Chapter 12
Lyrical
I’d fallen ill on Sunday, and now it was Thursday.
Tiguan declared me healthy enough to go back to work when Monday rolled around, as long as I didn’t relapse into a fever.
Who made him a doctor capable of making that decision?
I don’t know, but part of me didn’t really want to fight it. I rather enjoyed being taken care of.
If Jesse were alive, he would have done the same, but something about Tiguan’s brand of caretaking was different.
Chemistry. I knew you two would be good for one another.
Charged. That’s exactly what it was. Every time he touched me—helping me into a chair, tucking me under a blanket, massaging a part of me that ached—he was tender, but the air felt electrified with words unsaid.
When we shared space in the same room, which was ninety percent of the time, the chemistry between us flared like a child’s sparkler on the Fourth of July.
Our eyes would meet, and my body felt like someone had lit a match to my core.
Inside, I burned when he got close enough to touch.
My fingers twitched, desperate to reach out for him, but the tiny sparks that broke off us zinged over my skin, stinging just enough to make me mentally retract.
That voice in my head.
I’m not there anymore, sweetness. It’s okay to let go and love him.
I knew now it was Jesse, not some weird manifestation of my conscience. Somehow, it was the real thing. He’d never spoken to me since he died, not until Tiguan showed up. As if he were reintroducing us to each other and setting us up.
Late that night, I lay across the couch, my head using his thigh as a pillow. A warm hand drifted to my hair, threading through the strands over and over. The repetitive, soothing motions lulled me into a weird sort of subspace.
“Do you think Saturday we could try for that dinner date again?” he asked.
I wanted to say yes. Desperately. Something still warned me to hold back. I knew what that something was, but how did I bring it up?
Say yes, sweetness. He’d be so good for you. He can give you everything I wanted to but couldn’t.
“Is it Jesse?” he asked softly.
It was the first time in years I’d heard anyone, other than the chaplain at his funeral, refer to my husband by his real name. The sound of his name from Tiguan’s lips tore my heart like a jagged valentine.
“Yes,” I replied. “And no.”
I played with the hem of my shirt, my eyes still fixed on the television screen, but seeing only flashes of Jesse’s face. One memory after another cascaded through my mind.
Him putting his hat on my head while it snowed.
Dancing at the Snow Ball.
Our first kiss.
Spinning in circles in his arms after his boot camp graduation.
Watching him as he made love to me for the first time.
A water fight while washing the car.
The sight of him in our apartment kitchen, making pancakes on a Sunday morning.
His sad, handsome smile when he said goodbye for his first Raider deployment.
Standing in his arms, looking out the patio door of our new home, talking about trying to have a baby.
Hold onto the memories, sweetness, but you need to move forward.
“He wouldn’t want you to be alone, Lyrical.”
“I know. But…” Why was this so difficult? “Do you know the story of how Jesse and I met?”
“Some,” he admitted. “No real details.”
I nodded. “Jesse sacrificed everything for me. He’d completed his first year at Stanford.
He walked away from millions of dollars in inheritance money, other than a small amount his grandparents left him outright.
His parents couldn’t touch that. He literally packed a backpack with just a few things and left everything behind. ”
“He loved you very much.”
I did, Lyrical. So, so much. But I couldn’t love you completely.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
I let the comment sink into the quiet of the room. Tiguan reached for the remote and turned off the television. Illuminating the space, the lone lamp on the other side of the room created the illusion that we were tucked tightly into a cocoon.
“He loved you, Lyrical,” he assured me. “He was faithful to you. While the rest of them—the single guys, anyway—were out getting drunk and taking home girls from bars, he never strayed. They constantly teased him about being the model husband.”
I rolled over onto my back and looked up at Tiguan from where I lay.
His gaze focused on me, steady and sincere.
“I never doubted that Jesse would stray. His father once told me he’d grow tired of me.
That he’d eventually be unfaithful, like all other soldiers were to their wives, but not my Jesse.
He would never have broken a vow he had made.
Never. But our marriage… it wasn’t like other marriages. ”
He frowned. His fingertips traced my hairline. “What do you mean?”
“We weren’t like other couples.”
Shaking his head, he said, “I’m not understanding, Lyrical.
The few times I was around the two of you in person, he always seemed attentive.
There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for you, and I know some of the other wives on base were jealous as hell at how he took care of you.
When he got letters from you, or you could talk on the phone or video, you should have seen how he lit up. ”
I smiled, warmth filling me from head to toe. “I know. We were best friends.”
His face filled with confusion.
“Jesse and I were intimate. Obviously, since I was pregnant when you all were on that last deployment.” I swallowed hard.
“But we were more friends than lovers, if that makes any sense. He was a protector through and through. It bothered him greatly how people treated me, and his conscience wouldn’t let anyone treat me…
treat anyone, really… as if they were less than anyone else.
He protected me more because of the injustice in my life.
It wasn’t out of some sort of mad, passionate desire. ”
Here came the tough part.
“We could have gone on like that our whole lives and been happy. But then, things changed.”
“What do you mean?”
“You joined the team. And he learned what it meant to fall in love.”