by Stella Noir
I want to reach out for her, touch her, hug her, tell her that everthing is going to be okay and that she didn't do anything wrong. But I'm incapable of moving. When I try to lift my arm to touch her, a sharp pain runs through my side, reminding me that I was stabbed pretty badly the night before.
"Lily," I plead. "Look at me."
She lifts her head and her watery eyes lock on mine, seeking forgiveness when there's nothing to forgive.
"I'm proud of you," I say. "You did the right thing. He would have killed you. It was self-defense. Even if he dies, you did nothing wrong. You just saved both our lives."
She nods.
"That's what the police say," she says, her voice almost breaking. "But... I may have killed someone."
I know how she's feeling. I've been in her shoes. I've lived through her pain. Just like her, I never did anything wrong because it was my order to kill as a Marine. But taking another person's life, no matter the circumstances, that changes you. If you're fucked up in the head, it makes you feel powerful. If you're a good person like Lily, it makes you feel as if you're the worst scum on earth, a devil in disguise. And she will feel that way for a while, no matter what I or the police tell her.
"What you're going through," I tell her, "it's normal, Lily. That doesn't mean it doesn’t suck or hurt, and you will feel like shit for a while. But it does not mean that you did anything wrong."
She looks at me with another bitter smile, wiping away the tears in a delicate motion, trying not to ruin her makeup.
"I know," she says. "On a rational level, I know. But it still... sucks."
I nod.
"It does suck," I agree. "But I'm here. I'll go through this with you. I've been through this myself, I know what it feels like. And I know how to get through it."
Her face brightens and she squeezes my hand.
"Thank you.“
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Lily
"Are you sure this is fancy enough for you?" I jokingly ask.
Jed rolls his eyes at me as he turns around. We're sitting on his couch, boxes of Chinese take-out food spread in front of us as I light the candles on the table.
It's been two weeks and Jed has finally been released from the hospital. They wanted to keep him there longer, but he protested like a stubborn kid. I had to promise to take good care of him for the next few days and make sure that he doesn't reach for things or pick up anything heavier than five pounds while his wound is still healing.
Of course, he protested that part as well, but he can't tell me what to do. I took a few days off work, leaving the stressful world of daily news behind to pamper him back to full health.
"We should have done it like this in the first place," I say, sitting down next to him on the sofa.
He arches his brows.
"Oh, I don't think so," he objects. "I want to take you out properly. As soon as you let me."
I plant a gentle kiss on his lips, and he reaches up to grab me, his strength apparent as always. He presses me against the good side of his body, claiming me with a hungry kiss that instantly causes my body to quiver with need.
"Careful, careful," I warn, distancing myself from him.
His eyes follow me hungrily as I move away from him.
"I fucking miss you," he says.
"But I'm right here," I reply, winking at him.
He narrows his eyes. "You deserve a spanking."
My face blushes with red heat at the thought of it, but I shake my head.
"Soon," I promise. "You need to allow yourself a little more rest."
We start eating and I bathe in the bliss of having him back with me. These past two weeks were hard, to say the least.
Titus didn't make it, and while a part of me was relieved to hear that we'd never have to deal with him again, I'm still trying to cope with the fact that I took man's life. Jed has told me all about him, and based on his sad and regrettable story, I can't help but feel bad for him, even after what he did to us. Things could've turned out so much differently for him had he followed Jed's path instead of losing his way like he did.
I also missed Jed. My body craves him, and despite going through way longer periods without having sex than the past two weeks, I've never felt this under-fucked before.
But moreover, I missed having him around and being able to see him as much as I wanted. I visited him at the hospital every single day, but it just wasn‘t the same.
At least not being able to follow our usual routine has enabled us to reach a new level in our relationship. We talked more during the last two weeks than we did the entire month before, and I finally feel like I got to know the man who's been turning my world upside down for so many weeks now.
It took some time and some poking, but he finally let go, telling me about random things in his life, his upbringing, even about parts of his time in the Marines. He went through some serious shit during that time, as he took on even the most dangerous deployments. Compared to his experiences, my encounter with Titus is hardly anything and I feel stupid for letting it get to me this badly.
But there's one thing I still don't know. I still don't know about the woman in the pictures. He never mentioned her, and I didn't want to ask. I was already getting so much more from him than he was willing to give before, and I was too scared to ruin it by asking again.
My eyes wander over to the bureau at the other side of the living room where her pictures once stood. They're still gone. I have only seen them that one time, before he made them disappear and started to deny her existence.
I can feel Jed's eyes on me and turn around to look at him.
"She was my wife," he says.
My heart skips a beat.
"You don't have to –"
"Yes, I do," he says. "It's about time, and you deserve to know."
His gaze darkens as he diverts his eyes from me.
"I met her while I was still stationed here," he says. "I loved her, but we were very young. We got married before my first deployment, just in case something happened to me, even though we'd only been together for a few months. She was great, she was everything I looked for in a woman."
He pauses and clears his throat, my eyes glued to his lips.
"We were always worried about me getting killed, with all the scary deployments they'd send me on," he continues. "She hated it. What woman wouldn't? Every time I left, she cried her eyes out because she was so worried. We always worried about me dying, but never about her."
He turns to me, his black eyes locking onto mine.
"We never anticipated her death. So when it happened, I wasn't prepared for it at all," he says.
"Oh my God, Jed, I'm so sor –"
He waves me off, beckoning me to be quiet.
"She died in a freak car accident," he says. "No one could have seen it coming. It didn't even happen while I was away. It happened right in front of my eyes. She just wanted to pick up a few things from the store, just a quick errand, nothing special. I told her goodbye, and then a minute later, a truck crashes into her car, not even two minutes from our house."
A lump is building in my throat as I listen to his story with a heavy chest.
"She was dead almost immediately," he adds, clearing his throat before he continues. "She was pregnant at the time. Just entered the second trimester."
I gasp in shock, lifting my hand to cover my mouth as tears are swelling up in my eyes. This is what Joe must have been talking about. Jed's wounds weren't only related to his war experience, but to losing his wife and child in an accident.
"I was 23 at the time," he says. "Fucking young to become a father, but you see, it's what I've always wanted. A wife, a family, a home. I never had that. I grew up without a mother and with an asshole of a father who never cared for me. I yearned for all of that. I was about to leave the Marines. When Victoria told me that we were expecting our first child, I immediately made up my mind about changing my life. I didn't want her to continue living in fear like tha
t, not as a mother. I just didn't know how, yet. I was just about to figure all that shit out, when it happened."
Our eyes meet, and I can see the immense pain reflected in his. I can't even begin to imagine the horrors he must have gone through back then. I want to say something, but I know he doesn't want me to. Instead, I just touch his arm, stroking it, as if I could rub the pain away.
"I was so ready for all of it, and then it got taken away from me, just like that," he says, snapping his fingers. "Instead of leaving the Marines, I signed up for the most dangerous deployments possible. I wanted to die. But I thought it was better to die a hero on the field instead of cutting my wrists in a bathtub."
"But you lived."
He nods. "I lived. Got messed up even more and kicked out. They forced me into treatment, and for what it's worth, I came out alive. Alive, but not happy."
He looks at me. "Until I met you."
His words are so deep with meaning and sincerity that they make me choke up again.
"You remind me of her, Lily, a lot," he says. "That's what drew me to you, and what scared the hell out of me."
"I'm not her," I remind him, feeling uneasy.
He smiles.
"No, you're not," he says. "But that doesn't mean you're less endearing to me. You stole a heart that I thought had turned to stone, closed forever to everyone and anyone. Don't ask me how, but you made your way in. And you'll stay there as long as I live."
He pauses, fixating his attention on me with his dark eyes, before he says, "I love you, Lily."
A warm wave flushes through my insides, playing havoc with my heart.
"I love you, too," I say, my voice breaking as I cuddle up to him, careful not to strain his wound when I lean in for an affectionate kiss.
EPILOGUE
Jed
"You are crying," I whisper. "Are you okay?"
She nods. "Yes."
Her reply is barely audible as her voice breaks. She cuddles up closer to me and wipes her tears on my shoulder.
I worry about her. She hasn't been doing so well lately. There were days where she jumped out of bed early in the morning, violently throwing up and crawling back into bed as if nothing had happened. She tried to hide it from me, but I always noticed. I asked her to stay home several times, but she always insisted on going to work. She's successfully concluded her first year at City Heartbeat. Even though she signed an indefinite work contract with the paper, she still feels the need to prove herself every single day. I love her for being so diligent and ambitious when it comes to her job, but if her health is in danger, that's a different story.
She's been moody and very emotional, too, erupting like a volcano over the smallest things and crying in the weirdest situations.
Like right now.
Something is wrong. Something is bothering her and she doesn't want to tell me what it is.
"What is it, Lily?" I ask her. "I can tell that something is up. Since when have we stopped talking to each other when there's something troubling us?"
She chuckles and squeezes me.
"Nothing is wrong, Jed," she says without looking at me. "On the contrary."
She lets go of me and sits up straight in bed beside me, her hand covering her naked belly as she strokes over it.
Our eyes meet and the smile on her face is trying to tell me something.
"No," I whisper, as an idea begins to form inside my mind.
What kind of an idiot am I? I've seen this before! How could I not recognize the signs. The morning sickness, the over the top emotions. The little extra pouch she blamed on a bad diet.
I feel like such an idiot.
The happiest idiot alive.
"Yes," she says, nodding as her lower lip starts to quiver again. "We're having a baby."
I swallow hard.
Men don't cry. I don't cry.
Or rather, I don't want her to see me cry.
I try to avert my face from her, when I realize that there's no way to fight it off. The tears are coming, whether I want them to or not.
But Lily doesn't let me turn away from her. She lifts her hand, placing it at the side of my face and gently forcing my eyes to look back at her.
"You're going to be a father," she whispers, smiling and crying at the same time.
I can't speak. It's bad enough that she sees the thick and treacherous tears running down my cheeks. She must be the first woman, the first person ever, to see me cry. And she's to blame for it, too.
She makes me so happy already, and now she's topping it with this?
"How long...?" I try to speak, but my voice breaks.
"Twelve weeks," she says, looking at me with an apologetic smile.
"Twelve weeks?!" I repeat. "How come you didn't tell me!"
Her smile darkens, and she lowers her eyes, conscious of guilt.
"I wanted to be sure," she says. "I know how important this is to you. I didn't want to get your hopes up when everything was still so fragile."
"But still!" I exclaim. "Lily, twelve weeks! You should have told me! I could've taken better care of you!"
She laughs, shaking her head.
"Taken better care of me?" she asks. "Jed, you're already doing so much more than I could ever ask for."
I shake my head.
"It's never enough," I say. "I have to protect you, make sure you and our baby are safe and –"
"We are safe, Jed," she interrupts me. "Nothing is going to happen to us. We are safe with you. I've never felt safer in my life."
She keeps saying that, but after all that's happened, I'm hard to convince. I know there are no guarantees in life. Shit happens. It happens all the time. It happens to good people, to bad people, to reckless people, to cautious people. The things I can do to make sure that Lily is safe with me are limited. That's an agonizing reality.
But there is one thing I can do to make things a little better, a little safer for her. Something I should have done a long time ago.
"Become my wife," I say.
Lily gasps, her blue eyes widening in surprise. "What did you just say?"
"What I should have said a long time ago," I tell her. "Marry me, Lily."
She sobs, her smile bigger than ever.
"I've seen you as my wife without ever properly posing the question," I say. "But you're my girl, my partner in crime – literally – and the best wife I could imagine at my side. Please, let's make it official."
She leans forward and our lips meet in a passionate kiss, our tongues intertwining and our tears blending as we seal our love for each other.
"Is that a yes?" I ask, searching her eyes as we break our kiss.
She laughs.
"Of course!" she beams. "Yes, yes, yes!"
She smiles at me, her cheeks blushed and her light makeup smudged from sex and tears. She looks so devastatingly beautiful, it's almost hard to bear.
"You will get a ring," I promise her. "And a proper proposal, on my knees. Everything you deserve. And the wedding of your dreams with –"
"I don't need all that, Jed," she says, interrupting me. "You just proposed to me in the sweetest way possible. Honest, raw. I couldn't ask for anything better or more proper."
She plants kisses on my cheeks, one on the left, one on the right, another on my lips.
"And I don't need a fancy wedding," she adds. "I never cared for that. I don't need the big party, a white veil, hundreds of guests gawking at me in a pretty dress. I don't need that."
"But you can have it," I say. "All of it."
She shakes her head.
"I know I can," she says. "I know you'd give me everything I ask for. But I'm not asking for any of it. All I want is you. All of you."
I lift my hand up to her face, caressing the soft curve of her feminine jawline.
"You have me," I promise her. "All of me."
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