Chapter 3
Her husband stood in her doorway and damn it if her heart didn’t act like he was a sight for sore eyes. His shoulders were broader than she remembered, weighed down by the heaviness of the war. There were tired lines around his mouth, as though he’d forgotten how to smile. But his face was still the same. Lined more with weariness and too much time in the sun but that did nothing to detract from his looks.
It wasn’t his looks that kept her longing for this man. No, it was a deeper, more secret part. The part of her heart that had loved a good man. An honest man. And part of her, the tiny part of her heart that soared when she saw him, still loved him.
She wasn’t prepared to deal with this today. She stood as he stepped into her office. She wanted to go to him. To cross that space and feel his arms wrap around her like they had once upon a time. But that would be just another lie. Like when he’d told her that he missed her, that he’d do anything to be home with her and the kids. Like when he’d told her he’d never betray the vows they’d made.
Just like everything between them these days.
She shoved aside the crushing pain that threatened to break her yet again. In a thousand lifetimes, she would never be able to explain what he’d done to her. His quiet abandonment, the empty place in their lives he’d left unfilled.
He looked tired. She wished she didn’t notice. Behind the rims of his thin black glasses his eyes—those gorgeous, almost-black eyes—were filled with sadness and regret. There was something more there now. A stark determination she hadn’t seen in…she couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked like this.
For one moment, the lies and the fear and the sadness were forgotten and she savored the sight of her husband. A man she’d loved for as long as she could remember. But she couldn’t do this anymore. Not to herself. Not to their children.
Damn it, she was tired of caring about this man. She’d thought she’d loved him enough for both of them. She’d never been so wrong in her entire life.
“You’re home early,” she said. Her fingers found the pencil on her desk. It comforted her to have something to do with her hands. He said nothing for a long moment. She could have said hello. Could have been polite. Instead, her voice grated, sounding harsh against her own ears.
“Yeah. I, ah, tried to call you.” Trent stuffed his free hand in his pocket She wished she didn’t see the fatigue etched into the lines around his mouth. She wished she didn’t still care.
“Oh.” What could she say to that? What did it mean? “So why did they send you back early?”
“They’re ready to start the hearing.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Is that good or bad?”
He looked away, the muscle in his jaw pulsing. “I don’t know.”
Silence stretched between them. Laura didn’t know what to say to fill the gap. There was nothing she could say so she focused on the best things to come out of the mess that was their marriage. “The kids will be happy to see you,” she said quietly.
A half smile cracked the edge of his mouth. “How are the hamsters?”
“Fluffy escapes once a week, at least.” If hamsters were what it took to make conversation, she’d take it. Anything was better than the awkward silence that hung heavy and oppressive in the air between them.
“They don’t cause you too much trouble?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Not too much.”
He looked at her then, his eyes dark behind those glasses that really, really worked for her. She remembered when he’d gotten them. He’d been worried she wouldn’t like them. Who knew she’d had a thing for men with glasses?
“Thank you. For letting me get them for the kids.”
She tipped her head and cupped her chin in her palm. It had been almost a year since he’d bought those hamsters. “You’re welcome.” A simple response. The only thing she could say.
Another silence. This one less damning. All because of a couple of fat, fuzzy rodents. She swallowed the nerves that tickled the back of her throat. “Where are you staying?” she asked quietly.
She wanted him to ask to come home. Just once she wanted to remember what it felt like to have him in the house. To have another adult to balance out her life. To hear him in the other room or down the hall.
She knew things between them were over but that didn’t stop the longing for just one blessed day of normalcy. Just one memory of the way things had been between them. Before the war had torn away everything that he’d meant to her.
“At Shane and Jen’s.”
Sergeant First Class Shane Garrison had been home from the war for the last year, recovering from injuries that had landed him in the care of Jen St. James, a nurse at Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood.
“I think they’re both terrified,” she said. A tiny frown drew between her brows. “Aren’t you going to be a third wheel? They should be preparing for their wedding, not having a houseguest.”
“I know,” he said quietly. Trent pushed his glasses higher on his nose. “Shane insisted. Says he needs help with the wedding.”
Laura smiled wistfully. “Jen is going to be a beautiful bride.”
For a moment, Laura glanced down at her empty ring finger. She’d cried as he slipped the wedding ring onto her finger. His gaze locked with hers. For a brief moment, she was looking at her husband. No fear. No regrets. Just the man she loved looking back at her with the same love in his eyes. She blinked, and then it was gone so fast she wondered if she’d really seen it at all.
Trent looked away, clearing his throat roughly. No, she hadn’t been seeing things.
“When is the wedding again?” he asked.
“Four weeks.”
“That’s going to go by fast,” he murmured.
Laura glanced down at her watch. “I need to get the kids,” she said quietly, ending the moment before it really began.
Silence filled the gulf between them, a silence that once again felt absolute and unbreakable.
She lowered her gaze and it collided with the ring he still wore on his left finger. She looked away, wishing she hadn’t seen it.
But she had. He still wore his ring. He hadn’t signed the papers. What was he waiting for? Why couldn’t he just let her go?
She looked up then and met his gaze. And what she saw looking back at her shocked her. Ripped away at the bandages that had held her heart together and slashed every protective barrier she’d put in place.
His mouth crooked at the corner. His eyes were dark and hungry, his gaze locked on her, devouring her. Looking at her like she was the most precious thing in the world to him. The man who cherished her, who made her feel loved. Who reminded her of the aching desire she felt for him. For just an instant, the damaged warrior in front of her had slipped away, revealing the man she’d loved. Whole. Determined.
Hers.
But then his expression shuttered closed, leaving the man she’d come to know. The man who was distant and closed off. The speed of it almost gave her whiplash. She’d believed him when he’d told her he had to go, that the Army needed him. That he couldn’t argue with the powers that be.
All the while, he’d been volunteering for deployment after deployment. Leaving her and the kids willingly time and time again. Leaving her hoping and praying for the day when he would come home to her.
She knew in her heart of hearts that day would never come. Because no matter how much she might wish it, the man who stood before her, tired and beaten down by the war and the weight of his own sins, was not the man she’d married.
“I’m going to be around for the next few weeks,” he said. His voice was soft, his words sharp. “I’d like to see the kids.” A hesitant pause. “I’d like to see you, too.”
She stopped breathing. She searched his eyes, looking for a glimpse of the old Trent, but he was gone. Maybe he’d never been there. Or maybe he’d simply been wish fulfillment. Maybe her husband was really dead and gone and the man in front of her was a shell; nothing more.
That wasn’t true. The man in front of her had been forged in fire and come out steel. He’d been cut from the mold of a warrior, an ancient god of war.
The warrior in front of her had perfected the art of war. He knew his profession. He took pride in it. He’d given it everything he had. She knew that now.
But the warrior had sacrificed for his skill. He’d sacrificed his ability to love, to laugh, to smile. She saw the warrior now for who he was.
Because the man in front of her was not the man she’d married.
He was not the man she loved.
* * *
Trent knew fear. In that moment, he knew naked, soul-crushing fear as he waited for his wife’s response to his tentative gesture. He refused to think of her as his ex-wife. She wasn’t.
Not yet.
He had to fix this.
A better man would walk away. Would release her from the purgatory of their sham of a marriage.
But Trent was not a better man. He loved this woman. He’d always loved this woman.
The overwhelming love that he felt for her was there. Like a sleeping thing waking from a long dormancy. It was fragile. Malnourished.
But there, stretching after a long slumber.
He held his breath, waiting for her response. Held it until his lungs burned and his hands shook. Still, she didn’t respond. She toyed with the pencil in her hand. Rolled it along the edge of her desk calendar.
“The kids will be glad to see you,” she whispered finally.
It was a dodge. An obvious one.
He could let her go, let her slip away.
But that’s not what he wanted. And he’d seen her gaze flicker to his wedding ring. He hadn’t made that up.
She didn’t want this, either.
But fear was a powerful thing. He recognized the look in her eyes, the stiffness in her posture—it was like looking in a mirror the moment she looked back at him. He deserved that. He’d failed her so many times in so many ways. But right then, gazing at her copper eyes and dark copper hair, what he truly saw was her strength. The strength to love his children, to keep their home together.
To walk away when he hadn’t been enough.
Now? Now he needed her strength in a different way. He needed her to be strong enough to stay. To give him one more chance. And if he was going to deserve her, that had to start now.
“I was wondering if I could catch a ride with you?” he said, stepping into the breach and facing the possibility that once more, she would back away.
He didn’t know how to just be around her. He wanted to be alone with her. Just to see what it felt like. It had been so long since it had been just her and just him. When he’d come home after getting shot, all he’d wanted, all he’d needed, was time with his wife. But Ethan had been little and needy in the way that toddlers often were.
The kids had needed her more. And after too many late night diaper changes and dirty sheets, he’d stopped vying for her time. He couldn’t take any more from her. Not when the kids were taking so much. How could he ask her for more time for himself? But he supposed not wanting to ask for more time was how the distance between them had grown into the impossible chasm that stood between them now.
He had to find a way to get her to need him. To want him. A simple ride alone would be a start. A single step on the journey that would take him a lifetime to manage. If he got that far.
Right now? He was just hoping for a yes. And as the silence grew, so did his dread that what he would hear would be no.
It felt like forever before she said, “Sure. But where’s your truck?”
“I let Carponti take it. He needed to go pick something up for Nicole and didn’t want her to see it.” A version of the truth. Obi Wan would be proud.
Laura’s expression softened when he mentioned Carponti. She had a soft spot for Trent’s friend and his wife. Strange jealousy slithered through him. Not of her friendship. No, not that. But of the way her expression softened. She would never look at him that way again, and the loss? That loss hurt, cutting him quick and deep.
He took a tentative step forward.
“Laura?”
She wanted to look away. He could see it in her eyes. But she didn’t. She was so close, close enough that he could reach out and stroke an errant strand of hair that had fallen across her cheek.
He looked down at her left hand, clenching the pencil like a lifeline. It was a long moment before she turned off her computer and stood, her face a mask of caution. Her bare ring finger haunted him. It never should have gotten this far.
“I need you to be a happy couple.” Patrick’s words rang through his head. How could Patrick suggest that Trent ask his wife to lie for him and pretend everything was wonderful in their marriage when he could barely get past an awkward hello?
He wasn’t asking her for that. He refused.
He wanted this time with her for its own sake. Nothing more.
There was no way he would ask her to do this for him. He watched as she slipped her wallet into her purse. The elegance of her fingers as they flew over the zipper. Longing punched through him.
Laura stood, shouldering the simple black tote he’d bought for her two Christmases ago. It warmed him to see her using something he’d given her. He’d had this mental image of her throwing away everything even remotely tied to his memory and he held on to the ridiculous pleasure of seeing she still had it.
She shifted the tote to her other shoulder, her hand releasing the strap. She caught him looking at her hand and tried to tuck the injured hand behind her back. He moved quickly, capturing it before she could slip it out of his reach.
It was a mistake, touching her. Heat bolted through him the moment her soft fingers were cradled in his and he hung on to the sensation. Her skin was soft and smooth, a stark comparison to his. He’d dreamed about her hands on his body so many times and touching her sparked a thousand images, some real, some pure fantasy.
With a single finger, he traced the top of her knuckles. He brushed his thumb over her bandaged knuckles and felt her jerk. Chilled by her rejection, he let her go. Never would he have imagined that she’d flinch from his touch.
“What happened?”
“I scraped my knuckles trying to fix the dishwasher.” Her voice was thick.
“What’s wrong with the dishwasher?”
“It’s not cleaning the dishes right. I looked up what was wrong, and there’s probably food stuck in the chopper. I was trying to clean it out when the screwdriver slipped and I busted my knuckles.”
Trent wanted to be able to smile at his wife’s stubborn independence. The first time he’d deployed, she’d filled their small study with bookshelves she’d assembled herself. The second time, she’d landscaped. Each time, she learned some new skill around the house, so that when he came back, he was never faced with the honey-do lists that other soldiers had to wrestle with.
He should have been there to do those things for her. But he hadn’t, and she’d made one thing abundantly clear. She didn’t need him.
He looked at her then and wanted to beg her to give him another chance. To hell with the court-martial, to hell with the rumors. He wanted her back. Wanted to explain everything that he hadn’t been able to say for the last year and the year before that and the year before that.
Lay his sins at her feet and allow her to judge him as harshly as she deemed fit. Anything to keep her from casting him out entirely… Don’t give up on me. But he kept the plea to himself, the gulf between them too wide for a single plea to cross.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” he said. He wanted to ask if he could help. But the words lodged in his throat. He couldn’t.
He met her gaze, unable to walk away, despite everything that said he’d already lost her. “I’d like to see you,” he said again.
She bit her lip and looked away, down at where his index finger rested near the edge of her pinky. “I can’t, Trent,” she whispered.
“Can’t?” She lifted her gaze at his single word. “Or won’t?”
“You can’t come in here and ask me that,” she said. There was steel beneath the sadness in her voice. “You have no right.”
“You’re my wife.”
“I was your wife,” she said. “And you chose the Army over your family.”
He heard what she didn’t say. You chose the Army over me.
“I did. You’re right.” Her mouth opened, then closed again quickly. Surprise flashed in her eyes at his admission. A simple thing. But so very important. He had so many sins to atone for. She bit her lips hard enough that he winced. “I want to try. Just once more, I want to try and make things right.”
She swallowed hard, shaking her head. “You can’t. You lost that opportunity.”
“I screwed up last year.”
“This isn’t about last year, Trent.” She took a step backward. He felt the loss of her warmth in the air around him. “This is about all those years ago. You died. And you never came back to me. You never planned on coming home, not really. Not to me, not to the kids. So why should I believe you now?” she whispered.
He twisted his wedding ring around his finger. Light bounced off white gold. “I can’t give you any good reasons.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “Other than I screwed up.”
Silence stretched between them, harsh and unforgiving and filled with bitterness, sadness and lies. It was forever before she spoke.
“I can’t give you what you want anymore, Trent.” Her gaze didn’t waver from his. “Because I don’t have anything left. You broke me,” she whispered. “You finally broke me.”
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