Collateral Damage (14 page)

Jesus, maybe he’d been wrong about a lot of things where she was concerned.

“We’re talking about two totally different things,” she insisted with a shake of her head. “Your family was never there for you when you were growing up in Tucson, and you don’t even have contact with your father or step-sister anymore. Not that I blame you for making that decision after the way they treated you,” she added.

He raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to point out the hypocrisy of her statement but she kept going. “I know they’re not the easiest people to get along with and I know they have issues. But they’re still my family and I love them anyway. I’m sure you think I should just cut my family off after my father’s threats the other night, but that’s not the way I work, so I can’t. God, Liam, I
can’t
, okay? And I don’t know how to explain my reasoning to you or make you understand why.” Though the pain in her voice was real, it was the grief in her eyes that sent a shock of fear through him.

In that moment he realized the truth of why she’d come here. And fuck him, but one look at her face and he knew she was actually prepared to go through with it.

It left him reeling. He couldn’t move.

Stunned, not even remotely ready to face this even though he’d known for the past few days that this was a possibility, he could only stare while his heart seized in his chest.

Honor stood and raked a hand through her hair, looking tortured as she went on. “If we got married it would literally kill Charity, and my parents as well. I can’t do that to them, but especially not Charity. I know you don’t have much respect for her, and now less than you did before, but she’s the only sister I have left. I love her.”

Didn’t take a genius to decipher the underlying message there. The punch line: Charity was more important to her than he was. So Honor was breaking up with him.

He wouldn’t accept it.

Somehow Liam found his voice, striving to stay calm, to hear what she was saying and try to understand. “I get that, but how does that mean I automatically take last place in your life?”

She blinked and frowned at him in apparent confusion. “You don’t.”

He didn’t? Her reaction threw him for a second. So she
wasn’t
here to dump him? Liam stared, certain he was missing something. “Sure looks that way to me.” Felt that way, too.

Honor shook her head, her hair swinging gently against her cheeks. “Liam, I love you, you know I do. But she needs me right now, more than she ever has. Once we get her through this I’ll be able to fix the rest and everything will be okay.”

Liam sincerely doubted it. “So what are you saying?”

She hesitated a moment before answering. “I want to keep things quiet for a while, until everything settles down.”

He didn’t think he liked where this was going. “Quiet as in how?”

“You and me. We’ll just keep doing what we were doing before all this happened and my family doesn’t have to know.”

Oh, hell no.
His jaw clenched. “You want to lie to your family and everyone else and pretend we’re not together.”

“Nothing will change between us,” she said quickly, her aqua-blue eyes wide and pleading. “It’s for the best. Just until this whole situation blows over and I figure out how to smooth everything out.”

Liam rubbed a hand over his face and looked at her. “I don’t believe this.”

Alarm sparked in her eyes. “Just for a little while,” she stressed, taking a cautious step toward him.

“You seriously think that’s gonna help the situation?” he asked, frustration clear in his voice.

“Well it won’t hurt it. I know the timing’s shitty with you being deployed, but this is only for the short-term.” She seemed sincere and truly surprised by his reaction, as if she couldn’t fathom why he wouldn’t simply jump at the chance to go along with her plan.

That only made him angrier.

After everything she’d put him through the last couple of days, knowing that they’d be separated for at least another nine months, this is the best she could offer? “Dammit, Honor, after the other night I can’t believe you’d even ask that of me!”

She drew her head back slightly, her eyes widening at his show of anger. “What?” she whispered, looking stricken.

With a growl of frustration that came from his gut he spun around and took two steps toward the stove before turning back to face her. She was still staring at him, her expression incredulous.

His temper snapped. “Seriously?” He couldn’t fucking believe this. “I’ve lived for months like that already, feeling like some dirty secret you were ashamed of.”

She gasped and paled. “I never treated you like that!”

“Yes you did. We had to constantly sneak around so your family wouldn’t find out, back before we were both deployed last time—hell, you told me even your friend Erin didn’t know we were together until a couple months ago.”

“Well what was I supposed to do? I told you what would happen if my family found out, and the truth turned out to be even worse than I imagined. You were never a dirty secret to me though.” She sounded insulted.

She didn’t get it. “But you have no problem expecting me to keep doing that, even though we’re
engaged
. You want me to go back to only dropping by your place late at night so no one will see my truck there, and not eating at local restaurants together in case someone saw us and told your family. How would you feel if I treated you like that? Acted like I was ashamed to be seen with you?” He’d goddamn hated the sneaking around from day one, but he’d gone along with it to ease her mind. Now that he understood how toxic it was to enable that kind of behavior, he couldn’t do it anymore. Not after she’d promised to marry him.

When she didn’t say anything else he pushed out a breath. “For how long this time, Honor? You think Charity’s gonna be stable enough to ‘handle’ us being engaged in another six months’ time? A year, maybe? Because the reality is she might
never
be ready to face it. So how long am I supposed to go on living like that, walking on eggshells to make sure we don’t upset her, waiting until you decide it’s safe for us to come out into the open and then get married?”

“I don’t know,” she fired back, raising her chin and glaring across the island at him, “but what the hell else do you expect me to do?”

He gave a humorless laugh. “If the answer isn’t already clear to you, then me saying it is a waste of time.”

She made a frustrated sound. “What, you expect me to just flaunt you in front of my family now? Wave my ring in their faces after all this? Make Charity want to finish the job next time and kill herself for real when they let her out?”

A chill settled deep inside him. “Your family’s never going to accept me. You knew it, knew it all along, and now that the shit has hit the fan, you want to hide everything, including me, and hope it’ll all work out in the end. It won’t, Honor, not the way you want it to, and you know it.”

At that the anger drained from her and she swallowed. “You don’t know that,” she said quietly, a hint of uncertainty in her voice.

“Yeah, I do know that. And you do too, if you’re honest with yourself.” He watched her, waiting as the tense seconds ticked past, the blood rushing in his ears.

“So you’re giving me an ultimatum too? It’s either you or them?” Her voice caught.

“No. Goddamn it, don’t put words in my mouth.” Liam hated to cause her more pain but he couldn’t let her run from this and couldn’t wait for her to realize that by hiding their relationship for now she was just delaying the inevitable. Awful as it was, in the end she would eventually have to make this same decision. “I’m saying at this point you either want to marry me or you don’t, no matter what anyone else thinks.”

“Easy for you to say,” she snapped. “How can you stand there and say that to me after everything that just happened? All I’m asking for is time. You’re leaving tomorrow, which will give things a chance to settle down and—”

“Glad the timing of me being sent to a war zone for another nine months worked in your favor,” he said, sarcasm dripping from each word.

She stared at him for a long moment, then shook her head slowly, her eyes full of hurt. “You asshole,” she said in a choked whisper.

He didn’t give a fuck if he was being an asshole right now. She needed to see the truth, before it was too late. Right now they were rushing toward the edge of a cliff and he had to keep them from sailing over it.

He stepped toward her, determined to get through to her. “
Think
, Honor. Think about what
you
want. You want a lifetime of giving in to their demands, feeling guilty and resentful the rest of your life? Because if you cave on this, they’re just gonna keep controlling you,
for the rest of your life,
and you’ll have no one to blame for it but yourself. And if you really think they’ll ever come around and accept, let alone support the idea of us getting married, then you’re lying to yourself.”

Drawing a deep, unsteady breath, she shook her head and blinked fast, her eyes flooding with tears. “They might, you don’t know that for sure. Once you’re overseas and Charity’s stronger I can get her to see my side of things, and then my parents will understand—”

“They
won’t
,” he insisted. “Goddamn it, Honor, wake up! This is your
life
you’re talking about. It’s not a dress rehearsal, we only get one shot at this,” he yelled.

“Then stop trying to force me to make that kind of decision,” she shouted back, her face flushed, eyes blazing. “I can’t choose between you and them!”

Liam went dead still at the uncharacteristic outburst, his heart seeming to freeze in his chest. He wouldn’t give in on this one. Couldn’t. It was too important. For their relationship to work he had to matter as much to her as she did him. She had to be strong enough to stand with him, not hide him.

They stared at each other in silence across the kitchen, but the small distance might as well have been miles. An invisible and unbridgeable divide he didn’t know how to cross.

Heart thudding in his ears, he held her gaze.
Fight for us,
he begged her silently,
too proud to voice it aloud
. For me.
“I can’t do it, Honor. God, I’m leaving in thirteen hours.” Liam dragged a hand through his hair. “I can’t live like that, not knowing what’s going to happen,” he finally said instead. He couldn’t go back to Bagram in this kind of suspended hell. Liam dragged a hand through his hair again.

Her eyes glistened with tears. She blinked and one rolled down her cheek. He wanted so badly to go to her and pull her into his arms, stop this fight before it was too late. She wiped it away before he could move, her expression full of bewilderment. “Then I guess I really don’t have a choice.”

The bleakness in her voice hit him like a sledgehammer. Liam couldn’t answer. His entire body was in knots, nausea swirling in his belly.

He watched in disbelief as she reached down and slid the aquamarine ring off her finger. The gem sparkled in the kitchen lights as she set it on the island countertop. She was still crying silently, her anguish clear on her face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Sorry
? He might have laughed at the absurdity of it if his heart hadn’t been cracking into a thousand pieces. It felt like someone had shoved a baseball-sized rock down his throat, all but cutting off his airway. His body wouldn’t move. There was no goddamn way he was taking the ring, because taking it would mean he accepted her bullshit decision.

No fucking way.

He looked from the ring on the shiny brown granite and up into her eyes, steeling himself against the grief there, his entire body rigid with denial. “
No
.” The word was a low rasp, the single syllable all he could force out.

Another tear rolled down her cheek and she dashed it away angrily. “I gotta go,” she choked out, and turned to leave.

Anger surged up, hot and bright, mixing with the panic exploding inside him. His hands squeezed into fists beneath his armpits to keep from reaching for her. “You would seriously just walk away from me and everything we have together?” It was unbelievable. She must be too pissed at him to think straight at the moment, it was the only explanation.

Honor stopped and threw her hands up in helpless frustration before looking back at him. “Do you think this is easy for me? It’s breaking my fucking
heart
! I feel like I’m being torn in two right now! I can’t…” She paused, sucked in a shuddering breath. “My sister almost took her own life because of us. I can’t take losing another sibling, Liam, and you know why. Please, please try to understand that. All I’m asking for is some more time. Just give me that much.”

Liam’s attitude softened slightly. She’d lost her younger sister Faith to leukemia at five years old, and Honor had never gotten over it. No one in her family had, which is why Charity’s suicide attempt was even more painful for them.

Liam wasn’t willing to lose Honor over this though. If she wanted time, if she truly thought it would help, then he’d give it to her, even if he knew the end result would be the same. But on one condition.

“I have no problem with giving you time as long as I know you’ll stand up for us. As long as I know you won’t lie about us just to spare their feelings. And this isn’t all just because of Charity,” he pointed out quietly. Her parents, especially her father, would continue to be a huge problem. Maybe she didn’t see it that way, but they would. “Don’t back down from this, and don’t lie to them. Let them try to adjust to the idea of us getting married if you want but don’t hide the truth and pretend we’re not spending the rest of our lives together. I won’t live like that.”

Honor lowered her hands, her expression becoming shuttered despite the tears on her cheeks, more remote than he’d ever seen it. It made him want to punch something. “You want me to lose my family forever, maybe be the reason my sister kills herself? I can’t live with that, so don’t ask me to.”

“And what about
us
?” he snapped, the anger taking over again. “You wanted time, I just gave it to you. But no way in hell am I willing to back away from us because of them.” This was it, the moment of truth. Either she wanted him, no strings attached, or she didn’t. He still couldn’t believe she’d actually been willing to walk out that door.