She missed him with an unrelenting ache.
It was always there—at work, at home, everything in between.
One morning there came a knock on the door, and Lani swung it open to see Devon standing there holding a bag of fresh bagels.
“Food and friends,” she said with a tentative smile, “the best cure for a broken heart.”
“Ha.” Lani stepped back to let her in. “If there’s a cure, I’ll take it.”
They unpacked the bag and made coffee in a companionable silence. When at last they were seated at the table, steaming mugs in hand, Devon said, “If you want to talk about it, I’m listening.”
Lani toyed with a piece of blueberry bagel. Her appetite was nonexistent, like it’d been the whole three weeks Geo’d been gone, but for the baby’s sake she forced herself to take a bite. “I guess the gossip finally reached you, huh?”
Devon gazed at her over the rim of her coffee cup. “Well, when Geo went back to his original platoon and you went radio silent, it didn’t take much of a detective to figure it out. C’mon, honey, talk to me.”
“What’s there to talk about?” Lani shrugged. “We were friends with benefits and the benefits ended.”
“Bullshit.” Devon’s eyes were steady on hers. “If you don’t want to talk about it—especially with me—I’ll respect that. But at least be honest with yourself about what you two were to each other.”
At those words, Lani’s attempted belligerence drained out of her, leaving that ever-present ache behind. “I love him,” she said quietly. “And I sent him away.”
“Oh, honey. Why?”
“Fear.”
Devon’s face softened, and she reached out her hand to cover Lani’s. “Of what? What are you afraid of?” Her voice was exquisitely gentle. “Talk. To. Me.”
The memories crashed over her, of Geo on the ground with Ari in his lap, rocking her, crying with her. The protective tenderness on his face, in his voice, as he’d comforted her...
One tear leaked out, then another.
“Because that night,” she whispered, “for the first time, I could picture him as a father. An amazing, loving, wonderful father, and he’d take such good care of us—when he was around, that is.”
Suzette. The son Harry would never meet. A government car. Tabitha’s long, blond hair...
She wiped her cheeks. “I can’t be with a SEAL. I can’t do this again, risk losing someone I love, that my child loves.”
As she clutched Devon’s hand, those years with Rhys swirled before her eyes—the sum total of his absences far outweighing the togetherness; the neediness she couldn’t hide, couldn’t overcome; the vulnerability that made her feel like a bug, speared by a pin and writhing in failure...
Devon’s eyes shone with sympathy and understanding. “No one can blame you for that,” she said quietly. “Least of all Geo. What did he say when you talked to him about it?”
That brought Lani up short.
“He, uh, didn’t really say anything,” she admitted. “I’d made my decision, so it was time to rip the Band-Aid off, you know?”
“Oh.” Devon was quiet for a moment. “Well, obviously you have to do what’s best for you. Always.”
She left not long after, with hugs and reassurances that Lani’s village was just a phone call away. When she’d gone, Lani puttered around the silent kitchen, Devon’s question echoing in her ears.
“What did Geo say?”
Her heart gave a painful thud at the memory of his stricken face, then his silent departure. What could he have said? She’d packed his bags and had them waiting by the damn door, for fuck’s sake! Short of planting her foot firmly on his ass and shoving him out, she couldn’t have made her wishes more clear: Leave now.
Besides, what would she have done if he’d insisted on talking? Listened calmly, rationally?
No way. The walls around her heart had sprung back up, thicker and higher than ever, infusing her with a clawing desperation to leave him before he left her. If he’d pushed it, she would’ve gotten angry, defensive, possibly said things she didn’t mean...
Things like, “I don’t love you.”
The ache in her chest disintegrated into splinters of pain, and Lani dropped her forehead to her folded arms, the sudden truth sweeping over her. Geo had let her push him away, had gone without a fight, because he’d realized—in that moment—it’s what she’d needed him to do.
With that, the last wisps of the mental fog that’d been her constant companion for the last three weeks finally cleared. Springing to her feet, she ran to the hallway closet, where she reached up on the shelf and pulled down Geo’s Metallica T-shirt, neatly folded.
Clutching it against her, she headed to her bedroom. After Geo had gone, she’d cleaned her apartment like a crime scene. All his favorite condiments? In the trash. A half-finished grocery list written in his distinctive scrawl? Thrown out. After that, when she’d dumped her basket of clean laundry on the bed, there, at the bottom of the tangled pile, she’d found Geo’s T-shirt.
The sight of the faded material had broken the dam of her tears. She’d wept for hours, remembering the last time he’d worn it—the morning he’d surprised her in bed with a beautiful stack of pancakes he’d gotten up early to perfect. He’d fed them to her, interspersing each bite with a sticky, syrupy-flavored kiss, until at last she’d wrestled him out of his clothes and made love to him with a fervency that’d left hickeys on her neck and scratch marks on his back.
Eyes stinging at the memory, Lani traced her fingers over the cracked, faded letters, finally letting the enormity of what she’d done sweep over her.
Geo loved her. Without a shadow of a doubt, he loved her, and not only that, he understood her. But when the time came for her to understand him, be there for him, all she’d managed to do was regress back to the old Lani, the one who reacted by curling up into a spiky, self-protective ball.
“It’s like you haven’t learned a thing,” she berated herself. “Not a goddamn thing.”
Maybe it wasn’t too late.
Her fingers trembling, she snatched up her phone and texted Renae: Do you know when Geo’s platoon is back in town?
A few minutes later, a reply: Day after tomorrow, I think?
Lani’s heartbeat kicked into a gallop. Okay. She had time. She had time to make this right, to at least let Geo have a say before she unilaterally decided their future.
I’m coming. Don’t write me off just yet.