She did the little head shake again. “I’m good. You should stay with your family.”
He wasn’t going to let it end this way. “Heather—”
She held up her hand. “Really, you should stay.”
Turning on her heel, she left for the parking lot. He followed her to her new van.
“Don’t do this,” he heard himself say.
“Do what, Jase? Lie about our relationship? Tell people I care about that we aren’t together? Worry about my own comfort over everyone else’s? Fall in love with a guy who isn’t all in? What, Jase? What exactly am I not supposed to do?”
Wait.
The fuck?
“You fell in love with me?” he asked.
“We all make mistakes.” She unlocked the door, pulled it open, and climbed inside.
He caught the door with his palm. “Don’t make this one.”
Please don’t make this one.
“I think you made it for me.” She turned the engine over.
“Let’s just take a step back.” He’d fucked up, he got that.
“You want to take a step back? Fine. We’re stepping back. This is us stepping back.” She reached for the handle on the door.
That’s not what he meant at all. “Heather.”
“No, Jase. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to step back. I don’t want to go backward. I’m done with that. It’s time to go forward. With or without you.” She pressed her fingers against her eyelids. “And you’ve made it clear it’s without you.”
She pulled the door closed. He couldn’t move, just watched as she backed out of the lot. He returned to Babushka’s curtained room.
“You let her go.” Babushka pursed her lips. “I thought you were smart boy. But you let her go.”
“Nadzieja,” his mother said. “This is best.”
“No.” Jase shoved his hands on his hips. “It’s not. But thank you for ensuring that the best thing in my life just walked out.”
“Jason.” His mother gave him her look. The one that nearly always got her whatever she wanted.
“I am not speaking to either of you.” Babushka held her head high.
Somehow, he had to figure out how to make things right.
“Your problem”—Babushka shoved a finger toward him—“is that you let your mother and your father, and your brothers and your sister, tell you vat you vill do.”
Also, his grandmother. She forgot to add herself to the list.
“You come home from combat and you are a mess. Ve help you. Ve make decisions for you. I vait for you to be ready to make your own. But you don’t.” Her moratorium on speaking to him apparently hadn’t started yet. “A little shove I give. And still you don’t choose for yourself.”
A little shove? She’d totaled Heather’s van.
That was her little shove?
He could admit he’d been a wreck when he’d returned home four years ago. He’d lost most of his team in an explosion. He’d come home ready to retire from a life of defusing crude roadside bombs and IEDs. Ready to stay.
