AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And you’re afraid to just let me go,” he said. “As much as I enjoy being alone, you’re afraid of that very thing. You surround yourself every hour of the day with family and friends, and you have to ask yourself why? What is it you are so afraid of?”
“I don’t see that,” she said. “You’re grasping at straws because if you aren’t looking at a target through the safety of your scope then you don’t let yourself relax. You aren’t living life. You are observing it.”
He looked taken aback. And she felt a twinge of guilt at what she’d said, but there was no hiding from this. He was leaving and there was nothing she could say that would make him stay.
“You may be right,” he said, a sudden quietness in him and in his voice. “But I don’t think I can change. I’m sorry, Aly. I wanted a different ending for us. But I think I was fooling myself into believing I was a different sort of man.”
She closed the gap between them and reached out to touch his beard-stubbled jaw. “You don’t have to be a different man, you just have to be the man you are inside here.”
She drew her hand down his chest and tapped lightly over his heart. She knew that as tough as he was on the outside, Jay was soft inside. And that was why he fought so hard not to let anyone in, even her.
She hugged him because she was going to miss him more than he could ever know. His arms stayed by his sides and she felt her heart break wide open. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t love her and there was nothing she could have done to make herself not love him. She’d thought she could bring her warrior in from battle and show him the beauty of being a part of her community, but he wasn’t ready to give up fighting and she doubted he ever would be.
“Goodbye.”
He stepped back and looked at her and she easily read the anguish in his eyes.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you again,” he said.
It bothered her more than she wanted to admit that he knew that he’d hurt her but somehow hadn’t been able to see that she loved him.
“Is that really your only regret?” she asked.
“No, but we don’t have time for me to list them all,” he said, turning and walking toward the door.
“Coward,” she said. “There’s no pride in walking away now. You are just proving that you aren’t all you can be.”
“That’s the army slogan,” he said.
“I don’t care whose it is. You pride yourself on being a soldier, a warrior, but you don’t have the guts to stay and fight for something you said you wanted. Or have you changed your mind?”
* * *
JAY HADN’T EXPECTED Alysse to let him just walk out the door but he didn’t expect this amount of anger. Why not? Was he that insensitive that he’d missed something important here? He knew that she’d been hoping—hell, he knew nothing. She was still a big mystery to him and it seemed as if she always would be.
“I’m not a coward. I’m doing this for you,” he said.
“For me?” she asked, the incredulity in her voice enough to make him take a step back toward her.
“Yes, for you. Do you think I like knowing that even though you are with me I’m not the man you want? Do you think I like seeing disappointment in your eyes?”
“No. I never meant for you to feel that way,” she said. “I can work on that.”
She could try, but it wouldn’t change the fact that he was always going to be who he was inside and she couldn’t change that or accept it. He needed to make this break and never come back here again. He needed to walk away and keep Alysse tucked safely into his memories.
“You can’t. We’ve been trying to build something out of nothing here. That’s my fault. I’m sorry this didn’t work out better.”
“Sure,” she said. “I guess it doesn’t matter if I love you.”
His heart stopped beating for a second. No one in his adult life had uttered those words to him and he wanted to hold them close and hold her close. Was there a way he could make this work? Could he be the man she needed him to be?
He’d thought about the job with Lucien but to be honest he was afraid to risk it and find that he couldn’t stomach the job. He was a mess and had not been in the right place to start up his relationship with Alysse again. He’d made a mistake but he couldn’t bring himself to say those words out loud.
She watched him carefully, he suspected she was looking for some kind of sign that he’d figure out how to work this through, but he was tired of keeping them both on this roller coaster. He just wasn’t the right kind of man for the long haul. It didn’t matter that he felt like he should want something more. He was too afraid to go after what it was he wanted. He deserved the moniker of coward that she’d given him.
