Jonathan slammed on the brakes and threw the car into Reverse, backing up a few feet before hitting the brakes again. He ignored the impatient blaring of the horn coming from the car behind him as he hit the button for the passenger window to lower it.
No, he wasn't seeing things. There was Sammie, sitting on the bench, huddled in a jacket that looked more suited for Spring than Winter.
He leaned across the seat. "Sammie! Hey, Sammie!"
She looked up, her gaze moving along the line of cars backed up behind him before finally resting on him. For a second, Jonathan was afraid she'd ignore him, that she'd simply stand up and walk away.
She hesitated then pushed to her feet and swung a tote bag over her shoulder before making her way to his car. She was wearing a long skirt with some kind of abstract pattern on it, the hem swirling around the ankles of her boots. Her dark curls bounced around her face and she brushed them away with an impatient swipe of her hand before grabbing the door handle and pulling it open.
The car behind him hit the horn again, longer this time. Jonathan looked in the rearview mirror, ready to tell the driver to stick it up his ass. Sammie slammed the door closed and pointed over her shoulder.
"You're kind of holding up traffic."
Jonathan pursed his lips, swallowing back the words that had come so close to tumbling out, then started driving again. "I didn't think it would be this crowded."
"Well, it is the day before Thanksgiving."
"Um, yeah." He turned left, heading away from the crowd and traffic. Sammie stiffened next to him.
"Where are you going?"
Was that panic he heard in her voice? He glanced over, noticed the way her shoulders hunched around her ears and the way her chin tilted up.
"I'm just trying to find a place to park."
Her shoulders dropped a little, and he didn't miss the quick sigh of relief that spilled from her parted lips. His hands tightened on the wheel.
"Christ, Sammie. What the hell? Did you think I was going to kidnap you or something?"
"No. No, of course not."
He grunted but didn't say anything, didn't bother telling her that she didn't sound very convincing.
He finally found an empty spot, at the very far end of the lot, and maneuvered the car so he could back into it. Then he turned the engine off and sat there.
Silence filled the interior. Thick. Heavy. Oppressive. And fuck. Okay. Now what? Maybe he should start the engine again, just to turn on the radio for background music. No, music would be too distracting, would make it too hard to talk.
Not that there was any talking going on.
Jonathan wrapped both hands around the steering wheel, his grip so tight, he was surprised the damn thing didn't bend. He stared straight ahead, not knowing where to start.
"I—thank you for coming." And fuck, could he get any lamer?
Sammie shifted in the seat, looking out the window instead of at him. "I almost didn't. Shannon convinced me I should. She, uh, she said I needed to find out why. For closure."
"Closure." Jonathan repeated the word, dread sending ice through his veins. Was that why she was here, because she wanted closure? Wasn't that something you needed so you could move on? So you could put things behind you?
Fuck.
"Yeah. She said I wouldn't be able to move on without it."
"Closure?"
"Yes. She—"
"What is she, some kind of fucking shrink?" And fuck, he hadn't meant to say that out loud, hadn't meant for the words to sound so sharp. Sammie stiffened in the seat and watched him through narrowed eyes, her expression unreadable.
"This was a bad idea. I should go—"
"No, wait." He reached for her, let his hand drop to the console before he touched her. "Sammie, please. I just…"
She watched him, waiting for him to finish whatever he'd been ready to say. But he didn't know how to finish, wasn't sure what to say. He just…what?
He fucked up?
He was sorry for destroying what they had?
He was sorry for giving up?
Or maybe he should tell her he was nothing more than a fucking coward, afraid to face what he'd become.
Afraid for her to see what kind of monster he really was.
She shifted in the seat, anger clear on her face. But under the anger was something else: pain. Hurt. Betrayal. Each emotion cut through him, ripping open wounds he'd fought so long to ignore, wounds that had never healed.
"What do you want, Jon? Why are you here? Now, after everything you did?"
"I—"
"Do you even know what you did to me? How much you hurt me?" Her voice broke and she looked away, her throat working as she swallowed. "And I never knew why. You couldn't even bother to tell me why. One day, everything was fine, and the next, I'm being served with divorce papers and told I need to move. That the only home my daughter—our daughter—ever knew was no longer her home."
She turned back to face him, her dark eyes filled with tears. His heart shattered into a million shards as a single tear fell and trailed down her cheek.
"I didn't know—"
"You didn't know?" She shouted the words at him, fury replacing the hurt that had been in her voice only seconds before. "How could you not know? Or was it that you didn't care? Why, Jon? That's all I want to know. Why? What was it that I did that was so awful that you divorced me while you were deployed? What did I do to make you turn your back on your own daughter?"
"It wasn't you—"
"Your own daughter, Jon! And you still haven't asked about her. Not once." Sammie dragged in a shaky breath and wiped at the tears trailing down her cheek. Anger flashed in her eyes again, brighter this time, as she leaned closer. "Do you even know how old she is? Do you even remember her name? Do you even care?"
Jonathan jerked back, the words more painful than any punch he'd ever taken. Sammie had every right to her anger, had every right to hurl the accusations at him, but they still hurt.
Fuck, they hurt.
And underneath the hurt was irrational anger—at Sammie. At himself. At the time he'd thrown away these last two years, convincing himself he was doing the right thing.
He swallowed past the misplaced anger, forced himself to meet Sammie's watery gaze, forced the words past the bitter lump in his throat. "Clare Margaret Reigler. She turned three last month, on the eighteenth."
If he had expected surprise from Sammie, he'd have been wrong. Fury flashed in her eyes a second before she swung her hand in his direction. Jonathan snagged her arm mid-air, stopping her before she could slap him.
"Damn you. Damn you, damn you, damn you!" She struggled against his hold, her voice breaking as tears coursed down her cheeks. He released her arm, waiting for her to take another swing at him, knowing he deserved that and so much more.
But she didn't swing at him. She didn't do anything except sit there, staring at something past his shoulder, her expression oddly vacant.
"Sammie—"
"Why, Jon? Why?" Her voice was hoarse and scratchy, barely more than a whisper. "You remember, but you couldn't be bothered to ask? To check and see how your own daughter was? To even acknowledge her? Why? To hate me is one thing but—"
"Hate? Sammie, I don't hate you—"
Her gaze darted to his for a brief second then slid away. "Don't you? Why else would you have done what you did?"
"Sammie—"
"To take it out on Clare—"
"I don't hate—"
"Then why? Why did you—"
"Fuck!" Jonathan shouted the word then slammed his fist against the steering wheel, hard enough to cause the horn to emit a pathetic squeal. "Because you deserved better than a monster!"
Sammie sat back, her teary-gaze wide as she stared at him. "I don't—"
"I'm a fucking monster, Sammie." His voice broke and he shook his head, turning away from her as he forced himself to calm down. He reminded himself that this was why he asked to see her—to tell her the truth.
To tell her what he'd become.
And to hope she could find it somewhere in her to forgive him.
He ignored her questioning gaze, ignored the tears that clung to her lower lashes, forced himself to stare at his hands.
Large. Callused.
Stained with blood.
He curled one fist and rested it against his thigh, wrapped the other one around the steering wheel and squeezed. Fuck, he couldn't do this, didn't want to drag the past back up, didn't want to remember.
He had to. Sammie deserved to know the truth.
"You don't know what we did over there."
She hesitated, blew out a heavy sigh. "Not details but enough—"
"You. Don't. Know." The words were flat, final. He didn't look at her, he couldn't, so he stared out the window. "We'd go on patrols, day in and day out. Different villages. Never knowing what we'd find."
"Jon—"
He silenced her with a single shake of his head. He didn't want her to interrupt; if she did, he'd never be able to get it out. He had never talked about this with anyone before, nobody except Mac and Daryl. That was different—they were there, they had experienced it. Jonathan had to tell her. Had to let her know—
He took another deep breath and kept staring out the windshield of the car. But he wasn't seeing the parking lot, wasn't seeing the rows of cars or the people walking and laughing.
Hot. The sun beating down, searing his eyes in spite of the dark sunglasses he always wore. The grit of sand in his boots, stuck to his pants and shirt, plastered against the sweaty flesh of his chest and stuck between his fucking teeth.
Ramshackle huts, their color only slightly darker than all that Godforsaken sand, the sea of beige broken by the faded and muted colors of worn blankets or sheets hanging in doorways and windows.
Whispers. Laughter. Suspicious looks from dark eyes, at odds with the forced smiles and calls of welcome.
"We were on one patrol, in some shitty fucking village, checking out some intel. We didn't think there was anything to it. Fuck, there was nothing but women and kids in the village. There couldn't be anything to it."
A shout of warning. A scream. Gunfire and the sound of bullets tearing into flesh.
Blood, dark and red, saturating the sand beneath his feet.
An outstretched hand, the palms scratched and caked with dirt. Lifeless fingers reaching across the desert floor, stretching toward the switch that would kill them all.
Dark eyes, opened to the searing sun beating above them, the sightless eyes focused on something nobody else could see.
The face, young and unlined, the skin oddly perfect, marred only by the blood seeping from the boy's mouth.
A boy. A fucking kid. No more than ten or eleven. Lifeless.
Because of Jonathan.
Fuck. He could still hear the scream. Still smell the metallic odor of spilled blood, even after all this time.
He closed his eyes, dug the nails of his fingers into the flesh of his palm, reminding himself that he wasn't there anymore.
"The kid was just ten-years-old. Maybe eleven. Just a fucking kid with a fucking bomb strapped to his fucking chest."
He heard Sammie's swift intake of breath, sensed her stiffen in the seat beside him. If he looked over, would he see her condemnation? Would her dark brown eyes be filled with disgust at what he'd just confessed?
Tell her the rest. She deserves to know all of it.
He sucked a ragged breath through his raw throat, squeezed his eyes shut against the scratchy burning sensation. "He was the first kid I killed, Sammie. But he wasn't the last. Kids. Women. Fucking sent out to fucking blow themselves up and take as many of us with them as they could."
Startled silence filled the car, heavy with judgment. Sammie's? His? It didn't matter.
He opened his eyes and stared straight ahead, afraid to move his head to the side even the tiniest bit. Afraid he'd see revulsion reflected in Sammie's beautiful brown eyes. He couldn't bear to see that, not now.
Not ever.
"I turned into a monster over there. And I couldn't come back to you like that. How could I, after what I'd done, after what I'd become? How could I even think of touching you after that? And to hold Clare, to taint her innocence with the blood on my hands? I couldn't. You deserved better. Both of you. So I did what I thought was best. I set you free."
And fuck, could she even hear him, with the way his voice shook and cracked? With the way the whispered words were ripped from his aching chest? He didn't know, wasn't sure if he even wanted to know. He wasn't sure of anything, not now, not after telling her.
"Jon." His name was nothing more than a ragged whisper falling from her lips. He closed his eyes and shook his head, unwilling to hear her voice her loathing. Her fear. Her condemnation.
"You—you should just go now." And fuck, it hurt to tell her that, hurt to set her free. This wasn't what he wanted, wasn't what he had hoped for. But he'd been a fool to think telling her would change anything. The only thing telling her had done was convince him once more that she deserved so much better.
Long minutes dragged by, the quiet passing of time so oppressive it hurt to breathe. Then he heard the passenger door open, felt a rush of cold night air wash over him as Sammie climbed out of the car.
The door slammed behind her, hard and loud. The noise startled him and he opened his eyes, forced himself to watch as she hurried across the parking lot, moving further away from him with each brisk step.
Sammie had wanted closure. Had ripping the soul from his chest provided it for her? It didn't matter because he'd do it again. He'd do anything for her.
Because she was his soul.
Chapter Twelve
Flames licked at the logs, the oranges and reds casting a glow as gentle and hypnotizing as the heat drifting from the fireplace. Sammie usually found the sight to be soothing. Relaxing. Tonight should be no different.
Family was gathered in the large Victorian farmhouse, children chattering and laughing, adults talking in low tones, plans being made for the annual tree-cutting expedition and good-natured arguments over which child would be responsible for putting the angel on top once the tree was decorated. Sammie was surrounded by family: her parents; her two sisters and their husbands and kids; her mother's brother and his wife. Dinner was finished, leftovers had been put away, and coffee was brewing for dessert.
Families. Whole and unbroken and happy.
Everyone except her own.
In spite of the noise and togetherness that permeated the house, Sammie felt alone. Isolated. Her mind wasn't on dessert or the annual trek to get the tree, or even the get-together the team was planning for Sunday.
Her mind was on Jon, on everything he had told her last night. She couldn't get the words out of her head, couldn't get the images from her mind. His words hadn't been graphic, and she knew instinctively that he'd deliberately left out details. But what he'd told her was enough—more than enough. It was too easy to imagine what he'd seen and done. Too easy to imagine what he must have felt—what he still felt.
Sammie closed her eyes and tried to banish the images that had plagued her ever since he told her. The images had even haunted her in her sleep—what little sleep she'd had last night.
Worse than the images was the guilt she felt. What had it cost Jon to open up to her like that? She didn't know. And instead of staying around long enough to find out, she had climbed out of his car when he told her to leave and hurried to her own, needing to put space between them, needing to run from the horrifying images flashing in her mind.
And if merely hearing those things had upset her, what had actually experiencing them done to Jon?
No, she owed him nothing. They were no longer married, and he was no longer part of her life—hadn't been for more than two years.
Except that was a lie. Jon would always be part of her life—
Because of Clare.
She glanced over, a small smile spreading across her face as she watched he
r daughter help her cousins build something out of blocks. Clare's assistance generally involved knocking the blocks over after they reached a certain height, then giggling as her cousins set them up again.
Did she see any of Jon in their daughter? Clare had Sammie's curly hair and wide brown eyes. The shape of her mouth was almost identical to Sammie's mother's. Everyone always commented how much Clare resembled Sammie that she never looked for anything of Jon in her.
Watching her daughter now, she wondered if she had deliberately ignored the small resemblances, or if she had simply been blind to them. Because there were resemblances: the structure of Clare's cheekbones, finally emerging as she got older; the set of her eyes, so similar to Jon's; the shape of her nose, showing more than a hint of her father.
The father Clare had never seen, not since she was only a few months old.
The father who was afraid to see her because he was convinced he was a monster. Afraid that seeing her or holding her would somehow taint her.
Sammie blinked back the tears burning her eyes and turned her gaze to the fire. Jon had missed his daughter's first tooth, first word. He had missed Clare learning to crawl and walk. He had no idea what it felt like to hold his daughter's warm body against him as he read her a bedtime story, to hear her gentle breathing as she fell asleep or to kiss her soft cheek as he tucked her in.
Because he was convinced he was a monster.
Sammie couldn't wrap her head around it. How could he think that? What he'd done—those were things he'd had to do to survive. Would he have rather died over there? Couldn't he see that he hadn't had a choice?
Maybe he did. Sammie didn't know. He had never bothered to talk to her about it, had never bothered to give them a chance to work through it.
Had never bothered giving her the chance to support him.
Had never given her a choice.
Loving Hard: A Chesapeake Blades Hockey Romance (The Chesapeake Blades Book 2) Page 8