“I want to be your girlfriend.” She didn’t pull any punches, and I couldn’t hide the disappointment on my face. Her smile, so bright and shining a moment before as she told me her secret, the one she’d written to me about in boot camp, faded into nothingness. “What’s wrong, Remy?”
When she reached out, I did the only thing I could—I pulled away.
“I don’t want to be with you, Parker.”
Those fucking words were the biggest lie I had ever told in my entire life. And they all stemmed from the fear I had running through my veins at the thought of losing her. Even years later, the fear was still there. It was real. And the thought of finally having Parker as my own, only to lose her practically cut me off at the knees.
Her smile used to light up the room. Now, although those smiles were rarer than they should be, they didn’t just light up a room. Parker, well, she was the center of the universe. At least, she’d always been the center of my universe. She just never had a clue.
Daydreaming about what could have been, I almost missed Nox and Daisy taking off toward the other side of the house. It wasn’t until Nox was pulling on my hand and I looked down at him that I managed to shake off the intoxicating thoughts of what could have been.
He stared up at me with the same serious eyes that Danny had, and the same expressions that I saw on Linc’s face on a regular basis. “You better be nice, Uncle Remy.” If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Nox was a grown man, with the protective tone of his voice. “Mom doesn’t cry at night anymore. If you make her cry, I’ll find a way to make you pay.”
He walked away before I could say anything, and Daisy went with him. Her tail swished happily as she followed him up the stairs, too.
Left alone with my thoughts, which was dangerous on a normal day, had me rethinking my entire plan to tell Parker everything. If my dog hadn’t vanished in a puff of smoke at the thought of cuddles with her new favorite human, I might actually have had the chance to sneak out.
Coward. Danny’s voice echoed in my head, causing me to bite my tongue to keep from having a conversation with a dead man in Parker’s kitchen. Even if he was right.
I was a coward. I knew it, and he’d known it all those years ago.
I waited until Parker came back downstairs a few minutes later before I said anything. “You know you’re going to have a problem getting her out of his bed.”
Her only response was a small shrug that had her hair bouncing in the ponytail holding it. “That’s fine. You can get her later.”
My fingers itched with the need to touch her, to make sure that she was real and that she wasn’t going to disappear like she did in my dreams.
The desert overseas had more moisture in it than my throat, and I found myself unable to do anything but nod at her words. Fear and anxiety rolled together in one hell of an ugly ball, settling in my stomach and making it almost impossible to think. Breathing? Yeah, that shit went out the window too.
She sat down on the couch, pulling her legs up so that one of her knees was almost touching her chest, stopped only by the size of her breasts. The other, she folded under her lap. Then she stared at me like I was some sort of science project.
“We don’t have anything to talk about.” She reiterated her argument from earlier, and all the confidence I’d felt at being able to prove her wrong flew out the window.
“Stop saying that.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, letting go of the frustration I felt at the situation. It wasn’t her fault that I’d screwed everything up so badly. “We do. You may not want an answer now, but you deserve one.”
Parker pursed her lips together, and her eyebrows practically hit her hairline. “You mean the part where you kept all the letters I sent you, but never responded. And then when I asked you about it directly, you lied to me?”
Yeah, just like she always did, Parker cut right through my bullshit with a knife.
“Why didn’t you write me back, Remy? Why keep the letters after you told me, to my face, that you didn’t want to be with me? Why?”
Unwilling to have the conversation we needed to while I stood in the doorway like an asshole, I sat down next to her on the couch. Once again, I wanted to touch her. To pull her into my arms. But Parker wasn’t mine, not yet.
“I fucked up, okay?” The admission tore its way out of my heart and chest, creating a wound I wasn’t prepared for. “I fucked it all up, and I don’t even know why.”
Parker didn’t say a word. She didn’t even blink. Her eyes didn’t have any of the warmth, passion, or even disdain for me. As I silently pleaded with her to understand, I was left with nothing but a blank slate to speak to.
Seconds ticked by, and she didn’t say anything at all.
“You sent me that letter, and I got it in the first wave of us that got mail, right? I sat there next to Danny and Linc and we all got letters. Not only from you, but from our parents. While they tore into the ones from their parents, I sat there and stared at your letter for hours. Without opening it. If I didn’t open your letter, I could pretend that everything was normal. Everything was fine. I clenched that letter in my sleep for the first night. After I read the ones from my parents, I still didn’t open your letter. Not until the second one came.” The memory of cutting into her first letter, which had gotten worn down and wrinkled during the time I hadn’t opened it, took me back to the nights sitting in my bunk, needing to sleep but not wanting to.
“You said you wanted more, Parker. You gave me something else to think about. During drill practice, combat survival training, even the night marches they threw at us. You were the only thing I could think about. But I couldn’t bring myself to answer you. What if I ruined it? What if you changed your mind? What if being with me was too much for you?”
Parker sniffled, and I hadn’t realized that anything I said was emotional. Not until I saw the pain in her eyes.
“You ignored me, Remy. For three months, I wrote to you constantly, and you never responded to me. I watched everyone else get a letter from Linc and Danny, but no one got anything from you. We were worried, and you shut all of us out.” Her voice, trembling with her own memory of that time, added to the weight I carried on my shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Parker.” I was, too. So very sorry, and I didn’t know how to fix it.
“That night.” She leaned forward, cradling her face in her hands. “Tell me why.”
I looked up at the flag on her wall, with the dog tags hanging below it, and couldn’t form the words. I couldn’t force them out.
“I didn’t want a relationship,” I told her finally. “I didn’t want to start something and then leave for the other side of the country or overseas.”
Parker looked at me, her head tilted slightly to the side, still cradled in her hands. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because I don’t want to lose you again. Not if I have a chance to make up for what I did when I never thought redemption was possible.”
I ripped my heart out of my chest with those words and had nothing left to say. I sat there, silently waiting for her to say something … anything at all that might alleviate the pain. When she finally opened her mouth to give me an answer, the living room window exploded inward.