Fly With Me (18 page)

“I know. I'm worried that I'm asking too much. That you aren't going to be happy if we're always apart, if I can't ever be there when you need me.” His voice was strained. “I'm worried you're going to meet a guy who can give you all the things that I can't. And part of me wants you to meet that guy. You deserve to meet him.” He groaned. “And part of me hates the idea of you with someone else and is terrified to lose you.”

I knew exactly how he felt.

“Maybe we just give this a shot and see where we end up. Take it one day at a time,” I suggested. “Neither one of us was expecting to be here now. Maybe we just need to come to terms with this a bit more before we make any drastic decisions.”

“Okay. That sounds like a good plan.” He paused. “Are you still coming out here before we go to Alaska?”

“Yeah.”

He was quiet for a long beat. “I miss you. And I love you.”

He'd never felt farther away than he did now.

“I love you, too.”

I didn't tell him I missed him, couldn't put words to the ache inside me. We hung up the phone and I cried myself to sleep.

NOAH

I went through the motions of preparing for the squadron's TDY to Alaska and trying to get my orders for my PCS to Korea, the whole time my mind on Jordan rather than the mission. I'd never really cared all that much where the Air Force sent me. As long as I remained in the cockpit, flying the Viper, the rest was just window dressing. But I cared now. A lot. And I was fucking pissed that out of all my assignments,
this
was the one when I got nonvolled to Korea.

I drove onto the base, pulling into the squadron parking lot, my hand linked with Jordan's, the sound of music the only noise in the car. She'd decided to come out and visit before I left for Alaska, and then we'd had some of the tankers who were supposed to refuel us midair fall out due to scheduling conflicts, and our dates had gotten moved up. So basically, Jordan had arrived in time to see me off, and the days we'd planned to spend together had fallen away.

She hadn't said much when she'd landed and I'd broken the news to her, so I couldn't figure out what she was feeling,
although pissed seemed likely. I figured she'd add it to her tally of things I'd done to disappoint her. Hell, I'd break up with me at this point.

I'd spent the past two weeks going over everything in my mind, trying to figure out how to make our relationship work. We still talked, but I felt like she was pulling away from me, like the stress of things was an albatross weighing us down. Or maybe it was just my own paranoia, my own fear that overshadowed everything else. The more I thought about it, worried about it, the more I realized that I loved her. I didn't want to lose her. I
couldn't
lose her.

I put the car in Park, my limbs reluctant to get out and leave her once again.

And then the idea that had been rolling around my mind for two weeks now came out of my mouth.

JORDAN

“What if we got married?” Noah asked, his voice, and the question, jerking me out of my mental freak-out.

I froze, my hand suspended over the car radio knob itching to change the channel, the word “married” sending my world to a crashing stop. I blinked, wondering if I was dreaming, if this was really happening. As far as proposals went, it wasn't exactly romantic and it had the same feel as,
Do you want pizza or burgers for dinner?

I wasn't sure if I was pissed, or excited, or just plain shocked. Or some combination of all three.

“Jordan?”

I blinked again, waiting for him to tell me he was just kidding or to take it back.

He didn't.

Noah stared at me, his gaze unblinking, strangely serious.

Was I supposed to treat that like a proposal? Had he lost his mind?

We were sitting in the squadron parking lot, he was getting ready to leave for Alaska, hip-hop music playing in the background, it was ten in the morning, and I'd thought we'd decided not to make any drastic decisions. There was nothing romantic about this.

“Are you joking?”

“It was a stupid idea,” he muttered, turning the car off with a flick of his wrist. He unbuckled his seat belt.

“Wait.”

“What?”

God, I needed a minute. I hadn't been prepared for this, didn't know how I was supposed to handle a question like that. Was it even a question? Or was he just throwing ideas out there? And why did he seem pissed now?

“Are you serious?”

He let out an oath. “Yes. No. I don't know.” His mouth set in a grim line. “I don't know what we're doing here. Every time I have to say good-bye to you, it feels like I'm being sliced in half.” His expression darkened. “Loving you fucking hurts.”

I closed my eyes, the pain in his voice piercing me. He wasn't wrong. I just didn't know what the answer was. I wasn't going to marry him on a whim, on some half-assed attempt to bring us together when circumstances threatened to pull us apart. But if he was serious?

I reached out, grabbing his hand, linking my fingers with his, holding on, afraid that the effort of us was eventually going to be too much, that he'd meet an easier girl who
would jump at the chance to spend her life with him, who would view all of this as an adventure rather than the sacrifice I feared.

“I love you,” I answered, trying to give him as much as I could.

“I know.”

He didn't say the rest, but it lingered between us . . .
but is it enough?

And I didn't know. I didn't want to throw away my chance at happiness, and at the same time, I was scared to reach out and take it. Afraid of the sacrifice it required.

“What would happen if we got married?” I asked, trying to picture it, struggling to figure out a way to make him fit in my life.

“You could come to Korea with me.”

That sentence both thrilled and terrified me.

“You would be a dependent. You'd have healthcare and access to the military facilities. We could get an apartment on base and live together.”

“You're asking me to move to Korea?” I sputtered.

He sighed. “I don't know. If you wanted to, I guess.”

“What would I do for work? I don't speak Korean. What would I do all day?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I don't know.”

I didn't know what to say. Didn't know what I wanted. It was fast. Everything about this was fast. And it was too much. I loved him. So much. But why did love mean I had to give up everything? Why did love require this giant fucking leap?

And even though I knew I shouldn't even entertain the thought, a part of me resented that he didn't have to make any sacrifices in this scenario. I knew it wasn't his fault or even his choice anymore, but still it bothered me.

It wasn't just going to a foreign country, or how far away I'd be from my friends and family, or even not speaking the language—it felt like I was putting my life on hold. What would happen to the store if I just took off to Korea for two years? On the one hand, it was just a store. On the other, it was years of hard work and sacrifice. It was everything I'd wanted it to be. Business was better than ever and the idea of abandoning all of that was ridiculous. Especially to a giant unknown. Not to mention how much I'd miss my family. My friends. My dog. Could I take Lulu to Korea?

It was way too much. Like it wasn't enough that he was getting ready to leave for six weeks; now he was dumping this on me, too.

And just like that I went from confused to more than a little pissed off with Noah.

“Do you even want to marry me?” I asked.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

I could feel my temper building, the explosion lurking just beneath the surface.

“That's your proposal? You just throw out there the mention that, hey, maybe we could get married? We've never talked about it, you're about to leave for Alaska, and now you think it's a good idea to dump more on me?”

His gaze narrowed. “Sorry. I didn't realize the idea of marrying me would be so stressful for you.”

“We've never talked about it,” I shouted. “You just told me you loved me weeks ago. I'm not even a little prepared for this.”

“And I am?”

“You're the one who mentioned it,” I snapped.

“Because I'm trying to figure this out, too. I'm just as
confused as you are. I'm trying to figure out a way to make this work.”

“And I'm not?” Was he joking? “You do realize, that for you, getting married isn't that big of a change. But for me, it isn't just adding a husband and making a commitment to spend the rest of my life with someone. It's also moving to another country, away from everything I know and love. It's giving up the business I've worked my ass off to build. Would you give up flying for me?”

I threw it out there, not sure I wanted to know the answer.

His jaw clenched. “You know I don't have an option.”

I knew. And I knew it was unfair of me to care, to weigh our love as though it could be measured by a set of scales. But I did. Because I didn't want to be second in his life when he was always first in mine.

*   *   *

As far as good-byes went, ours pretty much sucked. We stood outside the squadron, the same awkward tension that had descended since Noah's faux proposal lingering like a bad smell.

We were both clearly pissed, and now was definitely not the time to discuss it, so we just stood there, trying to hold back the floodgates that nearly burst at the seams with the desire to air our personal laundry in the squadron parking lot.

“Look, maybe we shouldn't talk for a while,” Noah suggested, his gaze trained on a point over my shoulder.

“Are you serious?”

I knew he was upset, but not talking seemed like the worst thing we could do.

“Maybe we need some time apart to figure out what we want.”

“Are you breaking up with me? Minutes after you proposed to me?”

“No. God, no. I just think we might need some time to think about things.”

“About what? Whether we should be together? Because that kind of sounds like a breakup.”

“It's not a breakup. It's me trying to give us some space to figure out what we want.”

“Still sounds like a breakup.”

“It's not,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “You aren't the only one who's confused here, Jordan.”

I looked up at his face, his eyes shielded by aviators, a knot tightening around my heart.

“I don't want to leave things like this.”

“I think we need time to figure out if this is what we really want,” Noah replied. “I love you. But I think we need to decide if love is enough for us to make this work. And I think space will help us get there.”

I didn't agree with him, but I also didn't know what to do anymore.

He moved, opening the trunk, pulling his bags out.

A lump formed in my throat.

His head jerked toward the building. “I gotta go.”

I couldn't believe this was how we were leaving things, but I didn't want him distracted and upset before he had to fly. And the problems between us seemed bigger than the five minutes we had left. I swallowed the hurt and fear pummeling me.

I stood on my tiptoes, pressing my lips to his, trying to keep my emotions together when they threatened to spill over and rip me to shreds.

“I love you,” I whispered. “Be safe.”

“I love you, too.”

I stood in the parking lot, watching him walk away, wondering where we could go from here, and how I was going to get through the next month and a half without him, leaving our relationship hanging by a thread.

JORDAN

It was the longest six weeks of my life. We spoke every few days, our conversations short and stilted. He didn't bring up Korea or marriage again, and neither did I. For the most part, I threw myself into work, spending time at the store and with Sophia, hanging out with Lulu. I tried to picture giving it all up, living a different life, wondering if I should have said “yes” to his proposal or whatever it was in the car. Wondering if he regretted asking me.

I flew to Oklahoma a few days before Noah was scheduled to come back from Alaska, no closer to knowing what I wanted to do. It felt weird going to his house when he was still away on his TDY and things were tense between us, but I'd had the flight booked for a few weeks now and his return date had changed so many times, I'd given up trying to predict when he'd arrive. I used the key he'd given me and tried to make myself comfortable. And I called Dani.

She came over to have a glass of wine and to give me some much needed military life advice.

We sat on Noah's couch, his place the cleanest I'd ever seen it. I hadn't been able to resist the urge to straighten up, rationalizing it by telling myself that no one wanted to come home to a messy house after a few weeks away. Also, cleaning kind of calmed me and right now my life felt like such a chaotic disaster that I craved the normalcy of a routine.

I missed him so much.

“How are you doing?” Dani asked, a knowing look in her eyes.

I figured it was pretty obvious that I was kind of a mess.

“I'm not sure.”

“Noah's assignment had to have been a blow.”

“Yeah, it was.”

“Have you guys talked about what you'll do when he goes to Korea?”

I took a sip of my wine, gathering the courage to talk about it. I hadn't told anyone about Noah's proposal, had been a little too freaked about what my friends and family would think if I confessed that I was considering marrying a guy I'd only known a few months. And the scariest thing was that I was considering it. A lot. Even as it utterly terrified me.

“He asked me to marry him.”

I figured her lack of a response was a testament to Dani's familiarity with military relationships. Maybe this was normal when your life was unstructured. It just didn't feel normal to me.

“What did you say?”

I winced.

“I kind of freaked out. It wasn't exactly my finest moment.”

“Understandable.”

“I don't think he understood. We're sort of taking a break right now to figure out what we want.”

“He's a guy and a fighter pilot. Sometimes it's hard for them to see beyond the target,” Dani answered, her tone sympathetic.

“So you don't think I'm crazy?”

“I'd think you were crazy if you weren't a little scared. Marriage is a big step. Military marriage is a leap without a net to catch you. It's all or nothing, and that's a lot to ask. Especially when you guys haven't known each other that long. I don't blame you for being scared. We all are.” She made a face. “I'm still scared.”

It was strange to hear Dani confessing to being anything other than completely comfortable with this lifestyle. To the outside eye, she thrived here. I envied her ability to manage everything with the kind of aplomb I could never adopt. I needed some kind of military wives handbook, or at the very least, advice from a really good friend who'd run the gauntlet and come out the other end unscathed.

“So how do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Any of it. All of it. How do you stay sane?”

“The truth?”

I nodded.

“I don't know. I just do. I'm scared every second of every day. Always. That fear is a knot that lives inside me. It never goes away. It never shuts off. It just is. When he's gone, when's he up in the air, it's like I'm underwater holding my breath. The world around me ceases to exist. Everything hinges on the moment when I know he's safe. And when he's back, I can breathe again.”

“Do you ever . . .”

“Wish I'd fallen in love with someone else? An accountant? Someone who doesn't take his life into his hands every single time he goes to work?”

I nodded, a lump settling in the pit of my stomach.

“Yeah. I do. It's hard to explain, but there's a part of me that thinks this would be so much easier if I didn't love him so much. If I loved him a little less, maybe the absences and the constant fear that I'm going to lose him wouldn't hurt so much. But then again, if I loved him any less, I'm not sure I could do this. Not sure the life would be worth it. I love him just the right amount to make it hurt so much that I can't walk away.”

“I'm scared.” I whispered the words I hadn't been able to tell Noah, the feeling inside me that I was afraid to give a voice to.

She squeezed my hand. “I know. I wish I could tell you that it's going to be easy, or that you have nothing to fear. Wish I could tell you that this life won't take a chunk out of you; but as hard as it is to be in a relationship, it'll be that much harder to be in a military relationship. I know it sounds tough to believe, and it isn't easy to comprehend until you're in it, but in a lot of ways this is the most difficult thing you'll ever do. Still, there are two kinds of military wives. The ones who lean on their men, and the ones who are strong enough to give their men somewhere to lean when they come home after a six-month deployment that has beaten them down or a week of working twelve-hour days.

“If you love him, really love him, and you can't be the second kind of wife, then you really need to think about whether or not you guys can make this work. I'm not saying it'll be easy, or that you won't have days when you'll just sit and cry for a few minutes, but you'll have to be strong for him. Stronger than you think you can be. Because at the end of the day, his mind can't be on a fight you had that morning or on whatever problems you might be dealing with at home. It has to be on the mission. On coming home safely. Because
in their line of work, the smallest mistake can be the difference between life and death.”

“I'll always be second to the Air Force.”

She nodded. “Some wives resent that. It's a hard pill to swallow, and believe me, I've struggled with it. But if you find a good man, one who loves you—and Noah loves you—he'll put you first every time he can. And the other times when he can't, when he doesn't have a choice, those moments when he does choose, when he chooses you, will have to be enough to get you through the times when you feel like your entire life revolves around something you didn't sign up for, when you start to lose parts of yourself and the only thing you have to hold on to is him.

“It's corny, but true—military marriages make a good marriage stronger and a bad marriage worse.”

“How do you know? How do you know if your marriage is going to be one of the ones that makes it?”

I was so over my head. I'd always had a messy approach to dating. Romantic guru, I was not. I'd screwed up my fair share of relationships, but this one—the stakes were so much higher this time. I didn't want to hurt him. And I really didn't want to get hurt. And I had no clue what the fuck I was doing.

“When I decided I wanted to marry Joker, I thought about the life we'd lead together. I tried to envision what military life would be like, but to be honest, I had no clue. No one does. Being a military wife is a lot like getting thrown into the deep end to learn how to swim. You just have to deal with things as they come and adapt. But I did make myself a promise.

“I knew I couldn't live my life the way I had when I was single. I knew there would be times—way more times than I'd like to count—when it wouldn't be about me. When I
would spend holidays by myself, when I'd have to give up my career because his job meant we moved so much that steady employment was pretty much impossible. I knew there would be times that I would want to give up. But I told myself that no matter what, every decision I would make after I married him would be the best decision for the family we built. For our marriage. Even if sometimes it meant sacrificing what I wanted.”

“And that's what you do?”

She nodded.

“And you don't resent him for it?”

“For moments? Sure. But that's where the part of finding a good man comes in. He loves me. I am the love of his life. And he has given me an amazing life. So for every moment when I'm pissed off that I'm spending another Christmas by myself, for every time I've binge eaten chocolate on the couch on my birthday because I'm alone, there is always a moment, every single day, when I feel like I'm the luckiest girl in the entire world, because I am loved by a man who looks at me the way he does. Who fights for me every day of his life. He would die for me. Without question. So yeah. That's enough for me.”

I batted at the tear that trickled down my face.

“Noah loves you like that. He would be that for you if you let him. You just have to decide if you feel the same way.”

“It's fucking scary.”

Dani grinned. “Yeah, it is. It's all or nothing, which makes it a leap-before-you-look sort of situation. And no matter how much you plan or try to imagine what it'll be like, there's no way you can know until you're in it. It's jumping into the deep end and hoping you don't sink to the bottom.”

“And it's a whole other country. I mean, it's not just me
becoming a military wife; it's me becoming a military wife and moving to South Korea. I don't speak the language. I've never even been outside of the U.S.”

“For what it's worth, our overseas assignments were some of my favorite times in the Air Force.”

“Where have you guys been?”

“Italy and Germany.”

I'd never really been one of those people who craved adventure. My idea of a perfect night included curling up on the couch with take-out Chinese and a
Friends
marathon. I wasn't Noah. I wasn't looking to take on the world. But the problem was that now, when I looked at my idea of the perfect night, he was right there next to me.

“You could try long distance,” Dani offered, the tone of her voice conveying her true feelings on the subject.

“Noah hates the idea.”

“When they make their mind up, they tend to stick with it.”

I grimaced. “I've noticed. It's super fucking annoying.”

She grinned. “Trust me. Five years of marriage. I get it. And for what it's worth, Joker's even older and even
more
set in his ways. I've given up at this point.”

“How do you handle it? The bossy factor?”

“I let him run the things that are important to him, and sort of do what I want with the rest of it.”

“And that works?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes. It's not easy. Sometimes it feels like there's something about being a fighter pilot that takes normal annoying masculine traits and magnifies them by a thousand. But it also has its perks.”

She had a point there.

Dani reached out and squeezed my hand. “It'll be okay. Promise. The answer will come to you.”

My voice cracked. “He doesn't understand. He's pissed and he doesn't understand, and I'm worried that if I don't decide soon, he's going to just get fed up and give up on me.”

“He won't. He's scared. He doesn't want to lose you and right now he's worried that he's asking too much of you. And I can promise you, he knows how much he's asking you to give up.”

I hoped she was right. I hoped I hadn't fucked everything up.