28CARVER
It was lovely to know everything he had done was worth absolutely nothing. He had only ever tried to protect Clara. And she blamed him for it. She wished he hadn’t tried to protect her. She blamed him for the villain she now saw herself as. Maybe it was his fault.
He wrapped his arms across his chest, trying to fall asleep, but all he could think was how much he had screwed this up. He knew it was his fault. If only. If only what? If only he had married her? If only he hadn’t intervened and had let her get assigned to the army or wherever else they would have put her? If only he hadn’t been put on this assignment?
So many options, but none of them fixed this current problem. In fact, most of them only exacerbated it. There was no use daydreaming about things he couldn’t fix. He wished he could fix them. Desperately. But he couldn’t.
He tossed and turned, watching the clouds roll across the sky in the moonlight and praying it wouldn’t rain. If this assignment got any more complicated he might just lose it. He was supposed to be the strong one. From all his training, he knew how to minimize and destroy his emotions. Yet somehow, he couldn’tbuild enough walls against her. She knew just where to push. Just what to say for all of his defenses to be rendered useless.
“Carver?” She whispered, and against his better judgment, he sat up to face her. He didn’t say anything. She sat, pulling her knees against her body and wrapping her arms around them. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.” He still sounded angry, but to hell with her apology. She didn’t have anything she needed to be sorry for. He was the one constantly messing things up. If only he had just?—
“But I am. It wasn’t fair to say those things.”
“Clara, everything you said was true. I wouldn’t trust me either.” His words rang true, even so, he wished they weren’t. He wanted to be trustworthy for her. He wanted to be her friend, her protector. He wanted her.You can’t have her. He reminded himself. He would have to continue reminding himself.
She shifted in her blanket, trying to draw it further around herself without pulling it off the ground. “I do trust you.”
Her admission sat in the space between them, removing a burden while adding a new one. If she trusted him, then maybe he did have a chance at protecting her as they went into the city. If she trusted him, he would hurt her again.
“I’m only trying to protect you.”
She shook her head, hair flying across her face. He wanted to tuck it back behind her ear, but he resisted. He didn’t need to get in more trouble. “Don’t try to protect me. Trust me in the same way I trust you. To protect ourselves and watch each other’s backs. Neither of us actually needs protection.”
He disagreed, strongly, but he wasn’t willing to ignore the olive branch she was extending. “You know, if any of the caravan walks this way, they'll question why newly weds are shivering in the cold air feet apart from each other.”
He swore she rolled her eyes, even though it was too dark to tell for sure, but she laughed and he smiled. He could do this. They would be okay. “Is that your way of inviting me into your bed?” Her implication caused his own laugh.
“Not like that.” She smiled.Though if you insist…He quickly shut that line of thinking down.You can’t have her.It became a chant in his mind.
She stood up, and he spread his blanket out flat so it was big enough for the both of them. Again, they slept next to each other. Still not touching, though closer than the night before. “Do you ever wonder about the what ifs?” She whispered right as he was about to doze off.
“Of course.” He mumbled back.
“Sometimes, I wonder where we would be if there was no war. When I was younger, I always thought that the war was what pushed us apart. If we hadn’t signed up for basic, if we hadn’t become operatives, if that hadn’t been our goal we could have stayed together.”
Now he was awake, and as much as he wanted to remind her of the rule she was breaking, he wanted to hear the rest of what she had to say more.
“But then, I realized that without the war, we never would have met. Our fathers wouldn’t have been friends, you wouldn’t have moved into the house on our property, my father wouldn’t have died, and, in a way, drove us together. So the war separated us, but it is also what initiated everything for us.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“I’ve wondered, are we blessed or cursed for meeting? Was the war the issue and we never should have met? Never ended up in a position to hurt the other? Or, was the war a driving marker of fate, to give us the time we did have?”
“Clara, I’m too tired for this.” His heart couldn’t stand the direction this was headed. The implication their love andeventual break up was all connected to the war and fate. He didn’t want to think about it. He believed that everyone was in charge of making their own decisions, and it was up to them to live by it. That’s what he had done.
“Sorry.”
She turned her back to him, curling in on herself. He wouldn’t apologize this time, though. He was already doing everything in his power to not wrap his arms around her and tell her that it was all fate. That this assignment had driven them back together and he would never let go of her again.
It wasn’t true and he couldn’t live with himself if he lied to her like that. He was a soldier. He would do whatever was required of him. She wouldn’t be safe if they were back together. So he laid his arms next to his sides and tried to find some form of sleep. He needed his rest if he was going to protect her. It didn’t come easily, but eventually he drifted off.
He squinted awake, the sun already bright on the horizon. Clara wasn’t next to him, but he didn’t think much of it. She had most likely gone to the bathroom or something. He chuckled to himself about her panic the day before when he had been the one who had left before she woke up. She definitely worried more than he did.
She trekked back over a few minutes later, the rising sun framing her silhouette.Wow. She was beautiful.
“Why are you staring like you’ve seen a ghost or something?” Her tone, however, was not beautiful.
