Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
I start to kiss her back, and there’s grief and sadness and anger tangling between us. There’s the sharp edge of two people who’ve been circling something for too long.
She slides her fingers into my hair, while I kiss her like a man who’s spent months starving. A growl comes from my throat as I pull her so close, our bodies bleed together.
When the need for air finally forces us apart, I’m breathing hard.
“Elena.”
“I know,” she whispers.
I almost laugh at that. “Do you?”
She keeps a hand on my face, another on my shoulder. “I know you’re scared of hurting me. I know you think your damage makes you dangerous to love.” She slides a hand down to my chest. “None of that changes what’s here.”
Something in me cracks open fully.
Outside the room, the station carries on with the ordinary sounds of people doing work. Beyond that, there’s a small mountain town that has no idea an old war might be closing in.
I look at the woman Tyler loved, and I understand, with a grief that will never entirely leave me, exactly why.
I stroke my thumb over her cheek. “I care about you. More than I know what to do with.”
Then I kiss her again.
CHAPTER 30
ELENA
For the second night in a row, I lie awake long after the house has gone still around me.
The refrigerator hums, and the heater kicks on and off. The settling house creaks now and then.
There are too many small noises, and too much room for thoughts between them.
I stare at the ceiling and replay everything Calder said yesterday and in our earlier conversations. About the panic, and the way certain words or sounds could drag him somewhere else without warning. About the fear in his eyes when he admitted he didn’t know if he was too broken for anything real.
My chest aches again, just like it did yesterday. For him. For Tyler. For T.J. For myself, in a way I haven’t let myself feel in a long time.
Three years.
Three years of living around a hole no one had ever properly explained. Three years of folded flags and careful condolences and words like sacrifice and classified and hero, while the truth was buried behind official silence.
Three years of building a life on top of grief that never made sense.
Tyler hadn’t died the way they told me, and Calder carries pieces of that night in his skin and bones. So do Buck and Weston. They’re all walking around with ghosts the Navy apparently found convenient to leave inside them.
And now the ghosts are hunting us down.
Tonight, anger burns hotter than fear. Anger at the military, at the lies, at the faceless officials who decided I didn’t deserve the whole truth about my own husband’s death. They could’ve at least given me a close version of the truth, scrubbed of names and locations.
Braided through it all, almost impossible to separate, is the memory of Calder looking at me like he was braced for rejection. As if he’d bared what he thought was the ugliest part of himself to me, just to get the inevitable over with.
As if he truly believed that was all I’d see.
I turn on my side and reach for my phone before I can talk myself out of it.
It’s late enough that I hesitate when my thumb is over his name, but I think about all the nights I’ve spent alone with my own thoughts, and all the nights he’s probably done the same, and I press call.
He answers on the second ring. “Elena? Everything all right?” His voice is thick and rough, but his tone is alert.
“I’m fine. Everything’s all right.” He lets out a breath. “Did I wake you?” I ask.
“No.” I know he’s lying to be kind.
“Can you come over?”
My question is met with a couple of seconds of silence. “Now?”
“Yes.” My fingers tighten on the phone. “If you want to.”
After another pause, he says, “I’m on my way.”
My heart is beating too fast when I set the phone down. It’s not fear and not exactly nerves. More like resolve or hope.
By the time his truck rolls into my driveway, I’m at the door in a sweater and leggings, my feet bare on the wood floor. I open the door before he can knock.
Calder’s standing on the porch in a black jacket and jeans, his dark hair tousled from the wind, his face shadowed and serious. He scans me quickly as soon as I open the door. “Everything okay?”
The concern in his voice warms me against the chill air as I step aside to let him in. “Yes. I just … wanted to see you.”
He comes in quietly and closes the door with care. Even in the dim light from the lamp by the couch, he seems to take up all the space around him. He carries himself with a restrained stillness that always makes me think of something powerful being held tightly in check. I noticed it long before I found out who he was.