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Taya continues to glare at my ex-wife but no further exchanges occur, and Raychel walks off. As I watch her saunter back to her lover, some heavy, old knot inside me loosens and slips away. What I told her was true. She’s my past.

My future sits right across the table.

My wife, who looks more than a little shaken by all of this. Shit. Not exactly the romantic evening I had planned. “I’m so sorry, Taya, I had no idea she’d be here. What can I do to make it up to you?”

Her eyes are soft, kind, compassionate. “It’s okay.”

I reach for the water and gulp the cool liquid down, hoping it settles the snakes writhing in my gut. Because even though I’m over Raychel, that doesn’t make what she said any less true. Taya has a right to know the stuff I’ve been keeping from her. Has a right to decide if she wants someone like me in her life at all. “None of this is what I wanted tonight for you. For us.”

Taya squeezes my hand and sits back. She takes a remaining scrap of bread from the basket and picks at it. Her face is drawn, her eyes sad. How do I make this right? How do I show her what she means to me, what I want us to be?

On a mission, I do whatever is needed. As the leader of my team, whatever move or decisions I make in the heat of the moment have to be the right ones because there is no going back. I learned through war to act without regret. Marriage to Raychel taught me a different lesson entirely. I know how to say sorry, but I don’t know how to make amends and get back on the right track.

Now it’s my turn to put all my chips on the table. To open up and let Taya decide if she feels I’m worth being with. I know Taya still has details to tell me about her past, but we’ll have time for that, after. Hopefully. Unless Taya walks away.

I take a deep breath. Before I lose my nerve. “Raychel and I were never good together. She was always mean, and I don’t say that lightly, either. My C.O. during basic could chew on nails and shit out bullets, but Raychel is a different kind of mean. She needed my constant attention and when she didn’t get it, she was cruel for the sake of being cruel. She’d do little things to break me down, then laugh about it behind my back. I used to admire her for her drive. She had ambition, and I saw it as passion, at first. When I think about it, I see now that her ‘ambition’ was nothing but opportunism and manipulation. I think something inside her is broken, but it’s not my responsibility anymore to figure out what.”

Taya lifts her head, her eyes searching my face.

I pause, because this next part is humiliating to admit. “I caught her fucking two guys from base in our bed. Talk about a welcome home after a nine-month deployment. We were having problems, but I couldn’t wait to see her. There was no apology after. She told me it was my fault. I was gone all the time, I never gave her enough attention, I demanded too much. She said I was too hard to love, that being married to me was a burden. She hadn’t been cheating on me. She’d been trying to save herself.” It still baffles me how someone could be so flippant about infidelity. During my resulting explosion, Raychel had been all too eager to tell me about her dalliances.

“That’s bullshit.” Taya’s words are stern with conviction.

“Maybe. But it didn’t matter. I believed her.”

“You’re an idiot.” Her gaze drops, chin tucking in. “Why were you forced into the program?”

My stomach twists into a knot. There’s no way around the truth. “My actions while deployed... are...wereunder investigation. My commanding officer went to bat for me and saved my career. In return, I had to join the program with no issues and at least make it through the one year that the annulment clause covers.”

Taya straightens in her seat, her gaze unblinking and focused on me.

I’m picking my way through landmines, and the more I talk, the more mines there are. “There was a boy who sold fruit in Kabul. I don’t know when or how, but somehow, the hostiles got to him. Planted a bomb in his basket on the day we were clearing the city in preparation for an airstrike.”

I pause again when the images flood me. Everything was such a blur, but the expression of surprise on the boy’s face when he sees my gun will haunt me until my dying days. A tight lump clogs my throat. I shake my head. “Sorry, need a second.”

“It’s okay, Jim. I’m not going anywhere.” Taya’s voice is soft. Warm. Strong. I lean into the support her calm presence offers and somehow find the strength to utter those last, devastating words.

“I made the boy and took him out before he could blow my team to hell.”

Am I trying to justify what I did to Taya or myself? Probably both. It’s not like I haven’t spoken the words to myself before. I stare into her eyes because their brown depths make the world a little softer, a little sweeter and just the right amount of forgiving.

But she pales. And a second later, she is out of her chair and heads toward the front door. My heart constricts, my deepest fear punching me in the gut. Maybe she just needs a second. Or maybe she finds me deplorable.

Either way, I opened up, and she left me.

I bend my head and close my eyes, attempting to breathe with constricted lungs and a shattered heart. A cynical voice whispers to me. What had I expected, after all? After Raychel?

Except, that voice is full of shit. Taya is nothing like my ex-wife. So why am I sitting here, letting the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time walk out the door without a fight?

I toss some money on the table and jump to my feet. I rush through the restaurant and when I push outside the door, brisk salty air slaps me in the face while I look right and then left. Relief swells when I finally spot her, over by the public beach bathroom.

But Taya’s not alone.

There’s a man with her.

My hands tighten into fists as I break into a run.

Chapter Twenty-Four

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