Page 79 of Hold on Tight

All those years ago, beside the lake, it had been like this. Emotion bigger than him, bigger than his capacity to see or understand, bigger than his capacity to make the right decision. All those years ago, she’d asked him to claim her, and he’d failed her, like he’d failed her earlier in the beach house with his family when they’d asked him if he and Mira were together.

We’ve been spending a lot of time together.

A nonanswer. As telling as his silence had been that night at the lake.

He made the same mistakes over and over, hurt the people he loved most, because love made him stupid, because caring this much about someone was a recipe for the worst possible judgment.

Get up. Go inside. Don’t—

Don’t what?

Don’t tell her.

But the pressure of the words, of the memories, in his head was too much. This raw, uncomfortable, weird, messed-up sex, the sense of turning himself inside out into her, made it impossible to hold anything back from her. All of him wanted out. All of him craved the freedom of her. Even if he regretted it. Even if it laid him bare and tore him apart.

“My best friend died in Afghanistan,” he said.

White words, bolts of lightning, stark against the blackness of the sky, under which the foamy surface of the Pacific was only barely visible.

Her breath whistled inward. Then, “Jake.”

“Don’t.”

“Jake.”

And just like in the car all those years ago, the words spilled out of him, confessional shards. “The story I told you. He was the driver. When I told him to go, go, go, and he froze up? I knew that was going to happen. I’d seen him do it twice before in pressure situations. I’d taken him aside. I was the team sergeant. I took him aside and told him I was sending him home. Hebeggedme not to. Begged. And I caved. If I’d manned up, if I’d done what I needed to do, he’d be alive.”

The Pacific roared steadily on, wave after wave washing up on this shore, on every shore in western North America, in eastern Asia. Touching so many sands, connecting parts of the world that were far away. Echoing the rush of his blood through his heart, the pounding of that stupid, hopeful muscle in his chest.

He waited. He didn’t know for what.

She took a breath.

“Why?”

“Why didn’t I send him home?”

She nodded.

In the dark, she was perfect, as she’d been that first night, her hair glowing like pale gold, slivers of moonlight describing the contours of her face, shining in her eyes.

“I told myself I was afraid he’d kill himself. That if I shamed him and sent him away, he’d put a pistol in his mouth and pull the trigger.”

“Because that’s what you believed you’d do. If it were you.”

Something rose up in him, in his chest, and he was drowning, couldn’t catch his breath, couldn’t breathe at all. It felt like a ton of ocean water was crashing down on him, a wave curling up and over his head, like he was being being tossed around in the curl and churn and whitewash under the water until he didn’t know which way was up, and he had to hold his breath and pray.

“Does it make it worse? That you didn’t? That you came home and managed to stay alive?”

He hadn’t put a pistol in his mouth or drunk himself to death, and he’d risen to the surface after every wave that had threatened to crush and drown him, and when he’d broken back into the gaseous universe, there had been Mira and Sam and this idea offamily. There had been something that mattered beyond what he’d imagined could.

“Because now you have to think about the fact that Mike might have, too?”

She was supposed to say,It’s not your fault. She was supposed to absolve him and forgive him, because that was what kind and good people had done over and over again, uselessly, since the day he’d found out Mike was dead.You shouldn’t blame yourself. Don’t punish yourself; you’ve already been punished enough. No one could have done any better.

He hated her. For being right, for saying what no one else would ever say because no one else would ever see him that clearly. For dragging him down into this muck, this churning sand that was flaying him raw.

He loved her.

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