Page 76 of If This is Love

“Hey.” She held my arm, nudging me to stop and face her. She dramatically closed her eyes and inhaled one of those deep, cleansing breaths everyone was always yammering at me about. “Take a breath with me before we go in.”

So I did. Gunner patiently planted his ass on the floor next to my feet.

“Good.” She smiled and squeezed my arms again. “Now, let’s say a positive affirmation.”

Not even my undying adoration for this woman would be able to keep me from rolling my eyes at something like that. “No offense, Ruth, but that sounds like some hippy-dippy bullshit.”

She gave me one of her amazing laughs that made me feel like she was breathing life into all the dead places inside me. “You crack me up.” She snickered behind her hand for a second. “It’s okay, I’ll say one for you. All you have to do is not correct me.” She wrinkled up her nose and squeezed my arms again. “You are a good,goodman. You have a good heart. You are selfless, and you always sacrifice yourself for the betterment of others. The only reason we’re having this meeting at all is because you sacrificed everything on just this side of the absolute, ultimate sacrifice a person can make for someone else. You have been througha lot. Your experience is important, and your response to it is reasonable. You are loved and you are not alone, even when you might be feeling alone in there talking to them. I’m here. Skye’s here. And we’re here for you. Okay?”

For fuck’s fucking sake.

How was I supposed to go into this meeting and focus on apologizing when all I was going to be able to think about for the next fifty years of my life was every wonderful thing she just said to me?

Ohhhh…

Clever, clever girl. I wondered if she did that on purpose.

I gave her the smile I reserved foronly her. “Thanks, Ruth.”

She slid her hands down my arms, meeting my palms and squeezing them. “You ready?”

I still didn’t love being fussed over this much, but… you know.

“Yep.”

I reached for the door and pulled it open, letting her go first, and Gunner followed me as I stepped in.

Skye, Emma, and Austin were waiting, seated around a large, sleek table. Austin perched rigidly on the edge of his chair, looking like he was ready to strangle me if I made a single false move. Emma looked pleasant enough, but also impervious, and I also couldn’t stop staring at that scar dead-center on her forehead, and my neck was starting to prick with little crackling embers. Skye wore a nervous smile as her eyes shifted back and forth between Emma and me expectantly.

“Hey, y’all,” she said with a wave. “Thanks for coming. Come on in and have a seat. I think we should just say everything that needs to be said, and then I think it would be great to just jump right in with discussing the temple design.”

I let Ruth take the lead of choosing where we sat because I was just going to sit next to her, wherever that was. She seemed to catch on that I was following her around like a lost puppy and took the seat directly across the table from Austin, so I took the one next to her, directly across from Emma. I stared at the table. Gunner flopped on the floor next to me with a sleepy grunt.

It felt like three pairs of eyes were burning holes into me, and nobody was talking. I figured since I was the reason for this meeting, it was up to me to go first, and I clasped my suddenly-sweaty palms together on the table. “Uh, yeah, so… sorry about the other day.”

“Are you serious right now?” I looked up to see Austin cock one jet-black eyebrow as the muscle in his jaw pulsed. “That’s all you’ve got to say for yourself?”

“Austin,” Emma warned, a placid look overtaking her features as she cast a sidelong glance at him. “Have I ever needed you to do something like that?”

He turned his head and gave her a hard stare. “Iknowyou do notneed meto do anything like that. I didn’t do that because you needed me to. I was in the room when all that happened, and I did that forme.”

Emma sat back in her chair, a deadpan gaze settling over her face while she stared in my direction but not at me.

“Igetthat you have issues,” Austin went on, stabbing his index finger into the table while he glared at me. “Irespectthose issues and thecauseof them, but come on, man, this is my fuckingwife.” He jabbed his finger at the air, pointing at me. “And I don’t know if you’re married, or if you used to be, or if you have a fucking life partner orwhat, but Ido knowthat whatever it is, it’snothinglike this.” He gestured with both hands at Emma. “I watched herdie. On the national fucking news.” He twirled his finger in a circle, gesturing at the room. “Probably at the same time a bunch of you were watching it, too.” He dropped his hand to the table. “You have no fuckingcluewhat that’s like. And everything you saidto herandabout herwas like watching one of those cretins bludgeon her like they did for the six fucking months she was being held hostage in a five-by-eight desert dungeon. Soyeah.” He hitched his shoulders, adjusting his suit jacket and then sliding his black tie through his hand, laying it flat against his torso. “A half-assedsorrydoesn’t quite fucking do it for me, buddy.”

Whatever it is, it’s nothing like this.

Well, shit.

This motherfucker knew how to dress a motherfucker down better than any motherfucker I’d ever encountered in the Corps. Despite the fact that he just eviscerated the issues of mine that this meetingwasn’tabout, I had to give him a mental hat tip for how accurately he managed to nail the single worst pain point in my life.

The burn was flaring across my shoulders, and I was at a completely impotent loss for words, but the worst part was that I actuallywasn’tlost for words. I just couldn’t come back at him with all the things that reflexively ran through my mind.

Things like pointing at Ruth and declaring that I didn’t havethatbut I hadthis, and because I hadthis, I didn’t have to live through what he’d lived through to have a grasp of how shitty that must have felt, but I was still sorry he went through it. Because Ididn’thavethisorthat. I didn’t have anything but a dog to protect me from my own fucked up mind. And I just didn’t know what to say in place of that, so I said nothing.

“Okay, well,” Ruth spoke up after a tense beat of silence, “that was very honest of you, Austin, and it’s a fair point to raise. I know it’s impossible for any of us to know what it was like for either of you during that awful time.” In my periphery, I could see her turn to me, and I could feel the weight of concern in her eyes. “Gabe, would you like to add anything?”

I was frozen solid for about three seconds before I opened my mouth, but Emma slapped her pen down on the table.

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