Page 45 of The Soldier's Homecoming

It had been warm when they’d arrived, but the sun was long down and the weather coolish.

“Pen…”

“Daniel...”

They laughed, the second time that night they’d done it.

“Snap,” he said.

But he waited for her to go this time, wasn’t going to interrupt her.

“I was just going to say that I don’t want to fight anymore while I’m here.”

He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans because he didn’t know what else to do with them.

“I don’t want to either, Pen.”

She wrapped her hands about herself and he had to resist the urge to warm her with his arm. To hold her to him and steal the cold from her body.

“I’m not here long enough for us to waste the time arguing.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t know if we’ll ever work together again as a couple, Daniel, but I’m not going to say no. Because I don’t like living with regrets, and I don’t want to wish we’d remained civil, that we could have been something great again, but that I was too pig-headed to believe that you were sorry. That I was too self-absorbed to see the problems you were facing.”

“Nothing will ever erase what I did, Penny, but I want you to know…”

Penny held up her hand to silence him. He obeyed.

“I need to walk,” she said.

Daniel sped up to stay abreast with her fast pace.

“And I need to know the details.”

He groaned, like his insides were being turned inside out

“Penny, no.”

She stopped and grabbed his hand, forcing him to spin and stop.

“That wasn’t a question, Daniel. I need to know about it. If I don’t know, then I can’t process it. I can’t deal with it. I need to know everything if I’m ever going to understand. I don’t want to fight about it. I just want to know.”

Despite the cool air a trickle of sweat hit Daniel’s forehead. His hands felt clammy inside his pockets. He pulled them out and ran them down the denim of his jeans instead.

“I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t, I mean, geez.” This was not something he wanted to do. “I can’t do that to you, Penny.”

She scowled at him before marching off. “ You should have thought of that before you screwed someone else.” She could have yelled at him, could have screamed, but her words were so quiet and low that it scared him more than any argument could have.

But she was right.

If she wanted to know, then he had to tell her. She deserved that much.

“Okay,” he called out, jogging to catch up with her. “Okay,” he said, softer this time.

“Don’t look at me,” she told him, her eyes trained ahead, her pace fast. “Just answer me and don’t apologize. Don’t pad it out, tell me the details as I ask them.”

He nodded, even though she wasn’t looking at him and couldn’t see the action.

“Where did you meet her?”

This was going to be harder than he thought.

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