hard.

Her eyes, God, they’d killed me, but how could she understand?

She can’t when you won’t tell her, you asshat.

I groaned, wishing I could crush the tiny conscience that hammered away at me. My feet hit the floor, and I pulled on shorts and a Pearl Jam T-shirt before going in search of my fiancée. Mom only looked the other way on the tattoos as long as they weren’t thrown in her face.

The house was quiet in an uncomfortable way. Something was off. The tiles were cold under my feet as I walked into the kitchen, where Mom sat at the small table. She gave me a sad smile. “Good, you’re up. I poured you some coffee.”

“Where’s Ember?” I asked as I took the seat across from her, where a still-steaming cup of coffee waited.

“She’s gone,” Mom said softly, her eyes nearly dripping sympathy.

I sat up straight. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”

Mom shrugged. “I caught her on the way out. She said her brother broke his nose at hockey camp, and she was headed home for a couple of days to see him.”

“Gus, what? Why wouldn’t she tell me? I would have gone with her.” The chair squeaked as I pushed back from the table and stood. I needed to pack and find a flight.

“Sit down, Josh.”

Her tone didn’t allow for argument, and I did as ordered. She gave me “the look.” The one that my five-foot-three mother used to send me running for the hills. “Mom?”

“We haven’t really talked about what happened to you…over there.”

Fuck my life. Her, too?
“Mom…”

“Stop. We didn’t talk the first time, and I thought maybe that was for the best, to let you deal with it in your own way. I figured as long as I didn’t get calls from the police department that you’d been racing, you were fine.”

“I don’t race the Harley.”

“Well, then I should have set that Ducati on fire,” she said with a smile.

I tapped my fingers on the table, knowing that anything I could have said would have only earned me another foot deeper in the hole I’d apparently dug. “I was fine.”

“If you’re so fine, then how did you send your fiancée fleeing first thing in the morning? She didn’t even pause for coffee.”

“She…” I shook my head. “I raced the bike last night.”

“Joshua Walker.”

“It was stupid, but Evan—”

“Evan? We moved away from here for a reason. I know you were hurt in Afghanistan, but I don’t think it knocked you back eight years.”

I dropped my head to my hands. “She wants things I can’t give. I’m not capable.”

Mom reached across the table until her hands covered mine. “Then figure out how to give them to her.”

“Maybe she’s better off without me. Did you ever think of that? Twice she’s had notification teams at her door, Mom. Twice. She’s buried her dad. We buried Will, and she almost buried me. How much more do I have a right to ask of her? At what point does me pushing her away become a mercy? She told me I’m breaking her, so how long until I destroy the one thing I love most?”

“What you two have is something I’ve never seen, never been lucky enough to have. You don’t let that just walk out. I’m incredibly proud of the man you are, Josh, never more so than the way you love December. But I’ll kick your ass from here to the Colorado border if you don’t pull your shit together.”

Our eyes locked and I knew she’d do it. “What’s inside me, it’s ugly.”

“You let her decide what’s ugly. You owe her that much.”

Let her go,
my conscience screamed at me, but my heart couldn’t contemplate a life without her in it, not when she was the reason it beat in the first place. “Okay, let me find a flight.”

She tilted her head. “You have fifteen minutes to pack. You’re on the one p.m. flight into Eagle County.”

“What?”

“She’ll be in Breckenridge, at their cabin. That’s where her mother is sending her.”

“You talked to her mother and already booked a flight?”

She peered at me over her coffee. “Not all of us sleep in like seventeen-year-old boys.”

I let the jibe slip. “You’re not mad that I’m leaving? I’ve only been here a few days.”

She smiled at me. “I just needed to see you, Josh. Every time you’re hurt I can’t seem to breathe until I lay eyes on you. I’ve done that now, and don’t need to hover, or tend you like a nurse. I need you to go be the man I raised, so you don’t lose me my daughter…or my future grandbabies.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I stood from the table.

“And Josh?”

I turned at the doorway.

“Make arrangements for that damn Ducati or it becomes my bonfire.”

I gave a single nod. “Done.”

Everything was ready. Or, at least, I hoped it was.

I’d gotten to the cabin two hours ago, parked my rental in the driveway, located the hide-a-key, and stocked the place with groceries for the next three days. That was all the time we had, but damned if I wasn’t going to use every minute of it.

The sound of tires crunching the gravel of the driveway sent my pulse racing. What if she was pissed that I was here? What if she refused to talk to me? What if I’d already blown it?

While my heart was telling me to get a grip, that this was Ember, my head had spun off into the twilight zone of insecurity and was in no hurry to bring its ass back to reality.

What if she really was better off, and I was just prolonging the inevitable? As hard as I tried, I couldn’t get Rizzo’s whole stance out of my head. Maybe he was right, and I’d done Ember the biggest injustice simply by falling in love with her.

Shut the fuck up. Open the door and fight for your woman.

My hand turned the knob before my head was ready, and then I stepped out onto the porch. The dying afternoon light caught in her hair, illuminating the strands of red like a flame as her mouth hung open just a fraction, her eyes wide. “Josh?”

I leaned on the heavy porch railing, my arms aching to hold her but knowing I needed her to come the rest of the way on her own. “Hi.”
That’s the best you have?

“How did you know where I’d be?” Her footsteps were light as she came up the wooden steps.

“My mom called your mom and the rest is…” I gestured between us with my hands.

“Ahh.” She nodded, biting her lip. Her eyes dropped to her toes, and those four feet that separated us felt like a giant canyon.

Not for long.

“I’m an asshole,” I said, very matter-of-fact, and her head snapped up.

“Josh, no…well, maybe a little.”

“How’s Gus?”

“He’s already given us a list of A-list actors who have broken their noses. He says it gives him character.” She smiled but still held herself away from me. The distance between us, physical and emotional, was killing me.

I moved toward her and cradled her face in my hands. Her skin was unbelievably soft as I stroked my thumbs up her cheekbones. “Are you mad that I’m here?”

“No,” she whispered. “Embarrassed, a little, but never mad.”

“What reason do you have to be embarrassed?”

She rolled her eyes, instantly inflaming my need to kiss her. Ember was too damn cute. “I snuck out this morning because I just needed some space. Needed to breathe. I ran away like some drama-filled teenager instead of staying to fight things out with you.”

“We all need a little time to think sometimes,” I said, moving my hands through her loose, insanely gorgeous hair to the back of her head.

“I literally ran home to my mother, Josh. She then told me that she wasn’t going to watch my mope fest and to come up here if I wanted to breathe.”

“And now?”

“This is the first full breath I’ve taken since I left you this morning.” She sighed, a look passing between us that said everything words couldn’t.

“Yeah, I get that. You’re my oxygen,” I admitted. “I woke up without you this morning, and realizing I’d driven you to that—to leave me—I never want to feel that again. And yet, there’s still this part of me that says you’d be better off if I just let you go.”

“Josh.” Her face fell.

“No, if you want in, and I mean all the way in, that’s where this leads. There are ugly parts of me, December. Parts that think I should have spared you all this pain and walked away years ago. Parts that hate myself for loving my job, loving my mission. Parts of me that won’t stop screaming that my choice killed Trivette. That I killed Will, and he should be alive. Not me. That I’ll never live up to earning that sacrifice.”

“That’s not true,” she whispered.

“What’s true is a very clouded concept in my head. On one hand, I’m shoving you away from this nightmare because you’re not a part of it. You are the one place that isn’t shadowed to me. On the other hand, I’m holding on to you as tight as possible, because the moments I’m kissing you, holding you, it all evaporates and I’m whole.”

“And you think you’d lose that?” she asked.

“Like I said last night, I’ve never been willing to risk it. The way you look at me, the way you see me, Ember—I’m not sure that guy exists in me anymore. You said that I’m breaking you, but if you see those broken pieces of me…” I shook my head, words failing.

She brought her hands up slowly to my arms. “Josh, it’s all just you. Every tiny piece, whether you like it or not, it all combines to make you who you are, and I am wildly and desperately in love with you. Nothing is ever going to change that. There is nothing you could do or say that could make me stop loving you, so it would be a lot easier if you stopped trying to push me away. I don’t need you to lay bare every detail. I’m not pushing you for that, but if you can’t lean on me for support, then what are we doing? Why are we getting married?”

“Because even the pieces of me that know I’m in no shape to love you, can’t stop loving you. I don’t exist without you. You’re in every fucking beat of my heart. You are my first thought when I open my eyes. You were my last thought as we crashed. I almost ruined you. I…I could still ruin you.”

Her eyes didn’t leave mine—they were open, honest, and bluer than the Colorado sky above us. “I made my choice years ago. I knew all of this was a possibility, and I chose you. I still choose every part of you, every day.”

“And when you realize that those parts of me might be too broken to fix?”

She smiled, so beautiful and accepting. “Then I’ll fall in love with the broken pieces. You just have to trust me.”

“Okay.” My throat closed, emotion welling in my chest so powerfully that I was afraid of exploding from the pressure. I closed my arms around her as she tucked her head under my chin. Holding her was so easy when the world around us got too complicated. Everything else slipped away until I was left with the simple, incorruptible truth that I would always love December Howard.

I just prayed my love wouldn’t destroy her.

The next morning, I had coffee waiting when she stumbled out of the bedroom, her hair a riotous mess that made me want to take her right back to bed. But we weren’t doing that, not yet.

She’d accused me of sexing out of conversations, and she’d been right, and maybe last night we’d both been too raw to really talk, too emotionally exhausted to do more than curl around each other and sleep, but today I was coming out with all guns blazing.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” I said, passing her a fresh cup of coffee, already creamed and sugared.

“Hmmm,” she mumbled, sipping at the cup.

“Sleep okay?”

She looked over the cup at me. “Yeah. You only woke up once, right?”

Don’t lie. Lay it bare.
“Once that you woke for. I got up again around three a.m. but fell right back to sleep.”

“Are the nightmares getting worse?” She hopped onto the counter, and déjà vu hit me. It was the same exact place I’d kissed her for the first time.

“No. They’re actually less frequent, less violent. If they weren’t, I’d be worried.” I leaned back against the counter, keeping a respectable distance between us, or I’d have those pajama pants around her ankles in two seconds.

“Good. That’s good.”

“I want to take you somewhere.”

She gave me a wan smile. “Last time that didn’t work out too well for you.”

“Yeah, well, no bike here. Just us.”

“Can I shower first?”

The image of water dripping down her tight little body took over every brain cell.

“Josh?”

I blinked. “Yeah, shower. All good.” A week without touching December and I was ready to combust. How the hell had I survived three months of deployment?

She hadn’t been standing in front of you.

I waited forty-five minutes while she showered, dried her hair, and dressed. I didn’t go after her, touch her, hell, even so much as peek. It was an incredibly long forty-five minutes.

“Ready,” she said, coming from the hallway in a baby blue sundress. Her hair was up in some kind of messy knot, with soft tendrils that caressed her cheeks. I clenched the arm of the couch to keep from sending my hands up her skirt. If sex had been my drug of choice, I was sure as hell going through withdrawals.

“You look…edible,” I said, getting to my feet.

“As do you,” she said with a smile, gesturing to my khaki shorts and short-sleeve button-down. Luckily it was green, so we weren’t too matchy-matchy.

“Shall we?” I offered my hand, and she took it. A ten-minute drive in my rental car, and we pulled up to the ski lifts in Breckenridge.

“What are we doing?”

I simply smiled and held open her door. “Trust me.”

She arched her eyebrow, knowing full well that I’d just used her own words against her. We walked, hand in hand, to the gondola station, waited our turn, and after I slipped the attendant a fifty, had a private ride to Peak Eight.