A/N: This is the longest chapter. Hoping to do justice to Jess. With great indebtedness to various Wyatt backstory ff here: Fractures, Wyatt POV, Unmade, Adrift, What Makes Us and What If. Nod to What Makes Us with one of Wyatt's languages.

Chapter 2: Jessica

Wyatt coming home was supposed to bring our lives back together, not end it.

He was so sweet in high school. You'd never have guessed he would be so romantic from that tough guy exterior he had. Rough and tumble, ready for a fight, but once you looked beyond that, he was always thinking of others' feelings. Ready to stand up for people who couldn't defend themselves. And so aware. He'd see how life affected the people around him, and he cared. He wanted to make it better. He would jump in and think about the consequences later.

When he came back from that operation in Syria, he was a different person. He was so happy to see me, so happy to be home. But..different. He couldn't settle down. Couldn't rest at night. Got angry so easily.

That first night we fought over where to eat. Where to eat! This was nothing like the Wyatt I had fallen in love with. Who fought for me against my parents' disapproval. So attentive and thoughtful. Instead he was jumpy and distant. He said he had missed me, but sometimes he looked at me like I was a stranger. When I touched him I could feel him trying not to pull away. Then he'd make a joke about it and put his arm around me. But there was something missing in his eyes.

And his jealousy. It didn't make any sense. He'd be closed off, distracted, then get so upset when I talked with a male friend. This is kind of weird, but it almost didn't sound like him. Wyatt could get angry, but this kind of..contempt that came from his mouth. It was nothing like the man I knew. Instead it reminded me of things I tried to get away from in leaving Texas.

Nobody but Wyatt believed I could get out. Not my parents, not my sister. I can count on one hand the kids from our school who ended up leaving West Texas. I loved growing up on my parents' ranch. Driving yearling calves bareback, staying up all night to see a horse being born, the smell of new hay in the barn. These are all memories I would never give up. But the wide open skies held nothing else for me.

All my friends' plans revolved around dancing and drinking all night, then working for an oil company or being a teacher, having kids. Getting married, and ending up like so many of our parents. Struggling in loveless marriages, weighed down by debt and children and dead dreams. Our parents had ridden the boom and bust times of our childhoods in the 80s. OPEC was a curse word when I was growing up. We kids remembered that time when uncles and cousins stood idle or traveled to Houston and Dallas to try to find work. But by the time we were coming up, the world offered some modest hopes. We didn't understand how much our parents had sacrificed to keep us going.

There was a year when my parents had to auction all but our best cows and herd bull to make it through the season. They would have lost the farm to the cost of feed otherwise. I slept in my horse Midnight's stall to keep them from selling her. I swore I'd work at the feed store, recycle cans, sell belt buckles to tourists, whatever it took to pay for her keep. They kept her. Only many years later, when Wyatt and I were going through photos of my childhood together, did I realize that they'd sold their car to pay for hay and feed for her through that winter. He held me so tight when I cried. I couldn't believe how selfish I'd been. He assured me they did it because they wanted me to be happy. Just like he did.

Midnight was still alive when he and I were first dating. I took Wyatt out on her to the mountain. Where we kissed for the first time.

When Wyatt told me about his parents, it reminded me of so many of my friends—but it was just so much worse for him. It was a miracle how that damage hadn't spoiled him. The dance of alcohol, pain and abuse, making up and watching it all come around again. There had to be something else than all this. I saw how big the world was. How we didn't have to be caught here. It was worth the risk. I wanted so much more.

His love was so strong. He told me things he told no one else. What his father had been like. How his mother would read to him and tell him stories when his dad came home drunk. How his dad accused her of being with his friends, with strange men. How he hit her. Things got better for him, but it always seemed like Wyatt didn't really believe in the future. Not a future for us together, or one in which he would truly be happy. I tried to get him to open up about it. But somehow we couldn't get through that barrier. Kids were a sore spot. When I was lucky, he'd laugh it off, saying there was plenty of time. When I picked the wrong time, he just froze. Closed off. I had to wait for him to come back to me. He couldn't face being a father? Or maybe couldn't believe that it could work out for him? Or was it me?

I remember his first deployment with Delta Force like it was yesterday. He'd been in the army for years at that point. Stationed in Afghanistan during our break, then off to Fort Benning after we got back together. I was so incredibly proud of him. The army had opened up whole dimensions of him that I'd guessed where there, but were waiting to be watered and grown to blossom.

During all of high school he just scraped by. Not failing, Grandpa Sherwin never would have tolerated that. But he was never motivated by school. As likely to sneak off to do some target practice and skip an afternoon class, or to help a friend fix his car all night and totally forget to do his homework. Yet then in class he could recite back, chapter and verse what his teacher had said. I don't know if he even realized he was doing it.

Later, when we lived in San Diego together I teased him about his "total recall." How else could he learn three languages in those few months they gave them language training for the Special Forces? He came in with Scottish Gaelic, thanks to his Grandpa, but German, Arabic and Russian? Totally unrelated languages that just rolled off his tongue in no time. He would look at me like I was crazy and talk about how there were all kinds of theories about learning multiple languages, "The third one is so much easier than the second, and with the fourth you're just making connections..." No way, Mr. Logan. It does not work that way for everyone. And how else, years later, could he remember all those stories about Midnight and the details about catching frogs and fireflies in the creek that I told him once in high school? Much less find that very tree again, that one beautiful oak that we kissed under, to ask me to marry him? Or...the things I said that night after he had come back from Syria...when I was so blistering drunk and angry I didn't even remember the words until he threw them back at me. I'm so sorry I hurt you, Wyatt. You're nothing like your father must have been...

I don't think Wyatt ever thought he would or could go to college. It was that future thing. A wall. As though he didn't think there was anywhere he was heading, so why try hard to get there? It drove my father crazy. I couldn't describe to him what I saw in Wyatt. My dad just brought up Wyatt's father—how he beat Wyatt's mom and then died in jail—and how Wyatt was doing a whole lot of nothing with his life. Heading nowhere.

Sure his grandfather was a war hero, who got trotted out by the town each Veteran's Day. But Mr. Sherwin was a quiet, understated man. No one knew the extent of his bravery under fire until after he died. No one but Wyatt, of course. His eulogy for his grandfather was simple and profound. He told a story his grandfather had told him, about being there for a friend who'd been shot behind the lines in Germany. Just holding his hand as he died, and promising to bring his letters and dog tags to his widow. And how when he got back state side, he'd gotten permission to contact her. Looked in her eyes to tell her how much her man had loved her, talked of her as he died. Wyatt researched his Grandfather's career and gave an account of his deployments: the casualties, victories and losses he experienced. Grown men—my father, even—shed some discreet tears over that funeral casket.

I never met his Mom. She died when he was 10 or 11. But his Grandpa Sherwin, that is another story. Wyatt and I were just friends for a while, but the night he first asked me out he took me back home THAT NIGHT to meet Grandpa Sherwin. I did not know what to expect and was kind of terrified. The old gent ran a tight ship. The 100 year old house was immaculate. Probably looked just the same as it had in 1952 when he and the late, lamented Mrs. Sherwin bought it to raise their children. The lace curtains still on the windows had been made by Grandma Sherwin, and Grandpa kept Wyatt off the street in the summers by making him scrape and paint the house, clean the curtains, mow the lawn. I shouldn't have been scared. Mr. Sherwin was all quiet grace and thoughtfulness. He saw how nervous I was and put me at ease by asking if I'd like to see some of his relics from the war. Wyatt later told me he never brought those out. I asked Mr. Sherwin how he got through. He said as long as he had his friends with him, he felt he could do anything to be there for them. He said the only time he lost that belief was when he helped his unit liberate one of the Nazi slave labor complexes, Kaufering. He couldn't say anything about what he saw there. He simply said, "We must not let hate and fear turn us into monsters."

Wyatt's mom loved him, I know, and tried to shield him from the worst of his father's excesses. He only lived alone with his dad one year after she died. Only one year until the benders led to fights and then one fight led to a death. When Wyatt's father was put in jail for manslaughter Grandpa Sherwin took Wyatt in for good. What that year did to him, I think Mr. Sherwin spent all the rest of the time they had together trying to undo. I met Wyatt two years after his father died, and even then the look he would give me, or anyone, when they tried to comfort him for that loss. It was...murderous.

We didn't meet until Wyatt was a senior and I was a sophomore. We didn't run in the same circles. Wyatt just scraped by and avoided school, while I was busy prepping for college. We probably never would have met if it hadn't been for that day in El Paso outside the abortion clinic. I and my friends volunteered for Jane's Due Process to stand support outside the women's health office once a month. Wyatt was helping a friend and his sister Polly make the long trip to get there and get care.

There was a huge crowd of protesters that day. I was walking next to Polly. I don't remember how the man in the cheap dark blue suit got in my face crying about hellfire, so close his spittle hit me. But all of a sudden Wyatt was there, forcing himself between us and taking all the vitriol the man was spewing onto himself. I'm sure that guy threw the first punch, but Wyatt gave as good right back. He hurt the man. I had to hold him back. It's too easy to think that it's right to answer violence in kind. Their tussle broke open the crowd in a panic, and we were lucky to get Polly inside before the police arrived. My mom helped us bail Wyatt out. Not the best way to meet your future son in law...

We almost didn't end up together. If you'd asked me who I would marry while I was packing up my car to head out west to San Diego, I would have told you some writer or a hippy, or philosopher that I'd meet at UCSD. It broke my heart to leave him, but I'd told Wyatt that I needed to see what else the world held. He just didn't seem to have any thought of leaving our town. He supported me going off and finding what I needed. I had no idea that he had enlisted in the Army by the time he was helping me pull the posters off my walls and pack up my things in the car to head out to California.

And there he was. Two years later at the Sun God Festival on campus. On leave and dancing with me to Third Eye Blind—despite hating that band. And it was like we'd never left each other for a moment. Except that everything had changed. That Wyatt I had glimpsed in high school was all of who he was now. The manners his grandfather gave him. The loving heart his mother left behind. That quiet insight into others—somehow he always knew when I was tired or hungry before I even did—the military had taken that potential and honed it, and given him people to care for and be there for. He talked about the men and women he served with like I'd never heard him talk about anyone. Except maybe Grandpa Sherwin. He opened up, laughing and joking so much more. When he told me he was going for it to get into Delta Force, it was like he was finally finding his path. Those walls had crumbled. And somehow, I was still there with him, on the inside.

When we went back home for Grandpa Sherwin's funeral, he took me out to that tree and asked me to be his forever. Those years we had before he went to Syria—they were challenging—living apart when he went on missions was hard. Worrying what might happen to him...that never got easier. But the joy on his face when he came back to me was amazing. I felt so close to him, even when he was far away. He felt he was making a difference; he so belonged. It was all worth it. Until that operation in Syria.

And then those walls were back. He came home with the purple heart they gave him. Threw the box on a shelf and didn't look at it. Wouldn't talk about it. He stopped talking about his fellow soldiers and the missions. It was like the light had gone out for him. He dutifully enrolled in counseling and attended every week. He went through the paces. He put on a brave face and said everything was fine. But there was something different inside him. Like his heart had been broken. And I wasn't on the inside any more. I was outside again, where even I couldn't reach him.

The nights have been bad. He wakes up crying sometimes. Other times in a panic. I feel like he needs to go through his process. But the distance seems to be growing, not healing. He's always been so aware of the emotional damage of war. He's been there for friends who went through bad patches in their lives and relationships. Talked with them, helped them trust enough to get help. I've seen him catch himself in his fears and anxiety before and work it through with me and his shrink.

But this time, it's like he's in deep water. He can't find his way to the surface, and our helping hands aren't reaching him. He hides it behind an easy laugh, or asking me about my work, but I can see there's more going on.

I think he's scared. I can see it in his eyes when things are the worst. Sometimes when he drinks, he gets possessive and angry. And afraid. He almost started a fight at a bar last week. And he's drinking too much. He swerved on the road on the way home, but wouldn't listen to me. I never feel any threat from him toward myself, but I'm beginning to wonder about the danger he's putting himself in. His job puts him in jeopardy all the time. What happens if this current drags him under when he's in the field, and he doesn't have a way to resist it any more? Who will be there for him?

But I'm just catching glimpses. He used to be so open, so willing to share. Now I feel like that old Wyatt from high school is back. Where the future is closed off again. When I touched him he used to light up. Now he more often looks at me as though I'm far away and he can't see it's me. When I talk about the future, it's like all the plans I'm talking about will just crumble. Why believe, why commit.

Wyatt, what are you doing? I'd give anything to have the man back who asked me to marry him under that oak tree. I'd do anything to see hope in your eyes again. What will it take for you to trust me? Am I holding you back? If you need something else I want to let you go, just like you let me take a chance going off on my own to college. I love you. I want you to be happy. And I want to be happy. Maybe we just can't help each other do that anymore.

Sweet Wyatt. Please come back. Or let me go.