“I told you, it’s okay,” I remind her, cutting her off as she flounders for the right words. “You don’t have to explain. I thought I needed you to, but I don’t. I’m not mad, I just don’t want to know. I don’t want to have this image in my head of you with someone else. I just…don’t want to know. You let go and you moved on and that’s okay. I get it. Just let me get out of the room so you can handle whatever it is.”
I try to move away from her again, but her thigh tightens around mine and her arms wrap around my waist, holding me against her. I can see she wants to talk about this, and I don’t know what else to say or do to make her understand I can’t do it. I can be tolerant and supportive, but I can’t lie here next to her and listen to her tell me about the man she had in her life while I was gone. The man who got to touch her and kiss her and hold her when I was thousands of miles away fighting to stay alive. I had a moment of weakness the other night and Googled him. That was all the information I needed to make me feel small and weak and like I wasn’t good enough for her. I don’t need that shit swirling around in my brain if I want this to work between us. I want her to be happy and I want her in my life, however I can have her. Even if that means I have to share her, as much as it would kill me. I’d do it and I’d suck it up as long as it meant she’d continue to come back to me.
“I need to get something. Will you stay here, right where you are, and not move?” she asks softly.
She waits for me to nod before she quickly scrambles out of bed and covers up her naked body with my T-shirt that was tossed on the floor last night. I listen to her bare feet pad across the floor, down the hall, and out into the living room. I continue staring up at the ceiling until I hear her walk back into the room. Turning my head, I watch her walk toward the bed, my shirt hanging off one shoulder and stopping mid-thigh. She crawls back into the bed, clutching something in her hands in front of her. Crisscrossing her legs next to me, I keep my eyes glued to her face as she stares down at whatever she’s holding in her hands.
“First of all, that was a text from my mother, not him,” she starts. “I ended things with him before he left to go out of town. Before our night together in the stables.”
Her eyes meet mine and she gives me a small smile, cocking her head to the side.
“And second, I never let you go. Ever.”
She holds her arm out toward me and opens her palm. Pushing myself up, I scoot to the headboard, leaning my back against it before I look away from her eyes and down into the hand she’s holding out to me.
My heart stutters in my chest and my mouth drops open as I reach out with a shaking hand and pull my dog tags out of her open palm. I trace my fingers over the stamped letters and numbers that spell out my name, rank, and company number.
“Did you know your sister had a funeral for you?” she asks quietly.
I nod my head as I continue staring down at the tags, trying to block out the images of the day they were ripped from my neck and tossed to the ground. My sister told me they had a small service at the cemetery, not telling me too much about it other than how pissed she was that because of the suspicion still clouding what happened at the time, she couldn’t get the Marines to agree to a full military burial or get them to issue a military headstone.
“I overheard people talking about it at one of the charity events I was attending,” Shelby continues. “I went a few hours after it was over, when I knew your family would be long gone.”
She clears her throat and I look up to see her eyes fill with tears as she stares unblinking at the tags, lost in her memories. My heart breaks all over again knowing what I did to her, how I left, and feeling ashamed that I never told Kat about us. Never explained to my family how much this woman meant to me and she was forced to sneak into the damn cemetery like a stranger.
“When I got there,” she speaks again, “I saw your tags lying over the top of the headstone. I knew it was wrong and I knew I shouldn’t take them, but I couldn’t stop myself.”
A tear falls down her cheek and her mouth trembles as she keeps going, each word she speaks breaking me in two. I slide my hand around to the back of her neck, pulling her toward me until our foreheads are touching. I close my eyes and listen to each shaky breath she exhales, wishing I could take away all of her pain as she relives this moment.
“I picked them up and held them in my hands and all I could remember was the last time I saw you wearing them. It was the day I left for my audition and we’d taken a blanket out into one of the old pastures, do you remember?” she asks, pulling her head back and her eyes finally meeting mine.
I nod my head silently, remembering that day all too well. We spent the morning naked and wrapped up in each other under the shade of Shelby’s favorite magnolia tree, making plans for our future after she nailed the audition. Then we said good-bye so she could pack and head to the airport, I came home to find the police report someone had sent me, and I made the stupid decision to confront her mother without talking to her first.
“Your body was on top of mine and your tags hung down between us, sliding against my chest every time you moved,” she says softly, only remembering and knowing about the good part of that day. “When I got to the cemetery and saw them there, held them in my hands, and closed my eyes, all I could remember was the feel of them against my skin every time we made love. I held onto them and I could almost imagine they were still warm from your body and I could almost pretend like you were still alive and I’d see you again.”
“Shelby…”
I say her name and it comes out in a cracked voice, my throat clogged and tight with so much emotion I can barely handle it.
“I was so angry and so hurt, but it didn’t even matter. Nothing mattered but having a piece of you I could keep with me. I took the tags and I kept them in a drawer in my jewelry box,” she admits.
I drop the tags into my lap and lean toward her, cupping her face in my hands and wiping her tears away with my thumbs, each one that falls down her cheeks feeling like a knife to my heart.
“I never let you go, Eli,” she whispers. “Never. Every time I questioned my life, every time I felt sorry for myself, I opened the drawer to my jewelry box and ran my fingers over them, remembering what it was like to be happy and loved, and it helped me get through another day.”
I press my forehead to hers and let out a shuddering breath, wishing there was something I could do to take away her pain, cursing myself for being jealous and angry.
“I can’t take back the choices I made. I can’t erase the things I did no matter how much I wish I could, but you need to know I never let go. I tried to move on, but it didn’t work. He could never replace you, he could never make me feel the way you did, no matter how hard I tried,” she tells me through her tears. “It was always you, only you.”
Tipping her head up, I kiss the tears from her cheeks, telling her I love her and that I’m sorry in between each press of my mouth against her warm, wet skin. When I’m finished, she pulls her head back and runs her hand softly down the side of my face.