She made a pfft sound. “Sure you are. You wouldn’t see me in Germany. You only come over at home when I’m gone, like you watch the window for my car to pull out—”
“I do not.” You do.
“—or something, and yes, you do. The first time I saw you face-to-face was at the funeral yesterday. Now you’d better tell me what I did to irk you, Josh. Whatever it is, I preemptively apologize.”
I shook my head. “Of course you would think it’s your fault.”
“It’s not?”
More runners crunched their way down the gravel path behind us.
“No.” I looked down at the freshly placed grass seeds that would grow over Will from now on. “I killed him.” It was the faintest whisper, but she heard it.
“You did not kill him. He died at war. This is not your fault.”
“How can you, of all people, say that? You loved him more than any of us. How can you not realize that I basically traded his life for Jagger’s, and then again for mine?”
She tilted her head. “You knew it was Jagger when he went down. You went in for him, like any medevac crew would have, friend or not. Will agreed to the extraction, right? He didn’t say, ‘no,’ or, ‘hey guys, this isn’t a good idea,’ right? He went in with both guns blazing because that was his mission. You did not force him into that valley, Josh.”
There was no blame in her eyes, only absolution, understanding—no forgiveness, because she honestly didn’t think I’d done anything wrong. “There’s more.”
“Okay, tell me.”
I wavered for a second but pushed ahead.
“After the first deployment, I had this one-bullet policy. I wasn’t going to let myself be taken alive. Ever.”
“Josh,” she whispered, lightly touching my arm.
“During the firefight, Rizzo was working on keeping Jagger alive. It was mostly just Will and I, and when this guy came around the back…I had Ember’s voice in my head, begging me to come home. So I made this split-second decision and fired two bullets into his chest. I used all of my ammo, didn’t save the last bullet.”
She didn’t shy away, simply held my gaze in a way that was neither comforting nor threatening. She just listened.
“When the next guy came around, I was out. Will saw him first and shoved me to the ground, taking him out. He saved my life.”
“Sounds like Will,” she said.
I nodded and forced myself through the hesitation over the next part. “He was standing over me, reaching for my hand to pull me up when the shots were fired.”
Her eyes closed, twin tears tracking her cheeks.
“Damn. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—”
“Finish. Please, Josh. I want to know. I need to know.”
“I couldn’t even tell Jagger. Will fell on top of me, shielding me as he took two more rounds. I managed to get his weapon as the firefight ended. Reinforcements showed up, but Will…he bled out before they could get him to the medevac.”
“That’s exactly what he would have wanted, Josh,” she said, more tears falling. She swiped them away. “Don’t mind me. I’m a pregnant, hormonal mess over here.”
“You lost your best friend.”
Her eyes squeezed shut, and her breath was ragged for a second. “I did.”
“If I had just saved that last bullet, if he hadn’t pushed me down to start with…”
“If Jagger hadn’t been there,” she countered. “If those troops hadn’t come in contact. If your copilot hadn’t been killed. Josh, there are so many what-if’s, and any one of them could have changed the outcome. Maybe Will would be alive. Maybe you’d be dead, and Ember and I would be standing over your grave instead. Would you want to put her through that?”
I shook my head, the image already firmly planted there. “No.”
“If you hadn’t gone in, if Will hadn’t been there to pull you out, to climb the helicopter, and kick in the glass, Jagger would have died. There was no way you were kicking through that glass with your leg, and your medic would have been in too many places at once.”
“I’m just so sorry,” I said, my voice breaking. “I’m so sorry for what I put you through. I can’t even say that if I’d known, I would have chosen differently. It was Jagger.”
She took both of my hands in her smaller ones. “Josh. You were exactly where you were meant to be. You saved Jagger. Will saved Jagger, and then he saved you, the overachiever that he is…was. If I had a choice to make, I would have chosen Jagger, too. There’s no shame in that, not when he’s my husband, the father of our unborn son. I do not blame you for what happened, because you were supposed to be there. Will was supposed to be there, and if you take a second to look around, you’ll see that now Will is exactly where he is meant to be.” She pointed to the row in front of us, to the stone that sat directly in line with where Will’s would be. “Do you understand now? He’s with Peyton.”
I made out Peyton’s name carved into the simple, white stone and felt a piece of my soul slide home, making the puzzle one piece closer to whole. “Peyton.”
Peyton. Her name played through my mind, spoken in Will’s voice as a blood-muffled gurgle.
She nodded, a smile lighting her features. “He never stopped loving her. Not ever. Jagger is my person. Ember is yours. Peyton was his. He could have lived longer, gotten married, had kids, but no love would ever compare to what he felt for Peyton. You didn’t get him killed, Josh. He was just called home to the woman who was too stubborn to reciprocate that love in life because she was scared to lose her best friend.” She shrugged. “I like to think that now they have a chance to be happy.”