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“Yes. With my bare hands.”
“Which is why you woke up the way you did from your nightmare?”
“Yeah.” I swallowed hard. “I should’ve told you about the nightmares. I just was so ashamed.”
“Why would you be ashamed?”
“Because here I am, alive and well, while others aren’t. It seems petty to go complain about nightmares. Not when my family weren’t the ones to have uniformed soldiers show up and give them the news I’d been killed.”
“You feel guilty for living, don’t you?”
“The driver of the Humvee was father to a toddler with another baby on the way. My other man was a father to five-year-old twins. The third was barely old enough to drink a beer. Why the hell was I so special to have survived? I had nothing to go home to.”
“You had your family, Leo. Your mom, your dad, your brothers. But it wasn’t about deserving to live or not live. It doesn’t work that way. If it did, the shitty people in the world would be gone, and the good people would go on living.”
I took a shaky breath.
She caressed my face. “You have to know everything you’ve built, everything you stand for honors your fellow soldiers. You’ve built a business which gives jobs to veterans.”
“Yet I still feel guilty. Every single day.”
“That’s why you wouldn’t open yourself up to love me?”
“I thought if I could keep this in the ‘arrangement bucket,’ I’d somehow avoid tipping the scales of happiness. I could have kids but not love. I felt like I wasn’t allowed to have both. Like I could never deserve both.”
“This is why you have a beat-up truck, but a new house. A big bed in your room, but sleep on the floor. It’s the balance?”
“Yeah. It seemed whenever I tipped the balance toward happiness, the nightmares would remind me that I didn’t deserve it.”
She moved to sit cross-legged, and I did the same so we were facing each other. “But you do deserve to be happy, Leo. You can’t tell me that any of those men you served with would want you to sacrifice your joy because of what happened to them. You honor them with their initials on your knuckles, but you’d honor them more by living a life where you toast them during the good times. Sacrificing your happiness doesn’t do anything for them or their memory.”
She was right. None of my men would’ve wanted me to be miserable. Just like I wouldn’t have wanted them to live a life of guilt and denial. But I wasn’t done voicing my insecurities. Perhaps I could change my attitude, but my nightmares might never go away. “What kind of husband am I to not be able to sleep with you in the same bed? To comfort you after losing our baby?”
“The kind who wouldn’t leave me during the days after. That’s when I needed you most. That’s when the hurt consumed me.”
Her voice caught on the last word, and I found my own eyes turning misty.
“I’m so fucking sorry. All I thought about was how much better off you were without me. What a piece of shit I was for failing to be able to comfort you. For not being able to control the nightmares, and for putting you in danger.”
“I understand the why now, Leo, but what I need you to understand is I don’t need you in my bed every night to feel your love.”
I reached out and cupped her chin. “I understand that now. Will you give me a second chance?”
“I want to. More than anything, but how do I trust you won’t freak out again? Because I can handle separate rooms and beds, but I can’t handle you leaving me again.”
I’d never fucking leave her again, but saying so wasn’t the answer she was searching for. “I’m planning to see a professional. A therapist who works with survivors who have PTSD. I wasn’t ready before, but now I have too much to lose not to. I won’t shut you out again, Addy. When I’m struggling or when I need space, I promise to tell you.”
She put her hand over mine. “You love me?”
“I put cinnamon in my coffee every single morning because it reminds me of you. Put frosting between graham crackers because it really is like a hand-held cake and makes me recall the hum of pleasure you make when you bite into one. I made those nachos you love, but without you doing your ‘melty cheese dance,’ they weren’t the same. You are everything I’d never allowed myself to believe I deserved. You’ve changed my life, Addison. Made it worth living. So when I say I fucking love you, it doesn’t seem like enough to describe how much you mean to me.”
ChapterFifty-Six
ADDISON
His beautiful words made my breath catch and tears spring to my eyes. For a man who professed that communication was his kryptonite, he’d certainly found the right ones when it counted. “I love you too, Leo.”
We both lunged for each other, our lips colliding in desperation.
