“What reason do you have to be embarrassed?”
She rolled her eyes, instantly inflaming my need to kiss her. Ember was too damn cute. “I snuck out this morning because I just needed some space. Needed to breathe. I ran away like some drama-filled teenager instead of staying to fight things out with you.”
“We all need a little time to think sometimes,” I said, moving my hands through her loose, insanely gorgeous hair to the back of her head.
“I literally ran home to my mother, Josh. She then told me that she wasn’t going to watch my mope fest and to come up here if I wanted to breathe.”
“And now?”
“This is the first full breath I’ve taken since I left you this morning.” She sighed, a look passing between us that said everything words couldn’t.
“Yeah, I get that. You’re my oxygen,” I admitted. “I woke up without you this morning, and realizing I’d driven you to that—to leave me—I never want to feel that again. And yet, there’s still this part of me that says you’d be better off if I just let you go.”
“Josh.” Her face fell.
“No, if you want in, and I mean all the way in, that’s where this leads. There are ugly parts of me, December. Parts that think I should have spared you all this pain and walked away years ago. Parts that hate myself for loving my job, loving my mission. Parts of me that won’t stop screaming that my choice killed Trivette. That I killed Will, and he should be alive. Not me. That I’ll never live up to earning that sacrifice.”
“That’s not true,” she whispered.
“What’s true is a very clouded concept in my head. On one hand, I’m shoving you away from this nightmare because you’re not a part of it. You are the one place that isn’t shadowed to me. On the other hand, I’m holding on to you as tight as possible, because the moments I’m kissing you, holding you, it all evaporates and I’m whole.”
“And you think you’d lose that?” she asked.
“Like I said last night, I’ve never been willing to risk it. The way you look at me, the way you see me, Ember—I’m not sure that guy exists in me anymore. You said that I’m breaking you, but if you see those broken pieces of me…” I shook my head, words failing.
She brought her hands up slowly to my arms. “Josh, it’s all just you. Every tiny piece, whether you like it or not, it all combines to make you who you are, and I am wildly and desperately in love with you. Nothing is ever going to change that. There is nothing you could do or say that could make me stop loving you, so it would be a lot easier if you stopped trying to push me away. I don’t need you to lay bare every detail. I’m not pushing you for that, but if you can’t lean on me for support, then what are we doing? Why are we getting married?”
“Because even the pieces of me that know I’m in no shape to love you, can’t stop loving you. I don’t exist without you. You’re in every fucking beat of my heart. You are my first thought when I open my eyes. You were my last thought as we crashed. I almost ruined you. I…I could still ruin you.”
Her eyes didn’t leave mine—they were open, honest, and bluer than the Colorado sky above us. “I made my choice years ago. I knew all of this was a possibility, and I chose you. I still choose every part of you, every day.”
“And when you realize that those parts of me might be too broken to fix?”
She smiled, so beautiful and accepting. “Then I’ll fall in love with the broken pieces. You just have to trust me.”
“Okay.” My throat closed, emotion welling in my chest so powerfully that I was afraid of exploding from the pressure. I closed my arms around her as she tucked her head under my chin. Holding her was so easy when the world around us got too complicated. Everything else slipped away until I was left with the simple, incorruptible truth that I would always love December Howard.
I just prayed my love wouldn’t destroy her.
The next morning, I had coffee waiting when she stumbled out of the bedroom, her hair a riotous mess that made me want to take her right back to bed. But we weren’t doing that, not yet.
She’d accused me of sexing out of conversations, and she’d been right, and maybe last night we’d both been too raw to really talk, too emotionally exhausted to do more than curl around each other and sleep, but today I was coming out with all guns blazing.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” I said, passing her a fresh cup of coffee, already creamed and sugared.
“Hmmm,” she mumbled, sipping at the cup.
“Sleep okay?”
She looked over the cup at me. “Yeah. You only woke up once, right?”
Don’t lie. Lay it bare. “Once that you woke for. I got up again around three a.m. but fell right back to sleep.”
“Are the nightmares getting worse?” She hopped onto the counter, and déjà vu hit me. It was the same exact place I’d kissed her for the first time.
“No. They’re actually less frequent, less violent. If they weren’t, I’d be worried.” I leaned back against the counter, keeping a respectable distance between us, or I’d have those pajama pants around her ankles in two seconds.
“Good. That’s good.”
“I want to take you somewhere.”
She gave me a wan smile. “Last time that didn’t work out too well for you.”