“Not often. Nothing like what we dealt with overseas. But it happens—a subject spots you on surveillance and comes to see what you’re doing parked in front of his house, a client turns out to be lying about which person in their case is actually dangerous, and a process service goes sideways. I’ve been punched twice in three years and drawn my weapon once, and never fired it. I’m telling you because you deserve to know it’s not a desk job, and your knee is going to have opinions about it sometimes, and the people in your life are going to notice when you come home with your shoulder iced.”
I stood there for a moment with the phone against my ear and the river moving below me. The mallards had drifted further down the bank. The light had come up a little more through the trees, gold deepening toward something warmer.
“How much of you does it take?” I said. “When you come home. How much of you is still there?”
Emmett was quiet for a long moment, taking the question seriously enough not to answer it fast. “All of it, on the bad weeks,” he said finally. “That’s the honest answer. Not everyday. But enough days that you feel it. You’ll have stretches where you’re fully present and stretches where you’re not, and the stretches where you’re not are real, and they don’t respond to just deciding to be different.” A pause. “I’m telling you this because I know what you’re really asking. And I’m not going to pretend the answer is a simple one.”
I walked back to the railing and stood there, one hand on the damp wood, looking at the water.
I’d been circling the real question since he reached out. I’d been circling it since the night Emmett had first called, and I’d stood outside the bookshop window watching the light in the apartment above and told myself I wasn’t in deep enough for it to matter. I was past that now. I’d been past that for a while.
“Emmett.” I stopped. Tried again. “I have not been able to hold a relationship. You know this better than anyone—you watched me fail at every single one. Every woman I was with while I was in told me the same thing on the way out. That I wasn’t there even when I was there. That they couldn’t build a life with someone whose head was always somewhere else.” I paused. “They were right. I tried, and I was bad at it, and I lost every one of them for the same reason. When I came home for good, I put that part of myself away. Told myself I wasn’t a man who got to have someone at a kitchen table waiting for him. I made peace with it. I thought the chapter was closed.”
The river ran. A bird called somewhere in the trees above the far bank.
“And then?” Emmett said quietly.
“And then Cara.” I looked down at the coffee in my hand, gone completely cold now. “I cannot tell you what’s different about her. I only know that it is, and I have never said that to you before in my life, and I’m aware I’ve never said it before, and that’s the thing that is scaring me.” I set the mug down. “I’m afraid that if I take this job, it does to her what the Marines did toeveryone else. That I’ll come back from a long case and sit across from her, and she sees that I’m not there. That she gets tired of it the same way, and I lose her for the same reason I lost all of them. I’m afraid the thing I’m good at, that I would love to do, and the thing I want, are not compatible, and that if I try to have both, I’m going to lose the one I want more.”
A long silence on Emmett’s end. Long enough that I checked the phone to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.
“Jasper.” His voice was different now. Quieter. “I’m going to tell you some things, and I need you to actually hear them.”
“Okay.”
“Those women—the ones you lost while you were in—they were not going to be there when you came home, regardless of the Marines. I am not being unkind about them. I’m telling you the truth. I watched them. None of them were right for you. Katie had been looking elsewhere for the last six months. Megan had been looking for a way out before your second deployment. The one you almost proposed to was a good woman who was not in love with you, and I think you knew that and you were going to propose anyway because you were tired and you wanted to believe it was possible.” He paused. “The Marines didn’t break those relationships. The Marines sped up what was already going to happen. I’ve wanted to tell you that for years, but you weren’t ready to hear it.”
I gripped the railing with one hand. I didn’t say anything.
“And the second thing.” His voice stayed level. “I don’t know Cara Darlington. I met her twice at Sweetbriar High fifteen years ago, and she had a book in her hand both times. But I know what your voice sounds like when you talk about her now, and I have never heard your voice sound like this before, Jasper. Not once. Not with any of them. That is information you need to take seriously. She is not the pattern. She is something new. Youdon’t get to assume she’s going to respond the way everyone else did, because she is not everyone else.”
I let out a slow breath and looked at the river.
“The third thing,” Emmett continued, “is the actual answer to your question, and it’s this—you cannot figure this out alone. I’ve watched you try to figure things out alone your whole life, and it has never worked for you. You need to go to her and tell her what’s on the table. Tell her you have an offer, and you’re leaning toward yes, and you’re afraid of what the yes is going to cost. Ask her what she thinks. Bring her into the decision before you make it, because if you make it alone and it goes sideways, she’s going to feel like you were never planning to include her. And that—not the job, not the hours—that is the thing that will actually break it.”
I stood at the railing for a long moment without speaking. The cold had worked all the way through my jacket now, and I still didn’t go in for another one.
“I hear you,” I said finally.
“Do you?”
“I hear you, Emmett.”
“I’ve watched you fail to hear me on this our whole lives. I’m asking you to actually hear me this time. Go to her this week. Tell her about the offer, tell her what you told me, and let her tell you what she thinks. Stop trying to solve it by yourself.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“When?”
I hesitated, just for a second, and I knew he heard it. “Soon,” I said.
“Jasper.” He sighed, exasperated.
“Soon. I’ll tell her soon. I know I need to.”
“I’m going to call you in four days and ask if you’ve done it. I’m going to be annoying about it because I love you andbecause I don’t want a two-in-the-morning phone call from you six months from now telling me you waited too long.”
“Understood.”
