Tempted by the Soldier

Chapter Ten


Nate knelt down in the dew-covered grass of the cemetery where his parents were buried. Muted light poured over the two headstones in front of him, and his heart throbbed in pain. He fisted the dog tags around his neck and swallowed a belly full of guilt as he stared at his mother’s name. There was so much he needed to say to his parents, but all of it just sounded like bullshit when he played it out in his head. No words were ever going to be enough.

It had taken him ten years to get here. Ten f*cking years, and he’d only ended up at her gravesite on a whim, after he’d stumbled out of his hotel room before the sun had even broken over the horizon. He hadn’t slept at all, for fear that Lilly would witness one of his hellish nightmares. The last thing he needed was her seeing firsthand exactly how f*cked up he really was. So, when the glowing numbers on the alarm clock had flashed five thirty, he’d climbed out of bed, not realizing his early-morning walk would land him in the one place he was nowhere prepared to visit.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to his father’s headstone. “I’m sorry I let you down.”

He tightened his jaw and pulled a weed that was growing next to his mother’s headstone. “Damn it. I should have brought you flowers, Ma.” He tossed the weed away and grabbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. You’d think that after ten years I’d start getting some of this shit right.”

She’d told him once that sometimes you had to lose your way to find the right path. Of course, she’d also told him he was just like his father. At one time he’d believed that. He’d believed it enough to give up civilian life to chase after his father’s dream. Or his ghost. Nate still wasn’t sure which had driven him to enlist the first time around.


Either way, she was wrong. He was nowhere near the man his father had been. His father had been a hero. Colonel Bradford Jennings had never run from a fight in his life. He’d met it head-on. It’s how he had died, defending his men, fighting for what was right until the last ounce of life drained from his veins.

And now here Nate was, ten long years after their deaths. Still running. From Lilly. From the storm of emotions she was stirring up in him.

He swallowed another rush of self-recrimination. He should not have given in to her. To the overwhelming temptation to touch her. To be with her. To pretend, for just a few precious moments, that he could be a normal man and live a normal life with the woman he was falling for.

He’d known what would happen if he let himself give in. He’d known it would be hell leaving her behind.

He had been very careful the past two years. Careful not to become attached to anyone or anything he couldn’t in good conscience leave behind when the time came. Because he’d known all along that day was coming.

Soon.

Too soon.

He blew out a breath and stood. How the f*ck was he going to walk away from her now?

Because he still had to. What was he supposed to do? Ask her to wait for a man who might very well come back in a pine box the way his father had? No way. F*ck that. He couldn’t do to someone what had been done to his mother.

He turned at the sound of footsteps, and saw Lilly approaching him as one might approach a wounded animal. Her gaze bounced between the two headstones before finally settling on him.

She wrapped her arms around her middle and a breeze whipped the stray hairs that had escaped her ponytail into her face. “Nate?”

“What are you doing here?” His voice sounded broken, even to himself. He hated it. He hated her seeing him like this.

“I thought you were leaving me there,” she admitted. “So I followed you.”

She could have slapped him and it would have hurt less. She’d thought he’d abandoned her in a dumpy motel in a strange city—after they’d slept together?

He would never do that. He wanted to be pissed at her for even thinking it, for seeing him as that kind of guy, but he couldn’t. Not when he’d never shown her anything else. In that moment, he wanted to show her something different. He wanted her to see a man she didn’t regret sleeping with the night before. He wanted her to see someone other than the a*shole who had done nothing but hurt her over the past year.

“I wouldn’t leave you,” he said. “Not like that.”

Lilly nodded, her eyes searching his face, looking for things he didn’t want her to find. She stepped up beside him and inspected the headstones. “Who are they?”

“My parents,” he said.

Lilly dropped to her knees and pulled a few weeds that had grown around the graves. At seeing her tending to them, no questions asked, something he’d never felt before flooded his chest. Something warm and sweet and painful, all at once. He sank down beside her to help, and they worked together in peaceful silence until every last weed had been removed. Afterward, she walked across the street and came back with two bunches of wildflowers, and placed one at each headstone.

“Thank you,” he managed to get past the giant lump in his throat. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“My brother and I take turns,” she said, quietly. “Taking care of Mom’s.”

Nate watched her try to hide the pain etched on her face. She wasn’t pushing him like she normally did. Instead, she was giving something of herself, from a place that brought back a pain all her own. And she was doing it for him.

She was too good for him. She belonged with someone who could take that pain away, not add to it.

“How long has it been since you’ve visited them?” she asked.

“Ten years.”

She glanced up at him. “Why so long?”

Spouting some lame-ass excuse was something he couldn’t stomach right now, so he just said, “History.”

“What kind?”

“The kind that reminds me what a bastard I am that I couldn’t be bothered to stick around when my own mother was taking her last breath.”

Lilly picked a blade of grass between them. “Be glad you weren’t there to see it. You get to remember her in a way she would have wanted. Alive. Healthy. Free.”

He slipped his hand over hers, lacing their fingers, and surprise lit her eyes.

“Is that how you remember your mom?” he asked.

A sheen of moisture glistened in Lilly’s eyes, but she quickly blinked it away. “No. My mom didn’t care how anyone remembered her after she was gone. Inside, where it mattered…she’d been gone for a long time before I ever found her in that tub.”

Jesus. She’d been the one to find her mother like that? What kind of a monster set her kid up for a nightmare like that? A sick feeling swirled in Nate’s gut just envisioning Lilly having to deal with such a horrific thing. Small and afraid. Devastated by loss. Terrified for her future.

He wanted to hurt someone for her making her go through that.

She tugged on his hand, and he realized he was squeezing hers too hard. He loosened his grip, but refused to let her free. “What about your dad?” he asked.

She laughed, a lifetime of bitterness carried in the sound. “What about him? I’ve never really known him. I know he owns a big company. Mom used to be his secretary, and was screwing him behind his wife’s back. After she got pregnant with twins, I guess the affair lost its appeal. He paid her off to keep us a secret. She tried to find another man to replace him, but it never worked out. He was the only man she ever really wanted, but he didn’t want her back. In the end, Sawyer and I…we just weren’t enough for her.”

Nate gritted his teeth, fighting the urge to wrap her in his arms, so they could both forget how f*cked up their lives had been. “Who took care of you and your brother? You said you were fifteen when she died.”

She shrugged. “We took care of each other.”

And there, in a nutshell, was the difference between them. Lilly wasn’t someone who ran. She was someone who stuck around. She was loyal and good and strong. And she was the most beautiful f*cking creature he’d ever laid eyes on.

He swallowed hard and released her hand to grip the dog tags around his neck. “Why are you here right now, Lilly?” he asked. “After everything I did to you…why are you still sitting here with me? You could be on a bus to Vermont right now.”

She gave him the strangest look. “Because…I want to be.”

“You shouldn’t,” he said, and turned away. “You shouldn’t want anything to do with me. You’re a good person, Lil. I’m… I’m just not.”

“Why would you say that?”

He stood, the crushing pressure in his chest almost too much to bear. “Why? Because I’m the kind of guy who leaves his kid brother to take care of his cancer-ridden mother when she’s dying. I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t even come back for the funeral.”

“You were overseas,” she whispered, looking stricken. “You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“I can when I knew she was sick when I enlisted,” he admitted. “I overheard her talking to her doctor on the phone. I knew, and I chose to leave. I didn’t just leave. I ran.”


Lilly slowly stood, concern and understanding and things he didn’t deserve shining from her eyes. “You were a kid. You can’t blame yourself for a decision you made when you were a scared eighteen-year-old kid, Nate.”

Sharp pain throbbed behind his temple, blurring his vision. She didn’t know the half of it.

Hale. Clemmons. Keller. Puckett. Rivera. Hanson. Lopez.

F*ck. He didn’t need the reminder. The truth lived in him every second of every day. He didn’t need the scars or the pain. The memories of what he’d done and the people he’d failed never left him. Not for a minute.

“That’s not enough?” She needed to see him for who he really was. She needed to hate him as much as he hated himself for all the damage he’d caused. He stalked over and leaned down right in her face. “Seven men are dead because of me, Lilly. Seven. Men. And I wasn’t a kid when it happened.”

He expected her to step back from him, but her feet remained planted to the spot. She blinked. “What are you talking about? Your accident? The crash?”

“I was flying that helicopter. I was Search and Rescue,” he said. “It was my job to get them back safe. But I didn’t—”

He slammed his eyes shut and swallowed the burning sensation in his throat as he took a step backward and turned away. “I loaded them up, promised them safety, and then everything went wrong. The investigators said it was mechanical, but I know I could have done something. I panicked. I missed something. I f*cked up. And now they’re all dead.”

Hale. Clemmons. Keller. Puckett. Rivera. Hanson. Lopez.

He hadn’t just brought that chopper down. He’d left them strewn across that field like rag dolls. He’d jumped out and tried to pull his men to safety, but it had been an ambush. Shots had rained down on them like shrapnel, and someone had pulled him out of the fire. Pulled him to safety and held him down, before he could finish the job.

He grabbed his dog tags and tugged them hard enough that he felt the bite of the chain on the back of his neck.

Lilly stepped forward, erasing the distance between them, and cupped his face in her hands. “Look at me,” she whispered, her thumbs smoothing the lines on his face that lack of sleep had put there. “Look at me.”

He opened his eyes and looked into the shining pools of green gazing back him. The warmth of her hands seeped into his pores, soothing the pain. God, he was tired. Tired of living with this overwhelming grief. Tired of fighting the want and the need to be with this woman standing before him. He was just…tired.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “Say it. Say it, even if you don’t believe it yet.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then said unconvincingly, “It’s not my fault.”

Total bullshit. He didn’t believe that for a minute.

But even as he doubted, he felt something deep inside start to stitch together. Under Lilly’s soft touch…he finally began to heal.