Page 11 of Hearts to Mend

“So I joined the Army, and they dumped me in Afghanistan. It was hell. In one month, three soldiers from my platoon were killed by IEDs.”

I frown, horrified.

“When John, my LT, died, I tried to save him. Tried to keep him from bleeding out after his vehicle hit an IED on the road outside Kandahar. And I lied to him while I did it. I told him we were close to the field hospital. I told him to hold on. He tried. He fought death. It was a struggle. It hurt him to hold on. And in the end, it didn’t matter. He still died.”

Rico closes his eyes and huffs out a deep breath. After a moment, he opens his eyes again, focusing his dark gaze on me. I try not to fidget under his scrutiny.

Even as a boy, Rico always had a way of looking not just at me but inside me. And now, those eyes pierce through my layers of armor, deep and intense. I look away, down at my wine glass, tracing my finger around the rim.

“A few nights later, when I was released from the field hospital, I went out and stared at the stars and knew with every fiber of my being that I would be the next to die, or the one after that, and I came to terms with it. I found peace in it, and I promised myself, when it was my turn, I wouldn’t struggle. I’d let death take me.”

Holy—

“The only regret I had about dying was hurting you.”

Shit.

“So I wrote that letter to release you. I thought if I broke your heart before I died, it would hurt you less.” He clears his throat and takes a deep sip of wine. “I let you go because I didn’t want to hurt you by dying. I loved you, Dee, so much. I’ve always lo—”

“Stop! No!” I pick up the air horn and threaten to blow it if he tries to finish that sentence. “You don’t get to say that word, not after everything you haven’t said to me for seven fucking years. You clearly don’t even understand that word.”

“I understand—”

“Because if you did, then you wouldn’t have stayed away. How long have you been stateside? And in all that time, you never came to find me. You thought you might die, but you didn’t. You survived the war and still stayed dead to me. Why? Why, if you cared so much about me, did you end a lifelong relationship with fewer than five hundred words in a letter home from the front and never once look back?”

Now he looks down, unable to maintain eye contact as he says, “Things got complicated.”

Complicated. Complicated?

“Complicated how?” I ask, sounding as irritated as I feel when he doesn’t elaborate.

“Complicated because…I didn’t die. Complicated because…I met Theresa. Complicated because…she got pregnant.”

The sound of her name and the gentle way he says it puts a deep ache in the center of my chest. Turning the hurt into anger, I say, “She didn’t get pregnant. You got her pregnant. Own your role.”

He blinks at me, then slowly nods. “We got pregnant. And everything changed.”

I have questions, so many questions. But I have no energy to ask them and even less energy to hear his answers. I need a break, and I need distance from this man who used to be my Rico, from this house that smells like every wonderful memory I have from those days before the war.

I set my wine aside and stand. Giving him a hollow, toothless grin, I say, “Thank you for your honesty.”

Then I leave.

CHAPTER 6

RICO

* * *

“What the fuck?” I rocket to my feet and follow her out Mom’s front door. She has her arms wrapped around her stomach as she walks fast, double-time, to her car. She’s running away from me. But I’m not finished. We’re not finished talking. “Dee, where are you going?”

“Home,” she says over her shoulder as she fumbles with the keys to her car. It’s last year’s Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, and it’s purple. I grin at her choice of vehicle. It’s so her—flirty and fierce.

But when I speak, all I do is argue. “After all that, you have nothing to say?”

She pauses, turns slowly, and gives me an empty expression as she calmly explains, “I agreed to listen. I’ve done that. Now I’m leaving.”

Without thinking, I stomp over to her, closing the distance between us, and stop too late, when I’m too close. She has to look up to meet my eyes, and the sweet scent of her shampoo on the evening breeze envelops me.

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