Page 101 of Over the Edge

“I repeat: it’s not that simple.”

She shrugged. “Life is only as complicated as you choose to make it. We all have the capacity to strip it down to its bare essentials. We can ignore all the little day-to-day stuff that distracts us and choose to focus on moments like this.”

“Easy to say when there aren’t bullets flying overhead. You and I don’t have simple lives. That little day-to-day stuff is the difference between living and dying in our line of work.”

“You won’t always be a soldier, and neither will I,” she responded.

“But for now, we are. As amazing and extraordinary as this was…as you are…this is a distraction. It wasn’t even real.”

“It felt pretty damned real to me,” she snapped.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant. You don’t want to admit that you enjoy being with me because it would lead to the next logical question of why you don’t want to be with me a lot more. Maybe even all the time.”

His head whipped around and he stared down at her.

“There it is. The, ’Oh, shit. She wants a commitment from me’ stare of terror.”

“I’m not experiencing terror.”

She snorted. “You’re so scared you can’t even admit you’re scared, my dude.”

“I am not.”

“Look, Trevor. I’m not trying to pick a fight with you. And for the record, I’m not asking for a commitment of any kind from you. Heck, I’m not sure I would commit to you right now, even if you asked me.”

That made him frown.

Feeling the pinch of that shoe on the other foot, huh? Too bad. It was time he looked himself in the eye and served up a little honesty and self-awareness to himself.

He rolled away and commenced pulling on his clothing with jerky movements.

More devastated than she would dream of admitting to him, she sat up, pulled her sleeping bag around her shoulders, and hugged her knees. She stared into the fire sightlessly. She’d given it her best shot to break through his emotional walls and failed.

Sorrow for him—for both of them—tore through her. Loss like she’d never suffered before. A sense of utter, devastating failure. They could’ve been so good together. But he just couldn’t let himself be happy. As sad as that made her, it was his problem to deal with, and she simply couldn’t take responsibility for it.

She had to walk away from him. Not literally, of course. They would continue to work in close quarters for a good long time to come. But she had to protect her own heart at some point, too. Right now, though, her limbs were too heavy to lift, and her heart was too heavy to bear.

She’d lost him. She couldn’t break through the barriers he’d erected to keep out real feelings. Like closeness. Intimacy. Love.

Her best shot hadn’t been enough.

And she was an idiot for thinking she could win against his personal demons. She’d been with the guy day and night for months, and he’d never once shown any inclination to conquer them.

He was content—unhappy but content— to stay exactly where he was. He neither wanted nor needed happiness or, by extension, her in his life.

A sudden impulse to be the one to die when Kenny’s rescue went down ripped through her.

Dying.

Death by freezing.

Not how I thought I’d go.

No more kids to sing to.

End of the line.

---