Trying to envision a future without December—her laugh, the way her arms wrapped around me, the feel of her body underneath me as I made love to her… My eyes squeezed shut, like they couldn’t bear to see it. “What am I going to do? She doesn’t even realize that this is equally about giving her the future she’s worked for. She thinks I’m only living for Will. To make his sacrifice mean something. She doesn’t see that by doing one, I give her the other.”

Jagger slung the bag over his shoulder. “Yeah, well, maybe Carter would want you to fly SOAR. Maybe he would have wanted you to carry out that legacy, but I can tell you for sure that he never would have wanted you to lose Ember over it.”

He pushed past me and headed downstairs.

“So that’s your advice? Pull my head out of my ass?” I called over the railing.

“That about sums it up!”

“And what if I’m right? What if she’s done?”

He paused midway down and looked up at me. “You’ve never been a coward, Josh, so don’t start now. You’ll fly into a hot LZ to save a soldier, so take the fucking risk and save your relationship.”

I stood in our living room later that afternoon, but it didn’t feel the same. She’d left an hour ago for the airport, taking the out I’d foolishly given her—forced on her. I’d stupidly watched from Jagger’s window as she pulled out of our driveway, taking my heart with her. I was pretty sure I’d left fingernail marks in his windowsill to keep from going after her.

Who the hell was I to keep her from her dream? Then I’d be the epitome of what her dad had hated about Riley. I swear, she won’t be trapped under my dream. My promise to him twisted the knife I’d cut myself open with.

“I set her free,” I called out, my voice morbidly loud in the empty house. “I didn’t keep her caged.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “But if it was the right thing to do, why does it feel so wrong?”

Without Ember, this house was just a shell, an echo of something beautiful. The warmth, the welcome, the feeling of home, it was gone, because she was gone. Our pictures, our furniture…everything we’d started building together was here, but without her, none of this meant anything. It felt as empty as I was without her.

Without her love holding me together, I started to unravel. Every fuck-up I’d put her through the last few months replayed in my head. Every time I couldn’t talk to her, couldn’t let her in. The motorcycle race, the nightmares, returning to the deployment. The short emails we’d exchanged during the last couple of months, which did nothing to bridge the monumental canyon I’d created.

She deserved this job without me fucking it up for her, or feeling like she had to choose. Hell, she deserved a fuck-up free life. Maybe taking off her ring was her way of saying she knew it, too. I stared at the empty portion of the coffee table where she’d laid it last night. Maybe she’d taken it with her? Maybe she had put it back on?

Or maybe she’d left it in her jewelry box.

My steps felt leaden as I climbed the stairs. Everything felt heavy, my heart, my limbs, my choices. What if I found the ring in her jewelry box? What if she’d really given up on us…given up on me?

What the hell was I supposed to do? If I didn’t join SOAR, would Ember come home? Give up on the dig? If I did join, would that be even worse for her? What would Carter say? That they needed the best? That it was our obligation to step up? What would Doc Howard have said? Would the father in him demand that I take a desk job and protect his daughter? Or would the soldier he was understand the debt I had to pay?

He’d kick your ass for the way you’ve hurt her.

The sun came in through the window, and my face reflected in the glass frame of the print at the head of the stairs. I looked as shitty as I felt. I focused past my pale face and sunken eyes to the words beneath the glass. The Gettysburg Address. My eyes skimmed the words, my mind filling with memories of sitting next to Ember in history class, trying my damnedest to keep my focus on our professor instead of her.

I’d failed.

What’s your full measure? she’d asked me. Where was my resolve? I pulled Carter’s ring from my pocket and turned it over in my fingers as I read through the address.

“‘But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.’” My voice carried through our empty house, reverberating off the walls like I lived in a tomb.

We cannot hallow this ground…because they’d already made the greatest of sacrifices. There was no higher elevation to ascend to, no better way to consecrate that ground because those soldiers had already done so with their own blood. To have tried would have been arrogant, as if there was anything the living could have done to compare with the price that had already been paid.

My forehead rested against the cool glass, and my eyes slid shut.

“This is the only way I know to make his sacrifice matter!”

“It already does!”

Our words from last night’s fight slammed through me, shattering the last of my grief, my guilt, into manageable pieces. I was doing the same, trying to make Will’s sacrifice mean more, trying to earn it. He’d offered up his very life for mine, and there was no way to make that sacrifice mean more than it already did.