by Megan Crane
The way it had even six weeks back.
The water wasn’t doing its job the way it had before.
“You went back home,” Isaac said into the silence. “That gets in your head. It messes you up.” He laughed. “Believe me, I know.”
“I spent twenty years knowing exactly who I was,” Blue heard himself say. And then, having started, he couldn’t seem to stop. “I knew what I did and why. I knew exactly what I stood for. There were no mysteries—there were only missions.”
Isaac stood next to him, his gaze trained on the water, too. And the fact that he didn’t say anything—he didn’t jump in to tell Blue what to feel, or argue with him about his own damned life—made it easy to keep going.
To put words to the thing that had been eating him alive since he’d left Chicago.
“She thinks I’m a hero,” Blue said, scratchy and low.
“I get why that bothers you,” Isaac replied, his voice grave.
Because he did. He knew what it meant when Blue said that. They all knew that hero was a word that sounded great to other people and made those other people feel good, too. But every man in Alaska Force knew what it took to earn that title. What they’d done. What they’d lost. What each and every one of them would carry with them, always, thanks to that so-called heroism.
Hero was a weight to carry. It wasn’t as simple as civilians wanted it to be.
“She might call you a hero, but you don’t upend your life and come all the way to Grizzly Harbor for a fantasy.” Isaac shook his head. “That would wear off sometime during the first layover. What she wants is her man.”
“That’s not me.” Blue pushed the words out past that choke hold around his throat. Again. “That’s not ever going to be me.”
“It’s either you or it isn’t, but she came a long way to find out.” Isaac had turned to look at Blue then, his gaze steady. “You should probably tell her yourself.”
And here Blue was. Ready to tell Everly what he should have that night in her parents’ house. Which was whatever he needed to tell her to get her to go away and never come back.
To make her hate him.
Or at least make sure she never, ever told him she loved him again.
“You need to go,” he told her.
She looked prettier than he remembered, and he remembered every single detail. She’d piled that strawberry blond hair on top of her head, and strands of it were curled up around her face, likely from the heat in the hot springs. She glowed, rosy and warm, and it reminded him of all the many shades of red he could make her turn, which made his body harden. Her eyes were just as green as always, but tonight they were different. It took him a minute to realize it was because there was no lingering fear in them. Because she wasn’t on the run tonight. Hell, she was even wearing those dumb shoes of hers—but somehow, this time, he found them cute.
Everly caught him staring at the shoes and smiled, sticking one foot out as if she’d forgotten she was wandering around Alaska in shiny, metallic, foldable flats she claimed were practical. “The fire trashed my bedroom but not my closet. Go figure.”
Blue ordered himself to get back on track. “You can tell me you love me a thousand times and it won’t make any difference. You don’t.”
“I do.” But she sounded serene, not rattled. And not at all dissuaded.
He couldn’t say he’d expected that reaction.
“Everly, listen to me. Intense situations—”
“Do you love me?” she asked him, in that same direct way that was like the slam of a bullet into his chest. When he opened his mouth, she shook her head and moved closer. And then reached up with her hand and placed it over his heart. “Tell me the truth, right now, and I’ll believe you. I promise.”
He could have taken a punch. Hell, an actual bullet would have been better. He could have handled her angry, her upset. Tears or a temper he could have taken in stride.
But her kindness undid him. Her trust in him destroyed him.
He felt as if he were bloodied and staggering, though he knew he didn’t move. It was that earthquake in him, the one he’d been ignoring since that last night in Chicago. The fault lines hadn’t gone anywhere.
If anything, they’d gotten worse.
He could feel them give way, right there beneath her hand. He could feel his foundations crumble.
All the walls he’d built. All the lies he’d told himself.
“I want to love you,” he told her, the words torn from him, “but I don’t know how.”
He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t what she did.
Everly moved closer. She slid her other hand on his chest and tilted her head back to look up at him.
“You do know how,” she told him, her voice fierce and sure. “Look at what you do. Look at who you are.”
But that was the problem.
His own hands came up to push hers away, but instead he found himself holding them there.
“I’m trained to do things that would give people nightmares. But good people don’t have nightmares about men like me, Everly. They don’t know I exist. That means I’m the one who has those nightmares. I’m the one with blood on my hands.” He was too loud, too rough. Too something. “And it never goes away.”
“You saved my life,” she told him.
He shook his head. “You saved your own life.”
“I don’t mean in that house. I don’t mean Annabeth.” The expression she wore then was ferocious. “I was sleepwalking all this time. That woman would have killed me and I would have died without knowing that I’d never truly been happy. Without realizing that I had no idea what it was to love someone with every part of me. You set me free, Blue.”
She was talking about this summer. But all Blue could see was the past.
“I had to turn something off inside me to do what I did for all those years. I can’t turn it back on.”
“I don’t believe that.” She didn’t back down when he scowled at her. Instead, she held his gaze as if she were as strong as he was. He believed it. “You became a soldier, an elite one. I’m not going to pretend to understand what that takes. All I can do is admire your commitment and dedication. That alone would make you amazing.” She pressed her hands harder against his chest, as if she were trying to brand him with the heat of her palms, and the funny thing was that he thought she was succeeding. “But you didn’t turn yourself off then. You know you didn’t.”
“I had to.”
“It wasn’t the navy that flipped that switch.” Her eyes were so big, so green. It made him . . . restless. “Come on, Blue. Is this really what your father would have wanted for you?”
The last wall he had inside him toppled over then, hitting the ground with a wallop. Hitting him so hard that for a moment, all he could see was the dust. His hands moved of their own volition and gripped her shoulders.
But when the dust cleared, Everly was looking at him as if nothing had changed. As if he were still that man—that hero—he couldn’t understand how or why she saw in him.
“You told me he was a man who loved his wife and his son,” she said. “Would he have wanted that son to grow up shut off from everybody? Is that who he was?”
Blue thought of his father’s smile, quick and ready. The booming laugh that had seemed to light up rooms. The way he’d never met a stranger.
“You’ve been so mad at so many people for so long,” Everly said, relentless in ways he could hardly make sense of. “But ask yourself one question. Are you really mad at your mother because she moved on? Or are you mad that you couldn’t? She could go out and find herself a new husband. But you only had one dad.”
“Damn you,” Blue choked out, and he hardly knew what was happening to him. He was horrified to feel dampness on his face. He felt cracked wide open, exposed—
Alive, somethin
g inside him whispered. At last.
But when he looked at Everly, he saw that tears were rolling down her cheeks.
Because, he knew without having to ask, she hurt for him. She loved him enough to show him the truth about himself, and then stand there and cry with him while it rolled through him, decimating him where he stood.
“Why did you come here?” he demanded again, though he was hoarse and sounded like a stranger. And he didn’t let her go. “Why did you bother trying to find me?”
“Here’s what I can promise you,” she said, smiling through her tears. “I will always find you. Always, Blue.”
And he believed her. This was the woman who’d driven over Hard-Ass Pass. She could do anything. She would.
She already had.
“You don’t want this,” he warned her, gripping her more surely. “You don’t know what you’re signing up for.”
“You have a lot of requirements for women who come to your bed, yes,” she said, throwing his words back at him from so long ago, he’d almost forgotten he’d said them. “You like very defined roles. I remember.”
“We’ll get to that, believe me.” Fault lines and storms moved through him, in him. But he kept his eyes on Everly. Like she was light. “I’m not done with Alaska Force. I don’t want to live in a city. And I hate peas.”
“My job is entirely freelance, and guess what? I like it here.”
“You didn’t mention the peas.”
“I don’t have opinions about peas, Blue. I’m not sure peas deserve opinions, to be honest.”
“I’m not domesticated. I’m demanding and intense, and I hold grudges for decades.” He shook his head when she started to say something. “Don’t blow this off, baby. You deserve better than me, believe me. I know it even if you don’t. But if you don’t walk away from me right now, it’s not going to matter. Because I won’t let you go.”
She sighed and would have melted against him if he weren’t holding her the way he was. “I don’t want you to let me go.”
“Alaska winters are long and hard, and there are times you’ll be stranded in a cabin with nothing but me to—”
“The world could end tomorrow, Blue,” Everly interrupted, her voice firm. “Here’s the only thing I want to know. If you knew that we would die tomorrow, would you want to be with me today?”
“God, yes.”
He didn’t think. He didn’t hedge. He just threw it out there.
And knew two things at once. One, that it was the God’s honest truth. And two, that he would do anything to make Everly smile at him like that.
As much and as often as possible.
“Me, too,” she whispered. “Peas are negotiable.”
And Blue stopped trying to shut off all the things coursing around in him. He picked her up, swinging her around until she wrapped her legs around his waist. Then he held her there while she threaded her arms around his neck and kissed him.
She kissed him like every fairy-tale ending he’d never believed in.
She kissed him until his heart hurt, but this time, because it was swelling. Expanding, whether he liked it or not—and he was pretty sure he liked it.
Or he liked her, anyway, which was the same thing.
She kissed him until they were both laughing, and Blue pulled back so he could look up at her, pretty and perfect and entirely his. Maybe she always had been. Maybe he’d just needed her to find his heart for him and bring it home.
“I love you,” she whispered, right there against his mouth.
“I love you, too,” he told her, and vowed, there and then, that he would spend the rest of his life showing her exactly how much.
* * *
• • •
On the first day that could reasonably be called spring, with the sun poking through and the temperature downright mild by Alaskan standards, Blue rolled over in bed and nudged Everly awake.
She woke slowly, the way she always did, especially when he’d already had her awake and beneath him once this morning already. Her green eyes were cloudy and her mouth a little sulky as she stirred, but she smiled when she focused on him.
“Congratulations, baby,” Blue murmured. “You made it through an Alaskan winter. Not many people can say that.”
“Does that make me an Alaskan?”
“Don’t get carried away.”
She laughed, and he let her lie there as he went and powered up the generator, then prepared her some coffee with the machine she’d brought when she moved in, because his woman needed her espresso. His cabin sat up the hill a ways, with silence all around and nothing but water and mountains out his windows. The view had always soothed him, and it still did. Snowcapped glory and the endless sea. It made his soul feel light.
But it was the woman in his bed who’d set him free.
She’d brought him back to life.
Everly had talked him into Christmas in Chicago with both their families. He’d caught up with his stepsisters and their lives. He and Ron had gone out for a beer. He couldn’t say they were buddies or were likely to end up best friends, but it had been fine.
Good, even. There might be some scar tissue, but the wound was closed. Blue was sure of it.
“I’m glad you came,” his mother had said the morning he’d said good-bye. Everly had been in the same room, chatting happily with Ron. He liked knowing she was there. He liked having her close. “I hope we’ll see you again soon.”
She’d been stiff. Awkward, as if she were waiting for him to hurt her again.
He’d done that, he knew. To his own mother.
“I love you, Mom,” he said gruffly. He’d pulled her into his arms and hugged her, tight. “And I’m glad you’re happy. I really am.”
About thirty years late, but it was something.
More than something, he’d realized, when she started to shake. And had then cried all over him.
Everly had started crying, too, and soon Blue had been trapped between two weeping females, both clinging to him.
He and Ron had stared at each other in a perfect moment of horrified male communion, and Blue knew that it would all be okay. That he could make it right, those years he’d been off being a bonehead.
All it took was the trying.
Everly had taught him that.
She shuffled out to the porch with her coffee when it was ready, the way she always did. She laughed when she had to pull on only a sweater. No winter layers today. No snow, no arctic winds.
She sat in her favorite chair, and he watched her for a minute while the Alaskan breeze played over her face. Green eyes, red hair, and the freckles he was obsessed with. That smile that lit up his life.
He had no idea how he’d gotten this lucky.
“You asked me what comes after this,” he said.
“This what? This coffee?”
“Alaska Force.”
She caught his serious tone, and set her coffee mug down on the wide arm of the chair. He waited until he had her full attention. Then he pulled the little box he’d been hiding for weeks from his pocket and went to kneel down in front of her.
And didn’t comment on it when she held her breath.
“You, Everly,” he told her, very solemnly. “You’re what’s next. You’re my future. I want to watch you smile for the rest of my life. I want your laughter and I want your body and I want you next to me, no matter what. I want to be the man you see when you look at me. I want to make you happy.” He cracked open the box while her hands crept up to cover her mouth. “Marry me, baby. Please. I’m nothing without you.”
She was crying again, but her eyes were shining.
“You’ll never have to find out what you’re like without me,” she whispered. “Never, ever.”
“It’s a yes or no question, little girl,” he said.
And that
got him that big, wide smile that still made him giddy. He understood, from the way his heart lurched at the sight, that it always would.
“Yes,” she said. “Of course, yes. You jerk.”
Blue slid the ring on her finger, and she let out a sound of pure joy, throwing her arms around him. She kissed him, then kissed all around his face, murmuring I love yous between each one.
“And I have one more thing for you,” he told her, very seriously. “One very important thing.”
“How could there be more?” she asked, sounding happy and emotional and all things good and Everly. “This is everything. Blue, you’ve given me everything.”
He had a few ideas about how to express his feelings about that, to this woman who was going to be his wife, but he picked her up out of the chair instead. She flushed at the show of his strength the way she always did, and he loved it more than he could say when she got a little red. Still. Always.
He set her down carefully on the edge of the porch.
“Look over there,” he told her. “By the shed.”
She looked over and found it immediately. He knew when she clapped her hands over her mouth again.
“You didn’t,” she said through her hands.
“I did.”
“What if I hadn’t said yes?” she demanded, pulling her hands away, the diamond he’d just slid onto her left ring finger glinting in the morning light.
“Then, obviously, I would have ritualistically destroyed it and made you watch,” Blue said blandly.
Everly laughed. That deep, wide sound that burrowed into him and made him feel as vast and unconquerable as the Alaskan sky.
So alive he felt electric. That was what she did to him. For him.
“I love you so much it hurts, Blue. It actually hurts,” she told him, and then she was scrambling down the steps and moving over the little patch of hillside he called his yard. It was fairly level here, and she took advantage of it. She jumped on the gift he’d propped up by the shed, still laughing.
He didn’t tell her he loved her then, though it moved in him like the sea. That big. That relentless. He’d save it for later, when he planned to celebrate the fact that she’d agreed to marry him in a much more naked and carnal way.