Page 96 of Hold on Tight

“If I’d trusted my gut, I would have sent Mike home. But I would have talked to him first. Made sure there was a network in place at home, people for him to go hometo, a plan in place for getting him back in action. But I didn’t trust it and I couldn’t talk. And it was the same with Aaron, and then—”

He had to stop to catch his breath and pull himself together, because he had more to say, and he was going to say it this time. All of it.

He drew a breath that rasped against his raw throat and hurt his chest, but the steadiness and warmth of her gaze gave him the strength to keep going. “But it was true, too. Ididn’tdeserve you.”

She started to protest, but he shook his head. “Maybe that’s the wrong way to put it. Maybe it’s more right to say I wasn’t ready for you.

“I came back from Afghanistan alive, but without really choosing to be alive, if that makes any sense. Just—I had no choice. Mike died, I lived; that was the way the chips had fallen.”

The sympathy in her eyes was killing him. And giving him the strength to keep going.

“It was actually Sam who made me see. That day he showed up at my place. He made me see I was scared. Scared of how complicated things are. Not like in the army. Things in the army are—maybe not black and white, but at least shades of gray. Not Technicolor, like you and Sam. And I was scared of living halfway, too. So scared that it was easier not to live at all. I didn’t want to do something half-assed that wouldn’t feel like it meant something, so I wasn’t—I was along for the ride. And I wanted more than that for you and Sam. I wanted you to have amanin your life, someone who was here. Really here, not just getting up in the morning. So—I did a few things. I went to see Mike’s wife.”

“Oh,Jake,” she said, her voice warm, his name sweet on her tongue.

“I should have done it weeks ago. Months. But I did it. And she was great. I mean, she’s a mess. The kids are a total mess. But she hugged me and told me it wasn’t my fault.”

“It’s not,” Mira said, and she touched his cheek, a gesture that almost undid all his tightly held self-control, the governance that held both his tears and his sex drive in check. There was so much still to say, and Sam’s gap-counting was bringing him closer and closer to where they stood, so now was not the best possible time for either crying or kissing.

“I still think it was my fault,” Jake said. “I’ll probably always think it was. It’s something I’ll always carry with me. But talking to her helped a lot. I realized that part of what I was doing was refusing to live this life because Mike couldn’t. I think you kind of said that, that night at the beach, but maybe I wasn’t ready to hear it yet. Maybe I heard it as much as blame as an absolution at that point.”

“It’s not your fault,” she repeated. “I’ll say that as many times as you need to hear it.”

He had to stare out at the skyline for a moment to regain his composure.

“Anyway, I applied to the University of Washington and a few other schools. I’m going to get my bachelor’s degree, and then I’m going to apply to get a master’s, probably in prosthetics and orthotics, but maybe in physical therapy, depending. In the meantime, I’m going to organize and lead some workshops and support groups through my own prosthetist’s office.” He had a couple set up already, one focused on finding an outlet through competition and exercise, and the other on helping people decide whether to embrace and reclaim their old lives or strike out on a new path. The kitchen table in his apartment was strewn with notes—on his own discoveries, as well as bits and pieces of conversations he’d had with other vet amputees. Every time he saw the mess of papers, he felt a surge of fresh pride.

“But … I thought you wanted to go back to active duty. You told me, you told your mom—”

“I thought I did, too. But everything’s changed. You, Sam …”

“I don’t want to be the reason you’re not fighting.” She said it flatly, in that no-nonsense voice that he knew now from personal experience meant she’d dug in.

“You’renot,” he said, with heat. “God, it’s the opposite. You’re the reason that makes all the other reasons make sense.”

“But—”

“I’ve thought about this a lot,” he said, and the thing was, as deep as she could dig in, so could he, and that was one of the many things he loved about her, that at the most primitive level, theymatched. “I’ve thought about my motives, what I want to do, where I want to be. And when I say it’s about you and Sam, I don’t mean I’m giving it up because I feel like you need me to or expect me to. I mean because of what I’ve learned since I’ve—re-metyou. When I first was injured, I didn’t want anything. I was empty. Nothing.”

She nodded. She’d first seen him at a pretty low moment, and that hadn’t even been the worst of it, because the moment he’d seen her in that physical therapist’s office, she’d opened a chink in the dam and life had begun seeping back in. Slowly at first, then in a rush, until—

“And then you guys—being with you, getting to know you, falling for both of you—made me alive again, even if I didn’t realize it or even want it. Even if it wasn’t something I was ready to choose. That day, when Aaron proposed, all I could see was that he had so much more to give you than I did. That’s why I didn’t fight for you. And then when I’d lost you—when I thought I’d lost you—that’s when I saw it. What living means now. What I’m fighting for now. For you. To be the best man I can in the world,for you and Sam.”

She was crying. He reached out and brushed the tears away and then, because he could, and she let him, he put his fingers in her hair and loved the feel of it. Loved her damp eyelashes and slightly quivering lower lip—which he badly wanted to kiss—and the way she was staring at him like he was something she could commit forever to memory.

“And right now, for me, being the best man doesn’t mean going back to the war. It was the right fight for me, then. It was a fight that had to be fought, and I was good at it. I was the right man for it. But things are different now. When the phone rings and it’s you saying, ‘Can you get Sam?’ Or ‘Sam needs’—or ‘Ineed,’ I want to be there to answer it. Every time.”

“God. Jake.”

“Every. Time.”

Her hands were clenched together at her throat, but he reached for one and wrapped it in his, and she made a choking sound. She smiled at him as tears ran down her face, a smile that collapsed and re-formed, breaking through like a rainbow every time.

“Daddy,” Sam whispered, from under Jake’s elbow.

It was the first time Sam had called him that, and Jake had to catch his breath before he could answer. “Yes?”

“You made her cry.”

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