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“Don’t you dare go there, Boxcar. Drop this. Now.”
“You know, I did as Fox asked me to. You let him borrow some supplies and in return, I looked into your debts and I really didn’t like what I saw.”
I step back again as the weight of years of mistakes falls on me. “Box…”
“What happened after I left, Caleb?”
“Life happened!” I shout. “Real life. Most of us don’t have the luxury of knowing how to steal from rich guys’ offshore bank accounts. In the real world, people like me have to actually work for what we have.”
“I’m not going to apologize for taking advantage of a broken system. And don’t turn this around. All I want to do to is help you.”
“I never asked for your help!”
“And you never have to,” he says, his voice growing softer. “That’s the whole point. You and me — we were supposed to be a team, but you couldn’t handle that. You couldn’t handle the idea of relying on anybody. Especially not a man and especially not one like me.”
I pause as his words strike me cold. “Box, what…”
“I knew exactly what I was getting into with you, Caleb. Fox…” He pauses, chuckling softly. “He even tried to talk me out of it. He told me I didn’t have it in me to keep up with you and I knew he was right, but I wanted you anyway. You were stronger than me, faster than me, better than me, in every way imaginable but that just made me want you more. I thought undying devotion would be enough to make you want me back but, turns out, you couldn’t see past the coward standing behind you.”
I take a breath, but it catches in my throat. “You think I thought you were a coward?”
“I think you had every reason to,” he says, gesturing at me. “I mean, look at you. You’re perfect and badass and brave, but I’m not. Be honest, Caleb. If Fox wasn’t so hung up on Dani, would you have ended up with him or me?”
My jaw drops. “Is that what you really think?”
“Am I wrong?”
“Completely,” I say. “Fox died.”
“So, you settled for me?”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” My ankles twitch, pulling me closer to him. “Fox meant a lot to me, but I never once looked at him the way I looked at you. Men like that — the soldiers and the fighters — they don’t stick around for very long. You can’t depend on them to always be there because each one of them has a bullet chasing them down and it hits them eventually.”
He blinks with confusion. “We’re not out in the desert anymore, Cal.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I say. “Even today, Fox is still running from it. Ask Dani if you don’t believe me. Ask her if she ever wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat wondering if today’s the day she’ll never see him again. You don’t want to live like that.”
“Is that why you pushed me away?” he asks. “Because somewhere out there there’s a magic bullet with your name on it?”
“Can you really blame me? You were there. You saw it,” I whisper. My eyes burn but I fight the tears begging to spill over. “We lost… everything. We lost Fox — or we thought we did. I didn’t want to put you through losing me, too.”
“That wasn’t your call to make.”
“Yes, it was.” My voice breaks but I hold it together. “Part of me was really pissed off when Fox showed up alive, but I understood why he did what he did. Soldiers don’t get to be selfish and put others in the crosshairs meant for us. And — again — if you don’t believe me, ask Dani. She has a few scars that more than prove my point.”
Boxcar shakes his head. “You keep saying that, but… we’re not Fox and Dani. It’s an unfair comparison and if you really believed what you’re saying then why did you marry me in the first place?”
“Because you made it so easy to get lost in you,” I say. Instinct drives my words, bending my tongue too fast for me to stop it. “It was so easy to block out the world, even if it was only for a moment. I clung to you because you were different. I didn’t care that you were weaker than me or slower than me because you were smarter. You saw more of me than anyone else did. You’re no coward, Boxcar. You’re the bravest man I’ve ever known, and I couldn’t handle that because it meant that someday, you’d try to take that bullet for me.”
“Of course, I would,” he whispers. “You’re my fucking wife.”
Boxcar steps toward me, closing the gap between us with two long strides. I don’t fight it when his lips crush mine. I lean into his embrace, falling deeper into his arms as he wraps them around me.
Chapter 7
Boxcar
Then
