Hallowed Ground (26 page)

“This is beautiful,” she said, her nose pressed against the glass as we took to the sky over Breckenridge.

“Yeah, it is,” I said softly.

She smiled at me over her shoulder. “I love it here.”

“Me, too. This whole town makes me think of possibilities, reminds me that the things you want most, sometimes you can actually have.”

She turned to me and curled up on the seat just under my arm. “Like us.”

“Like us,” I said, then kissed her lightly, lingering just a moment to savor the way her soft lips clung to mine.

“I miss you when you’re gone.”

“You’re never far from my thoughts. I keep a picture of you on my kneeboard.”
Which currently is spattered with my blood.

“Really?” Her eyes lit up. Had I never told her? Never let her know that she was with me on every mission?

“When we go into a situation where the landing zone isn’t clear, where it’s hot, there’s a moment when we all make sure that we’re in. Everyone agrees, and then we go to extract the wounded.”

“Because you know what could happen.” She didn’t flinch, just spoke as a matter of fact, and it gave me the courage to keep going.

“Yes. I always say yes.”

“I would expect nothing less of you.”

“Even if it means I don’t come home to you?”

She took a deep breath and then laid her legs across mine. “I have faith that you’ll come home. It’s all that gets me through each day that you’re gone. I can’t live thinking you won’t. That kind of fear is paralyzing, crippling. So I choose to believe that every choice you make will bring you home to me, and save others.”

“I always look at your picture before I say yes. I know what I’m choosing in that moment—the possibility of you holding a folded flag—and I do it anyway. I chose to go after Jagger, and I could have left you holding a folded flag. I chose the possibility of saving him over the certainty of coming home to you. How can you love someone who doesn’t choose you?”

“How could I not love someone who risks his own life to save others? Josh, you didn’t choose Jagger over me. I wasn’t lying wounded and bleeding on the ground in Afghanistan. I was hanging out with Paisley in our home. I was never in danger. Stop blaming yourself. You made the right choice. I know the debt you feel you have to pay. I see the war raging just under your skin.”

“What else do you see?”

“Besides the man I love?”

“Yes.”

She sat up enough to look at me comfortably. “I see the struggle, the way you watch the news, the look you get when you’re trolling the internet for what’s happening over there. Mostly…” She searched my eyes for a long moment and let out a stuttered breath. “Mostly, I see the moments when you’re not here. Your body is here, but your mind…it’s there. And those moments scare me the most, because I’m terrified that I won’t ever truly have you home again. Not one hundred percent. Does that make sense?”

“More than you know.” I grazed my thumb over the diamond on her hand as we passed through the first station on our way up. “Do you want the ugliest truth?”

“Yes. I want everything.” She forced a half smile. “And maybe if you tell me the worst, the rest will be easier.”

“I feel like I left pieces of myself there, and I don’t just mean the physical ones.” I looped my arm over her thighs, resting my palm on her bare skin, trying to ground myself in her warmth, her light. “Our unit is still there, filling in the gaps from me, Trivette…Carter. I’m not sure I’ll really be myself until they’re all home, everyone we left there. I feel like I’m split between home and Afghanistan, like I don’t really belong here.”

“Okay,” she said in simple acceptance that meant more than she could ever know.

“And when I’m with you, that all fades away. You ground me in a different reality, where there’s just you and me. I haven’t used alcohol or drugs, because I’ve used you.”

“I knew that,” she whispered. “It’s never bothered me. It only got under my skin when you wouldn’t talk to me, like sleeping with me would answer all my questions, explain everything I needed to know. Sometimes it felt like you were distracting me from asking. That, I despised.”

“No, I was distracting myself. Answering your questions meant examining them, because I’ve never been able to hold back with you. It’s always been full measures or nothing. No halfway bullshit.”

She ran her fingers through my hair, and I groaned when she scratched her nails lightly over my scalp. God, it felt so damn good.

“I’ve always loved that about us. We’re all in. Always.”

“Yes.”

“But that’s not ugly. Nothing you’ve told me is ugly.”

My stomach dropped, and we passed through the station on route to Peak Eight. I looked up to the green mountains, their beauty overwhelming, their sheer size distorted because we were too close to accurately gauge their mass.

“Even knowing everything we have, this incredible love that we share, our beautiful life that we’re building…” I shook my head and looked down at her knees.

“Josh.” She tipped my chin. “I’m here. No matter what you’re about to say.”

“Having done that mission, medevaced the wounded… Ember, I’ve found my purpose. I’ll always go when they call. How many deployments can you wait through? How many times can I leave you?”

Fear streaked through her eyes, but she masked it before I could question her. “As many as it takes. I would rather sit home and wait for you, than spend a lifetime with anyone else. By the time the next deployment comes along, you’ll be healed, and I’ll be stronger.”

“That’s not the life you wanted. We said I’d get out after my contract, remember?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I know, and I still want that. And this is the life I wanted, because I have you. Everything else will fall in place.”

The gondola stopped, and I helped Ember to her feet. We came out at the base of Peak Eight, and I walked us toward the superlift.

“Okay, now you have me confused,” she said, her hand tightly in mine. “Everything there is to do is over there.” She pointed toward the alpine slide.

“Oh, you think I’d sign up to hurl myself down a mountain with nothing but a sled and a tube slide?”

She scoffed. “Yeah, it’s probably not nearly enough of a rush for you.”

“You wound me.” I slapped my hand over my chest as we made our way to the base of the superlift.

“Mr. Walker?” the attendant asked.

“That’s me, well, us,” I said, gesturing to a very confused Ember.

“Ms. Patricks will meet you at the top.”

“Thank you,” I told him as we sat in the middle of the four-person lift chair. It accelerated at the very edge of the platform, and we were airborne, our feet kicking without ground beneath us.

“Oh my God,” Ember muttered, trying to tuck her dress under her thighs.

I laughed. “No one can see you, babe. Let it fly free.”

“No way in hell,” she muttered. “There’s got to be cameras.”

“Then they can catch this.” I captured her face and turned it toward mine, then kissed the breath out of her. She melted into me, her dress long forgotten. I kept the kiss slow, lazy, savoring every gasp from her lips, every time her breath stuttered. There was no distraction here, no phone ringing, no one in the background. The absolute quiet was perfection.

She giggled when my hand grazed her thigh. “One-track mind?”

“When it comes to you? Always.”

The lift reached the top of the hill and slowed. I helped her dismount and swung her into my arms when she tripped. She looped her arms around my neck, and I couldn’t ever remember feeling as happy as I did in that moment, carrying the woman I loved.

We made our way through the longer strands of grass, the tiny wildflowers that dotted the terrain, until we reached a large, wooden platform. “Are you going to put me down?” she asked.

“No,” I answered, climbing the few steps it took to come out onto the stagelike surface. “There’s room for about seventy people up here. At least, that’s what they’re telling me.”

“Oh?” she asked, not really looking at the platform. Her eyes focused on the view. “Josh, it’s gorgeous.”

The mountains rose before us in stark contrast to the blue of the sky. They were covered in green to the treeline, the town of Breckenridge appearing tiny beneath us. “It’s perfect.”

“I’ve never seen a more beautiful view.”

I set her down, her little sandals plunking against the wood, and then I stood opposite her, taking her hands in mine. “I think this view is as good as my life will get. Except maybe in about a year. This is perfect.”

“Perfect for what?” she asked, tilting her head.

“For marrying me.” I watched closely as her eyes widened and her lips parted. Her gaze swept over the platform behind us to the view in front of us and then back to my eyes.

“We can get married here?”

“We can. They don’t have an opening until early next summer, so we’d have to wait until June and pray there’s no snow, but yeah. You said a mountaintop in Colorado, and I thought, what better place than where this all started for us—Breckenridge. We can have the ceremony up here, and the reception in the lodge, which I’ve been told is very sought-after. Repeatedly.”

“We can ride the chairlift?” Her eyes lit up, and I wanted to fist-pump, to shout to the world that I was this woman’s man.

“We can, dress and all.”

She laughed, her smile wide and bright, clear of the shadows that had dragged us both down lately.

“Mr. Walker?” a woman asked, walking over to us with a clipboard. “I’m Mrs. Patricks, the wedding coordinator. What do you two think? Is it what you’re looking for?”

“Well, Miss Howard, what do you say?” I lifted her hand and kissed her palm.

She spun, taking everything in one last time while she deliberated. Then she turned back to me, radiating happiness from every line in her body. “I think it’s absolutely perfect.”

“Yes!” I shouted, scooping her into my arms and lifting her above my head. She braced her hands on my shoulders, and her laugh healed another broken line in me, stitched it together with love and the promise of our future.

I slowly lowered her until I could kiss her, and then I didn’t give a hot damn if the wedding coordinator was there or not. She tasted like summer and felt like home.

We broke apart, and I turned to the open Colorado sky and shouted at the top of my lungs. “I’m marrying December Howard!”

She laughed, and damned if it didn’t put a little more life into my soul. “Louder, babe. I don’t think they heard you in Kansas.”

I took a deeper breath and yelled even louder, pretty certain the whole world got the message that time.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Ember

The next month passed in what was my idea of working perfection. We talked, laid everything bare, and accepted each other’s fears, doubts, ugly little truths. The nightmares were down to a couple of times a week, and he managed to sit through an entire movie at the theater without leaving because of the crowds.

But no matter how much progress we made, I still saw the moments where he wasn’t with me. That vacant look came over his face, his eyes focused in the distance, and I knew he was…there.

The scars faded to a light pink, his air cast came off after one week longer than he’d originally been told, and he’d even admitted that he’d screwed up by taking it off for the race. He was getting stronger in physical therapy and, two and a half months after the crash, had almost full mobility.

I took my GRE’s and was waiting on my scores. Waiting to decide if I was really going to Ephesus in a few weeks. I still leaned toward no. After all, we were finally in a great place after surviving a shit storm, and these last couple of months had been the longest we’d ever lived together. I wasn’t exactly in a rush to run off to Turkey, not when it could jeopardize what we’d worked so hard for. But we talked, we loved, we touched. We did easy, simple things like cooking dinner.

We lived.

We planned our wedding, which may end up being the single biggest reason we’d never divorce. Hell if I was ever going to go through this crap again. “Ugh. Who seriously needs that much time to book out?” I groaned, nearly throwing my iPad onto the couch as Josh did shirtless pushups on the living room floor. Good God, that man was a marvel of creation.

“Who now?”

“Photographer. We need to find a different one. If we want the one that’s recommended on the wedding site, he needs ten months.”

“Well. We’re. At. Ten. Months.” He spoke between reps, just breathless enough to make me want to slide under his body, sweat and all.

“And he’s like…two thousand dollars.”

He paused. “Damn.”

“For a deposit.”

He hit the floor. “Okay, well, I don’t plan on getting married more than once, so give the man what he wants and book him.”

“Between this and the reception…”

“Yeah, well, I married a girl with good taste. It will be fine.”

“Mom offered.”

“No,” he answered, coming to his feet. He stretched his arms above his head, the lines of his abs rippling, and I damn near fell off the couch. “Your mom is still paying for April’s school and supporting Gus. The answer is no.”

“Maybe I should think twice about grad school,” I muttered. “The money Dad left me for college is dwindling.”

“You’ll get a scholarship. I’m not stressed.” He headed for our kitchen, grabbing water from the fridge. “And if you don’t, we’ll pay for it.”

He came over, kissed my forehead, and walked toward the stairs. Even the man’s back was sexy. “Want some company in the shower?”

“That’s something I could most definitely agree to.”

There was a knock at the door.
Crap.
I hopped up and checked the window. “Paisley’s here.”
With awful timing.

“Well, have fun, and don’t forget we have that barbecue tonight.” He disappeared up the stairs.

“Hey,” I said, opening the door.

“Morning,” she answered, a small gift bag in her hand. Her eyes were slightly puffy, and her smile forced.

“Why don’t you come in?”

She nodded. “Just for a second.”

I shut the door behind her and turned to see her pacing my living room. “Is everything okay? Jagger? The baby?”

She paused, startled. “Oh, yes, they’re okay.” Paisley ran her hand over her belly like she could actually caress their son. “Everyone is fine. I just got a box from Will’s mom. I’d taken all his things down to Alabama for her to sort through, but I must have missed this.” She handed over the bag. “It’s for Josh.”

I took it by the handle, its weight far heavier than the ounces it felt. “Oh.”

“I don’t know what’s on it—the USB drive—but mine was a video.”

My heart sank. The videos I’d seen of my father since he died were such a double-edged sword. “Oh, Paisley.”

She shook her head quickly and blinked back tears. “No, no. It was…good. Good to see him. I watched it before Jagger got up,” she whispered the last.

“Why?”

“I didn’t want him to see me cry. I’m better most days, really, I am. And I don’t want him to think that my tears mean I love him less. I just…I miss Will. Even after we broke up, and he was such an ass…” She laughed. “He’s always been a part of my life, and that hole he left, that’s not something that can be filled, you know?”

My fingers tightened on the small paper handles of the bag. “Yeah, I understand that perfectly.”

Her lips quirked upward. “It’s funny how they’re the ones that die, but we’re the ones who are changed.”

“Irrevocably.”

A look passed between us, just as it had the first time we met and understood each other on a level not many people could. “We on for Sunday night dinner?”

“Always,” I replied.

“I’d better get back before he tries walking on his own again. Two months in those casts did a number on him, but he’ll get it back.”

“Well, if he starts growling, you’re welcome to hide out here and throw food through the window so he’s fed.”

She laughed and hugged me before she left. As soon as the door shut, I took out my laptop and set it up on the coffee table, then put the bag next to it. Josh jogged down the stairs a few minutes later in MultiCam pants and a T-shirt.

“What did Paisley need? I can hop over before I go to my appointment.”

“No, she’s good. But she brought you something.” I picked up the bag. “It’s from Will.”

He paused mid step, then took a breath and walked over to me, gently taking the bag from my hand. He brought out the USB drive first and raised his eyebrows at me.

“Paisley said it was a video. Do you want to see it?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly and sat next to me on the couch as I booted it up on my computer.

“Ready?” I asked, my finger on the mousepad.

He nodded, and I tapped the play button.

Will’s face illuminated the screen, and I sucked in my breath. “He looks so—”

“Alive,” Josh answered.

I took his hand as Will sat in front of the camera and gave us an awkward wave from his old apartment.

“Hey. So I guess I should start with: if you’re watching this, then things did not go the way I planned, which definitely…well, sucks. I hope that I went doing something meaningful, and if not…well, let’s just pretend I did, okay?” He smiled, and my chest tightened like a vise on my heart. “But listen. There’s something I want you to have.”

Josh pulled a ring box out of the bag. “Oh, shit,” he whispered, and then popped the case open. Will’s West Point ring stared back at him and tears instantly welled in my eyes.

“I know you called me a ring-knocker on more than one occasion.”

“You were,” Josh muttered.

“And I was,” Will agreed as if he could hear Josh. “There was this one time we were on the flight line, remember? When you told me that I knew nothing about loyalty. That I wouldn’t last a day—”

“In a real platoon,” Josh finished in time with Will, then hung his head.

“Stop kicking yourself, because you were right. I wouldn’t have, not back then. But all those times we were studying, when you were catching up on my notes in the Advanced Course, I don’t think you realized that you were really the one teaching me.” Will sighed. “Once I knew what you’d been through on your first deployment, I watched you. Watched how you took on the world like you’d never been scarred by it. I watched how you loved Ember, how you’re protecting her even right now while you’re in Afghanistan and I’m just getting home from fixing her disposal.”

I whimpered, my hand flying to cover my mouth. I’d seen him right before he filmed this. He’d stood in my kitchen, helping me, talking to me, and died a few short weeks later. The unfairness of it was devastating.

“Being around you taught me the value of friendship, and I know you guys didn’t want to let me into your little club, but you did. And I’m thankful. I learned more about loyalty in the last two years from being with you guys than I did in four years at the Academy.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Okay, so tell Ember to take care of Paisley. I know that’s Jagger’s job, but I also know that what we do means we’re not around as often as we’d like to be. And you should probably marry her, because I’m telling you that you’re not going to find a better woman.”

My teeth sank into my lower lip as tears spilled down my cheeks.

“So, I guess, thank you for teaching me the things I needed to learn. Thank you for being an asshole and showing me my own…assholishness…I guess. You’ve taught me perseverance, and brotherhood, and from the reports we’re getting back here of those missions you’re flying over there, the rescues you’re making, well, I have a lot more to learn from you once I get there. Maybe I can talk you into going SOAR with me.” He grinned.

“But just in case, live well. Love hard. Try to follow a goddamn rule every once in a while, just to throw people for a loop, okay?”

He stood, and I wanted to yell at him not to turn off the video, just to give us another second, but he reached for the camera—and paused, coming back into eyesight. “For the record, I should have moved that fucking polar bear with you. Bye, brother.”

A click later, and the screen was black.

Josh snapped the ring box shut and dropped his head over his hands, sucking in long, deep breaths. “I killed him.”

I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and leaned into his arm. “You gave him what he desperately needed. Friends. A family. Everything else was out of your hands.”

“Logically, I know that, but I close my eyes and see his face above me, taking those shots.”

“I’m so sorry.” I pressed a kiss into the fabric of his shirt.

“Me, too,” he said quietly. His lips brushed my forehead, then he stood. “I’ll be back after my appointment, okay?”

He was gone a few moments later, and I pressed play again, pausing when Will grinned. I wanted to remember him just like that. “It mattered, Will,” I told him. “Your death. It mattered. It will always matter to me.”

I was going to fucking kill him. “Dead, dead, dead,” I muttered as I stood in the garage doorway. What the hell had he been thinking?

Jagger whistled low, leaning against the doorframe, crutches braced under his arms and giant boots on his lower legs. “So this is how death-by-fiancée begins…”

“Shut up,” I snapped. “And are you even supposed to be walking around?”

“It’s part of my physical therapy,” he flat-out lied. “Seriously. I’m cleared for weight-bearing casts.”

“Paisley’s going to kill you if you overdo it.”

“What she doesn’t know isn’t going to hurt her.” His eyes shifted to the Ducati.

Well, I sure as hell knew about the motorcycle now. “I can’t believe he did this.”

Jagger sucked his breath in through his teeth and shook his head. “You know, Josh is my best friend, but on this…yeah, I’ve got nothing.”

“Speak of the devil,” I muttered as Josh pulled into the driveway behind me. He hopped out of the Jeep, the doors long since removed in the hot weather.

“Hey, babe.” He walked over and kissed my neck. “Oh! She made it! Damn, I thought she was being delivered tomorrow.”

“Yeah, well, I hope that bike looks good wearing an engagement ring.” Jagger laughed and left us, walking with tiny, excruciating steps back to his own house.

“What?” Josh asked. “Do you need me to carry you, old man?”

“It’s going to be hard for you to walk once she kicks you in the balls, man.” He flipped Josh the bird and kept going.

“Why would you do that?” Josh asked, but then caught the look of hell in my eyes. “Whoa.”

“You brought that fucking Ducati here?” I spat the words at him.

His mouth opened and closed a few times. “My mom said it couldn’t stay there.”

“So you thought it should come here?”
And invade my sanity?
Next to Josh’s Harley, it looked like the brother no one in the family wanted to talk about…because he was still in jail, and somehow knocking up nuns.

“Bad idea?” he asked honestly.

“Only if you wanted to ever have sex again because your fiancée is still hugely pissed about the death machine in her garage.”

We stood there, side by side in relative silence for a moment while he digested the news that his pretty little baby wasn’t welcome.
Because it’s the spawn of Satan.

“Okay, well, I love that bike, so we’re going to have to come to a compromise. I swear on my life that I will never race it again.”

I side-eyed him. “A compromise like it not being here?”

He cringed. “Like a storage unit nearby?” His tone was pleading.

I wanted to kick the damn thing over, but that was about as mature a move as the one I’d pulled running away from him in Arizona. “How about we go to this barbecue and we’ll talk about it later?”
After I find an appropriate junkyard.

His entire posture relaxed. “Thank God. I mean, yes, that sounds like a plan.”

“Nice. Go get changed. I’ll meet you in the car.”

The barbecue was in full swing by the time we made it to the Trivette’s house on the outskirts of Clarksville. It was a beautiful two-story with a wraparound porch and a giant backyard that was currently full of families.

“Walker!” Rizzo called out, waving us over.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” Josh asked, taking the offered beer. I declined, since someone would have to drive home so we could fight over the silver speedster in our garage.

Rizzo lifted his hand, squeezing his fingers. “I’m healed up. Got the all-clear and everything. How about you?”

Josh lifted the leg of his cargo shorts to expose the long, pink scar. “Good to go. I actually got my up-slip today.”

My stomach hit the floor. “You did?”

“Yeah,” he said with a huge grin. “I’m ready to get back up there. I meant to tell you, but we got distracted.”

That’s a word for it.
I shouldn’t be worried, right? He needed to get back in the seat for his own well-being. Besides, it wasn’t like people were going to shoot at him on Fort Campbell. This was for the best.