Fly With Me (Wild Aces #1)(59)

I threw it out there, not sure I wanted to know the answer.

His jaw clenched. “You know I don’t have an option.”

I knew. And I knew it was unfair of me to care, to weigh our love as though it could be measured by a set of scales. But I did. Because I didn’t want to be second in his life when he was always first in mine.


*



As far as good-byes went, ours pretty much sucked. We stood outside the squadron, the same awkward tension that had descended since Noah’s faux proposal lingering like a bad smell.

We were both clearly pissed, and now was definitely not the time to discuss it, so we just stood there, trying to hold back the floodgates that nearly burst at the seams with the desire to air our personal laundry in the squadron parking lot.

“Look, maybe we shouldn’t talk for a while,” Noah suggested, his gaze trained on a point over my shoulder.

“Are you serious?”

I knew he was upset, but not talking seemed like the worst thing we could do.

“Maybe we need some time apart to figure out what we want.”

“Are you breaking up with me? Minutes after you proposed to me?”

“No. God, no. I just think we might need some time to think about things.”

“About what? Whether we should be together? Because that kind of sounds like a breakup.”

“It’s not a breakup. It’s me trying to give us some space to figure out what we want.”

“Still sounds like a breakup.”

“It’s not,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “You aren’t the only one who’s confused here, Jordan.”

I looked up at his face, his eyes shielded by aviators, a knot tightening around my heart.

“I don’t want to leave things like this.”

“I think we need time to figure out if this is what we really want,” Noah replied. “I love you. But I think we need to decide if love is enough for us to make this work. And I think space will help us get there.”

I didn’t agree with him, but I also didn’t know what to do anymore.

He moved, opening the trunk, pulling his bags out.

A lump formed in my throat.

His head jerked toward the building. “I gotta go.”

I couldn’t believe this was how we were leaving things, but I didn’t want him distracted and upset before he had to fly. And the problems between us seemed bigger than the five minutes we had left. I swallowed the hurt and fear pummeling me.

I stood on my tiptoes, pressing my lips to his, trying to keep my emotions together when they threatened to spill over and rip me to shreds.

“I love you,” I whispered. “Be safe.”

“I love you, too.”

I stood in the parking lot, watching him walk away, wondering where we could go from here, and how I was going to get through the next month and a half without him, leaving our relationship hanging by a thread.





TWENTY-ONE




JORDAN

It was the longest six weeks of my life. We spoke every few days, our conversations short and stilted. He didn’t bring up Korea or marriage again, and neither did I. For the most part, I threw myself into work, spending time at the store and with Sophia, hanging out with Lulu. I tried to picture giving it all up, living a different life, wondering if I should have said “yes” to his proposal or whatever it was in the car. Wondering if he regretted asking me.

I flew to Oklahoma a few days before Noah was scheduled to come back from Alaska, no closer to knowing what I wanted to do. It felt weird going to his house when he was still away on his TDY and things were tense between us, but I’d had the flight booked for a few weeks now and his return date had changed so many times, I’d given up trying to predict when he’d arrive. I used the key he’d given me and tried to make myself comfortable. And I called Dani.

She came over to have a glass of wine and to give me some much needed military life advice.

We sat on Noah’s couch, his place the cleanest I’d ever seen it. I hadn’t been able to resist the urge to straighten up, rationalizing it by telling myself that no one wanted to come home to a messy house after a few weeks away. Also, cleaning kind of calmed me and right now my life felt like such a chaotic disaster that I craved the normalcy of a routine.

I missed him so much.

“How are you doing?” Dani asked, a knowing look in her eyes.

I figured it was pretty obvious that I was kind of a mess.

“I’m not sure.”

“Noah’s assignment had to have been a blow.”

“Yeah, it was.”

“Have you guys talked about what you’ll do when he goes to Korea?”

I took a sip of my wine, gathering the courage to talk about it. I hadn’t told anyone about Noah’s proposal, had been a little too freaked about what my friends and family would think if I confessed that I was considering marrying a guy I’d only known a few months. And the scariest thing was that I was considering it. A lot. Even as it utterly terrified me.

“He asked me to marry him.”

I figured her lack of a response was a testament to Dani’s familiarity with military relationships. Maybe this was normal when your life was unstructured. It just didn’t feel normal to me.

“What did you say?”