“Butyoubuilt thisparticularhouse?”
“With my dad,” he says, and his throat bobs with the words. “He helped all of us build our dream homes.”
“That’s incredibly sweet,” I say, barely above a whisper, my eyes burning.
I glance out the window, my mind swimming withwhat-ifs.
What if my mom had stayed in her hometown and had me here, instead of alone in West Virginia? Would I have wound up with a kind, loving family like the Archers? Or with someone like that sweet man down at the farmers market?
Would my dad have shown up—swooped in to save me from a life of uncertainty, unanswered questions, and bone-deep loneliness?
And the hardest question, the impossible one that never ceases to plague me—what if she never would have died at all?
Would I have been happy here? Loved and adored. Would I have grown up surrounded by bees, and horses, and sun-drenched fields of wildflowers instead of packed bags, foster placements, and that cold, hollow ache I could never quite shake?
A long silence stretches between us, thick with things neither of us is brave enough to say, until he finally breaks it, taking my breath right along with him.
“I joined the Army before mine was done,” he murmurs. “Always figured I’d finish it when I got out. But I was different. The war, shit that happened over there…”
He stiffens, and I get the sudden urge to hold his hand again, but I stop myself, not wanting to destroy this little corner of vulnerability we’ve carved out.
“It fucked me up,” he continues. “Changed me. But the shit that happened back here while I was gone? Itdestroyedme. Didn’t see much sense in building something meant for happiness and dreams when I was nothing but sand and ash by the time I came home.”
He tugs on his hair again, jaw clenched as he finally looks at me. His eyes are hollowed, haunted, and the weight of that sadness nearly knocks me off my feet.
My mind flashes back to everything he told me in that courthouse. I’d been so irrationally angry at Marlee for what she did to him—for leaving him, for ending things while he was thousands of miles away, risking his life, planning their future, unsafe and alone.
She broke his heart, that was clear as day—written all over his face.
I’d be lying if I said a big part of me hasn’t wondered if his commitment to all this—to Aurora and gaining custody, is because he still loves her.
The rational part of me says it doesn’t matter what his motives or feelings for a dead woman are, but she was his first love, and judging by his story, Kade loved Marlee in a big, deep kind of way. A forever kind of way.
Does that feeling ever really leave you?
I know I still think about my first boyfriend, Stephen Tillby, every once and a while. I was nineteen, in my second year of college, and I think I loved him—as much as I’ve ever let myself love another person. Eventually, he ended things, said I never really opened myself up to him. Maybe he was right, or maybe we were just never meant to be.
Kade and Marlee, though…
That was a lifetime's worth of love cut too short in a letter while he was worlds away, and then again in a tragic accident.
He turns, facing me, and steps closer. “Tell me somethin’.”
My throat tightens. “What?”
“Why’s it easier to talk about this shit when you’re around?” His eyes flit between mind, burning and glazed, like a storm raging and cresting, all at once. “It’s been years, and I can’t talk to anyone about…before.”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, heart hammering wildly. My brain is begging me to run away while my body is screaming to close the distance between us.
“You know what I think?” he says, fingers brushing mine. “I think it’s because you’ve seen wars, too. Might not have been as bloody as mine, but just as painful, just as destructive.”
His eyes burn into mine, a storm of grief, heat, and history I’m desperate to know, but can’t ask for, can’t carry, when I’m not ready to give any of mine.
Too close. We’re too close.
I suck in a breath and take a quick step back. My body immediately loathes the distance, and that right there, tells me all I need to know.
I’m notjustproud of him for stepping up. I don’tjustfind him attractive and annoying in the best way.
