Only Love

by Melanie Harlow

  “And are you still just friends?” Emme demanded.

  “No, actually. We’ve decided we’re more than just friends.”

  “I knew it,” Grams said, looking pleased with herself. “Mark my words, girls, that meatloaf can work wonders.”

  A little later, I was getting changed in my room when Emme burst in dramatically. “Spill,” she said, throwing herself across the bed. She rolled onto her back. “And I do mean everything.”

  I smiled, pulling a tank top over my sports bra. “We had a talk.”

  She propped herself up on her elbows. “And?”

  “And he said some nice things.”

  Her eye roll was extreme. “Such as?”

  “Such as … that he’s in love with me.”

  “What?” She grabbed a pillow, smashed it over her face, and screamed into it.

  Laughing, I grabbed my running shoes and sat on the bed to tug them on. “True story. Shocked the hell out of me.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him I felt the same way.”

  “Oh. My. God. I can’t believe it!”

  “Neither can I. It’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me, like by far.”

  “I know! You never do this kind of impulsive, romantic thing.” She popped up onto her knees and felt my forehead. “Are you sure you’re okay? Do you have some kind of fever? Are you delirious?”

  “Stop.” I pushed her hand away and leaned over to tie my shoes, but I couldn’t help smiling. “I’m perfectly fine. I just followed my heart for once. And this is where it took me.”

  “So what now?” she asked. “Long distance love?”

  “We haven’t talked about that yet.” I stood up, grabbed a ponytail elastic off the nightstand, and put my hair back.

  “Well, it’s not that far. I mean, it’s not a plane ride or anything. It’s definitely doable for weekends.”

  “I hope so.” If things went well, then maybe we could talk about one of us moving to be closer together, but that was down the road. We didn’t need to rush. “I better go meet him. We’re running together.”

  Emme shook her head. “You guys are perfect for each other. I can’t believe Grams set you up with Mr. Right Next Door.”

  I laughed. “Me neither. She was such a stinker about it, too, making up stories about her ailments just to get me up here.”

  “Well, would you have come if she hadn’t?” Emme asked, following me down the stairs.

  “Probably not,” I admitted. “So I guess I should thank her.”

  “I’m super happy for you, Stella.” When we reached the first floor, Emme grabbed me from behind and squeezed tight. “I hope he can come to the wedding with you.”

  “I’ll invite him,” I said, patting her hands, which were clasped around my waist. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

  I was crossing the lawn, eyeing the gloomy skies, when I saw Ryan heading for me at a quick clip. “Hi,” I said, smiling broadly.

  “Hey. I’m sorry, I can’t run right now. I have to go somewhere.” He had his keys in his hand, and his brow was furrowed.

  “Everything okay?”

  “I don’t know.” He glanced toward his garage, like he was anxious to get away. “I think a friend might be in trouble.”

  “Oh no. Well, don’t worry about me, I run by myself all the time.”

  He didn’t really look worried about me at all. “Okay. I’ll see you later.” He turned toward his driveway and started to move away, then at the last second rushed back and kissed my cheek. “Can you let your grandmother know something came up and I might not be able to get to the porch work today?”

  “Of course. Go.”

  He jogged toward his garage, and a moment later his truck backed down the driveway. I gave him a little wave, but I don’t even think he looked in my direction.

  For a moment, I stood there biting the tip of my thumb and trying not to feel disappointed.

  Stop. It was obviously an emergency, or he wouldn’t have taken off so fast.

  But it’s my last day here.

  Well, tough. Shit happens. And someone needs him more than you do.

  But a strange little pit had opened up in my stomach, and as I took off at my warm-up pace down the road, I couldn’t help feeling like something was about to go wrong. Like last night had been too easy. Like all my romantic dreams had simply fallen into my lap without my having to work for them.

  If something seems too good to be true, it usually is, right?

  Quit it! You’re being ridiculous and insecure. He had an emergency, he’ll be back soon, and you’ll spend the rest of the day together.

  Thinking about all the things I had yet to learn about him gave me a surge of adrenaline, and I pushed myself to run faster. We had so many good things ahead of us.

  Everything would be fine.

  Twenty-Eight

  Ryan

  On my way out the door to meet Stella, I’d gotten a message from Mack that had me in a panic.

  Come to my house. It’s about Bones.

  I’d stopped in my tracks and called him, but he hadn’t answered. Then I tried Bones again. No answer.

  My heart was thudding with dread. Something wasn’t right.

  I made the twenty-minute drive to Mack’s in fourteen minutes, lucky I didn’t get pulled over. I knocked on the door, then let myself in. “Mack?” I called from the front room.

  “Back here.”

  I followed the sound of his voice to the kitchen, where he sat at the table with his head in his hand and a cup of coffee in front of him. He looked even worse than he had yesterday.

  From the adjacent family room, I heard the sounds of singing on TV and high-pitched giggling. “You’ve got the kids?”

  “Yeah.” He looked up at me with red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. “Bones, he …”

  “Oh, fuck.” My hands clenched into fists and my neck muscles got tight. “What happened?”

  But I knew. I knew what he’d done.

  Mack couldn’t bring himself to say it, anyway. He closed his eyes and shook his head.

  I swallowed hard against the rising gorge in my throat. “How?” I demanded.

  “Shot himself in his bedroom.”

  “When?”

  “Late Wednesday night. Early Thursday.”

  Late Wednesday night. He’d been texting me that night, sending me the picture of Kopecki. What had I said to him? I couldn’t even remember. “Fuck!” I shouted, grabbing onto my skull with both hands. “Fuck!”

  I knew Mack’s kids were in the other room, but I couldn’t help it. Self-loathing gnawed at my insides. I felt sick with it. I raced out Mack’s back door into his yard and around the side of the house. Bracing myself against the brick with both arms, I closed my eyes and choked out sobs. I wished I would vomit. I wanted to get rid of this grief that was poisoning me. I wanted to purge the guilt, the sorrow, the knowledge that I could have done more. I could have done more.

  I felt like I’d left a brother behind. And I’d never forgive myself for it.

  I pounded my fist against the wall. I hid my face in my arm. Heaving breaths shuddered through my chest as I wept silently for the skinny kid from Iowa who survived the war overseas only to succumb to it here.

  You can’t let yourself feel! I wanted to go back and scream at him. You can’t look at those pictures, you can’t bring anyone back, you can’t undo any of the things you’ve done. The only thing you can do is bury it all so deeply it can never harm you again. If you don’t, it will kill you.

  But Bones hadn’t learned that lesson. Maybe his heart was too big. Maybe he was too young. Maybe he loved too much.

  Not me. I knew better. I’d learned that survival took more than honor, courage, and commitment. It took the strength necessary to overcome anything that threatened to weaken you. You had to learn to switch it off, before it took you down.

  I pulled myself together and walked back around the house, letting myself in the back door. Ma
ck hadn’t moved. Dropping into the chair across from him, I took a deep breath and confessed. “He reached out to me that night.”

  Mack looked up. “He did?”

  “Yeah.” My voice cracked. “He sent me a photo of some of us, including Kopecki. Said he missed him.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I don’t even remember what I said back. Whatever it was, it was wrong.”

  “Woods. Don’t.”

  “I should have said something else.”

  “This isn’t your fault.”

  “Then whose fault is it? Huh?” Tears threatened, and I swiped angrily at my eyes. “Whose fault if not mine? He reached out to me. I let him down.”

  “No, you didn’t. There’s no way you could have known he was going to do this.”

  I leaned my elbows on the table and took my head in my hands. “I want to go back. I want to go back and fucking tell him to stop thinking about Kopecki.”

  “That was a fucked-up day that we lost Kopecki.”

  “That was my fault too.”

  “Fuck off, Woods. It was not.”

  “I’d been nice to that kid.”

  “We all were.”

  “And he turned around and tried to blow us up.”

  “Because he wasn’t just a kid, Woods.” Mack’s voice was hard. “He was a soldier.”

  “I should have seen it coming. Should have been sharper. I was weak—I felt sorry for him, growing up surrounded by war. ‘What chance does he have?’ I thought. I was soft.”

  “You were human, looking for a little humanity among the violence. It’s understandable.”

  “But it’s not forgivable.”

  Mack didn’t argue. He knew there was no point.

  “I talked to Bones’s mom,” he said. “There’s going to be a service next week and she asked if we’d be pallbearers.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t speak.

  “Daddy, can we have lunch?” A little girl appeared in the kitchen doorway. It looked like Millie, the oldest. She had her mother’s blond hair and Mack’s dark eyes, and she was at that gangly age where her arms and legs looked too long for her body.

  Mack cleared his throat. “Yeah. Give me a minute.”

  “What are you going to make?” she asked dubiously.

  “I don’t know. Chicken nuggets.”

  She sighed heavily and turned around, walking back into the family room. “It’s chicken nuggets again, you guys.”

  This news was greeted with groaning.

  “God, how can they be so sweet one minute and such little assholes the next?” Mack asked.

  Any other day, I would have laughed.

  My phone buzzed in my back pocket, and I took it out to look at it. It was a text from April Sawyer asking if I could come in. “Shit. I have to go in to work. It’s going to rain and they need to move everything inside.”

  Mack nodded.

  I replied to April that I’d be there within the hour and shoved my phone back in my pocket.

  “You gonna be okay?” he asked, getting up from his chair.

  “Fine.” All I had to do was flip the switch so I didn’t have to feel anything—not grief for Bones, not guilt over Kopecki, not regret for all my mistakes.

  “Want to grab a beer later?” He pulled a bag of chicken nuggets from the freezer.

  “What about the kids?”

  “I can try to get a sitter.”

  “Okay. Yeah. Let me know.”

  It wasn’t until I was on my way home to change that I remembered Stella was waiting for me. Fuck. I was already a shitty boyfriend and we’d only been together for twelve hours.

  Because you’re not cut out for this. You’re not capable.

  I scowled at the highway in front of me, hating myself for getting into this situation. For allowing myself to fall for her and letting her fall for me. She’d been right to be scared. I was only going to hurt her. Nothing good had ever come of dropping my guard and letting someone in. Of being weak. Of being soft.

  I sat up straighter in my seat, jaw clenched, hand tight on the wheel. I had to be tough. I had to be ruthless. I had to sever the feelings at the root so they would die.

  As for her feelings, well, that was her problem. I’d warned her, hadn’t I? I’d told her I wasn’t good at this. I’d told her it would be a mistake. She needed to go home and forget about me.

  I ignored the way my gut was churning. The sharp pain in my chest.

  I parked the truck in the driveway, ran into the house, and changed from my running clothes into jeans, a Cloverleigh work shirt, and boots. I was on my way back out again, jogging down the front porch steps when I saw Stella about to come up.

  She’d obviously run on her own, and was glistening with sweat, her cheeks flushed. At the sight of her, my heart started to pound.

  “Hey,” she said, slightly out of breath. “Everything okay?”

  No, I wanted to say. I fucked up and I’m a mess and I can’t handle this. I can’t handle any of it.

  “Fine,” I said shortly, moving around her and heading for the truck.

  She spun around. “Wait, where are you going?”

  “To work.” I opened the driver’s side door. “I got a message they need me.”

  “Oh.” She twisted her hands together at her waist.

  Her nipples were hard and poking through her top, and I hated myself for not only staring but starting to get hard at the sight of them. I loved her body. I loved its softness and its firmness and all its curves and planes. I loved her arms and legs around me, and the smell of her skin, the taste of her lips. I loved the sound of her voice, the touch of her hands, the way she looked at me, as if she was in awe. As if I had saved her. As if I were a hero.

  I wasn’t. I wasn’t even close.

  “So—so when will you be back?” she asked, clearly confused by the change in my demeanor.

  “I’m not sure.” I got in the truck, hesitating before closing the door. “I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay.” She attempted a smile. “I missed you on my run.”

  I steeled myself. “I have to go.”

  “Oh.” She took a step back, the hurt obvious in her expression. “Okay.”

  I shut the door and started the engine, keeping my eyes off her as I backed out of the drive and took off down the road. Fat drops of rain began to pelt the windshield.

  I’d committed some unspeakable acts in my past, but leaving her there on the side of the driveway, alone and sad and clearly worried, felt as wrong as anything I’d ever done.

  The weight of it was nearly unbearable.

  It got worse as the day went on. I unloaded the trucks and helped move all the ceremony furniture inside, which meant tearing down some of the reception tables and chairs. Those would have to be put back into place once the ceremony had concluded, during cocktail hour.

  I could’ve used a cocktail. Or at least a bottle of tequila.

  The bride arrived, upset about the weather. I listened as April reassured her that rain on your wedding day was good luck, and felt like spitting.

  It’s a lie. Don’t believe it, I wanted to say to her. It rained on my wedding day too, and the marriage was a fucking disaster.

  But what could anyone expect? Nothing got stronger over time—not people, not houses, not relationships. Things started to weaken. The joints. The bones. The foundation. You wound up in the dust no matter what you did. So why bother?

  Stella texted in the middle of the afternoon, and seeing her name on my screen was painful. I wanted nothing more than to go home after this shitty day, get out of my damp clothing, and curl up in bed with her. Tell her everything. Let her hold me and tell me I was okay, even if I didn’t feel it.

  But I had to stay strong.

  I didn’t answer her.

  Later, Mack messaged me that he’d gotten a sitter and would meet me at Bayside Grill at seven, after he fed the kids dinner.

  What’s for dinner? I texted back, remembering how the squad had looke
d for levity even in the darkest hours.

  Go fuck yourself, he replied.

  I wanted to smile but couldn’t.

  I stayed at work, hiding in the stables doing meaningless, unnecessary tasks until it was nearly time to meet Mack. I arrived an hour early, sat at the bar, and polished off two beers and a burger. Mack arrived, drenched from the rain, and took the seat next to me.

  “Hey,” he said. Then he sniffed. “Were you in the stables today?”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” I tipped up my third beer. “I haven’t been home yet to clean up.”

  He kept looking at me, but I stared straight ahead.

  “They needed you all day?” he asked.

  I still didn’t answer.

  Mack shrugged out of his wet jacket and ordered a beer and some tacos. “How’s it going with Stella?”

  “It’s not.”

  He stopped with his arm halfway out of his sleeve. “Did she leave town?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “What happened?”

  I shrugged.

  “I thought you liked her.”

  “I do.”

  “What’s the problem?” Mack’s beer arrived, and he thanked the bartender before taking a sip.

  “The problem is that I’m not capable of maintaining the kind of relationship she wants.”

  “How the hell do you know that? You met her on what—Monday?”

  “Because I know, all right?” I snapped. “Things got too serious too fast, and I realized I was making a huge mistake.”

  He stared at me a moment. “Okay.”

  I continued to drink without looking at him, scared that he’d read the truth in my face.

  “You just seemed … I don’t know, really into her.”

  “Well, I wasn’t. It was a stupid mistake to sleep with her.” At least that much was true. Because even though I was acting as if I was indifferent, I wasn’t feeling indifferent at all. I’d been trying all day to switch off my feelings for her, and it wasn’t working.

  I was starting to panic a little.

  “I mean, look at Bones. Look what happens when you let yourself go around feeling things.”

  “You’re not Bones, Ryan.”