I slid onto the bed, grabbed one of the large pillows, and hugged it in front of me. I waited for Ben to move closer and sit near me, but he leaned against the wall.
“I owe you an apology.”
“So, you’re finally admitting you manhandled me?”
He didn’t smile. “I’m talking about seven years ago, Sav. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the Army right away, but after our first night together, we were on such a high, and I didn’t want to think about it. It was stupid.” He shrugged his shoulder. “I was twenty-two.Iwas stupid.”
“I can kind of see that. But that last conversation… You put a pretty abrupt end to that high, as you call it. It meant more than that to me. I thought it meant more to you, too.”
“Oh, Christ, Sav, it did. It meant more than I could have imagined.”
“But you ended it like it was just a summer fling, like you’d planned that all along.”
“It wasn’t, and I hadn’t planned anything.” He sat on the far end of the bed and blew out a long breath. “I felt like a liar all summer. Hiding my Army contract from you. Hiding our relationship from the world. And not because I was ashamedof us. I just didn’t need to hear anyone’s opinions about it. I heard enough of everyone’s opinions about me.”
By everyone, I assumed he meant his family because everyone else I knew loved Ben unconditionally. I thought his family probably did, too, but it wasn’t always easy to tell.
He continued. “Before I shipped out for basic training, all I wanted to do was to come clean. I needed to tell you the truth, and I wanted to tell the world about us.”
“How did you go from that to breaking up with me?”
“On my way to meet you, I stopped for some advice from someone I trusted, someone who knew me and the situation well enough to tell me what I needed to consider. It sure as hell wasn’t what I wanted to hear, though.”
I angled toward him. “Someone told you to break up with me?” Mai had been deployed then, so I knew it hadn’t been her.
He shook his head. “No, they told me to apply what I knew about myself to the situation and reminded me that I’m Three-Be Ben.”
“Three-Be Ben? What the hell does that mean?”
“Be brief, be bright, be gone. I’m not great at long-term commitments, in case you don’t remember. I bounced around between varsity sports, college majors, and girlfriends. I might have flaked on my Army commission if I hadn’t already signed the paperwork.”
He was studiously avoiding mentioning the advice-giver by name, but the complaints about his lack of focus had Vice Admiral Hayes written all over them. Ben’s dad had loved all three of his kids, but he’d had the hardest time identifying with his middle son, specifically Ben’s enthusiasm to try—and typically excel at—everything. Conversely, that had been one of the main traits that had drawn me to him.
“You did keep your obligation,” I reminded him. “You made it into the Rangers.”
He scrubbed his hand over his jaw. “The Rangers aren’texactly the settling-down type, though. You want a homesteader, you choose a Green Beret.”
I furrowed my brow. “What are you talking about?”
“Just an Army thing. My point is, I’m not a good bet when it comes to committing. Sooner or later, I would have screwed up everything. I didn’t mean to break your heart, but if I’d waited until we were both in deeper, the fallout would have been even worse.”
I scowled. “Who said you broke my heart?”
He’d shredded it, pulverized it, then ground it into a fine dust. I hadn’t been sure there was enough of it left to heal. It had taken nearly a year and the excitement of a chance to build the business with Devlin to bring me fully back to the world of the living. But I had never admitted that to Ben, and I wasn’t going to start now.
“Well, it broke mine,” he said. “And I’m sorry for what I did to both of us.”
My heart, the one that had grown back over the years of making a reasonable, if not joyous, life for myself, jumped into my throat.
He pushed off the bed and took a few steps toward the bathroom.
I grabbed his hand as he passed. “Thank you for telling me what happened.”
He gently squeezed my fingers. “I didn’t want to part ways again without saying what needed to be said.”
“Me either,” I said.
“But about that incident you keep calling manhandling… As we used to say in the French class we had together...” he leaned down and whispered, “je ne regrette rien!”
