She wrapped her slight arms around me. “I love you, and I understand. There is nothing to forgive, Josh. This—” She pointed to the ground where Will laid. “This was never in your hands.” She looked toward the sky and then behind us. “Hey, you. Good run?” she asked.

I turned to find Ember standing close behind us, dressed in running clothes, her eyes bright with unshed tears that she tried to smile away. She failed. “Yeah,” she answered, walking to Paisley’s other side.

Fuck. How much had she heard? I felt a tearing, a rending of sorts in my heart, but couldn’t figure out why.

“This place is perfect for them, isn’t it?” Paisley asked.

“Hallowed ground,” Ember whispered.

“It is,” Paisley agreed. “I should get back to Jagger before he wakes up. See you guys at takeoff?”

“T-minus four hours,” Ember answered with a smile. They hugged good-bye and Paisley left, the gravel crunching under her feet as she headed back toward the gate.

“December,” I said, reaching for her. She sidestepped me and popped one of her earbuds back in.

“I’m going to finish my run. I’ll see you back at the hotel?”

“I have the car. We could grab Starbucks over there,” I offered, throwing out the one thing she could never resist—coffee.

“No thanks.”

Alarm bells sounded in my head.

She walked past me, just out of my reach. “Ember, what’s wrong? What’s happening here? Is it because of what you heard?” I was thankful that she knew, as much as I hated it.

“What I heard? No. God, Josh. Weeks. Not once have you…” She shook her head and backed away. “I’ve been trying so hard to get through to you, for you to open up to me. You know what? I’m glad you found someone to talk to. I guess I just foolishly thought that it would be me. I’ll be fine. Just give me…a run.” She shrugged, her face crumpling, and darted off before I could say or do anything.

A month ago I would have chased her, swept her into my arms, and fixed my fuck-up. A month ago, I hadn’t been broken, physically unable to run or pick up the woman I was soul-wrenchingly in love with, because my body had been whole. A month ago I hadn’t crashed my helicopter and killed more people than I wanted to think about…including two of my friends. A month ago I was a different man.

A month ago, I never would have let her go.

But this me? Yeah, well, maybe she was better off running.

Chapter Twenty-Two

EMBER

I held the steaming white mocha in front of me with both hands, savoring the way it warmed my skin to nearly burning but not quite. It hovered just along the line of comfortable—kind of like how I stood with Josh right now.

We’d been home from New York for three days, tiptoeing around each other. That was one thing about moving in together; when we fought before, we could just hang up, cool off, and talk later. Now, we did this awkward dance around the refrigerator and pretended things were semi-okay.

“Have you looked into plane tickets? They’re ridiculously expensive,” Luke said, thumbing through his dig packet at the table in front of me.

“No,” I answered, my own packet untouched.

Could I even go?

“Well, you’d better start looking. We report in two months.” He sipped his latte, looking at me over the brim as I spun my ring with my thumb. “Okay, what the hell is wrong with you, Red?”

“What? Nothing. Shitty few weeks.”

He nodded. “How is Flyboy adjusting to being home?”

I took another sip, using the time to construct my answer. “He’s okay. Struggling, but that’s not really a surprise, right? He was almost killed. His friends were killed. There’s going to be some residual damage there.”

“Okay, well, how are you adjusting?”

My eyes flew to his. “No one’s really asked me that.”

“Why the hell not? Your fiancée was almost killed. Your friend was killed. You’re on nurse duty twenty-four seven, and the only reason I even snagged twenty minutes of your time is because I drove all the way up here from Nashville while Flyboy is at physical therapy.”

I sat, stunned for a few seconds. “Because Josh is hurt. I’m fine.”

“Apparently.” He rolled his eyes.

“What? I am. I’m just thankful he’s alive. That’s all that matters.” Wanting more than that made me selfish, self-absorbed. Josh’s healing, including when he was ready to talk, was all about him and his timeline. “I stupidly pushed him to talk,” I admitted.

“And…”

“And I feel like he talks to everyone but me.”

“Your other friends having the same trouble?”

I shook my head and picked at the Starbucks sticker on the cup. “Paisley and Jagger are big on open communication. Grayson and Sam, too. Maybe we’re the only dysfunctional ones.”

“Therapist, maybe? Couldn’t hurt.”

“Yeah, because Josh is going to sign up for a therapist. He already shot that idea down. At least he has to go for a psych screening this week, and that’s just so it checks the box for his up-slip.”

“He wants to get back to flying already?”

“Yep. I guess it’s a get-back-on-the-horse thing.”

He nudged my packet toward me. “And what about your own horse? Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you haven’t even looked at the information.”