Chapter 13
Tiguan
Iswallowed tightly. A hollow feeling filled me, and my heartbeat echoed through my chest and into my ears, the pa-pound-pa-pound-pa-pound of my pulse throbbing in time. My skin felt clammy, the bile in my stomach threatening to rise through my throat and into my mouth.
“He loved me. But he was in love with you.”
I didn’t know that she knew.
We sat in the quiet, the words from her lips seeping into all the spaces, smoothing the bumps and filling the cracks between us.
“I knew,” I admitted. “At least I knew he felt something for me that went beyond friendship.”
I looked up at the mantle across the room, where photos of Mayhem and Lyrical sat among photos of him with Chaos, of the team over the years, and its variations.
Barbecues, parties at the beach, impromptu football games in the camp.
Even some candid photos from bars and our quarters while on deployment. So much joy. Such a brief life.
It may have been brief, but I had a great life. And now it’s time for her to have a real life. With you.
My gaze fell on the shadow box with his folded flag and his medals proudly displayed.
My eyes threatened to water, and I worked around the hard lump in my throat to get out what I needed to say.
“For whatever reason, when I came onto the team, he and I just… clicked. It was as if we’d always been friends. ”
I twined my fingers back into her silky-soft hair, carding it across my lap. The action soothed me. Made the ache somehow less. Yes, she was his wife first. But she could be mine now, and I knew I could give her everything he’d wanted to give her, but also what he couldn’t.
“We went on this hike.” She knew it was more than just a walk through the mountains. She was a Marine’s wife, after all. But I didn’t intend to tell her anything more than the basics. “I got hurt. Knocked unconscious and fell into a ravine. It was about thirty minutes before the guys found me.”
She gasped.
With a light smirk, I said, “As you can see, I’m just fine, but it rattled him.”
I was out of my fucking mind.
I woke up that night, and his cot was empty.
I’m not sure what made me go looking for him, but I finally found him in our mini headquarters, looking through his phone, and he…
he was crying. Sobbing. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t feel like it was my place, you know?
I just stood in the shadows, watching him. Making sure he was gonna be okay.”
Emotion welled up at the next part. “He got up at one point and left the tent, I assume to go to the head, but he left his phone behind. He obviously wasn’t thinking clearly. I’m not sure what made me do it, but I snuck over to the table to look at what was on his phone.
“It was a picture of him and me from a week earlier. We’d been goofing around after a game of touch football in the quad. He had his arm around me in a sleeper hold. He wasn’t really hurting me, but we were yucking it up for the camera.”
The only thing that scared me more than losing Lyrical was losing you.
I felt wetness on my skin, and when I looked down, I saw tears leaking from her eyes.
“That was when I knew. He never said a word. No one knew but him and me.”
Chaos knew. I never told him, but he was my brother.
Clearing my throat, I sat up straight and pulled her into my lap, her legs straddling mine.
It wasn’t a sexual position—more so I could look her in the eye and show her my honesty.
“You need to know this though. He loved you, Lyrical. He truly did. There wasn’t a day that went by when you didn’t cross his mind.
Maybe it wasn’t a great, passionate love like in a romance novel, but he loved you in every way that truly mattered.
” Gently, my thumbs brushed away the tears that were falling freely now.
“He never stopped talking about you, about how fucking proud he was of you.”
Still am. She’s a fucking powerhouse.
Lyrical’s hands reached up to frame my face. Somewhere in what I said to her, my own eyes leaked tears. I’d been ninety-nine percent honest with her, and now it was time to give her the last percent.
“And I was so fucking jealous,” I whispered heatedly. “Because he got to have you in his life, and I had to watch from the outside. Like a kid with his nose pressed up against the glass of the local candy store, with no hope of being able to have a taste of what was inside.”
Just like in the playground on those damn monkey bars, her fingers fanned out against my cheeks, the stubble of my day’s shadow of a beard rasping against her skin.
“I loved Jesse. My life was richer because he was in it. No one has ever accepted me as completely as he did. And I will always love him.”
“I don’t want you to not love him. I just want you to maybe someday love me too.”
She will. She does.
Like a slow-motion dream sequence, she leaned toward me until our lips were a breath apart.
“Stick around, Rhen Durbin, and I think it will be impossible not to,” she whispered against my mouth.