Chapter 4 #2
She studiously ignored him as the elevator doors shut in front of them. He glanced at her profile, caught the flush in her cheeks and the sheen of tears in her eyes.
Seeing her on the verge of crying twisted something in his chest. That’s why she’d just rushed out of the room, so he wouldn’t see her on the verge of breaking down.
Hating her silence and to see her hurting, he lifted a hand and brushed a soft wave of hair off her shoulder. “Hey. Talk to me. Why are you so upset about all this?”
Turning her head, she nailed him with an angry glare. “Because you’re being an insensitive, unsupportive jackass.”
He snatched his hand back. Wow, okay then.
“I’m trying to help us stay stable financially, and planning for down the road.
I’m being responsible and protecting us and our future.
” Because if she stayed home once they had kids, they were going to burn through their savings pretty fast. Even with his hazard pay, things would be tight.
He didn’t want them to struggle like that.
“Yeah, well, if this has been your idea of being helpful and responsible, you can not bother from now on.” She folded her arms across her breasts and moved a step away from him. Shutting him out.
It pissed him off, and dammit, it hurt too.
A second later they reached the ground floor and she stormed out of the elevator before the doors had fully opened. Ryan trailed after her, angry and baffled at the same time.
They didn’t speak as they walked through the front doors. Out in the bright morning sunshine she turned right and headed across the lawn, taking a deep breath as she shook her hair back over her shoulders.
God, they were going to be at the stables in a matter of minutes and, while he didn’t give a shit what other people thought, he didn’t want their friends to know they were arguing.
Normally she was the one who wanted to hash things out until they were resolved, but now he was the one who couldn’t stand to let this go on any longer. Talk about role reversal.
Enough.
He caught up to her in a few strides. Wrapping a hand around her elbow, he pulled her around the corner of the building, into a shaded area where they could have at least a little privacy.
Rather than pull away, she faced him with an almost mutinous expression. Thankfully there were no more tears in her eyes. “What?”
He shook his head once. “I don’t want to fight.” Arguing with her made him feel like shit.
She shrugged, the motion tight, defensive. “I don’t want to fight either, but I can’t just pretend everything’s fine between us. I’m not built that way.”
Yes, he was aware. “Okay, then tell me what you meant before. What can’t you do anymore?” The deployments? Them being apart all the time?
“The missions. The flying. The lifestyle. Everything.”
He blinked in surprise. “But you love flying.”
She shook her head, more hurt bleeding into her expression. “Sometimes I feel like you don’t understand me or listen to me at all.”
He frowned. “Of course I listen to you.” But she was going to need to spell this out for him, because clearly he didn’t understand.
“No, you don’t, because I’ve already tried to explain this to you.
I used to love flying. But not since that mission out there with you.
That changed me forever. I’m not the person I was before, and now I’m done.
I want out, only I don’t know what to do after that, and for months I’ve been on my own in D.C.
, flailing, trying to figure it all out while you’re overseas, and when I do turn to you for support and advice, I get told to suck it up and stay in.
Like you don’t give a shit about my feelings or what I’m going through.
” She blinked fast, her eyes filling with tears, and it slayed him.
What? “I never told you to suck it up.”
“Pretty much. You told me what to do instead of listening and caring about how I felt or giving me an ounce of validation.”
Jesus, had he? After thinking about it for a moment, he realized that yeah, maybe he kind of had, but he hadn’t meant to be insensitive.
Hadn’t realized she was still struggling with long term trauma.
Shit, he’d handled this all wrong. Hated that he’d made her feel so alone.
“I didn’t know it was this bad for you. Do you need to talk to someone again? About what happened?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t need therapy or a shrink to fix me, Ryan. What I’m going through is completely normal.”
“Okay.”
She pulled in a deep breath. “I’ve served my country and I’m proud of that. Proud of my service. I’m strong, I’ve dealt with a lot, but I need a change, and even if I don’t know what that looks like yet, I expected you to at least try to understand and be supportive.”
The accusation in her eyes made him wince inside.
“You make me feel completely alone, like you don’t care about how I feel or what I’m going through. Do you know what that’s like? To not be able to depend on the person you love the most?”
Her words slashed at him like knives. God, he’d had no idea she felt this way. He never wanted him to feel like she couldn’t depend on him.
Those dark eyes held his, unflinching. “When we were trapped out in those mountains, I knew you had my back. I knew you’d do whatever it took to get me out of there.
And I’ve been nothing but supportive of you and your career.
But now, when I’m struggling and needed you, I feel like you weren’t there for me—and it had nothing to do with you being overseas. ”
Fuck.
She drew in a breath and continued. “You could still have been there for me even though you were half a world away, but you weren’t. You let me down and that hurt so bad because you’re my husband and I thought I could always count on you to have my back, no matter what.”
Ryan stared at her, his chest constricting.
Jesus, he felt like a total asshole. He barely resisted the urge to rub a hand over the back of his neck, reeling from her words.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he murmured, feeling like shit that he clearly had.
The next words weren’t easy for him, but he said them anyway. “I’m sorry.”
The hurt in her eyes faded, replaced by something that looked a lot like hope.
“I didn’t know you were dealing with all of that.
” He’d thought she was handling everything fine, had never realized the extent to which that mission still affected her.
She’d seemed to bounce right back afterward and returned to work, and he’d just assumed everything was okay.
Yeah, she’d mentioned it a time or two in the weeks and months that followed, but he hadn’t understood what she’d been trying to tell him.
Damn, and when he thought of her going through all that alone, feeling abandoned while he was on the second of back-to-back combat tours and they had only limited communication...
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, not knowing what else to say. All he knew was he felt awful and he couldn’t stand not touching her a moment longer, so he pulled her into his arms, hoping she wouldn’t push him away. “For hurting you, and for not being there.”
To his relief she sighed and slipped her arms around his waist, easing the raw ache in his chest. “Okay. Thank you.”
Relief washed through him. He hugged her tight and pressed his face into her hair, breathing in the herbal scent of her shampoo.
“You can always count on me to have your back,” he murmured, hating that he’d made her feel otherwise.
That she’d ever questioned it. “I’ll always be there for you.
It’s just sometimes, even when you tell me things, I guess I don’t always get it. ”
She snorted softly, her cheek on his shoulder.
“Yeah, I noticed. But after the first few times I tried to talk to you about it, things started going downhill fast, so I didn’t bring it up again while you were away.
I didn’t think it was fair to keep fighting about it while you were over there, just.. .you know, in case.”
In case he got killed.
He understood why she’d done it, even appreciated it to a point.
She’d withheld all this until now to protect him in her own way, worried about him being distracted over there, but it wasn’t worth the cost. Not when the alternative was her stewing about it all this time while he stayed clueless and it drove a wedge between them.
“You don’t need to protect me like that,” he said. “Not from anything to do with us.”
Another shrug. “It wasn’t something we could resolve over the phone or by e-mail while you were gone, so I wanted to wait until you were back.”
He sighed and released her, catching her chin in his hand and tilting it up so she met his gaze. “Well, I’m back. Or I will be as of tomorrow night after this boys’ trip, and we can figure everything out together after that. Okay?” They were a team.
She nodded and lowered her gaze, looking relieved. “Okay. Thank you.”
“So you forgive me for being an insensitive asshole?”
Her lips quirked and she looked up at him again, humor warming her gaze. “Mostly. But only because I love you.”
Thank God for that.
Firming his grip on her chin, he bent his head and covered her lips with his in a slow, thorough kiss.
She melted into his hold, opened for him. He growled into her mouth as blood surged to his groin. It had been a long time since they’d had make-up sex. He mentally calculated the time it would take to get her back up to the room and strip her naked.
Candace pulled back and gave him a wry, knowing smile. “Rain check.”
Damn. He cupped her cheek in his palm, holding her gaze. “I’ll do better, okay? From now on I’ll try to listen better.”
“Okay. I’ll do better too.”
He was so damn lucky to have her, and it was a weight off him to know she wasn’t still mad. “I love you.”
“Love you too.” She hugged him tight, then stepped back and checked her watch. “We better get going.”