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If anyone should have suffered physical and emotional pain, it should have been me. I’d always been the tough one, the strong one. Not that Cooper w
asn’t, fuck, he was the strongest man I knew, but he’d never had any need to be. He had a good life, grew up in a kind household. An amazing mother and two dads I respected the hell out of. Me…I’d been training my whole life to deal with pain and fight back against despair. I was used to it, being dealt the worst hands in a deck and dealing with it. Going all in even when the odds were against me. I could go to hell and come back laughing. Cooper…he was too good for that shit. He’d gone to hell, that was for damn sure, I just wasn’t sure if he’d ever come back.
I followed him out of the hotel and across the street to the diner. His shattered leg had healed and I no longer had to slow my pace to match his. But the scars would remain. Obvious reminders to him—and anyone who saw his bare arms and torso, his left leg—of what had happened. I guessed that was how life worked—the people who got hurt weren’t always the ones who deserved it. Life wasn’t fair, I knew that. But it still sucked. And I still intended to do everything in my power to make things right and to give Cooper the kind of life he deserved.
That meant winning Ivy back and bringing her home with us so we could start a new life. Together. We’d only had one night to show her what she meant to us and we wanted a lifetime more.
Cooper remained too quiet until the coffee was poured and his eggs were set in front of him. He toyed with his food and I sat there patiently sipping from my mug. I knew he was deep in thought and he’d talk when he was ready. That still didn’t prepare me for what he said.
“I think we should go back to Bridgewater.” His bloodshot eyes met mine. “Today. This afternoon.”
Setting my mug down, I tried to make sense of his request. “You mean, before we meet Ivy for dinner?”
He gave me a short nod.
“But we just found her.” Leaning over the table, I tried not to let my frustration show. “After all these years, Cooper, she’s here. She’s waiting for us.”
Cooper shook his head. “She wasn’t waiting for us. You saw her expression just like I did. She wasn’t happy to see us, she—”
“She was surprised, that’s all.” My protest was just a tad too vehement because I was trying to convince him as well as myself. He was right. She hadn’t exactly looked psyched to see us. If anything, she’d looked scared. That fear had been a punch in the gut coming from Ivy. She’d known us her whole life and knew we’d never, ever hurt her. The last time she’d seen us we’d made her come in the back of a truck, for Christ’s sakes. Why would she be afraid of us?
Tonight, I aimed to find out. But first, I had to convince Cooper that we had a shot. “So maybe she wasn’t as excited to see us as we’d hoped, but a lot of time has passed. Remember, she’s not the same girl we knew either.” No, she was so much more.
He was shaking his head before I finished. “It’s not just that.”
Ah hell. I recognized that intense look on his face. The nightmare must have messed with him because he’d gone someplace dark. Somewhere I wasn’t going to be able to reach him, no matter how much I said.
“I’ve been thinking,” he started.
Shit. I shifted in the booth, flagged down the waitress for more coffee. Whatever he’d been thinking, it couldn’t have been good.
“I think we should let her go.”
I stared at him in shocked silence. “Let her go?”
I shook my head and leaned forward again, far enough so he was forced to look at me. “She’s the one. You know that as well as I do. We knew it the night in Baker’s field. We wouldn’t have touched her otherwise. We’ve been waiting years to have another shot with her and now…what? You want to quit before we’ve even begun?”
I saw a flash of guilt in his eyes and wanted to kick myself for giving him shit when he was already in a low place. “Where’s this coming from?” I asked. “Why the change of heart?”
He scratched the back of his neck as he stared at the eggs like they might leap off his plate. “I just…I don’t know that I’m ready.”
I was careful to school my features. If there was one thing I knew about my best friend, it was that he didn’t want my pity. I knew exactly what he meant, of course, but I played dumb. “Not ready? I know for a fact you haven’t been with a woman in ages.” Since before the accident. Fuck, longer than that. There weren’t women to fuck in the desert. I left that part unsaid as I gave him a teasing grin. “Are you telling me you didn’t notice how hot she looked in that sundress?” I shifted in my seat, my cock at half-mast just thinking about the way the scooped neckline accentuated the soft curves of her breasts.
His grin was reluctant. “Of course, I noticed. Jesus, that woman is still as gorgeous as ever. More so.” He fidgeted with his fork and I could see that he was switching tactics. The man was scared, and maybe rightfully so, but he had to get back to living his life. He had to move on and he had to do it with me and Ivy.
“Hard to believe she’s not taken,” he said.
No kidding. She was beautiful, smart, funny. Perfect. Why hadn’t a man snatched her up by now?
Sure enough, Cooper was looking for an excuse to run away. Ivy was real. What we wanted with her was real. It wasn’t a dream any longer. She wasn’t a dream. A fantasy that I jerked off to in the shower. Not that I could blame him. Moving on was a lot harder for him than it was for me. The army had chewed us up and spit us out, but we had the rest of our lives ahead of us. No war. No bad guys. No IEDs or anti-aircraft fire.
I took a sip of my coffee. “I didn’t see a wedding ring, did you?”
He shook his head. “That doesn’t mean she’s not dating someone.”
“She said she wasn’t,” I countered.
“You saw the way she looked at us. Like we were ghosts or something. Clearly, she hasn’t been pining over us these last seven years.”
