Page 33 of Always You

“When?”

“Just now, when you let me go first.”

“Oh, I wanted to check in with you, is all,” I said.

He frowned, then shrugged. “I’m good, just the Harper thing is intense.”

“I get that.”

Jazz’s voice cracked a little as he continued, the words spilling out with an urgency that was hard to witness. “I worry about her, about whether she will forgive me for not being here. Her mom explained Harper was better off without me, without the toxic behavior—hers and mine—and I agreed Harper needed stability, so I stayed away. I mean… whenever I was stateside, I stayed near them. I tried to be part of Harper’s life, but I missed so much, and I can’t get that time back. I can’t undo me not being there.”

“You have to remember it was Harper who gave you the details for Guardian Hall.”

“Yeah, she did.”

“Then, she must have wanted you to have help and found the right place for you.”

“She’s the best daughter,” he said, his voice soft, pride and affection clear in every word.

“I bet,” I replied, trying to match his tone.

He let out a huff that sounded almost like a laugh. “When I told her I was bi, way back when I talked about you, she just accepted it.”

“You told her about me?” I asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” he said with a shrug, his eyes flicking up to meet mine briefly before dropping again. “You were part of my past, and she knows all of me—well, everything apart from the Army stuff now.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. Instead, I focused on the emails, the safer topic that wouldn’t expose the ache I couldn’t fully understand. “See?” I said, forcing a lightness into my voice. “You’ve been emailing, and now she wants to visit. It’s all good.”

He gave me a small, tired smile, but I couldn’t tell if he believed it, then he took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m trying to piece myself back together to be someone she can be proud of. I want to show her I’m more than what the military made me, that I’m more than the nights I spent away from her.”

I nodded. “You’re doing the work, Jazz. That’s all anyone can ask for. You’re here, you’re fighting, and that means she gets her dad back.”

He glanced up, his eyes meeting mine. “I need her to see that I can be the best dad, and that her mom wasn’t completely right about me.”

“I know,” I reassured him, and for some inexplicable reason, I reached over and placed my hand on his.

Jazz appeared lost in his thoughts, making me uncertain whether he noticed the comforting touch until his hand tensed beneath mine. For a moment, neither of us moved. The only sound in the room was the distant hum of the refrigerator. Then,gradually, I felt him relax a little, the stiffness giving way to a cautious acceptance of the gesture.

We sat there in silence, with the tiny act of connection hanging between us, and I felt weighed down by all the things I hadn’t said to him over the years. When he withdrew his hand, severing the connection, I felt the loss.

The link between brain and mouth disintegrated as I stared into his beautiful eyes, and the desperate apology I’d been holding back fell out of me; it should never have left my thoughts. “I should have put you above everything, not decided things for us, and you wouldn’t have left. It’s my fault all this happened to you.”

Sitting upright in his chair, horrified, he shoved his chair back. “What?”

Fuck, I’d dug the hole and now I kept on digging. “If I’d been more honest with you, told you how I felt, cut myself off from my family and chosen you instead, we could have been together, and you would have stayed with me and?—”

“I was always going to enlist.”

“I could have stopped you.”

“What? No.” His words hung in the air between us and forced me to look up and meet his gaze.

“But I wanted…” I started, my voice faltering as I tried to reconcile his assertion with the narrative that had played over and over in my head for years.

Jazz shook his head, a rueful smile touching his lips. “You thought you could stop me from making my own choices, from living my life? Jesus, Alex, I loved you with everything a teenager could, but I had a path I was following, and I grew up.”

And unspoken?

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