Hallowed Ground (Flight & Glory #4)

by Rebecca Yarros

  Paisley cleared her throat. “So have you decided if you’re going to take the job running the dig?” she asked.

  Josh’s eyes widened. “They offered you a job?”

  “Yeah. It’s only two months, and I’d be home in time to start the semester.”

  “That’s amazing,” he said, his voice full of pride but laced with that same hurt in his eyes. “And it explains a lot,” he murmured.

  Before I could ask him what he meant, he leaned away from me, stood slowly, and walked over to Jagger, going around the bassinet to avoid me, and handed over the baby like he was deathly afraid of dropping him. “Congratulations, he’s beautiful. I think we’re going to head back and get some sleep. Are you staying here?”

  “Yeah,” Jagger answered, pointing toward the little couch. “That’s where I await diaper-changing time.”

  “Sweet. Then do you mind if I crash in your guest room?”

  Every sweet feeling I’d had crumbled, burned, and then left acidic ashes, scorching me from the inside out. He didn’t even want to sleep in our house, let alone in the bed next to me. Fuck, the pain was unbearable.

  Paisley’s eyes flickered to me, but Jagger didn’t miss a beat, God bless him. “Sure, if that’s what you want,” he said slowly.

  “It is.” Josh’s tone was final, the same timbre as when he’d told me he was going back to Afghanistan. He’d made his decision, and there was no way to sway him.

  Jagger handed Peyton to Paisley and then retrieved his keys from his pocket. Breathe in. Breathe out. Focus on that. Sucking oxygen through my lungs became my only thought. Everything else was too horrible to manage.

  Josh thanked Jagger, took the house key, and we headed for the parking lot in silence. There was none of the confusion or anticipation of the drive here. Now there was simply a lingering sadness between us. But hadn’t he just said there would never be a time he didn’t want me? What was this bullshit? What set him off? The job offer? At least I hadn’t snuck off in the middle of the night to take it without telling him.

  Anger blossomed, and I welcomed the way it masked the hurt.

  Maybe I needed to change my flight, get back to Turkey tomorrow, and take the damn job. Maybe he’d screw his head on straight while I was gone…or maybe it would kill off whatever was left of us. Why was there never a right answer lately?

  Twenty minutes of pregnant silence later, we pulled into the driveway. I opened the hatch before he could and brought my bag to the ground.

  “Do you want me to carry it in for you?” he offered.

  “No,” I snapped. “I want you to pull your head out of your ass.”

  “December.”

  I tossed my backpack over my shoulder and tugged on my suitcase, pulling it behind me up the stairs. I shoved the key in our door and let out a relieved sigh when it turned without sticking. The door opened soundlessly, and I walked through.

  “December!” he nearly shouted as he followed me in.

  “Oh, is this what it takes to get you in our house?” I asked, dropping my purse on the couch.

  “It’s for the best.”

  We squared off a coffee table apart. “Please, do explain how you know what’s best for us.”

  “You have a job in Turkey waiting for you.”

  I shrugged. “So? I never said I was taking it. I said it had been offered. I don’t make those kinds of decisions—the kind that alter our life—without talking to you. I wish I could say the same for you.”

  “Are we still having this argument?” He rubbed his hands over his hair.

  “You leaving in the middle of the night didn’t void the fight, Josh. It just pressed pause. You made that decision, and now you get to reap the consequences.”

  “I had to go back!”

  “I know that!” The shout took some of the fight out of me, and my shoulders sagged. “Don’t you think I figured it out? I get it. You came home a different person, and you told me you felt like you’d left bits of yourself there. I listened. So yes, I get it. You went to put yourself back together, to finish your mission, but you didn’t discuss it with me, you just chose and left.”

  “I’m sorry that I hurt you. It was never my intention.” His eyes were soft with regret, but everything else about his posture, from his crossed arms to how far he was away from me, screamed his resolution.

  “I wish apologizing was enough. Do you feel like you succeeded? Are you all whole now?”

  “Yes. It was exactly what I needed. I could have never looked at myself in the mirror knowing I stayed home when I should have been there. I couldn’t be the man you deserve unless I did it.”

  “What I deserve? What I deserve is you, and I’ll take you in any way you come to me. Whole, damaged, ripped the fuck apart—you’re still mine.”

  “Oh, is that so?” he spat back, his tone utterly ironic.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that I’m not the only one making choices by myself, am I?” He gestured at me with a tight jerk of his hand before momentarily covering his eyes with it. “Maybe this is what I deserve. I left you when you asked me not to. I put you through hell constantly, and I hate myself for it. But I can honestly tell you that every single minute I was gone, you were in my head, in my heart. I may have doubted myself, maybe even our future, but I never once doubted you.”

  My mouth dropped. “Me? Our future? All I’ve done is fight for us, Josh. Since the moment you deployed, I’ve been holding on to you by my fingernails. But I don’t let go. I don’t run away. I have faith!”

  “Is that why you took your ring off? Because you still have all this faith in us?”

  What? My gaze flicked to my bare left hand. “Is that why you got pissed at the hospital? Why you’re sleeping at Jagger’s?” I yanked the chain around my neck until my ring popped free of my neckline. “I never took it off. I wear it on a chain when I’m on the dig so I don’t hurt it or the artwork, but I never changed my mind. I never changed the vision of our future. Unlike you, apparently.”

  He doubted us. That admission shook my foundation and suddenly, that crack dividing us felt like the Grand Canyon, with him standing on one side in that uniform while I wore myself thin trying to stretch across it to him.

  His whole frame sagged, and his gaze dropped to the floor before coming back to meet mine. I saw the relief I needed, but also a lingering sadness in those brown eyes that cut through my anger. “You didn’t take it off.”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m an asshole.”

  “It appears that way,” I answered. “You…you doubt us?”

  “Not us,” he said, “but maybe where we’re headed. Do you want to take it? Do you want to run that dig?” He searched my eyes as if his very future hung on my next words.

  “Yes. Of course I do. It would be absolutely amazing. But nothing is more important to me than you. I don’t want to leave you.”

  His eyes slid shut momentarily. “You need to take it. It would be huge for you.”

  “Yeah, it would, but our relationship is more important. I’m putting us first, because that’s what you do in a relationship. You compromise for the sake of the person you love. You put aside your selfish goals so you can build one future.”

  “You’re staying because of me.” His head hung as if there was some kind of blame to be placed here…like being together was a bad thing.

  “Not because of you, for you. For us.”

  “It’s the same difference!”

  Why was he so angry? “So what? You’d wanted to be stationed in Texas, right? Closer to your mom?”

  “What does that have to do with it?”

  He still wouldn’t meet my eyes, so I stepped around the table. “You chose Fort Campbell instead, so I could finish college. So we’d be together.”

  “This isn’t the same.”

  “You’re right. You moved your entire life. I’m only giving up two months. There will be other digs. I’m choosing you this one tim
e.”

  “That’s just where it starts,” he muttered. “God, he’d kill me.” His whisper was so soft that I barely heard it.

  “What? Who are you—”

  He didn’t let me finish. “This is just the beginning.”

  “It’s one time. We need it.”

  “And nothing I say is going to change your mind?” he asked, his mouth tightening.

  “Nothing will ever change my mind about you. About us,” I said softly, hoping to soothe him. “This dig would be great, but we are extraordinary. It’s a tiny sacrifice—”

  “I’m fucking sick of you sacrificing!” he shouted. Before I could respond, his head snapped up, the panic in his eyes quickly masked by aloof, untouchable ice. “I’m assessing for SOAR next week.”

  A bomb detonated somewhere in the vicinity of my heart, and the fallout decimated everything in me. “Special Ops? But…” I didn’t have words. He’d never even hinted at wanting to fly for SOAR, and now he was assessing? For the first time, I felt like our relationship wasn’t even on the radar of his concerns.

  Fuck, that hurt. This wasn’t the snap decision he’d had to make about deploying. No, this was a well thought out choice. Here I was, putting our relationship, our love, first, while he treated it like a side piece of baggage. The Josh I fell in love with, my rock, my whatever, never would have done that. Had he changed so much in the nine months since he’d deployed that we were no longer his priority? Red-hot rage tensed every muscle in my body. “Who are you, lately?”

  He winced but didn’t pause. “This is the right thing to do. Just like you taking the job in Turkey is right for you.”

  I scoffed. “Yeah, a temp job that I delayed while I came home so I could see you. Because that’s what I do, right? I put my career second while you make the decisions—while you apply for SOAR behind my back and volunteer for Afghanistan like it doesn’t affect me.” I ran over any attempt he made to speak, my fury overtaking my usual level-headedness when it came to Josh. “You are the one with the changes. Three years ago it was, ‘I’ll just do my required four years, and then I’ll get out.’ Then you went aviation, and I get it. You didn’t know that I’d be a part of your life, so I sucked up the fact that it would be another six years after you finished flight school. But this? SOAR? That’s not temporary, and it’s changing what our future looks like without so much as asking me, and that’s not fair.”

  “This is what I have to do,” he pled, stepping toward me.

  I retreated. “No. It’s not. You’ve never wanted to do it. Is this like that stupid Ducati? Do you need the adrenaline rush to feel alive? Is that it?”

  His jaw tensed. “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t, either, but you’re asking me for things I don’t know that I can give, things you never would have asked me to do nine months ago. Do you not want to be with me? Is that it?”

  His mouth dropped in shock. “No. There has never been a moment since I met you that I didn’t want you—want to be with you. But you need to go run that dig. I’ll assess for SOAR. We’ll both live our…dreams.” He ended on a whisper, as if he could barely speak the lie, because he and I both knew SOAR had never been his dream.

  “Separately.” My heart rebelled at the idea of building separate lives.

  “Yes. This…this is what I want my future to be. Our future.” The flat tone of his voice sounded more like defeat than determination.

  “What kind of future is that? The one where we see each other in passing between your deployments and my digs? Or maybe we can manage a hookup halfway between. Is that what I am now?” We stood on the edge of something I couldn’t fathom, and I had no clue how to bring us back. Not without him fighting for us equally as hard. “This isn’t how I want our life to be. How can this be the future you want?”

  “I know it’s not fair of me to ask you to live like this, or how I can make you understand.” His eyes met mine, and the anguish, the honesty I saw there stole my breath. “I know that this choice—this moment—might cost me you, and it’s fucking killing me.”

  “Then stop making these asinine decisions. Stop ripping me apart. Stop making these choices pretending like they’re all about me when they’re really about you! That’s why you want me to go on the dig, right? So I resent you a little less? So you feel righteous that I’m not sitting at home waiting for you to die? Because let me tell you, I had the same damn fear every day on that dig that I did while I waited at home. Maybe it was easier on you—” My mouth dropped. “Is that it? Did you figure out that it was easier for you to be gone while I was away?”

  “No,” he whispered, apology streaming from his eyes. “Don’t you see that this is what’s best for you?” His head shook. “For…everyone.”

  I ripped the necklace over my head and put it on the coffee table, the ring making an obscene sound of abandonment against the glass. “How do we build a future if we don’t agree on one? What? We just sleep together when we’re in the same state? Send emails?” He couldn’t mean it. There was something else there, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Was he looking for an out? “Josh, do you even still want to marry me?” The question ripped through my soul like razor blades, and the bleeding was instant, excruciating.

  “I want that more than my own life. But you’re right. Living like this isn’t fair to you. The waiting. The worrying. The sacrifices. Not after what you’ve been through. Not after what I’ve promised you…all the promises I’m breaking right now.”

  “Why do you have to do this? What we have…what we’ve fought for, it’s like you’re just throwing away everything we’ve wanted.”

  “Sometimes the things we want aren’t the same as what we need.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second. Need and want have always mixed into one when it comes to us.” There had to be an explanation, some reason that he would put us through this, jeopardize us. It had to be a sense of duty…

  Or guilt.

  Will.

  Another shard of my heart broke, crumbled like tiny pieces of sand sifting through my fingers. Was he ever going to get past what had happened? Really and truly?

  “It’s just something I feel like I have to do,” he whispered.

  “No.” I shook my head. “No, it’s something Will had to do.”

  His head snapped, his gaze widening. “December,” he warned.

  “That ring?” I pointed to where it lay on the table. “I accepted it from Josh Walker. The boy I fell into lust with on the ice, and the man I fell in love with when he held me together. I don’t want to marry Will, or his dreams, as great as they were. You want it back on my finger? Then you act like the man I love, and not the man we lost.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “None of this has been fair! We didn’t ask for any of this. We lost Will. We almost lost Jagger. We almost lost you. Hell, some days it feels like I did. But you have to stop punishing yourself for what happened. Joining SOAR isn’t going to bring him back.”

  “Nothing I’ve done is enough. This is the only way I know to make his sacrifice matter!”

  “It already does!” My throat tightened as tears bit into my eyes, the sting the only feeling I recognized. “You are an amazing man. A wonderful friend. He knew that. Stop thinking that you need to be more, because you’re already more than enough.”

  “I can’t. I’m not.”

  “Then see yourself through my eyes. See the man that I love. The one who promised to be my whatever. I’m holding on to you with everything I have, until my fingers—hell, my very soul—are raw and bleeding. You’re trying to live for Will, but you’re killing me.”

  He sucked in his breath, his eyes closing slowly. “You’re right.”

  A small sliver of hope spiked through the fog of my misery.

  “You’re right,” he continued. “You should go back to Turkey. You should take the job—follow your dream. There have already been enough casualties, and I refuse to watch you wither away. Go.”


  My chest tightened, every nerve ending screaming to latch on to him and hold tight. Not to let him nail shut the coffin he’d built to put our relationship in. Desperation took hold and squeezed my lungs. “Stop. I…I can figure it out. If this is what you need, then I can do it.” Deployments without warning. Never knowing where he was. Never ending. “I can do it for you, for us. Josh, I love you, and nothing is ever going to change that. Whether we’re on different continents, different beds, or different wavelengths, you’re my everything.”

  He walked forward slowly and pressed a lingering kiss to my forehead that felt too much like a good-bye. “Go run your dig. We’ll—” He glanced at where my ring sat on the coffee table, echoing the same defeat that radiated from him. “We’ll figure this out when you get back. Two months isn’t going to change how much I love you. A lifetime couldn’t.”

  Then he turned and walked out, pausing in the doorway. “But if this changes your love, if you realize that all I’m doing is holding you back…” He swallowed. “I won’t blame you. I’m not really sure I could love me, either. Not under these circumstances.”

  “Josh,” I whispered. “Stay.” Don’t give up. Don’t abandon what we have.

  His knuckles turned white on the handle, but he walked through, shutting the door behind him.

  I took in a gulping breath. Fear, pain, heartbreak, it all coursed through my veins, but anger trumped it all. He’d made another fucking decision for us. I stomped up the stairs like a petulant toddler. Fuck it. If he didn’t want to sleep next to me, then I didn’t want to sleep next to him.

  I knew that was a lie about twenty minutes later when I crept back down the stairs, put my ring around my neck, and then crawled into our guest bed, simply because I knew Josh was on the other side of the wall. I let my hand rest on the smooth paint as a tear slipped down my cheek.

  Two and a half years, and we were back here, our headboards separated by a wall and our hearts separated by something a little less tangible.