“Like Iraq.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a long pause on the line.
“Well, damn,” he says quietly. “That’s new.”
“Yeah,” I say again.
“What’s her name?” he asks.
“Ivy.”
He lets it sit there, like he’s tasting the shape of it. “And?”
“And we…started something,” I say. My throat feels tight. “Then she got the promotion she’s been busting her ass for—Creative Director, big campaigns, more hours. Job’s based in Saint Pierce. She wanted to try to make it work between there and here.”
“And you told her no,” he says, like he already knows.
“I told her I couldn’t do long distance,” I say. “That I didn’t want to hold her back. That I wanted my quiet. My mountain.”
“And?” he prompts.
“And she called me a coward,” I finish.
There’s a small sound on his end that might be a laugh, might be a mutteredJesus Christ.
“Is she wrong?” he asks.
The fire pops. The cabin shifts. My chest hurts.
“I don’t know how to be that guy,” I say. “The one who…drives down every weekend. Who lives half his life stretched between mountain and city. I barely figured out how to sleep up here. I don’t know how to sleep anywhere else.”
“You bare your ass in a Humvee in the middle of a firefight, but committing to a woman is what scares you?” Ruin says. “You realize how that sounds, right?”
“This isn’t about commitment,” I snap, then stop, because maybe it is. “It’s about…knowing what I can carry.”
“That’s some poetic bullshit, brother,” he says. “Here’s a thought: maybe you can carry more than you think. You just haven’t tried anything heavier than your own guilt in a long time.”
I scrub a hand over my face. “Why are you calling, Ruin?”
“Because I miss you, for one,” he says. “And because I didn’t crawl my way out of my own hole just to watch you dig yours deeper. And because I have news.”
I snort. “Let me guess. You and your bike finally got officially married.”
“Ha ha,” he says dryly. “Her name’s Dakota, and I’m about two minutes away from that, actually.”
I sit up a little. “You…met someone?”
“Yep,” he says, and there’s a softness under the bravado I rarely hear from him. “Met her on a job down near Austin. She’s stubborn as hell, tougher than most of the guys I served with, and thinks my scars are ‘textured.’ Whatever that means. I’m in so deep it’s embarrassing.”
I can’t help it. I smile. “She know you used to sleep with your hand on the wall so you didn’t bolt awake swinging?”
“She’s been on the receiving end of that once,” he says. “Didn’t flinch. Just put her hand over my chest and told me she was there. I stopped waking up like that after a while.”
Something twists in my chest. Ivy’s hand. Her weight against me. The way my breathing calmed.
“She sounds… good,” I say quietly.
