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“Because I love you,” she said, her eyes on his and her tone as direct as her gaze was. “I love you, I’m in love with you, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. So you can break up with me if you need to do that, but I’m not going to take it well. And I’m not going to give up on you.” She lifted a shoulder. “Ever.”

Noah stared at her, his eyes so dark that they almost looked like shadows.

And he opened his mouth as if he was going to argue, but for a moment, all he did was stare. Almost as if⁠—

“Oh, yes,” she said, before he could ask. “It’s true.”

She settled back on the bed, pulling her legs up so she could curl them to the side, and then lying down with her head propped up on her hand. Then she watched him quietly implode right there before her.

Poor Noah, she thought.

“You were saying something about how this could never be anything. And that I’m sick in the head. Or both.” She nodded, encouragingly. “Go on, then. Take it away. Explain to me how I don’t love you.”

9

Noah lost his shit.

There was no other way to put it.

He’d made it to the rank of Staff Sergeant in the Marines, which was not nothing. He had been prized by his superior officers for his cool head and calm, considered response no matter what situation was developing around him.

In other words, he had made it his life’s work to remain fucking cool under any circumstance or pressure, and he had always been good at it.

And yet here, in this hotel room filled with boxes from her former life, while she lounged there on the bed where he’d learned every inch of her beautiful body, Raemy Miller actually made him lose it.

He didn’t even know what was coming out of his mouth. It was...everything. Everything that kept him up at night. All the things he remembered that tore at him. Her brother, yes. But he’d been in the Marines a long time. Twelve years. He’d seen too many things. He’d lost too many people.

Or worse, they’d lost themselves back here at home and he couldn’t help them.

Truth was, there wasn’t a worse. It was all bad. Veterans committed suicide in numbers that were far too high for his peace of mind. Many of them couldn’t deal with the PTSD, so they ended up on the streets. He cited statistics. He told her stories.

Combat killed some men on the field. It killed others slowly, by increments, back home.

The men who came here to Wild Rose Point were brave, because they’d survived the battle, but knew that they needed help with the various wars they’d be fighting inside themselves for the rest of their lives.

That didn’t make him brave. Just lucky.

He went on and on.

And it wasn’t until she moved from the bed and came over to wrap her arms around him that he understood that this was what she’d been talking about. This was exactly what she’d been getting at.

This was all the terrible weight of too many lives and too many losses that he’d been carrying around inside him, all this time.

It was grief. It was sorrow. It was fury that no one had saved his brothers, and a terrible, deep resignation, because he’d known them. He knew them. He’d known that every one of them had, like William Miller, chosen the path that they were on.

And every single one of them had known that it was possible to go off and not come home. Or to go and become so ruined out there that they couldn’t ever really get back home, even if they were out of the combat zone.

Through it all, she had listened. She had nodded along in some parts. Sometimes her eyes had spilled over. And then, when it seemed like he’d actually lanced the worst of the poison out of himself, she didn’t run.

She came over and she hugged him.

And it was possible that Noah lost track of things for a while there. The time. Himself. There was only Raemy holding him as if she would carry him if she could.

There was only the way her arms wrapped around him, strong and sure.

Until, somehow, they were sitting in the chair. She was in his lap, but he didn’t pretend that she wasn’t the one holding him. Because she was. She was curled up against him and she wiped moisture from beneath his eyes⁠—

That he couldn’t conceive of, because it couldn’t possibly be⁠—