Hallowed Ground (Flight & Glory #4)

by Rebecca Yarros

  He didn’t look away from the screen. “She’s a little bit of everything. Strong, stubborn, relieved…heartbroken. She refuses to complain, not even about us sleeping on the fold-out down here until I can get up the stairs. She needs to take her beautiful, pregnant ass up to our room and sleep in a decent bed, but she refuses. She takes care of everything. The house, laundry, groceries, getting me to therapy and doc appointments, dealing with the stupid fucking wheelchair… Hell, I almost wish she would complain. It’s like she’s scared to let me know she’s hurting.”

  “Will?” Guilt slammed into me, ripping apart what little peace I’d gained since the funeral. I shouldn’t have taken those last shots. I should have conserved more ammo during the firefight, should have had his back. But a million “shoulds” wouldn’t bring him back. How can Paisley…Ember even look at me?

  Jagger sighed and dropped the remote as the race ended. “Yeah. It’s always worse after she calls to check on Morgan. She puts on a brave face, but it’s not like I can’t see it in her eyes, hear it in the words she’s not saying. What about Ember?”

  I absently rubbed the skin near the healing, raw, pink line of the laceration on my thigh. “The notification wasn’t easy on her. Losing Will, the funeral, all the shit I’m putting her through… Fuck, you should have seen her face when I asked about an up-slip.”

  Jagger’s head snapped toward mine. “You already asked about an up-slip?”

  I nodded. “I have to know if I’ll be able to do it.”

  He whistled low. “I’d have kicked your ass if I was Ember. You just get home after nearly dying, and you’re asking to get right back in the death machine?”

  “You don’t want to get up there?”

  “Hell yeah, I do. When my legs are ready, when I’m ready, but also when Paisley is ready. But I’m looking at six months before that’s even a remote possibility, and I know she needs this time just as much as I do. This has been pretty damn rough on her.”

  Images of Ember played through my head. Burying her father, burning the West Point shirt, pinning my bars…my wings. The look on her face when I’d told her I was deploying, her tears that morning, the desperate way she’d clung to me, knowing almost better than anyone what could happen over there. Her soft sighs when she curled up next to me in Landstuhl, the slight way she trembled at Will’s funeral. But it was the look of shock when I’d thrown us to the floor last week that stuck with me.

  She deserved so much better.

  “Do you ever think that they’d have been better off if we’d just stayed away from them? Ember would have been. I know that.” The words slipped from my mouth before I could stop them.

  “What. The. Actual. Fuck. Where the hell is your head at? Don’t even think things like that.”

  “This life—what we do—it’s going to destroy her. I knew it back in college, and I should have stayed away, but I was too selfish. I wanted her too badly, and look what that’s brought—”

  The door opened, and my mouth shut.

  “We’re here!” Ember sang as she danced through the door, three boxes of pizza in her hands.

  “Hey, babe.” I forced a smile for her, and she winked as she passed.

  “Don’t get up, I’ll grab you a couple slices,” she ordered, taking the boxes to the dining room with Paisley following after she bent to kiss Jagger’s forehead.

  Jagger looked at me, narrowing his eyes.

  I shook my head and ran my hands over my face as the Skype app rang on Jagger’s television and he answered it. Stop voicing thoughts you shouldn’t even have.

  “Sunday night dinner?” Sam asked from their dining room table in Colorado.

  “You bet!” Jagger answered, saluting with the plate of pizza Paisley handed him.

  “Pizza? Really? I thought we agreed on chicken cacciatore?” Grayson glared. “Italian, remember?”

  “Pizza is Italian,” Jagger answered, his mouth full.

  “There are no words for you,” Grayson said, shaking his head. We caught up on the week, as close as we could be with the eleven hundred miles that separated us.

  Ember sat next to me and handed over two pieces of perfection with a beautiful smile. She was so damn happy lately that I’d gone to see Dr. Henderson. “Thank you,” I whispered and kissed her lightly. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for staying when you could so easily walk away.

  I shoved my earlier thoughts to the back of my head, the dark corners where monsters, regret, and truth lurked, and coped how I did best—I locked it away.

  But not before I realized how crowded it was getting back there.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Ember

  “Oh my God,” I said in disbelief as he walked through the door at the orthopedist’s office. Had it already been four weeks?

  “Do you like it?” he asked, waving his arm in the middle of the waiting room.

  “What is it?” I slipped my Kindle into my purse and stood.

  “It’s an air cast. Sexy, right?”

  I gingerly took hold of it, turning his arm over and inspecting the device. “And you’ll still heal?”

  “Faster, at least that’s what they said. They were minor fractures, really, in good locations, or as good as you can get when you break your arm, right?”

  “And you can take it off?” I fingered the Velcro.

  “Yeah, but only to wash my arm.” He ran his tongue across his lower lip and gave me a look that screamed pure sex. “Or maybe other things…”

  I fake-punched the good side of his chest. “Ha-ha. You have jokes. It comes off in the shower and that’s it, mister.”

  “There are no rules against getting you in the shower,” he whispered in my ear, throwing his arm around my shoulders as we walked out of the orthopedist’s.

  The image of him naked against me, water dripping over the lines of his muscles, hitched my breath. “After your arm is one hundred percent,” I promised, leaning up to kiss him on the cheek. “As for now, we’re due at the airport in two hours.”

  “I’m driving,” he said with a wicked grin, snatching the keys out of my hand.

  “Josh, you have a cast on!”

  “Ember, your car is an automatic!” he teasingly mocked me, even nailing my eyebrow arch. “I’m good, I swear. I asked.”

  He opened my door and winked when I glowered at him and settled into my seat, then clicked the belt in place. “I don’t like this,” I said as he slid in behind the wheel.

  He sported a sexy-as-hell grin as he waited for the power seat to scoot back. “It’ll be fine, relax.” His hand crept up my thigh, and I plopped it back on the gear shift.

  “Nuh-uh. You need both hands, buddy.”

  “Okay, but be patient with me. I might be a little rusty.”

  I bit my tongue. He shouldn’t have been driving period. I ran through Mom’s advice from volunteering with PTSD soldiers in my head. Be patient. He might drive a little more slowly than normal. He might drive between lanes. He might be a lot more defensive.

  He pulled out of the parking space without incident, and I breathed a sigh of relief, then another one once we’d made it off post.

  Then he gunned it.

  The force of his acceleration threw me back in my seat. My gaze snapped to his face, the small smile that grew as the speedometer climbed. I found the door handle in my hand before I even thought about gripping.

  “You know we’re not late or anything, right?” I asked, hoping my voice stayed neutral.

  He shot me an amused look. “God, I missed this.”

  He darted between cars, switching lanes to weave in and out of the building traffic…and that was before we got on the highway.

  Once we hit the on-ramp, I mentally steeled myself. Josh had always driven fast, that was never in question. So why was I so nervous now?

  Because whatever that was in his eyes at this moment, that slight edge—it hadn’t been there before. My breath froze in my lungs when he passed the car in front of us, narr
owly shooting the gap before darting back into the lane. I snuck a look at the speedometer. Ninety-five.

  Don’t nag. Do. Not. Nag.

  “Babe, if we get pulled over, I’m pretty sure we’ll actually be late for the flight.”

  He looked at me, and I wanted to turn his face back to the damn road. “You’re scared,” he remarked.

  “I’m nervous,” I answered, trying to keep the middle ground.

  “Did you forget how I like to drive?” he joked.

  “Did you forget that my VW doesn’t have rotors? This isn’t”—my sentence faltered as we threaded another needle to pass—“a helicopter.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, his shoulders sagging as he pulled into the right-hand lane.

  As our speed dropped, so did the light in his eyes. Doubt gnawed its way into my head with each passing mile that Josh stayed within five mph of the speed limit. Should I have asked him to slow down? I mean, was there really a danger? Sure, he’d always driven like he was a lost member of the crew from The Fast and the Furious, but I’d never been worried enough to actually ask him to slow down.

  Had I overreacted?

  Wait, was I overthinking this now? I shook my head like the unwelcome line of thought would tumble loose. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take your fun away.” Okay, that was the lamest apology ever.

  He took my hand in his and lifted it to his lips, kissing the back gently. The air cast did give his fingers way more mobility. I’d definitely wigged over nothing.

  “Babe, if you’re ever scared, just tell me. I’d rather slow down than make you think I don’t care how you’re feeling. Besides, like you said, we have plenty of time to get to the airport.”

  That was why I loved this man so deeply. No matter what he wanted, he always took my feelings into account first.

  Right. That’s why he won’t let you in about what happened to him over there.

  I flicked the thought-devil off my shoulder and tried to enjoy the remainder of the drive to the airport.

  We checked in at the skycap after parking the car and headed inside the terminal. The line for security wound down the small hallway, and we found ourselves packed in like little sardines.

  “This is taking forever,” Josh muttered, shifting his weight from foot to foot, his eyes scanning the crowd around us.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Never better,” he said, still checking out the lines.

  It clicked. “Is the crowd bothering you?” I asked gently.

  He shook his head, then caught my eyes and slowly nodded. “A little.”

  I took his hand, stroking my thumb into his palm and pressed lightly.

  “Mmmmm.” He closed his eyes, and I began to massage the muscles. I kept it up until it was time to slip off our shoes and walk through the scanner. Josh rolled his eyes but sat through the advanced screening for his air cast, mumbling something about what he did for a living. Then we took up residence in an empty gate across from ours, which was packed, and waited it out.

  He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and tugged me into his hard frame. “Thank you,” he whispered against my forehead and then placed a tender kiss there that melted my heart into a puddle of warm goo.

  “There’s nothing to thank me for,” I responded truthfully.

  “You shouldn’t have to deal with…all of this.”

  I snuggled in further and turned to kiss his jaw. “All of this is all of you, and it’s nothing. You don’t like crowds right now? We’ll avoid them. You want to drive fast? I’ll find you a racetrack like one of those NASCAR things. We got this.”

  “NASCAR, huh?”

  “How did I know that’s what you’d pick up on out of all that?” I laughed. “Besides, maybe they’ll teach you how to use a brake.”

  “Oh, you’ve got jokes?” He tickled me, and I lost it, flailing my arms.

  “Ahh! Stop!” As soon as I asked him to, he did, but not before I sent my bag sprawling at our feet, dumping my Kindle, wallet, and papers from the biggest pocket to the floor.

  “Here, babe,” he said, scooping up most of it. His hands paused on the paperwork, but he put it back into the manila envelope. “Is this…”

  My cheeks heated, like I’d been caught doing something I shouldn’t have. Like I’d been sneaking it. “Dig paperwork,” I answered.

  “Oh,” he answered, his voice fading as he slid the envelope into the bag.

  “I basically just need to look at it so I know where to send the papers to cancel,” I said in a rush. “I’m not going.”

  His gaze swung to meet mine. “You’re what?”

  “Not…going?” Why are you asking him? Isn’t that your choice?

  “Yes, you are.”

  They called our flight to board. “Looks like that’s us,” I said.

  “You’re going. You’re not turning down this dig because I got hurt.” His lips flattened into that determined I’m-not-giving-up line, and I sighed.

  “It’s not just you getting hurt. I’m not leaving you for a week, let alone two months. Not when I almost lost you.” My voice dropped to a whisper.

  He cupped my face in his hands as they called our flight again. “You are going.”

  “It’s too soon.”

  “For who? I’m the one who crashed, and yet you’re the one afraid to spread your wings. December, I’ve been responsible for a lot lately, but I’m not going to stand by while you give up this dig, and your entrance into the doctorate program, because you’re scared to leave me. Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

  “They’re calling our flight.”

  “We’ll sit here until you agree to go.”

  “You’d hold your mother hostage against my dig?” I arched an eyebrow.

  “Fuck. You had to bring my mother into this?” His eyes closed, and he took a deep breath. “My one weak spot.”

  I shrugged, unapologetic. “She hasn’t seen you in months, and she’s been so worried…”

  His mouth dropped. “Cruel.”

  “Effective.”

  He stood, pulling me with him, and swung my bag over his shoulder. “This conversation is continuing on that plane.”

  “I brought noise-canceling headphones.”

  “The sass-mouth on you, I swear. No more talking to Sam on Skype. You’re cut off.”

  I laughed as the attendant scanned our tickets, and we walked the Jetway. The line shuffled forward until we stood at the threshold of the plane.

  Josh paused just behind me, and I looked over my shoulder to where he held up the rest of the line. “Babe?”

  He swallowed, and it was as if he’d pulled the color out of his face in the same motion. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  What was going on? He’d never freaked out when we traveled before. I was usually the one who had to have my hand held while we were…oh, shit…flying.

  “Babe, we don’t have to go. Or we can drive,” I said with a smile, ready to walk off that plane at his signal.

  He shook his head and stepped forward. “Nope, I’m good. Let’s just get to our seats.”

  We found our seats, and I took the window while Josh took the aisle. He put my bag under the seat ahead of me, knowing I tended to freak if I couldn’t reach my laptop, but pulled the folder out before sliding it home.

  “I told you we weren’t done.” He waved the papers.

  Shit. “Okay, give me one good reason I should go, and then I’ll tell you why I’m not. We’ll see who’s left standing at the end.” I arched an eyebrow. “Because I’m not going, and you can’t make me.”

  His eyes skimmed my face, a slow, easy smile tilting his lips. Then he leaned forward and kissed me. Uncaring that we were on a plane in full view of anyone who wanted to see, Josh launched an assault on my senses. He tugged on my lower lip with his teeth, and I acquiesced, opening to him. He quickly pounced, devouring my mouth in a way that was highly inappropriate and sexy as hell.

  My hands tangled in his hair, and I’d quit caring w
here we were by the time he lifted his head. “You’re cute when you’re mad.”

  An unladylike snort erupted from me. “I’m not mad, I’m determined.”

  He dragged his tongue across his lip, and the cabin was suddenly very hot. I reached up, quickly turning the dial for air, shifting my weight to ease the ache he’d woken with just a freaking kiss. Damn it, now I was turned on, too? This was going to be a long trip.

  “This dig will make it so you can apply to start your PhD in the spring term.”

  “So?” I asked, still fighting with the freaking air.

  He reached up and turned it, and cool sanity hit my face. Now if only it would douse my thighs in ice. That’d be great.

  “So, you couldn’t apply in time for normal term because we didn’t know where I’d be stationed until December.”

  “Right.” Yeah, I’d been pissed. Of course my future would revolve around where Josh was stationed, but that was the life I’d chosen. So I’d bitten my tongue and waited for his assignment, knowing that it would cost me a year.

  “So now you’ll get to go on an amazing dig and be on track with your peers for your PhD.”

  The plane pulled away from the gate. Josh gripped the armrest but showed no other sign of nervousness.

  “I’ll be gone for two months.”

  He shrugged. “I was gone for three. It’s your turn.”

  “And look what happened during those three!” I hissed and immediately regretted it.

  “Okay, well, as long as you’re not flying helicopters in enemy territory, I think we can safely assume the same won’t happen to you.” He winked.

  Winked. How could he look like everything was okay when I knew the truth?

  I barely held myself back from sputtering. “Not funny. What if you need me?”

  “I’ll adapt, just like we do during deployments.”

  A shudder racked me. “Okay, don’t say that in plural. One is enough.”

  “You need this,” he argued, brushing a strand of hair off my shoulder and lingering on my exposed bra strap.

  I pulled up the boatneck of my T-shirt. “I need you,” I argued.

  “No, you don’t. You stood on your own while I was gone, and I was proud of you, December. I’m not going anywhere, our relationship, our marriage…” He paused, as we both smiled like idiots for that second, but his faded. “It’s two months, and you’re going.”