Safe.
When I closed my eyes and started to drift off, I heard Daisy get up and her claws clacked on the floor as she abandoned me and went to the bedroom, to chew on my pillow no doubt.
“What is it you said to me? Well, don’t you look cozy.”
A splash of cold water to my veins, that voice had my body jerking into action. I grabbed the box of letters as I opened my eyes and shoved them onto the ground, under the coffee table, to keep Parker from seeing them.
“What are you doing here?” My pulse raced and I swear my voice rose an entire octave.
Parker raised an eyebrow at me, her hands on her hips and her lips pursed together in challenge.
“You ruined my night. I thought turnabout was fair game.”
I stared at her outfit and had to keep my mouth from watering. She’d changed out of the jeans she’d been wearing at the restaurant, which had been lethal to my libido just with their existence. But now, she was wearing a pair of skintight black leggings, and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.
Her shirt, low-cut and loose-fitting, revealed all of her cleavage and pushed up against her curves, making my mouth water on top of everything else. I stared, like an idiot, and tried to pull my shit together.
Parker didn’t have a clue about the effect she had on me. She never really did.
“You should go.”
She didn’t budge. Instead, her eyes bore into me, seeing straight through my bullshit like she always had. Those eyes, I’d dreamt about them while I was overseas.
Parker’s eyes flashed, and she crossed her arms over her ample chest, blatantly mocking my earlier stance at the restaurant.
“I only stopped to say ‘hi’ to an old friend, Remington.”
The growl left my throat before I could stop it. “My name isn’t Remington, Parker. Don’t call me that.”
The command in my tone spurred her into action, and I didn’t miss the glazed-over expression that crossed her face. Her mouth opened in the prettiest little o shape that I’d ever seen, before she quickly masked it, biting her lip unconsciously.
I barely bit back the groan threatening to escape at the sight of her doing that, instead turning my eyes to the ceiling and counting to ten silently.
“Jeremy.” Her throaty voice filled my ears, bringing my attention back to her.
When my eyes locked on hers, I saw the pain there—the hurt. She broke eye contact first, her gaze moving to my wrist, and I saw the moment she knew the truth.
“You lied to me.” Fractured, she barely managed to whisper. “You told me you never got a single letter.”
Don’t look down.
Almost as if she read my mind, Parker’s head dropped, and the box of letters was right in her line of sight. Worse, there was a letter on the ground next to the box that must have dropped when I’d shoved them down.
Number 25.
That fucking letter.
Even as I reached down to grab it before she could, Parker was moving. She had it in her tiny hands, staring at it as though it held all of the poison and venom in the world.
“No.”
I thought she’d sounded broken before, but I’d obviously been mistaken. I would never have the words to describe her tone of voice. It was so much worse than it had been after Danny’s funeral as she cried for him. Worse than the day she had broken her wrist in fifth grade. Worse than the day that her parents died and my mom brought her to the house to stay with us until her aunt could get her. Worse than any sound I’d ever heard in my entire life.
I reached for her, unsure of what I was trying to accomplish, but Parker shoved my hands away and dropped to her knees.
The box of letters. She grabbed them and brought the entire thing to her chest, tears beginning to fall down her cheeks.
My hands trembled again, this time with the need to help her. To make her stop… But I couldn’t. Not when I was the reason for her pain—for her tears. I’d done this to her.
Fuck.
I yanked at the hair on my head, unable to do anything else, and let her cry.
“You lied to me.” Her whisper crushed me, and I found myself dropping to my knees next to her.
Her name a shattered whisper upon my lips, I railed against the lie I’d told. I wouldn’t deny it, though. Not to Parker.
Instead of looking at me, Parker pulled the box of letters away from her chest and started to rifle through it, each breath becoming more labored than the last.
In the dim light of the living room, she pulled letter after letter from the box as though they were precious to her. My pain and heartache were nothing compared to hers. As her sobs became uncontrollable and her hands shook, Parker kept going. Letter after letter, not just the twenty-six from our deployment, either. But every single letter she’d written me while we were in boot camp. The ones she wrote while I was in MOS school. All of them. She saw them all, and it wasn’t until she set them down on the floor in front of her that she looked up to face me.
Her despair crushed me. I leaned forward, unable to stop myself, and my hands hung limply over my knees. I couldn’t reach for her. Not after she’d pushed me away.
“Parker.” Helpless, I waited for any sign from her that she would forgive me for this. That I hadn’t destroyed her.
“I hate you, Jeremy Vale Townsend.”
Her words cut deeper than any wound I’d ever received. I swallowed, despite the boulder that had taken up residence in my throat, and tried not to cry. Her anger, I could handle. Her derision, sure that too. Even her tears, I would find a way to get through it. But her hate? I would never survive. Even overseas, as I ignored every letter she sent, as she moved on in her life with Danny, I didn’t have her hate.
“Parker.”
She pulled away from me, falling backwards on her ass in her haste to put distance between us.
“You lied to me, for years.” Her sob filled the air between us before she slumped back, all of her energy spent. “Why?”
“You weren’t mine.” The simple admission should have come out smoothly. Instead, my words were clipped, curt, and filled with the rage at our truth. “You were never mine, Parker.”
Parker’s face, still beautiful even though she had tears streaming down her cheeks and red eyes from crying, contorted in pain.
I should have stopped there. I should have closed my fucking mouth and not said another word. Even as I opened it, I told myself to shut the fuck up. But I couldn’t. Not when we’d already blown through the dam of emotions between us with a stick of dynamite. There would be no going back. Not now.
“You fucked my friend, Parker. And then you tried to write me a letter. To explain it all away. There’s no taking that back.” I couldn’t meet her eyes, my gaze firmly stuck on my hands.
Her sharp inhalation was the only indication that she’d even processed my words. Followed by the sound of her pushing up off the ground.
I got up as well, unwilling to stay on the floor while she stood above me.
“You’re fucking kidding me, Jeremy. You have to be kidding me. I poured my heart out to you.” She started to pace, and even though I couldn’t meet her eyes, I watched her every move. “I offered you everything. You. Rejected. Me. You… You did that.” She stopped in front of me. “You shattered me. And you don’t even know the whole story, yet you judge me just like everyone else. You could have been my hero, Jeremy. You literally had everything in the palm of your hand, and you decided that I wasn’t worth it. You threw everything away. Do you want to talk about that?”