Free Only for Us by Cristin Harber Page B

Maybe—
    “You tried to tell me. That night. And this…”
    “I wasn’t…” Crushing pain in my chest chokes me. “Strong enough to risk losing you.”
    She closes the notebook and holds it to her chest. Her eyes are bloodshot, her nose red at the tip.
    “Maybe this wasn’t a great idea for a present.”
    Another tear slips down her cheek. “It’s perfect.”
    “It’s making you cry. Damn sure there’s a rule about making your girl tear up on her birthday.”
    “It’s helping me understand. And I’m pretty sure the no-cry rule has exceptions.”
    “Not likely.”
    “This”—she hugs the notebook—“makes me feel love down to the very threads of my existence.” She burrows closer to me on the couch. “I choose you, Gray, like you’ve come home to me. Like I chose you then and want us now. What tore us apart had to have happened for whatever reason, and now I’m in your arms forever.”
    Hugging her to me, I’m not sure we can ever get close enough. “I feel like I have it all.”
    “Me too.”
    “What do you think life will hand us next?”
    “You should move in here.” There’s a casual certainty in her voice.
    An unnerving calmness runs deep. “Move in here?”
    “Fast… but maybe…” She smiles. “You’re good with that?”
    “Hell yeah, I’m good with that.” We’re hopping over major relationship steps, but it feels right, almost easy. “First, I told you about that job interview?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I want to be up-front with you. The interview was good, but it gave way to a job… test , for lack of a better word. The folks I’d work with, it’s not a desk job, and I can’t talk about much.”
    She rests her chin on my chest. “A job you can’t talk about?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Like you need a clearance?”
    “It’s more hands-on than that.”
    Concern scrunches her forehead. “Is it dangerous?”
    I press my lips together, my eyes narrowing, as I try to word what I think might be a truthful answer in my head. “They haven’t exactly told me what the job entails. But, who they are—”
    “What is it? Like, a security firm?”
    “Yeah. They’ve helped me out since I was discharged from Walter Reed.”
    “Is that where your truck came from? It doesn’t look like you drove it off a showroom lot.”
    I have to laugh at that. The big, blacked-out, chromed-out fuel guzzler doesn’t look very standard. “Yes. It belongs to Titan.”
    She gnaws on her lip. “So, you’d be in danger?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Like, risk your life every day type danger or… I don’t know, something less scary-sounding?”
    “If it’s what I think it is, there’d be risks.”
    “You’re going to come home from war and just to jump into a job like that?”
    “Not if you don’t want me to.”
    She turns her face away and burrows into my arm. “Is it what you want to do, Gray?”
    I hold onto her, praying this isn’t a deal breaker. I want to provide for her, and working for Titan would do that—very, very well. I miss the camaraderie of a military team, the brotherhood I can’t explain and yet still crave. “This is the only thing I know how to do well.”
    She lies against me quietly as time drifts by. “Anything else you can tell me?”
    “There’s probably travel.”
    “How much?” she asks.
    “Honestly, I have no idea. And most likely, you wouldn’t know where I was going.”
    Humming against my chest, she sounds as if she’s considering the idea. “But you want this?”
    “Better than bartending at Seven’s or—”
    “I hate that place.” She studies my face. “But seriously, after everything that you dealt with… over there, you want whatever this job is?”
    “Good question.” My hands smooth over her back. “I have some baggage to deal with.”
    “Over your team?”
    My dead team. “Yeah.”
    “Think you can manage it?”
    All of the therapy, the brochures, the stupid pieces of paper where some therapist asked me to circle my emotions that day…