Page 34 of The Hometown Legend

He’d promised Cassidy a different life. He’d been a different man, and she had marriedthatman. They’d been a happy young couple with a full life ahead of them and he had sold her a dream. And then that dream had turned dark, fractured. Ruined.

“I told you...”

“You bought the house,” she said. “You bought it. So take your half. It’s not fair, Gideon. It’s not fair for you to try and be honorable now when we both know you weren’t at the end. I married a war hero. And I divorced one of those men that you promised me... You promised me you’d never be like that. But you weren’t a hero, not for me, and now you’re trying to give me a gesture when it’s too late. I don’t want it.”

Her words stung, but they were true.

He’d been so prideful as to think he could never be one of those old soldiers. Sitting in the gutter holding a sign, tethered to a bottle, prescription or booze.

Yeah, he’d thought he was better than that. He’d been such a prick.

But he hadn’t thought so then. He’d thought he was special. He’d thought they were special and they’d shared that thought. This idea that they were special in some way. Golden. That was why he’d thought he could do all those tours and not die. That was why he hadn’t worried about a bomb, bullet or pain pill.

Because he was Gideon Payne.

And dammit, all that had meant something. In Pyrite Falls, Oregon, it had meant something. In his own mind, it had meant something. That he was living some kind of charmed existence. That he was immune to human weakness, to these kinds of petty traumas.

How very basic and boring to get blown up on a battlefield.

How weak to not be able to recover from that.

To become one of those homeless men in a gutter, shaking from withdrawal because the VA wouldn’t renew his prescription yet.

His house, his wife, his pride, none of it mattered. Not when the only thing he could think of was finding a way to get relief from all the pain wracking his body.

“I’m not being a hero. I just don’t need anything from you. I let you down, Cassidy. I realize that. I’m not mad at you for leaving me.”

“Be mad at me,” she shouted. “Yell. Do...do something. I...”

“I can’t do that for you. I can’t make you feel good about all that. I don’t hold it against you. Maybe you should let that inform how you feel about it. I’m not trying to be a hero. I promise you that. I gave up on the idea that I was a hero a long fucking time ago.”

“You didn’t use to talk like this.”

“I didn’t use to feel like this,” he said. “But I do now. I do all the time. So, sorry if you like the idea that maybe I transformed into a hero again after I left that house, but I didn’t. I’m still a miserable asshole. So feel well justified in your choices.”

He could give her this, at least. Separation. Feeling like she didn’t owe him, or whatever was driving her now. She was right—he wasn’t a hero. Why try to be principled now?

“Just give me a place to send the money to.”

He rattled off his dad’s old address. “You can send a check.”

“Gideon, I wish it hadn’t turned out this way.”

He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. Right then, he wondered if she wanted him to be angry so she could remember why she left. And not just remember the things that she liked about him once upon a time. So that she could remember he was also the same guy who’d lost his shit trying to assemble a simple piece of furniture and had ended up throwing a screwdriver into the wall. Yeah. She probably wanted to remember that.

He was better now. He was.

He wasn’t perfect, but he was better than that. That had all been...trying. Trying to pretend that he could go back to being the man he was. Without missing a beat. That had been a hell of a game, and it hadn’t helped in any way. In the end, he’d realized that. It hadn’t helped at all.

“I hope you’re well.”

“I’m getting remarried.”

It was like the bomb had gone off in his chest. He didn’t love Cass anymore. Not in the way that he once had. He didn’t feel nothing for her. She’d been his wife for eight years, after all. You didn’t just not love that person. But he wasn’t the husband that had said vows to her, and when she told him that he’d changed too much, he’d known for certain it was true. He couldn’t fit into that life anymore, so he couldn’t fully miss her, because he couldn’t miss all the things they’d once done. She loved going to parties as an officer’s wife. Had loved the status that it gave her within the community.

Her dad was a big deal in the military as well, and being the daughter of somebody high-ranking and the wife of someone on his way up had given her a lot of cachet at the base. He didn’t even have to ask. He knew that she was engaged to another military man.

“Do I know him?”

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