Free Summer of Two Wishes by Julia London

you hooked up with Clark.”
    As if she’d just turned him off and Wyatt on one day, could name the exact moment she’d let go the memory of him and allowed herself to love Wyatt. “Roughly two years,” she said tightly. “I spent two years thinking of you every moment of every day. Mourning you. Wishing I had died with you. And then…then one day I didn’t want to worry or die anymore. I don’t know how it happened—it just happened.”
    “Wow,” Finn said, his gaze sliding over her. “Two years.”
    His indignation suddenly angered her. “You act as if I should have assumed you were alive in spite of all the evidence to the contrary! I am sorry if I can’t describe the loss and the despair I felt to your satisfaction, Finn, but believe me, there were days I never got out of bed. I spent many, many long nights surfing the Web, putting your picture up at every fallen soldier Web site I could find along with a personal tribute because that was the only thing I knew to do to soothe my grief, and that didn’t even touch it. There were days I didn’t eat. There were very long days that I didn’t do a damn thing but wander around the house, looking for you. Cows were outside calling for food, and I didn’t care. There were entire days when I did nothing but worry that I hadn’t said good-bye to you the right way. I’d said good-bye like you were coming back, not good-bye like I’d never see you again, and I couldn’t do anything but worry about it.”
    “Jesus—”
    “I got the black boxes with your stuff from the army and I thought I would have something that had your scent, something I could touch and hold on to, but you know what? They washed it all! I couldn’t smell anything but detergent! And you know what else? I was very angry, especially with you for joining the army to begin with. What the hell, Finn? Why did you have to go? Why did you have to risk everything that we had?”
    Finn didn’t speak.
    “All that sorrow and anger almost buried me,” Macy heatedly continued. “Ask anyone here. So forgive me if one day I decided my life was still worth living, even without you. That’s right, I tried to find a way to live my life without you. What else was I supposed to do?”
    He looked stunned. Let him be stunned, Macy thought bitterly. “I’m sorry if I didn’t grieve correctly, but no one gave me a manual for that, any more than they gave me a manual for how to put everything back the way it was when my lost husband turned up blessedly alive.”
    She moved to pass him, but Finn stopped her by taking her arm. “Before you flounce off, I want to tell you something.”
    Macy tried to remove her arm, but his grip tightened.
    “I didn’t get a rule book either,” Finn said quietly. “I never even thought of the possibility you might have remarried, can you believe it? Maybe that was dumb, but I didn’t, and now I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do with you. Am I supposed to accept that you moved on? I’ve tried, Macy, but it’s not that easy for me.”
    Macy glanced down. Her hands were shaking. “Me either,” she admitted in a whisper.
    He caressed her arm with his thumb. “I’m not trying to upset you. But I’m a plainspoken man, and I’m just going to tell you straight up. I can’t stop thinking about you. Hell, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since the moment we met, but now I can’t stop thinking of you with him. It makes me feel sick. I love you, Macy, and I didn’t come this far to lose you. You need to know that. You need to know that I want you, and I’m not going to give up on us until you tell me to, and even then, I’m not sure I can. Beyond that, I don’t know what else to say.”
    There was a time those words would have melted her right into his arms. This evening, they stirred an unbearable yearning for something that was bigger than desire. Those words went right to her heart and warmed it, hurt it, made it beat like it hadn’t beat