Page 37 of No Broken Promises

Daydreaming about what could have been, I almost miss Nox and Daisy taking off toward the other side of the house. It isn’t until Nox is pulling on my hand and I look down at him that I manage to shake off the intoxicating thoughts of what could have been.

He stares up at me with the same serious eyes that Danny had and the same expressions that I see on Linc’s face on a regular basis. “You better be nice, Uncle Remy.” If I don’t know any better, I’d think Nox is a grown man, with the protective tone of his voice. “Mom doesn’t cry at night anymore. If you make her cry, I’ll find a way to make you pay for it, and I won’t call you Uncle Remy anymore.”

He walks away before I can say anything, and Daisy goes with him. Her tail swishes happily as she follows him up the stairs, too.

Left alone with my thoughts, which is dangerous on a normal day, has me rethinking my entire plan to tell Parker everything. If my dog hadn’t vanished in a puff of smoke at the thought of cuddles with her new favorite human, I might actually have had the chance to sneak out.

Coward. Danny’s voice echoes in my head, causing me to bite my tongue to keep from having a conversation with a dead man in Parker’s kitchen. Even if he is right.

I am a coward. I know it, and he’d known it all those years ago.

I wait until Parker comes back downstairs a few minutes later before I say anything. “You know you’re going to have a problem getting her out of his bed.”

Her only response is a small shrug that has her hair bouncing in the ponytail holding it. “That’s fine. You can get her later.”

My fingers itch with the need to touch her, to make sure that she is real and that she isn’t going to disappear like she does in my dreams.

The desert overseas had more moisture in it than my throat, and I find myself unable to do anything but nod at her words. Fear and anxiety roll together in one hell of an ugly ball, settling in my stomach and making it almost impossible to think. Breathing? Yeah, that shit goes out the window too.

She sits down on the couch, pulling her legs up so that one of her knees is almost touching her chest, stopped only by the size of her breasts. The other, she folds under her lap. Then she stares at me like I am some sort of science project.

“We don’t have anything to talk about.” She reiterates her argument from earlier, and all the confidence I’d felt at being able to prove her wrong flies out the window.

“Stop saying that.” I close my eyes and take a deep breath, letting go of the frustration I feel at the situation. It isn’t her fault that I’ve screwed everything up so badly. “We do. You may not want an answer now, but you deserve one. You deserve the truth you asked me for all those years ago.”

Parker purses her lips together, and her eyebrows practically hit her hairline. “You mean the part where you kept all the letters I sent you, but never responded? And then when I asked you about it directly, you lied to me?”

Yeah, just like she always does, Parker cuts right through my bullshit with a knife.

“Why didn’t you write me back, Remy? Why keep the letters after you told me, to my face, that you didn’t want to be with me? Why?”

Unwilling to have the conversation we need to while I stand in the doorway like an asshole, I sit down next to her on the couch. Once again, I want to touch her. To pull her into my arms. But Parker isn’t mine, not yet.

“I fucked up, okay?” The admission tears its way out of my heart and chest, creating a wound I am not prepared for. “I fucked it all up, and I don’t even know why.”

Parker doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t even blink. Her eyes don’t have any of the warmth, passion, or even disdain for me. As I silently plead with her to understand, I am left with nothing but a blank slate to speak to.

Seconds tick by, and she doesn’t say anything at all.

“You sent me that letter, and I got it in the first wave of us that got mail, right? I sat there next to Danny and Linc and we all got letters. Not only from you, but from our parents. While they tore into the ones from their parents, I sat there and stared at your letter for hours. Without opening it. If I didn’t open your letter, I could pretend that everything was normal. Everything was fine. I clenched that letter in my sleep for the first night. After I read the ones from my parents, I still didn’t open your letter. Not until the second one came.” The memory of cutting into her first letter, which had gotten worn down and wrinkled during the time I hadn’t opened it, took me back to the nights sitting in my bunk, needing to sleep but not wanting to.

“You said you wanted more, Parker. You gave me something else to think about. During drill practice, combat survival training, even the night marches they threw at us. You were the only thing I could think about. But I couldn’t bring myself to answer you. What if I ruined it? What if you changed your mind? What if being with me was too much for you? What if I ruined your life while you were waiting for me?”

Parker sniffles, and I didn’t realize that anything I said was emotional. Not until I see the pain in her eyes.

“You ignored me, Remy. For three months, I wrote to you constantly, and you never responded to me. I watched everyone else get a letter from Linc and Danny, but no one got anything from you. We were worried, and you shut all of us out.” Her voice, trembling with her own memory of that time, adds to the weight I carry on my shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Parker.” I am, too. So very sorry, and I don’t know how to fix it.

“That night.” She leans forward, cradling her face in her hands. “Tell me why.”

I look up at the flag on her wall, with the dog tags hanging below it, and can’t form the words. I can’t force them out.

“I didn’t want a relationship that would destroy your future,” I tell her finally. “I didn’t want to start something and then leave for the other side of the country or overseas. You’d be here, just waiting for me when you had the entire world in front of you, ready for you to reach out and take it. You could do anything, and I didn’t want you to waste your life on me.”

Parker looks at me, her head tilted slightly to the side, still cradled in her hands. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because I don’t want to lose you again. Not if I have a chance to make up for what I did when I never thought redemption was possible.”

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