Chapter Twenty-One
Sunlight streamed in through the windows when I peeled open my eyes. The bed next to me was empty. A single calla lily rested on Josh’s pillow with a note propped up on its stem. I smiled as I stretched, luxuriating in the delicious soreness of my body.
So that was what everyone raved about. Why had I waited twenty years for that? His scent still clung to the sheets, and that was my answer. Because Josh was the one I was waiting for.
Josh, who loved me.
Happiness flowed through my veins, and I reached for the lily and brought it to my nose. No roses or daisies; Josh didn’t do anything typical. I unfolded the note.
Good morning my gorgeous December,
I wish I could be here to wake you up the same way I put you to sleep, but you looked too peaceful to wake. I had to leave town, but I’ll see you as soon as I’m back tomorrow night. Sleep as long as you like, I love knowing you’re in my bed. Thank you for the best night of my life.
I love you,
Josh
It had been the best night of my life, too. I felt free for the first time in years, free and empowered, like the choices I made were mine, and right, and for the right reasons.
I rolled into his pillow, pulled the soft sheets to my face, and breathed him in. I couldn’t see him until tomorrow night. Not exactly the morning-after glow I was hoping for, but it must have been important for him to leave so quickly.
I found my bra, pants, shirt, and located my pink panties hanging on the corner of his dresser like I had won Where’s Waldo. The memory of him taking them off was enough to set my skin aflame again. I made his bed and tossed the clothes he’d left on both sides of the bed into the hamper by his door.
Then I shamelessly scoped out the pictures he had framed on the wall opposite his bed. There was one of his motorcycle, matted and framed like a piece of art. The majority were hockey, starting with one from when he looked barely old enough to walk and with a woman who I assumed was his mom, all the way through to the team picture from this year. He had played all of his life.
He hadn’t let getting shot keep him down, though he still wasn’t ready to discuss it. He was stronger than a gunshot. Even if it had killed his dream, he still found a way to live it. I smiled when I caught the picture of Gus’s team, Josh standing by as a proud coach. He didn’t just lick his wounds and go with half a heart, he found a way to give back, to bring up the next generation if he couldn’t star in this one.
There was a picture of him perched on the side of a hospital bed, his arms wrapped around a delicate, beautiful woman with striking features that mirrored a few of his own. She had to be his mother. Love radiated from his face, almost as exquisite as the bare skin of his head that matched his mother’s. I swallowed back the lump in my throat. He must have shaved his head when she’d lost her hair from treatment. Could this guy be any more freaking perfect? He’d transferred colleges to be with his mother. That was why he understood how much my family meant to me, what I was willing to go through for them; he felt the same about his.
My eyes drifted back toward the high school years, and I gasped when I saw it. It was the picture that ran on the front of the sports section, the one I had pinned on my bedroom wall. I pulled the frame off the wall and couldn’t contain my smile. It was from the school assembly after they’d won state. Everything about that assembly lingered in my mind, from the sheer noise of the gym to Josh’s ecstatic face as he carried the trophy high above his head.
The picture captured that moment in perfection, from the deep maroon of his uniform to the blissful look on his profiled face with the trophy hoisted. He was beautiful, dangerous, and young, exactly how I remembered him. But even as gorgeous as that picture was, the high school version of Josh couldn’t hold a candle to the one I loved now. Now his beauty and danger were tempered with maturity, which made him all the more amazing.
I lingered over the lines of his face, joy and pride emanating from him. I’d studied this picture so often and always found something I hadn’t seen before. I loved that he wasn’t just happy, there was something deeper there, a longing. I loved that we both had the same picture on our walls. I loved him.
But this wasn’t the same version the paper had printed. That one had been cropped, apparently. I caught the details behind him now, the ones left off the print I had. In this picture, the crowd of students was visible behind him in beautiful detail. I had always wondered what he had been staring at, longing for. I traced my finger over the glass, following his line of sight.
It was me.
I was sitting next to Sam, laughing at something she said, and Josh’s eyes were focused on me. Everything in me melted. He had noticed me, and after last night, I knew that look. He wanted me. I may have been gangly, awkward, and fifteen, but Josh Walker noticed me. I shook my head and smiled to myself as I rehung the picture. I’d definitely need this version.
I closed Josh’s door quietly and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw my purse on the kitchen cabinet. I grabbed it from the counter and almost made it out the door.
“Walk of shame?” Jagger joked from his bedroom door.
My skin flushed hot, but I threw him a jaunty salute. “Jagger.”
He laughed, his head thrown back in abandonment. Yeah, I could see why the girls went for him. He screamed reckless in a way that caught the eye. Just not my eye. “Ember, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Josh is f*cking crazy over you.”
Joy beat through my embarrassment. “I’m pretty crazy about him, too. Where did he skip off to this morning?”
Jagger’s face dropped all expression for the barest of moments, but I caught it before a smooth smile took its place. “Scholarship stuff.”
“Scholarship stuff? What do you mean?”
His eyes fell away, and my stomach went with them. “It’s just something he has to do for his scholarship. He’ll be home tomorrow.”
What could Josh be doing that Jagger wouldn’t want to tell me about? “Right,” I muttered absentmindedly and turned for the door. My feet caught a stray bag of hockey gear, nearly sending me tumbling to the ground. Thankfully, I caught myself. Hockey gear. “Wait. Don’t you have a game tonight?”
He reached over and pulled the bag out of my way. “Yeah.”
“Josh is missing a game? That’s not like him. Why would he miss a game?”
Jagger cleared his throat. “Coach is fine with it. He knows how Josh’s scholarship works.”
“But why would he miss a game if he’s on a hockey scholarship?” Nothing made sense, and the way Jagger purposely dodged my questions didn’t make me feel any better.
He closed off his expression and stepped back, cracking his neck in a stretch. “Yeah, so anyway, Josh will be back tomorrow night. I know he’ll be dying to see you. He really cares about you, Ember. I’ve never seen him like this, not with any girl.”
I melted. Was I really going to let whatever was going on with Josh’s scholarship kill my morning-after buzz? Hell no. If something was wrong, he’d tell me. Just don’t let him be injured. There was no way he’d take it if they took him off the ice for an injury. Was his leg more hurt than he let on? I’d have to ask him tomorrow night.
“Thanks for not making this all awkward, Jagger.” He gave me a smile and a wave. I waved back and let myself out of the apartment, turning to mine. I reached into my purse for my keys. Shit. Sam drove my car home last night. Right. I knocked on the door, and she answered a few minutes later.
“Wow. You look . . .” There were simply no words for Sam’s appearance. Or smell.
“Don’t even. You went home with Josh-freaking-Walker and I decided, after I got home, alone, that I was going back out to have a good time. No lectures, I took a cab.” She waddled like a penguin back to the darkened living room. I smiled at the drawn curtains.
“Medicate and hydrate?” I tossed my purse onto the counter.
She saluted me with a Dasani and nodded to the bottle of Excedrin next to her. “Besides, I may look like crap, but at least I’m not wearing what I went out in last night.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “So dish, because if you spent the night in Josh’s bed, I want freaking details.”
I threw up my index finger at her and slid into my bedroom, tossing yesterday’s clothes into the hamper and pulling on comfy pj pants and a tank. From the looks of Sam, we weren’t going anywhere today.
The chair made a whooshing sound as I plopped my full weight into it, throwing my legs over the arm. “Yes. I spent the night with Josh.”
Sam squealed and then grimaced, pushing her fingers into her temple. “Stupid tequila. Is he as yummy in bed as he looks?”
The smile that spread across my face may as well have been its own entity for all that I couldn’t contain it. “He is perfect. Everything.”
“I’m so freaking jealous!”
I laughed. “I just can’t believe it happened, you know? I mean, Josh! He makes me forget everything. I don’t need a schedule with him, or a plan, and things can be insane, and wonderful, and out of control because I know he’s not going to let me fall.” The words tumbled so quickly from my lips, but Sam interpreted my rant with a gleeful laugh.
“You love him!” She clapped her hands together with a smile that lit the room. “You trust him, and for once you’re not molding yourself into whatever some guy wants.”
That sweet feeling hit my heart again, like it was reminding me it belonged to Josh. “I don’t have to be anyone else. He loves me, and I love him.”
She jumped across the coffee table, scattering magazines to the floor, and lunged at me in a bear hug. “I’m so happy for you!”
“I’m happy for me, too!”
We collapsed into a fit of giggles for a moment before Sam winced. “Ugh. My head. Let’s talk about your new love life in soft tones the rest of the day. I want to know how that body of his stacks up.”
My neck was crimped when a knock on the door sounded. I threw my history book on the table. So much for getting studying done; I’d fallen asleep with the book on my lap. The clock read 4:45 p.m. Sam was racked out on the couch with a Diva-embroidered sleeping mask, sleeping off her hangover. She’d be screwed if she wasn’t recovered by tomorrow morning. Those kids she tutored in math Sunday afternoons could be brutal even when she wasn’t hungover.
I checked the peephole and pulled back. What the heck was Mom doing here? I opened the door, and Gus came flying around her, tackling me with a sticky hug. “Ice cream?” I laughed.
“I totally ate yours.”
I ruffled my fingers through his curls. “I’m totally cool with that.”
Mom looked me up and down. “Late night?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Afternoon checkups never happened at Boulder.”
She bowed her head with a smile. “Touché.”
I motioned her inside, and she stepped in, dressed, hair and makeup done. She was healing. “It’s nice,” she said, her eyes sweeping over our apartment.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Mrs. Howard,” Sam mumbled as she sat up.
“There’s your late night,” I whispered at my mother.
Mom laughed quietly. “Her mother would definitely not approve.”
“Here’s the deal, Mom.” I crossed to the refrigerator, pulled out a Sprite, and pushed it toward Gus. “You show up on the weekend, you keep the secrets.”
“Deal.” She fidgeted with her phone. “I have an appointment for your sister. Do you think Gus could stay with you for a couple hours?”
“An appointment on a Saturday?”
“We thought it best that she start seeing someone, especially after I found those credit card bills you paid off while I wasn’t quite myself.”
I cringed. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“You did just fine. Better than I could have ever dreamed. I confiscated everything she bought. She’s buying it back a bit at a time, and seeing the psychologist is part of that. It wouldn’t hurt you to, either, you know.” She forced a smile, like she hadn’t just suggested I go to therapy.
I blatantly ignored her and turned to see Gus staring at Sam’s glittery eye mask. “Gus, you want to hang with me for a bit?”
“Yeah!”
“He’s cool, Mom. Sam, there’s no point trying to sleep. He’ll start poking at you in five minutes.”
“Rawr!” she growled at Gus and pulled him down, locking her arms around him as he struggled playfully to get away.
“Thank you, Ember.”
“No problem. That’s why I moved back here, Mom. To help out.”
Her cool hand stroked down my face like I was five again, and the light caught the diamond of her wedding set. “I want you to live your life, too.”
I thought of Josh, and the way he’d worshipped my body last night. Mom would die if she knew. “I am. Don’t worry so much about me.”
“I never have to worry about you. You’re more put together than half the population. Gus! I’ll be back in two hours. Don’t you dare act up.”
“Bye!” he managed through his laughter.
Mom gave me a hug and headed out the door.
I snagged Gus out of Sam’s arms. “Sam, if you’re going to attack my baby brother, you at least have to smell decent. Shower. Now. Before child protective services gets called on us.”
She flipped me the middle finger when Gus ran into my room and went for the shower.
“Can we watch this?” He held up a DVD of a horribly gory movie he took from the bookcase in my bedroom.
“Nope.”
He grabbed the envelope from the top, and his expression puckered. “You haven’t read Dad’s letter yet?”
I shook my head. “Not ready, yet. I will.”
He nodded. “It’s okay to do things at your own pace.” My brother, the sage.
“Did you like yours?”
He nodded, his head stuck further into my DVD collection. “He loves me, but I already knew that. He said he sent me my own soldier-guardian almost-angel. At least, that’s what he called him. How cool is that?”
Sometimes I just didn’t speak seven year old. “Awesome, buddy.”
“Iron Man?”
“Sounds like a plan.” We popped it into the player, and I pulled him back onto my lap. I breathed in the sunshine scent of his hair, like taking a shot of pure joy, and smiled as it raced through me.
Sam came back in, freshly showered and perky, with a towel wrapped like a turban around her head. “That shower sure helped you.”
“Well, I figured we’d have to get ready for the hockey game, right?”
Gus slurped at his Sprite, but I didn’t bother to correct him. That’s what moms were for. Big sisters were for movies and contraband soft drinks.
“I don’t think I’m going tonight.”
“What?” Sam dropped her jaw. “You’re like the girlfriend of the star player, and you’re not going? What’s he going to think? I’ll tell you what. He’s going to think that he’s awful in—”
I threw a pillow at her face before she could finish the sentence. “He’s doing something for his scholarship and won’t be back until tomorrow night.”
“Well, that sucks. What do you think he’s doing?”
“Not sure.” As I shook my head, my chin rubbed across Gus’s head. He leaned further against me, more engrossed in Tony Stark and his soda than anything. “I’m just hoping it’s not his leg. I don’t know what he’d do if he lost his scholarship.”
“You and Coach Walker? That’s cool. Gross, but cool. He got shot, you know,” Gus announced. “Coach Walker did.”
I hated that Gus had already been exposed to so much of the ugliness in the world. “Yeah, buddy, he did. But he’s okay.”
“It almost killed him, but he was super lucky.”
Apprehension raced up my spine. “Did he tell you that?” Josh was really private about his injury. So private he hadn’t even told me the full story.
“Dad did.”
I turned him in my arms to see his face. “He what?”
“Chill out, Ember. I’m not crazy.” He craned his neck back, but couldn’t see the movie. “Dad took me to hockey, so he knew Coach Walker. He talked about him sometimes.”
Don’t be a moron. Of course my brother wasn’t talking to dead people. “Yeah, sorry, buddy.” The movie sucked him right back in.
Sam took a seat on the couch next to us. “So what do you really think is going on? Do you think he’s hurt again?”
“He’s at drill,” Gus answered with a huge slurp.
My stomach fell through my body and a gaping hole opened up that cried out desperately to be filled with any piece of logic. “Drill for what, Gus? Like construction?”
His head swiveled, and he gave me the my-sister-is-dumb look. “No, like drill, Ember. You know, for the army. That’s why Dad liked him. Josh is a soldier like he was.” Gus turned back around like he’d announced that his hair was red. So matter of fact.
“Drill? Soldier?” No. No. No.
Gus sighed and stood up. “Seriously? You’re going to have to rewind the movie if you keep talking, Ember. I’m missing the good parts.”
Sam grabbed the remote and hit the pause button. “He’s in the army, Gus?” she asked softly.
He nodded. “How do you think he got shot?”
Where the gaping pit in my stomach had been, now was a sense of crushing, of everything imploding into me like a black hole had opened up in my soul. Once a month. He disappeared for a weekend a month. Drill. “He’s in the Guard,” I whispered.
“Yup! Sergeant Walker!” Gus plopped down on the floor in front of the TV.
Sam pressed play and then pulled me into my bedroom, shutting the door behind us. “Talk to me, girl.”
It all made sense now. Wrong place, wrong time. He’d only failed to mention that the wrong place was half a world away and he’d been in uniform. He’d been lying to me from day one.
Oh God. I was in love with a soldier. I couldn’t love a soldier. I swore I never would. I would never put my heart in the hands of someone who threw his life away in a foreign country, fighting for people who didn’t even want us there, and left for months at a time.
I couldn’t love a soldier. I couldn’t sit home and wait and wonder if he’d ever come back. I wouldn’t answer the door when strangers knocked. I wouldn’t fall apart. I wouldn’t hang a gold star in my window.
I wouldn’t be my mother.
“You’re not speaking, Ember.”
I snapped my focus back to Sam. “He’s wrong. He’s wrong! Josh would have told me. He knows how I feel about the army. He would have told me!”
I was on my feet before I realized I’d wanted to stand. I had to know. “Gus, stay with Sam!” I flew out the door, not bothering to shut it behind me as I pivoted and pounded on Josh’s door.
“Hold the f*ck up!” Jagger shouted, ripping the door open. “What the f— Oh, Ember. Hey, did you forget something?”
I shook my head and pushed past him, stumbling through the apartment like a drunken crazy woman. Maybe I was.
“Ember?” He followed me into Josh’s room.
“He’s not right. Gus can’t be right,” I muttered, opening Josh’s drawers. “He’s just a kid. What would he know?”
“What are you looking for? Right about what? Josh isn’t seeing anyone else, if that’s what you’re worried about. Hell, he’s barely looked at another girl since you showed up in December.” He closed the drawers once I was done rummaging through boxers, jeans, shirts, and socks, trying to find something that would prove Gus wrong.
“Gus, he told me . . .” I glanced up at the photos. There were no pictures of him with other soldiers, or deployments, or in uniform. Uniforms.
“Where is your flaw, Josh Walker?”
He laughed. “I keep it in the closet.”
Right. I sidestepped Jagger and opened the closet door, flipping the switch just inside.
“Ember, no!” Jagger yelled.
He was too late.
My eyes skipped over the various hockey jerseys and sparse dress clothes and were drawn to the ACUs like a magnet. Two steps and a reach, and I could touch them. The fabric was as foreign and familiar as it came, the backdrop of my whole life. “No, no, no,” I whispered, praying I was wrong.
The uniform slid from the hanger, and I held it out in front of me. On the left shoulder was the patch for the Colorado National Guard, on the right, signifying he’d been deployed, his combat patch was identical. The stripes of a sergeant were fastened across the chest, and across from the US ARMY tape was the word that froze up the love and hope in my heart.
“Walker.” The whisper left me broken. I crushed the fabric in my fists, wishing I was strong enough to rip it at the seams, to shred the future I knew it stood for. The one I refused to be a part of.
“He wanted to tell you,” Jagger said softly. “He just . . . couldn’t. He couldn’t lose you.”
“Get out.”
He sighed, and his footsteps retreated.
The room spun, or did my racing heart make it seem that way? How could something so perfect, so exquisite be so damned? This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I wasn’t supposed to live like this!
A primal scream ripped free of my throat. I tore the remaining two sets of ACUs off their hangers, unable to cope with them in my sight, and slid down the back of the closet onto them. Pain lacerated me, shredding the joy I’d had just an hour before and replacing it with an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. Maybe this is how all love ended up, crushed beneath the weight of something darker and stronger.
Maybe the tears would come and release me, prove I was processing what I’d learned. But there was nothing. I’d cried so much in the last three months that maybe there was just nothing left to give. I was hollow and empty.
I kneeled, scooping up the uniforms, but my hand hit a hard object toward the back of the closet. The light caught the dark green case folder, one I had seen too many times to count. It was an award.
I pulled it off the stack of abandoned binders and opened it. “Order of the Purple Heart, awarded to Specialist Joshua A. Walker for wounds sustained in combat in the Kandahar Province of Afghanistan.”
Exactly where my father had been killed. Wrong place. Wrong time.
Just like me at this very moment.
I brought it all up into my arms and carried it into his room, leaving the uniforms on the bed and propping the award on top. He’d been the one wounded, but somehow I’d taken a fatal shot straight through my soul.
The state championship picture mocked me from the wall, so I pulled it down and left it next to the award. I had been wrong. We hadn’t been fated since I’d been fifteen; we’d been doomed.