The garage door opened, and I called out before Josh came around the corner. “Hey, do you want to try that Thai place in a minute? We could walk. They’ve got that tea you like.”
I sat on the floor sorting my shipment of new plaid dog harnesses. The sizing seemed off. The extra smalls looked like smalls, and the smalls looked like mediums. I was pondering this as I looked up just as Josh walked in with Tyler directly behind him.
My breathing stopped.
Stuntman lost his ever-loving shit. He dove off the sofa and went right for Tyler’s ankles. In one fluid movement, Josh scooped him up before he attacked.
My dog yapped and snarled, and Josh stood there for a moment before he finished depositing Tyler the way he dropped off a box when I was on the phone: He made eye contact with me, set him by the door, and left.
“What are you doing here?” I breathed. Goddamn. He looked good.
I mean, he usually looked good. But that thing that always happened when he’d come back from leave, that moment of instant, primal attraction that smacked me in the face and reminded me what had drawn me to him in the first place—that thing happened.
He wore a long-sleeve striped button-down shirt rolled up at the elbows, with pressed black pants and a tan belt and shoes. His brown hair was thick
and combed, and he had a five-o’clock shadow. He wore the silver watch I got him last Christmas.
“You won’t answer my calls,” he said, slipping his hands into his pockets.
He looked wounded. Slightly slumped. I’d never seen him anything but confident and smiling.
“Why would I?” I got up and crossed my arms. “We’re over, so…” Sadness flickered across his face.
For the first time since we’d broken up, it occurred to me that this had been hard on him.
I just thought his career was more important, and he was relieved he wasn’t going back to civilian life. From his apologetic “I reenlisted without talking to you” message, I got the impression that while the breakup was an unfortunate by-product of his decision, he understood it was the choice he’d made and was at peace with it.
He took a step toward me. “Kris, can we talk?”
“Talk. Go for it,” I said defensively. “But do it from there.”
He glanced back toward the garage. “Let me take you somewhere. A nice restaurant. Where we can sit down and discuss things.”
I scoffed. “I’m not going anywhere with you. You have two minutes. Say what you came to say and get out.”
His jaw flexed. “Kris, I’m not leaving until we talk, and it’s going to take a lot longer than two minutes for me to say what I came to say. So unless you plan on having him throw me out”—he nodded to the garage—“then let’s go somewhere private.”
The set of his mouth told me he meant it. He wasn’t leaving until I let him talk. I thought of Josh, of him walking in and out of the house while Tyler and I had what was probably going to be a really shitty conversation.
I rolled my eyes. “Fine.” I grabbed my purse off the coffee table. “Let’s go.”
He looked over my outfit. I was in shorts, flip-flops, I had a sweater tied around my waist, and I wore a T-shirt that read THE MORE I MEET PEOPLE, THE MORE I LIKE MY DOG.
Tyler liked expensive restaurants. The food on deployment was terrible, so when he came home, he wanted to treat himself. We’d probably end up
at some fancy fusion place or something. I’d be epically underdressed, and I didn’t give a shit.
“You’re not going to get changed?” he asked.
“Nope.” I marched past him to the front door. “You’ll just have to make my excuses to the maître d’.” I stomped outside.
He ran around me to the passenger side of his SUV and held my door open. I got in grouchily and stared into the garage as Tyler slipped into the driver’s seat.
Josh stood over a staircase holding a nail gun with Stuntman leashed by his feet. Josh looked at me for a flicker of a second before he turned back to his project, his jaw tight. I wondered what he thought of all this.
Stuntman barked and strained against his leash as we pulled out of the driveway, and I couldn’t shake the super weird feeling I was leaving my family behind.
Tyler’s sandalwood cologne was more concentrated in the closed SUV. It blasted my face through the AC, familiar and new at the same time, stirring feelings of nostalgia in my heart.
“I missed you,” he said. He reached for my hand, but I yanked it away.
The heavy-duty door that I’d stashed Tyler behind rattled and shook and then it burst open. A tornado of emotions rotated around me, and I couldn’t process any of them. All I knew was that the general consensus was that I was pissed.
I felt indignant about him making his choice without the courtesy of even speaking to me first.
There was guilt that he was no longer the last man I’d slept with. That I’d jumped on Josh literally within minutes of us breaking up without so much as a twinge of regret.
Hurt that he seemed hurt.
Confusion as to why he was even here.
Surprise that seeing him made me wonder why I’d been so nervous about us moving in together.
Anger that he didn’t have more of an effect on me when we were still together so Josh might have had less.
Outrage that he hadn’t kept his promises so I would have to keep mine.
Pissed.
That was the muddied summary of how I felt. I was just pissed.
I glanced at Tyler. He seemed to be upset that I hadn’t let him hold my hand. His face had darkened. “Are you sleeping with him?”
We both knew who he was talking about. There was no reason to act coy. “That is none of your business,” I snapped.
“Were you sleeping with him when we were together?” He didn’t look at me, but his knuckles were white on the wheel.
I fumed. “You know what? Stop the car. Let me out.” I unbuckled myself.
“Kris—”
“Fuck you, Tyler. I was faithful to you. And I didn’t do this shit to our relationship. You did it. If you didn’t want me sleeping with other people, you shouldn’t have broken up with me. You gave up the privilege to be butt hurt the second you left me that voicemail.”
He didn’t stop the car.
“Okay,” he said after a moment. “Okay, I apologize. I know you wouldn’t do that. I just…seeing how he was about you, I…I’m sorry.”
How was he about me? What the fuck happened in the garage? I wasn’t going to ask, but what the hell?
We drove in silence for several minutes. When he finally spoke again, his voice was almost a whisper. “Do you love him?”
I ignored him. This answer was one that hurt to admit to myself. I turned to the window and tried to sort my feelings by staring out at the freeway.
As expected, he picked some ridiculously dim, hoity-toity seafood place in Malibu. Our table was under a stupid lamp made out of coral with a view of the ocean. He pulled my chair out for me and I refused to sit, glaring at him until he made his way around the table to his own seat.
I’d had enough of his chivalry. I wanted to get this over with. As far as I was concerned, this whole thing was too little, too late.
I sat and squinted at the menu. I was starving and irritable. The drive had taken forty-five minutes in rush hour. Josh and I would have been done eating dinner already. Josh never let me get this hungry. He would have put me in the passenger side of the car, closed the door, tapped the glass with his knuckle, and pressed a bag of chips against my window, grinning with those fucking dimples of his. Josh would have taken me somewhere I wanted to go, and he would have wanted to eat there too because we liked the same food.
A server put a bread basket between us. It wasn’t even bread—just weird, jagged paper-thin crackers with sesame seeds on them. It totally triggered me, and I instantly felt hangry and more annoyed.
“The tuna tartare is supposed to be excellent,” Tyler said, his tone conciliatory.
“Is it?” I slapped the menu closed and dropped it on the table with a smack. “Order for me because I have literally no idea what the hell I’m looking at.”
“We could go somewhere el—”
“Nope. Let’s do what you want. Always,” I bit back. “Let’s have a long- distance relationship that leaves me alone for months at a time while you do you. And let’s eat what you want to eat. Because you’re the important one here, right?”
It wasn’t fair and I knew it. I’d signed up for a military relationship. But I wasn’t rational at the moment—I was hungry.
I leaned forward. “Order oysters. I dare you.”
All I needed was shells filled with snot set in front of us for me to completely lose my shit.
He pressed his lips into a line. He seemed to sense I was too hungry to be reasoned with. So when the server came back, Tyler placed our order, watching me the whole time from the corner of his eye like I might flip the table or something.
Afterward he tried again to reach for my hands. “Kristen—”
“What?” I put my hands in my lap. “Say what you have to say, and do it without touching me.”
“Kris—”
“You broke up with me in a voicemail. Two years and I get a voicemail.”
Everything I did after that was fair game.
His thick eyebrows drew down. “I couldn’t get you on the phone. I tried for days. Where were you?”
Hanging out with Josh. Panicking that you were coming home.
“You called twice, Tyler. I missed two phone calls, so you decided to replan our lives without discussing it with me?”
The indignation surged again. “Do you know what it’s like to have a boyfriend you can’t call? To not know where you are because it’s
classified? To never have a date for things? To go to weddings alone? I did this for you for years. And the first thing you’re supposed to do for me, you bail on me.”
I snatched one of the crackers from the bread basket and took a grumpy bite. “What about my surgery?” I waved the cracker around. “I could have had it months ago and had Sloan take care of me, but nooooo. You told me to wait. You wanted to be there for me.” I put my fingers in quotes. “Thanks for all the months of extra needless suffering. And what about that big house you made me get so you’d have room for your things? I guess I’ll just continue to foot that enormous rent, right?”
I glared at him, sitting back in my seat. “Oh, and you know, you really fucked me over with Evelyn too. Tossed me right into the lion’s den. So thanks for that.”
He let out a slow breath. “I know. And I’m sorry.” He dragged a hand down his face. “I need you to know that this wasn’t because I didn’t want to be with you. It was never that. This just wasn’t the life I wanted, Kris. The military is all I’ve ever known.”
“Fine.” I crossed my arms. “So you’re doing what you want, as usual.
You made your choice. You did it without including me. Why am I here?” “Don’t you even miss me?”
The question hit me in the heart. His eyes begged me. Begged me to miss him.
Not really. Not until I saw you and I let you out of your storage room.
Now I’m confused…
…Josh.
An urge to talk him out of wanting me took hold.
“You know, it’s for the better anyway,” I said, tossing a hand. “Because I’m not even myself around you. You would have hated living with me once you really got to know me.”
He just looked at me, his eyes going soft like he knew what I was doing and thought it was cute.
“Okay, you don’t believe me? This place—” I threw a hand up at the restaurant. “I don’t like eating at places like this. What the fuck is squid ink pasta? I go to places like this with you because you like it and you only get to choose where you eat, like, fifteen days out of the year.”
I put a hand to my chest. “I am very opinionated about where I want to
eat. You don’t even know that. That is a core part of who I am as a person, and you have never seen that side of me, Tyler.”
The corner of his mouth came up into a small, amused smile.
“This is not funny. I’m being totally serious. I get very easily annoyed. I’m impatient and moody. I hate almost everyone. We don’t even really know each other. All you’ve ever seen is me at my best, being agreeable and wearing makeup. That is not the real me.”
Josh knows the real me.
I went on. “You reenlisted. It’s done, and my position on another deployment hasn’t changed. I’m not doing it. We are not getting back together. So I appreciate the explanation and the face-to-face. But none of this changes anything.”
He leaned onto the table with his forearms and spoke directly to my eyes. “I love you.”
My heart clenched.
I’d heard the words on the phone a hundred times. He’d written them in letters. But it had been almost a year since he’d looked me in the eye and said it to my face. And now that he did, there was no question that he meant it.
He waited, but I didn’t say it back. I wasn’t sure if I loved him. I wasn’t sure that I didn’t.
Someone dropped off some weird salads while Tyler and I stared at each other tensely across the table. The green menagerie smelled faintly like seaweed, and I actually felt a little nauseous looking at it. The only thing I recognized on the plate was a cherry tomato, and even that was yellow instead of red. I pushed the plate away and crossed my arms, scowling.
I wanted to put out the stupid romantic candle flickering between us. I grabbed the glass votive and dumped my water into it, and Tyler wrinkled his forehead at me like I’d gone insane.
“What do you want from me?” I asked. “Closure? Forgiveness?” I picked up the sloshing votive and moved it next to the salt and pepper shakers.
His gorgeous green eyes canvassed my face. “Do you remember the day we met?”
I scoffed. “Of course. You were so lame. How could I forget?”
He smiled. “You’d convinced the piano player in that bar to let you play.
It was incredible. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
The corner of my lip twitched. It was the last time I’d played. Two years ago.
I had a booth at a pet trade show in Orange County, and I was staying the night alone in a hotel. I had a few drinks in me, and nobody there knew me. The notes had soared from my fingers, and I saw him there across the room, under a light at a cocktail table like a scene from a movie.
Everything around him had blurred.
He continued. “I asked you your name, and then I wrote it in calligraphy on a napkin. And you laughed at me and asked me if that ever actually worked on anyone.” He smirked a little. “It did, you know. It worked on every girl before you.”
This made me smile, and I felt myself soften. “You were so well dressed I thought for sure you were gay.”
He laughed, his eyes distant like he was pulling up a memory. “After you gave me a hard time for my stupid pickup tactic, I tried to buy you a drink. You said all you wanted was a new napkin. So I got you one, and I folded it into an origami swan. That really pissed you off.”
I snorted. The damn origami swan. I still had it, though I’d never admit it. “I was pretty salty that day. I had no patience for desperate acts of origami.”
He chuckled. “You told me if I could beat you at thumb war I could have your number.”
Yeah. I hadn’t seen that win coming. I’d never been bested. He had surprisingly agile thumbs.
I remembered how my heart had fluttered when our hands had touched.
I’d been immediately attracted to him. The chemistry was instantaneous.
He shook his head. “I’d never met a woman like you before. You told me to go to hell and made me look forward to the trip.”
He scooted his chair around so he was sitting catty-corner to me. Our knees touched, and a small thrill ran through me.
How close I had come to living with this man. To sharing my life with him. It could have been him sleeping in the bed next to me instead of Josh, my cuddly teddy bear.
Tyler’s piercing eyes seemed to reach into my soul, and I couldn’t look away.
“I couldn’t throw my career away, Kris. I worked too hard to get to where I am. They dangled an opportunity in front of me, I panicked, and I did something stupid, and I’ve regretted it every day since.”
He let out a shaky breath. “The morning after I left you that message, I woke up and I felt like I’d buried myself alive. I tried to call you right away and…” He shook his head. “This silence has been like a siege. I’ve been so desperate to get to you I almost went AWOL. You have no idea how hard it’s been. I’ve been out of my damn mind.”
He reached for my hand again. His expression was so raw I thought it might break him if I jerked away, so I reluctantly let him take it. His touch sent an unexpected jolt through me. A shiver of memory.
He looked down at our hands as he threaded his fingers in mine. My heart began to pound.
I remember you.
Tyler came flooding back to me like his touch broke a forget spell.
I knew this man. I knew the way he smelled and tasted. I could recognize his moods in a single word. I remembered the look in his eyes when we made love and the smile on his face in the morning when we’d lay in bed talking, sharing a pillow. I recalled the pain of kissing him goodbye at the airport and the emptiness when he left.
I remember.
He looked at our hands like it hurt him to touch me. His eyes moved back up to mine. “It’s been a sucking void, Kris. Like some black hole that keeps getting wider and wider. You’re the thing that I look forward to. The reprieve in the middle of whatever bullshit I’m dealing with. I have conversations with you in my head. I store things up to tell you. For the last two years, I’ve been on a countdown of nothing but you, living my life in the days between our talks and my leave.”
He paused and studied my face. He was painted in regret and sadness.
“I messed up,” he breathed. “I should have never done it. I should have just come home.”
I let out a long breath. “And then you would have just resented me.”
Fuck, was there no scenario in which a man could just be with me without having to give up on the one thing he wants for himself?
At the rate I was going, the only way I’d end up with someone for the rest of my life was if I choked on some queso and died on a first date.
Our food came, and we ate in silence. I stared at my plate, and he stared at me. When the dishes were cleared, my anger had officially run out. I replaced it with guilt.
“Tyler…”
He looked at me, his eyes hopeful at the change in my tone.
“I am in love with him. I think I’ve been in love with him from the day I met him.”
I didn’t see the need to lie to him. If he was going to be tortured over his choice, I didn’t want him seeing me with rose-colored glasses.
He wiped a hand down his mouth and sat back in his chair, his fist clenched on the top of the table. “I figured,” he said finally, his voice low.
I wondered how he knew. What about me had given it away? Maybe seeing Josh had given it away.
“Are you with him?” he asked. I shook my head. “No.”
He looked away from me. “Then he’s a fucking idiot,” he said, his eyes glassy.
“It’s not his choice. It’s mine. And I would be with him if I could.”
He stared wearily at the bread basket. “But you don’t love me?” His eyes went back to mine.
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I think a part of me was with you because you weren’t really real, you know? You weren’t here to deal with my shitty periods and get sexually frustrated like the boyfriends before you. You didn’t want kids, so my issues didn’t matter to you. Mom loved you. You were easy. And then we decided to make it real, and I was just so freaked out that you were coming home. I was scared to live with you and make that kind of commitment. But then when I saw you today, I…”
He hung on my words.
I let out a breath. “I saw you and I wondered why I was scared. I think I would have fallen right back in love with you the second you came home. But you never did.”
And I needed you to. Because you were the only thing keeping me from throwing myself into the flames.
He squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, they were full of hurt. “And what about him?”
I shrugged. “What about him? I can’t be with him. Ever. He wants kids.
So that’s the end of that.”
He shook his head. “This is my fault,” he said quietly. “All of it. I knew something was there with you two. I could feel it. And I fucking reenlisted anyway.” He looked at me, the anguish etched deep in his forehead. “I did this. I practically handed you to him. I was so stupid.”
“You’re not wrong,” I mumbled.
I wondered what would have happened differently if Tyler had just come home. If he would have moved in. Been there. Reminded me, like I was reminded now.
But deep inside, I knew Tyler never stood a chance against Josh. Josh would have hovered on the edges of any happiness I could have ever found with Tyler.
Josh would hover on the edges of my everything for the rest of my life, I suspected.
So I might as well get used to it.
Tyler paid the check and as we got up to go, he looked at me. “I want to take you somewhere.”
He brought me to a hotel right off the beach. I thought we were going up to the roof—I’d seen a sign for a rooftop bar. But we got off on a guest room floor. When he pulled out a key, I realized he was taking me back to his room.
“Tyler—”
“Just…please, Kris. Just for a few minutes.”
He opened the door into a sprawling space. An enormous panoramic window looked out over the ocean. He led me with a hand on my lower back into the room, and I realized it wasn’t a room at all. It was a presidential suite.
A dining room table for eight sat to the left with a fresh flower arrangement on it bigger than I was. A spiral staircase led up to a loft with a library in it overlooking a gourmet kitchen.
A sleek black piano with flickering candles, two champagne glasses, and rose petals on top of it sat by the open balcony door. Champagne nestled in shifting ice next to the piano bench.
He’d obviously had something romantic planned for us before I’d made it clear we weren’t getting back together and I’d dropped the news about
Josh on him.
The day hadn’t gone the way he’d hoped. It hadn’t gone the way I’d hoped either.
“I wasn’t sure if I should bring you here,” he said. “I wasn’t sure you even wanted to see me. It took me a while to find one that had a piano.” He looked at me, his green eyes searching. “I was hoping you’d play for me. Like the day we met.”
I looked back at the piano. I didn’t want to reenact the day we met. I didn’t want to perform for him or play these games.
What I wanted was to go home. I wanted to be with Josh.
We stood there in silence, the distant sound of the ocean crashing through the open balcony door.
He put a hand to my arm. “Kris?” He tipped his head to catch my eyes. “Will you play for me? Please? One last time?”
One last time.
So this was it. Our goodbye.
This was how it started, and this was how it would come to an end. Me, sitting on a piano bench while he watched me play. It was a fitting finale. I was glad we had it. Glad that he’d come and we’d said the things we needed to say. It was better this way.
I looked at him a moment. “All right, Tyler. One last time.”
I took a seat, placing my fingers on the keys. A cool, salty ocean breeze rolled through the drapes, and I drew it deep into my lungs and began.
My mind disappeared into itself. I didn’t feel Tyler sit next to me, and I couldn’t tell you what music my fingers chose, or how long I played. Fifteen years of muscle memory made all the decisions.
When it ended, it felt like coming out of a dream. I put my hands in my lap and found Tyler sitting next to me, smiling gently, his eyes teary.
Then a hand came up under my jaw, and he was kissing me.
It was soft and careful, a closed-mouthed exploration. But it drew me up into him like a warm breeze lifting a kite. My arms found their way around his neck, and the memory of the shape of his mouth and the feel of his lips filled in the places that used to hold question marks and dark corners.
Yes, I remembered him. I remembered us. But he wasn’t Josh.
The scruff of his beard felt wrong. He was too tall. And while my heart
pounded, it didn’t reach out for him.
Maybe once, this would have been enough. I might have even mistaken this feeling for love.
But now I knew better.
He pulled away, a hand still cupping my cheek, and I looked at him, despair pouring over me.
This is as good as it will ever be.
If Tyler couldn’t eclipse Josh, nobody could. And it made me start to cry because the whole fucking thing was completely and utterly hopeless.
His thumb moved along my jaw, and his eyes blinked back tears. He probably thought I was moved by the kiss. I guess I was. But not in his direction.
“I love you, Kris. I’m always going to love you,” he whispered. “Please forgive me.”
I looked away from him, wiping a tear from my cheek. “I can forgive you if you can forgive me back.”
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pressed his cheek to the side of my head.
Our embrace was full of loss and regrets and what-ifs.
Tyler was a version of my life. A path I could have taken. But now I was so far off course I didn’t even know where I was going anymore. All I knew was I was headed for a dead end.
And when I got there, I’d be alone.
“Kristen, have you ever heard of the red thread of fate?” Tyler said over me.
“No.” I sniffled.
He turned me until I sat facing him.
“I’ve been studying Mandarin,” he said, speaking to my eyes. “Learning a lot about the Chinese culture. And there was a story I read that really resonated with me.”
He reached out and tenderly wiped a tear off my cheek with his thumb. “In Chinese legend, two lovers are connected by an invisible red thread around their pinky fingers. The two people connected by the red thread are destined lovers from birth, regardless of place, time, or circumstances. The cord might stretch or tangle, but it can never break.”
His eyes moved back and forth between mine.
“You are on the other end of my thread, Kris. No matter how far apart we are, you’re tied to me. I stretched us and I tangled us and I’m sorry. But I didn’t break us, Kris. We’re still connected.”
He paused. That pause that he always did on the phone, the one that told me he was about to tell me the good part.
Then he pulled a tiny, black velvet box from his pocket and opened the lid.
My heart stopped dead. Oh my God.
“Marry me.”
