“Get out.”

He sighed, and his footsteps retreated.

The room spun, or did my racing heart make it seem that way? How could something so perfect, so exquisite be so damned? This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I wasn’t supposed to live like this!

A primal scream ripped free of my throat. I tore the remaining two sets of ACUs off their hangers, unable to cope with them in my sight, and slid down the back of the closet onto them. Pain lacerated me, shredding the joy I’d had just an hour before and replacing it with an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. Maybe this is how all love ended up, crushed beneath the weight of something darker and stronger.

Maybe the tears would come and release me, prove I was processing what I’d learned. But there was nothing. I’d cried so much in the last three months that maybe there was just nothing left to give. I was hollow and empty.

I kneeled, scooping up the uniforms, but my hand hit a hard object toward the back of the closet. The light caught the dark green case folder, one I had seen too many times to count. It was an award.

I pulled it off the stack of abandoned binders and opened it. “Order of the Purple Heart, awarded to Specialist Joshua A. Walker for wounds sustained in combat in the Kandahar Province of Afghanistan.”

Exactly where my father had been killed. Wrong place. Wrong time.

Just like me at this very moment.

I brought it all up into my arms and carried it into his room, leaving the uniforms on the bed and propping the award on top. He’d been the one wounded, but somehow I’d taken a fatal shot straight through my soul.

The state championship picture mocked me from the wall, so I pulled it down and left it next to the award. I had been wrong. We hadn’t been fated since I’d been fifteen; we’d been doomed.

Chapter Twenty-Two

My phone dinged, announcing yet another text message. In another twenty-nine seconds, it would ring four times and then go to voicemail. Another ten minutes or so later, it would begin again.

“You gonna answer that?” Sam asked as she passed me a plate of spaghetti over our bar.

I spun the noodles on the plate, but I couldn’t manage to eat them. “Nope.”

She let out an exaggerated sigh. “Ember—”

“Don’t. Just . . . don’t, because I can’t.” I spun another bite and let the spaghetti fall off the fork.

Sam sat on the stool next to me and studied me thoughtfully as she chewed. “You haven’t eaten since yesterday. You’re not crying. You’re not talking. What am I supposed to do with that?”

Everything was numb, chilling me from the soul outward. There was no hurt because I couldn’t feel anything. At this rate, my arm could have been ripped off, bleeding pints onto the floor, and I wouldn’t have noticed. All the color had drained out of my world, taking with it my ability to feel . . . anything.

I played with my food and watched the digital clock on the oven changing. Six more minutes. Five more minutes. Four. Any minute now he was going to call again, and I still wouldn’t know what to say. Who was I kidding? There was nothing left to say.

Fists struck our front door three times, and I cringed. “December!” His voice was rough, strangled.

Sam raised her eyebrow at me, but I couldn’t do it. I shook my head without raising my eyes from the red-checkered plate. How nice that the spaghetti sauce matched it. She sighed purely for my benefit and scraped the legs of the stool across the floor as she scooted back.

I heard the door open. “She doesn’t want to see you, Josh.” She sounded sad, like she was siding with the guy who’d just broken my heart.

“Please, Sam. I have to see her.”

I closed my eyes against the pain I heard in his voice. Letting it in would lead to madness.

“I can’t.” The door shut with a click, and I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

“December!” he shouted, the sound slightly muffled by the closed door. “I have to talk to you! I will pound on this door and scream your name until security arrests me or you come out!”

Sam sat back down and shoved a bite in her mouth. As she chewed and I spun the noodles on the fork, he continued to shout. Pain ripped through my stomach at the misery in his voice, but I quickly shut it down. The moment I acknowledged it, the rest would overwhelm me, and I wasn’t ready for it.

“December!”

“For fuck’s sake.” Sam grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Before he gets arrested?”

I couldn’t let him get in trouble, not over something as trivial as me. I slid from the bar stool, wearing the same tank top and pajama pants I had been since yesterday, and made my way to the door.

“I’m not opening the door,” I spoke to the wooden frame.

“God, December. Please, we have to talk.”

I shook my head like he could see me or something. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“There’s everything to talk about!”

He was angry. Good. It was good that one of us still had emotions.

“One question.”

“Whatever you want.” Something knocked against the door, and from the position and sound, I guessed he’d leaned his head on it.

“Are you in the army?” I reached my hand up and pressed it to the door, where I knew his head was on the other side.

A long moment of pause passed, condemning him more than the uniforms had. “Yes. National Guard.” His reply was soft, broken.