Jesus. His pain radiates off him in waves, building and cresting. He pitches forward, elbows coming to rest on his knees, hands pulling at his hair again. Rage and sorrow spiral around him in a vortex.
“It was my fucking fault.” He spits out the words, full ofself-loathing.
He hasn’t cried, but I can tell he’s so strung out it wouldn’t take much to push him over the edge. I shake my head, though he can’t see it. I don’t think he can even feel where my hand now rests on his back or the way my body is pressed to his. I don’t even remember moving this close.
“No.” My voice breaks on the word, barely able to get that one syllable past my lips. I swallow, steeling myself to say more. “No. It wasn’t.” I don’t know how I know it, but I do. “God, Wes, I’m so sorry. I’m just so sorry.”
I manage to keep my voice mostly even as I say the words. I just want to hold him, take it all away. But I’m not sure that’s what he needs right now. I reach my other hand out, gently pulling on his wrist, trying to get him to look at me. When he finally lifts his head, his eyes are almost pleading.
I repeat his words from earlier. “Can I hug you? Please.”
He nods and I wrap my arms around him, and I feel his shoulders slump. He’s so tall that I’m awkwardly kneeling on the couch to embrace him, but I couldn’t care less. His shoulders shake as he hugs me back, squeezing me with everything he has, like I’m the breath he hasn’t taken in years. He lifts me, bringing me closer until I’m flush against him, my thighs bracketing his hips to straddle him.
He buries his face in my neck as I rest my head on his shoulder, whispering all the comforting words I can think of. Knowing they’ll mean nothing, but hoping they’ll ease the ache in his heart a fraction. I let him take what he needs, the comfort of my body against his, the freedom to let himself go.
Everything starts to fall into place as I think about this story in the grand scheme of his life and why he’s here. This must be thecatalyst for why he got out of the military. The scars on his leg and shoulder that I’ve noticed when surfing finally make sense. This is what he’s running from—everything he lost at home.
I don’t know how long we sit like that, wrapped in each other. At some point, we quietly shift to lie on our sides, continuing to hold each other close as we drift off to sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Wes
Istand under the hot spray of the shower, letting my mind wander over the two months I've spent in Sydney. Some days it seems as if that time has flown by, but when I think about how far I’ve come, I’m surprised it hasn’t been longer.
I reflect on the night I told Joss about Bobby. I hadn’t planned to pour my heart out to her, laying bare all my grief and guilt over what happened, but somehow, I’ve felt lighter in the weeks since. Prior to that night, I barely ever talked about it. Most people don’t know how to handle holding someone else’s grief, and it was just easier to deal with it in my own way.
My own way being me waking up sweating from flashbacks and nightmares every night, and then brushing it back under the rug every morning. I mean, at least I’ve finally accepted them for whatthey are and I’m not pretending they’re just “dreams” anymore. Progress is progress. Yet, in the month since I spilled it all to Joss, I haven’t had a single nightmare. It’s like my body and my brain were just waiting for me to let it out some other way so they could stop badgering me while I slept.
I feel a difference in myself. Life seems a little easier to manage. I can see now that I’d been faking a lot of my confidence and swagger since the crash. A year of putting on a show for everyone around me. But now it feels more like the old Wes is back, the one who embodied that confidence, that self-assurance, the one who loved life. Joss has been a huge part of that. Anytime she sees me getting into my head, she reminds me that I’m not to blame for what happened.
A small smile crosses my face as the water beats down my back. Joss has me actually talking about Bobby again. I’ve started to share all the good things I remember, all the memories that I locked away because they were just too painful. I wish he could have met her; he would call me an idiot for not making her mine. Maybe I am an idiot, but I still haven’t let go of my hang-ups surrounding relationships. One step at a time. Besides, our friendship means too much.Shemeans too much.
We were out on our boards at dawn this morning, so it’s only been ten hours since I saw her, but I’ve spent all day looking forward to tonight. I love our daily routine when she’s home: surfing down at Bondi, grabbing coffee before I go to work, eating dinner at either one of our places. Sometimes we read on one of our balconies or watch something stupid on TV. When we watchedSilence of the Lambslast week, we both went into hysterics remembering the day we met (for the second time).
We text constantly while she’s working. I usually wake her up with a picture of the beach or the sunrise, or she wakes me up with a selfie of her making a silly face on an airplane. Whenever my phone pings and I see it’s her, I can’t help my face splitting into a huge smile. Like it’s doing now.
Our rhythm with each other has become easy, our expectations low. I know she has work and a life just like I have my own, but slowly they’re intermingling more and more, and I can’t complain. Even our friend groups are starting to overlap. Breck joins us for dawn patrol when he can, and Talia has even met us for coffee a couple of times after she drops Willow off at school. And after my weekend of taking care of Joss, Jaz accepted me with open arms.
I shudder at the memory of how sick she was that weekend. Westillcan’t believe I never got what she had. I know I’m a total man-child when I’m sick, and I wouldn’t have wanted Joss or anyone else to have to put up with that. Last Christmas when I visited Rory, I was laid up with the flu for days on end and she still makes fun of me for how absolutely horrific I was as a patient. I was completely useless.
Come to think of it, I probably need to call her this weekend to check in—see how everything is back home. The idea of home feels so strange these days. Sydney feels more like home than any of the duty stations I was assigned to over the last twelve years in the Navy.
Shit, that’s a scary thought.
One I don’t dwell on as I flip off the water and immediately hear a knock at the front door, followed by Joss letting herself in. We’ve gotten so used to sharing these spaces. Dinner here, a moviethere, coffee on the balcony. But we never sleep over—not since she was sick.
Do I think about that weekend? The way it felt to hold her in my arms? The way it felt for her to straddle me on the couch? I mean, what man wouldn’t let his mind wander there occasionally. Still, it’s not something we plan on repeating, actively putting in the effort to resurrect the boundaries we blurred.
“Are you ready?” Joss calls just as I’m stepping out of the shower.
Remembering we need to get going so we’re not late to Breck and Talia’s, I hustle to slip on a pair of black boxer briefs. I turn to leave the bathroom, but stop dead in my tracks when I come face-to-face with Joss.
“Hi!” She squeaks out the word before turning on her heel to face the other side of the room.
“Hi yourself,” I purr, amused at her reaction. I’m not one to get embarrassed, especially about my body.
I check her out from behind, a favorite pastime for a masochist like myself. She’s in a pair of jeans that make her ass look amazing and those legs… Damn. She’s wearing a chunky knit sweater and suede boots. The way her hair hangs in waves down her back makes me want to wrap my hand around it and—nope, nope, nope, stop those thoughts right there, Wes.
