Saving Landon Part 74

And I needed to do it independently of military protocols and combat zones.

"How long do you want to be gone?" She asked me, pulling my attention back downwards. "Can't exactly knock all of that stuff out in a few weeks, unless you're taking the express route."

"As long as I can, Clara. I'd take my sweet time with it. Maybe I'd never come back."

Something changed in her face.

Wait. f.u.c.k.

Turmoil flashed in her eyes.

I reached down and drew her up my body. At my silent behest, Clara laid her head into the nook in my chest. Tenderly, I stroked her hair as I searched for the proper words.

"You asked what I wanted, Clara. And I told you the truth. But being here, with you... I couldn't just give this up, not even for a second."

"You need to do this," she answered, almost mournfully.

"Before, I was convinced... but now..."

"Now what?"

'Now what' indeed, I thought for a moment.

"If there was any reason to stay, anything that could pull me from that path... that reason would be you," I finally answered here.

The moment I saw that scared look in her eyes, I knew that I'd seriously f.u.c.ked up.

Clara's face lifted to meet my gaze. She looked terrified a deer in the headlights, entranced but pulsating with crus.h.i.+ng, absolute fear.

"Let me make my own decisions," I told her gently, fighting down the concern that was swelling in my chest, desperately hoping to calm her down. "You leave that stuff up to me."

"No," she told me, climbing up off of me. "That's not good enough. I can't do that."

I leapt up off of the bed. "Wait"

"No," she insisted, throwing my hoodie back on. "You can't just turn down that kind of dream for me. I won't let you. I'll never let you. I can't be the reason you throw all of that away."

I laughed in complete exasperation. "We get through an entire car ride with our parents, even with the most awkward f.u.c.king conversation ever, and it's me wanting to travel the world that makes you lose your s.h.i.+t?"

Clara turned on me with vicious eyes.

"Look," I prefaced her, "you told me just today hours ago that you're committed to this cause. Clara, you gave me complete conviction that it was gonna be you and me against the world..."

"That was before I knew you had this dream," she insisted. "You just heard me tell you that I'm not interested in that kind of a life. And now I find out that you are? And you have been for years? I can't stand in the way of that. I won't be the kind of girl to ask you to stay. It's not happening."

"Clara," I repeated, firmer this time. I reached for her wrist, but she yanked it away, staring me down with h.e.l.lfire in her eyes.

"No, don't... don't you even think about touching me," she growled. "I refuse to let you do this. You have to go, Dalton. Live that life."

"Clara, I don't want to go. I want to be with you to spend my days with..."

My words faltered as I watched her tremble before me. As Clara lifted a face brazen with furious, tear-brimmed eyes, I realized immediately what she really meant with those words.

"You have to go," she repeated angrily.

"Clara..."

"Now."

We stood there, watching each other for a moment. I didn't dare take a step towards her, not while seeing her like this. My heart pounded in my chest, tearing apart with a wound more vicious than any that I could have received in combat.

Because those wounds the ones you survive, at any rate are just flesh deep. You lose an arm or a leg, maybe more. You take stray shrapnel to the chest, and with luck you survive it. It kills a part of you, it makes you weaker, but you learn to live on around it.

This was something much deeper.

This was the shrapnel that shredded your very living soul... because you can't remove ghost shrapnel, even if it's still cutting you inside, penetrating down to your core.

"Go," Clara repeated through gritted teeth, her tears rolling freely down her cheeks now.

I'm not an English major, or a literary critic. My weapon was never vocabulary; it was always a knife in a holster and a rifle, slung over my back.

I say this to explain a point: I'm not equipped with the right words for this. I can't properly express to you how my heartstrings strained in that moment. Every atom, every ounce of my very being was desperate to cross the distance to her, to wipe the tears from her face and sweep her back into my warm, comforting embrace.

The look in her eyes said Don't you dare.

It said Stay back, I'm warning you.

No weapon could ever win this standoff.

Without a single syllable uttered, I silently gathered up my things and I left her.

54.

Arrogant Brit

Chapter 17.

No matter how many sleepless nights pa.s.sed since that devastating afternoon, I couldn't know for sure if I'd done the right thing... or made the biggest mistake of my life.

It had been over a week since Dalton left my apartment. Every night when my cheek struck the pillow, I wished that he were there with me.

Whatever the ex-marine had seen in my eyes that day, it had convinced him of what I knew was certain in that moment. Mission accomplished. The man had gone completely radio silent.

Dalton's words had rattled me down to my inner being. Beyond all hope and reason, I didn't dare let him choose to stay here because of me. I'd heard how much he loved that dream; I couldn't let myself be the obstacle to his happiness.

But did I do the right thing?

My unfettered decision had grown uncertain.

Selfishly, of course I still wanted him. I logically expected to need some time to get over him, but I hadn't prepared myself for how my heart had fractured. When the days continued and I still had to force myself to eat, or exert willpower into every smile, I realized the true depths to the pit of my despair.

My heart broke just a little more every day.

Perfect timing meant that I wasn't scheduled a single hour for the entire week after Dalton left. Banquet season had apparently slid down to a grinding halt. That meant less morning s.h.i.+fts to go around, and I didn't have the energy to fight for the sc.r.a.ps.

Natalie was a G.o.dsend. She's probably the reason I climbed out of bed, made it to my cla.s.ses, and turned in (most of) my homework.

Dalton apparently did not have a Natalie.

He hadn't shown up in our cla.s.s.

He hadn't tried to contact me in any way.

"I'm sure he's fine," she rea.s.sured me one afternoon during a commercial break of some sitcom we both liked. "He's probably just working through things on his own. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d will come around, and everything will be fine again."

"He's not a b.a.s.t.a.r.d," I told her.

"Technically, he is!" She chirped up. "Guy's parents never married, right? So that makes him a total b.a.s.t.a.r.d. It's the textbook definition."

"Fine. He's a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, then," I grumbled.

Natalie turned to face me with welling concern. Before she opened her mouth, I saw the impending, heartfelt lecture spring to life in her eyes. "Look, Clara..."

"Don't." I cut her off, backing the word up with a glare. "I don't want to hear it."

"We both know that I might be a bit airheaded sometimes, but even I can see that you two love each other. You're desperate for him, and I've seen the way he looks at you! You can't ignore that!"

I turned away, but she pushed the issue.

"Find a way! Reach out to him! You know that he wants that!"

"Would you listen to yourself?" I asked her bitterly. "What kind of person would I be if I asked him to set aside his dreams for me? I can't do that to him."

"What was it again that he asked you to do, right before you went all psycho on him?"

"I didn't go psycho."

"Clara, I know you. If he hasn't tried to reach out to you at all, then you totally went psycho. Anyway, answer the question."

I ignored her insult. "He said to let him make his own decisions."

"And you didn't. You made it for him."

"He would have made the wrong one."

"You know that for sure?"

I crossed my arms. "Yes."

"And why's that?"

I tried to turn away again.

"Answer me, Clara!"

I stood up and finally let loose.

"Because they're both the wrong f.u.c.king decision! No matter how you look at it, either choice is wrong! Either I make him go and uncomplicate both of our lives... struggle to get over him... not daring to think what life would be like if we were together..."

"Or what?" She demanded.

Defeat filled my veins when I looked at her.

"Or... we get together, living some twisted double life around our parents and grandparents, unable to be really together without them judging or disowning us... until he inevitably resents choosing this life over traveling around the world."

We were silent for a while. The sitcom had come back on in the meantime, and the laugh track occasionally clashed with the atmosphere.

"You can't just let this go without trying," Natalie pleaded quietly.

I didn't have a response for that.

"Listen to me, Clara," she continued. "So there are some kinks. It's not easy. I get that."

I bitterly shook my head, and she ignored my response to get out her point.

"Yeah. It's a total mess and it sucks that the two of you are stuck in this unfair cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k. But you can't just let this thing slip out between your fingers without a fight. You know he makes you happy, and it sounds like you make him happy too. Just talk to him. Who knows what's going on with him? If he's dropped off the face of the earth, he's obviously in a dark place. Maybe he needs you."

"I can't," I pleaded.

"Clara, talk to him," she insisted gravely.

I slumped down into my sofa next to her, and my frustration broke down into sobs. Natalie held me close while I cried it out, and when I lifted my face she had a tissue ready.

"Don't think for a moment that I don't want to," I replied, gratefully taking it from her hand. "Maybe you're right. Maybe he needs me right now. But this is short-term pain for long-term gain. He's got a life, Nat, and he's got dreams. Oh, if you'd seen the look in his eyes when he was telling me about them. I can't take that away from him."