“Nothing I’ve done is enough. This is the only way I know to make his sacrifice matter!”

“It already does!” My throat tightened as tears bit into my eyes, the sting the only feeling I recognized. “You are an amazing man. A wonderful friend. He knew that. Stop thinking that you need to be more, because you’re already more than enough.”

“I can’t. I’m not.”

“Then see yourself through my eyes. See the man that I love. The one who promised to be my whatever. I’m holding on to you with everything I have, until my fingers—hell, my very soul—are raw and bleeding. You’re trying to live for Will, but you’re killing me.”

He sucked in his breath, his eyes closing slowly. “You’re right.”

A small sliver of hope spiked through the fog of my misery.

“You’re right,” he continued. “You should go back to Turkey. You should take the job—follow your dream. There have already been enough casualties, and I refuse to watch you wither away. Go.”

My chest tightened, every nerve ending screaming to latch on to him and hold tight. Not to let him nail shut the coffin he’d built to put our relationship in. Desperation took hold and squeezed my lungs. “Stop. I…I can figure it out. If this is what you need, then I can do it.” Deployments without warning. Never knowing where he was. Never ending. “I can do it for you, for us. Josh, I love you, and nothing is ever going to change that. Whether we’re on different continents, different beds, or different wavelengths, you’re my everything.”

He walked forward slowly and pressed a lingering kiss to my forehead that felt too much like a good-bye. “Go run your dig. We’ll—” He glanced at where my ring sat on the coffee table, echoing the same defeat that radiated from him. “We’ll figure this out when you get back. Two months isn’t going to change how much I love you. A lifetime couldn’t.”

Then he turned and walked out, pausing in the doorway. “But if this changes your love, if you realize that all I’m doing is holding you back…” He swallowed. “I won’t blame you. I’m not really sure I could love me, either. Not under these circumstances.”

“Josh,” I whispered. “Stay.” Don’t give up. Don’t abandon what we have.

His knuckles turned white on the handle, but he walked through, shutting the door behind him.

I took in a gulping breath. Fear, pain, heartbreak, it all coursed through my veins, but anger trumped it all. He’d made another fucking decision for us. I stomped up the stairs like a petulant toddler. Fuck it. If he didn’t want to sleep next to me, then I didn’t want to sleep next to him.

I knew that was a lie about twenty minutes later when I crept back down the stairs, put my ring around my neck, and then crawled into our guest bed, simply because I knew Josh was on the other side of the wall. I let my hand rest on the smooth paint as a tear slipped down my cheek.

Two and a half years, and we were back here, our headboards separated by a wall and our hearts separated by something a little less tangible.

How could he have changed so much that we were no longer his priority? Unless he hadn’t. Unless this was about something different altogether. But what? I’m not really sure I could love me, either. His words gutted me more than his SOAR declaration.

His walls had grown so thick, and he shut me out until I was freezing, my heart barely able to endure the cold.

But that heart still beat for him in a way I knew it never would for anyone else.

Some damned homecoming. My eyes blurred with tears as I pulled out my cell phone and opened my flight app. One hundred and ninety-nine dollars later, I changed my departure date.

Then I emailed our wedding coordinator.

Chapter Thirty-Five

JOSH

“I swear this is the second time in two months that I’ve told you that you’re being a fucking idiot,” Jagger said as he grabbed clean clothes out of his dresser.

“What the hell do you want me to do, Jag? She took her fucking ring off. I’m pretty sure that says it all right there.” I flexed my hands to keep from punching a hole in his wall. When I’d finally realized that her left hand was as naked as I’d wanted to get her, my heart had been crushed. She may as well have driven a construction truck over it. Then to realize I’d been a moron and it was hanging around her neck, only to have her actually take it off? That tiny action rocked the foundation of my very being.

In that instant I realized that letting her go wasn’t just going to break my heart, it was going to obliterate it.

What the hell was I going to do? My most basic instinct was to march over to our house, throw open the door, strip her naked, and keep her screaming my name until she agreed to put that fucking ring back on her hand. But she’d already accused me of trying to sex my way out of things, and she’d been right.

“So you told her to go? Pushed her even further away?”

“Yeah, well, it’s what she needs.”

Jagger stopped shoving his clothes in a bag and flat-out glared at me. “Get a fucking grip.”

“I have one!” I shouted. Okay, well that sounded insane. “I’m fine,” I said softer. “No nightmares, found my purpose, you name it, I’ve done it. I corresponded with my therapist overseas with Skype sessions, I flew missions, I got my head back. My heart just seems to have left.”

“You left her, Josh. You walked out in the middle of the night after she asked you to stay. Paisley put her back together and then put her on a plane.”