I wanted to cry at how unfair the world was. But I already knew that and I didn’t have any business being surprised by it.
“Your brother doesn’t go over there with you?” I asked him, fully aware he’d already mentioned to me in the past that his nana had had enough of his shit, and how he was the only one left who Jackson still had.
“No. About ten years ago, he got in trouble with some motorcycle club in San Antonio and he…” Dallas blew out a breath like he didn’t want to tell me, but he did anyway. “He stole some of Nana’s jewelry. She’s never forgiven him since.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Fuck.”
No one had a perfect family, but that was something else. All right. I needed to change the topic. “Where does your mom live?” I paused. “I’m so nosey, I’m sorry. I’m falling asleep and just trying to get you to keep talking to me so I don’t keel over.”
His laugh was soft behind me, more warm air over my neck. “You’re keeping us both awake. I don’t have secrets. My mom moved to Mexico a couple of years ago. She met this man old enough to be my Pawpaw. They got married and moved there. I see her once every couple of years. More now than when I was in the service.”
Something about that made me snicker. “As long as she’s happy….”
“She’s happy. Believe me. She busted her ass for us. I’m glad she’s found somebody. Old as fuck, or not.”
“He’s really that old?”
“Yeah. His name’s Larry. He has a grandson Jackson’s age. My ma asks for grandkids from time to time, and I have to remind her she already has a few,” he said, amused.
“You don’t want to have kids?” I asked before I could stop, immediately wanting to slap myself in the face.
His fingers brushed the shell of my ear again, and I had to fight the urge to scratch my scalp. “I want a few. I like ‘em. Can’t have them by myself though.”
“Your wife didn’t want any?” I blurted out.
It was that question that had him clearing his throat. Except for the time in the restroom, neither one of us had ever brought up his marriage, but fuck it. He was combing things out of my hair. We were pretty much BFFs by this point. “She already had one when we met.”
I waited. I already knew this information courtesy of Trip.
“Her ex had been in the navy, too. I didn’t know that when we started seeing each other. She didn’t like to talk about him much, but I figured they’d gotten off on bad terms. It turned out he was on the same base as I was.” He sighed, moving more of my hair.
Something close to anger flared up in my belly, and I fought the urge to glance at him over my shoulder, but I asked anyway, in practically a whisper, “She cheated on you?”
There was a hesitation. A hum. “No. Not then. We’d met through a mutual navy friend. She worked at the PX on base, and I liked her—”
I would die before I ever admitted to getting jealous that he’d liked the woman he eventually married. But I did.
Oblivious, he kept going. “She was nice. We… fooled around for a while. I was being deployed. About a month before I was set to leave, she told me had found a lump in her breast and that she was worried. She didn’t have insurance, her aunt had had breast cancer…. She was scared.”
Why did my stomach start hurting all of a sudden when it wasn’t jealousy-related?
“I really did like her, and I felt bad for her. I remember what it was like for my dad when he was sick, and nobody needs to go through that alone. I had already been thinking about retiring when my time was up in a year and a half. One night, I told her we could get married and we did. She’d have insurance, and I liked the idea of having someone at home waiting for me. I thought it was fine. I thought we could make it work.”
I felt like throwing up. “What happened?”
“She waited about two months before she went to the doctor because she was worried about the insurance not covering her, and it was benign. She was fine.”
“And then what?”
“You sound awake again, hmm?” His fingertips tickled the sensitive skin south of my earlobe for one moment in time. “Thing is, Peach, you can shoot the shit with someone and have a good time, and have that be the one and only thing you have in common. That was the same thing with us. She wasn’t the great love of my life. I fucked up thinking I knew this person I’d only met a few months before we married. I didn’t miss her while I was gone, and she sure as hell didn’t miss me while I was away. I’d e-mail her and two weeks would go by before she’d reply. I’d call her phone, she wouldn’t answer.
“I found out from one of my COs that she had been all in love with her ex. I’ll never forget how he looked at me like he was surprised I hadn’t known she was hung up on him when we got together. Everyone who knew her knew that. He was the great love of her life. I was just this asshole she had used for insurance who was a fill-in for somebody else whose shoes I could never fill, no matter how hard I tried.”
His hands paused in my hair for a moment as he let out a breath. “I’ll be honest. I didn’t try that hard. Not even close. Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder if there’s nothing there to begin with. By the time I got back, a year later, things were not close to being right. That happens a lot to people in the military when they’re deployed, you know. I moved back in to our house on base, with her and her kid, and we made it two months before I packed up and left. She told me out right one day that she didn’t love me and never would.
“The last thing I told her was she was going to waste her life away waiting for somebody who didn’t love her enough to want to be with her. It was the wrong fucking thing to say to a pissed-off woman.” He kind of chuckled almost bitterly. “And she said to me: You don’t know anything about love if you aren’t willing to wait for it. Wait for it. Like I was just killing time for her. I didn’t see her again until… a few months ago. Right after you moved in.”
Yeah, I knew what he was talking about. I’d overheard that conversation. Awkward.
“You didn’t try to divorce her?”
“I’ve been trying. She wanted half of my shit, and I wasn’t going to agree to that. She’s been drawing it out for almost three years. When I finally saw her again recently, she asked me to sign the divorce papers, that she didn’t want anything from me anymore. I heard from a buddy still in the service that her ex had split from the woman he’d been married to, and that they were getting back together.” He let out a disbelieving noise. “I wish them the very fucking best. I hope they’re happy together after all the shit they put so many people through. If they wanted each other bad enough, they deserve it—fucked-up love and all.”
I tried to imagine all of that and couldn’t. It was unbelievable. “Your life sounds like something out a soap opera, you know that?”
Dallas laughed, loud. “Tell me about it.”
I smiled, cheek still on my hand. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”