"Babe," he says, reaching for me, but I push his hand away.
"No, don't say 'babe’. I'm not your babe anymore, Jaxon. You left for eight full years and said nothing." Even as I spit the words at him, the guilt starts gnawing at me. I have a secret, one I won't tell him about. He deserves to know and when he finds out, he's likely going to be more hurt by my secret than I've been by his absence.
I've had eight years to heal and sort my shit out. He's been home two weeks and the shock is still in his future.
"I know you don't understand, but when I was on deployment, I couldn't just call you…" He runs his hand through his hair, and I take a step closer to the water's edge. "We went fullcommunications blackout every time we left base, okay? And when boot camp was over, I went straight into advance training. I didn't have a chance to?—"
"What about leave?" I snip, turning on him like a feral cat. "Or between deployments? You mean to tell me you couldn’t send a single letter or text message? You called your parents, right?" I'm mad now, biting back the worst of my comments, but still some are leaking through. Things I've thought for years are spilling out of me without regard to his feelings.
"Em, you're being silly… Come on. I'm home now and we don't have to fight about this." He reaches for me again, but again I swat him away. He's being flippant, ignoring the hurt he caused me by ghosting a relationship he promised would last a lifetime. Now he waltzes back into town and wants to rekindle our flame, but how?
How do I look past his just up and leaving me with no word?
"No, you're right. We don't have to fight at all. If you can ghost me for eight years, I can walk away from this conversation." I take a step away, but he snags my wrist.
"Emily, please don't do this. I want to talk it out, okay? I do. I want to apologize for what I did and?—"
"You destroyed my heart, Jaxon. I thought you were dead." The anger burns so hot, I can't stop the tears, but I do swipe them away. "You could've called me, at least, and told me that you were breaking up. Instead, I waited for you, mourning my grandmother who died and thinking the love of my life was dead…"
His bottom lip pushes out, but still, he offers no explanation about anything. Instead, he stands there with his hands balledup at his sides, frowning like a scolded puppy. I can't take it. I've had enough of this conversation and I need to put space between me and him. So I move away from him, walking toward the empty lifeguard shack on the horizon.
After several minutes, I turn over my shoulder to see him following at a safe distance, though I don't slow down or wait for him. He's like this—when I get upset and want privacy, he follows me. I know he's doing it to make sure I’m safe, but I've lived on my own long enough to know how to protect myself. I don’t need him. And I don’t bother turning on him to tell him that. It'll only make me more angry.
The shack is empty and dark inside, the bench along the back wall covered in sand that nobody's swept since last summer. I climb the ramp and walk into the old worn-down shack to sit down, pulling my knees up and wrapping my arms around them. The wood creaks under me and I focus on the sound of the tide coming in and not Jaxon's boots tromping up the ramp.
He ducks through the doorway and stands there with his hands in his pockets looking at me. It's annoying that he followed me, but I can't cuss him out and tell him to go away. I set the coffee down on the floor next to me. It's going cold anyway, and I don't take it like that anymore—just another thing he wasn't around to witness.
"I'm sorry, Em." His voice is quiet, but I hear him clearly. "I know that doesn't fix it. I know saying it a hundred times won't undo what I did. But I need you to hear me say it."
"I've heard it." I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and stare at the floorboards. "Hearing it doesn't help."
"Then tell me what does."
"Nothing. There's nothing you can say that makes eight years of silence okay." My throat is raw and my chest hurts. I'm exhausted from all of this—the anger, the crying, the guilt I'm carrying around that he doesn't even know about. I'm tired of being angry at a man I still have feelings for, and I'm tired of pretending those feelings don't exist.
He sits down on the bench across from me, close enough that his feet touch mine toe-to-toe. He leans forward with his elbows on his thighs and looks down at me.
"I never stopped thinking about you. Every day I was overseas, every single night, you were the only thing that kept me from losing my mind completely." He pauses and swallows hard. "I know I don't deserve another chance, Em…"
"We're not the same people, Jaxon. Too much has changed." I look up at him and feel so torn. I'm still in love with him, and I have no fucking right to be.
"Then let it be different. Let it be new. I don't care what it looks like as long as you're in it." He reaches for my hand, and I can't shy away this time. There's nowhere to escape to. Besides, I don't want to escape. I want it messy and raw and alive, and I want him.
"You don't even know me anymore."
"I know enough." His fingers close around mine and he brings them to his lips to press a kiss to my knuckles. "I know you wouldn't be sitting here right now if you didn't still feel something."
I close my eyes and let out a long breath. He's not wrong. I hate that he's not wrong. If I felt nothing, I would've walked away on the beach and kept going. I would've told Charity to mind herbusiness and never shown up for coffee in the first place. But I did show up because my heart has never given up hope that my happily ever after would come.
"Can't you see I'm trying, Emily?"
He stands and pulls me up with him. His eyes are locked on mine, and my chest is pounding so it shakes my whole body. And when he wraps his arms around mine and kisses me softly, cradling my cheek to brush away a few tears, I melt. I can't help it. I missed him so badly that right now, every trace of anger is gone, and the desperation of eight years of grieving takes over.
"I'm sorry, Em…" Jaxon kisses me harder when I don't pull away, hands sliding down over the curve of my ass to pull me against his body. I fist his shirt and yank him harder against me, biting his lip until he groans.
“Eight years,” I hiss between punishing kisses. “You vanished for eight fucking years and now you think you can just kiss me?” My brain is oscillating between hunger for everything I've been missing and anger over how he left me hanging. I'm confused and hurt, and all I want is his arms around me.
“I missed you every goddamn day,” he growls, pressing me back against the wall. His mouth crashes into mine again, nipping my lower lip before he says, “You think I didn’t ache for this? For you?”
