Day 6 - Now

My body was sore everywhere.

It was like I was hit by a truck. The most delicious truck that I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

I tried to stir a little as the sunlight filtered through the flowing curtains, but my muscles screamed. Still, I moved just enough to see a sleeping Tommy dreaming away without a care in the world.

I should be upset, I should be appalled with myself, but I wasn't. I couldn't. I knew in my heart that this is the way things should be.

I let myself imagine for only a moment that this is what things would look like. That Tommy and I had found ourselves back to each other somehow and we had come on this trip together, instead of being promised to others.

How different would our life be right now? Would be have been married like he said he wanted? Would we have the kids he told me he envisioned us having? Would they be here with us on this trip or would they be home with our parents while we got a week to ourselves?

Then I thought back to Cole. This could have been us as well. If he would have been able to get out of work then he would be the one that would be keeping me warm right now. I had to tell him. I had to explain everything to him. Things would inevitably end, but I knew that the moment I saw Tommy again. I definitely didn't admit it to myself, hell, I would have denied it yesterday as well, but I knew. Somewhere deep inside me, I knew things would never be the same.

I wouldn't be able to go back to him and be his after this. I don't think I was ever his to begin with.

I allowed myself to lie there in the bed, hoping that time would just stop and things could fix themselves. If only things could be that easy.

Tommy turned towards me and wrapped a muscular arm around my waist and pulled me towards him. He was like a child clinging to his favorite teddy bear and I couldn't help but smile.

Then I felt his lips on my shoulder.

I'm not sure why I believed that Tommy would wake up and have regrets, but like everything else that nagged in my life, it was a thought I didn't think I would be able to live through.

"Morning, beautiful," he whispered.

My relief was like the first drop of rain in a drought.

"Morning," I whispered back.

I turned to find him staring right at me and I don't think I had ever seen a more gorgeous image than that very moment.

There was an innocence to him that masked the dark truth of betrayal.

If there was ever a doubt in my mind about him, he erased it with his lips. Slowly and tenderly, nothing like the savageness we shared last night. It took no time at all before he flipped us over so that he was on top of me. He held himself up with one hand while the other cradled my face, his lips still on mine, nibbling and sucking, and driving me wild.

"Wait," I panted, but he ignored me and moved to my neck.

I was glad that I was already lying down because my legs felt like jelly. He just had something about him that knew exactly how to untangle me. Things can quickly lead to something else, and if I don't stand my ground, they will, but now isn't the time for that.

I needed to speak. I needed to have a conversation with him that could change everything.

I didn't come here with the intentions of something happening between us, but now that they did, I can't ignore it.

"Tommy," I whimper as he sucks on a tender spot, "we have to talk."

He groans in my ear, hating that at almost thirty we have to finally become the adults we've been pretending to be.

"Okay," he says softly and kisses my cheek.

He rolls off of me but keeps his arm around me. He doesn't know this, but it puts me at ease. It does.

"Can I go first?" He asks me and I smile at that too. Here is the guy that I had to pull information from when we were dating. He would sooner run into a war unarmed than speak about his feelings. So the fact that he offered to go first really mattered to me.

"okay," I whispered back and threaded my fingers with his.

He took a long and slow exhale, one that told me I was in a for a ride.

"We fucked up," he told me and I felt the air flee my lungs.

Not the words I was expecting.

"But like I said last night, I don't regret anything. I do have regrets when it comes to you, but not this. I regret letting you go, but I think what I regret more than that is letting you stay gone. I ruined things for us and I'm still not sure if its something you can forgive. I sure as hell don't deserve your forgiveness, but I'd be lying if I said I could just stand by and let you go again."

A tear slipped from my eye and I let it fall.

"I'm so sorry about the pain I caused you, Kim. I was a kid that didn't know he had the world in front of him. I'd go back and kick myself if I could, but then I stop and think that after everything I've done in my life, somehow—someway, it has still lead me back to you. If that's the case, and if this is real…," he shook me a little, "I wouldn't change a thing."

He touched his forehead to my shoulder, waiting for me to say something, but I didn't know how to follow that. I was waiting for him to say this ten years ago and I had a response that I had been practicing equally as long, but telling him to get lost, that I hated him, that he would never have my forgiveness, was the opposite of what I was feeling in my heart.

"I have loved you hopelessly and in secret for ten years, Tommy," I smiled, the tears filling in my eyes. "I've tried hating and replacing you, and I've been lying to myself for so long that I believed I finally did it. But there's no getting over you, there's no way around… there's just you."

"I believe you," I told him, "I believe that this hasn't been easy for you as it hasn't been for me. Maybe I'm out of my mind, but whatever is happening between us is too strong to ignore."

"Give me a chance to be the man that I couldn't be before," he whispered.

Maybe this was the moment for us all along. The stars and planets aligned, hearts were broken, years were wasted, tears were shed, only for us to find our way back to each other at this very moment.

"Yes," I said, placing my answer on his lips with mine. "Yes," I answered when I flipped us over so that I was on top of him. "Yes," I prayed as I welcomed him into my body once again.

And I believed the words out of my mouth more than anything.

"Tell me what you've been doing the last ten years," I said softly while he circled my back with his fingertips.

My head had been on his chest since the last time we had been together. We were too exhausted to move. One of us, I'm not even sure which one at the moment, had ordered room service and we had just finished it on the balcony. A shower followed, but I don't feel like I got any cleaner with the way that Tommy pinned me onto the shower wall.

We never made it downstairs to have brunch with our friends like we normally do, and I don't doubt that they noticed we were both missing, but I have hope that they won't ask questions until we're ready to say something.

There was still so much more we had to discuss in regards to Cole and Giselle. I hate that we're going to hurt them.

This was a blend of what was so wrong and right with the world.

"What do you want to know?"

I thought about it and smiled, "Everything."

His chest vibrated when he let out a chuckle, "We might be here all week."

"Then start now," I kissed his chest.

"Well," he sighed, "it's been a blur. I've been on seven deployments in that time. They all kind of blend together at this point."

I hold on to him tighter as I try to imagine what that was like. I've been in war before but I had a greater power that protected me. This is different. Tommy is human, with no man in a tube protecting him from anything.

"There were others after you," he sighed, "Nothing serious. Nothing real. I only started dating Giselle a few years ago. She's the sister of Moreno, one of my buddies that I lost a few years back. He asked me to look out for her. I guess we bonded over the grief."

He turned silent and I could hear the thick swallow in his throat. It's evident that it was a painful memory.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, my own emotions building in my throat.

The guilt inside of me was beginning to stack up, one little block at a time. Giselle held a bigger part in his life than I thought. She was a tie to a brother lost in war. And how does he repay his friend? By sleeping with me.

"You were all I thought about. The moment I stepped on that bus and was shipped off to Parris Island, you were there. I hoped that one day I could work up the courage to send you one of the letters I wrote you."

"You wrote me?" I lifted to meet his eyes.

"Every day," he answered.

I once thought it had been easy for him to walk away and take half of my heart with him, but hearing him now, with the rawness in his voice, I'm not sure how I ever fooled myself into believing that. I had been desperate to find any reason to hate him.

He saw me stroking the spot on his bicep that I noticed last night, the round, ragged scars that resembled too much like bullet holes.

"You can ask me," he said, understanding my curiosity, "it's okay."

I chose my words carefully, "Did this happen to you while you were… out there?"

He nodded, "It was a set up. We thought we were going to save a group of elementary school children from a warehouse, but all we found were cowards waiting for one of us to step on an IED. One of my buddies did and this scar is all I have left to remember him by. The shrapnel shot at me like a thousand knives."

A silence grew between us and then I saw the bob of his Adams apple.

"So I just live with the screams of my brothers and the scars of those that I couldn't save… but they say I'm the lucky one."

I could no longer hold the tears inside me. I wanted to be strong for him, but hearing that he went through hell and back was painful to listen to. I could have lost him that night.

"Shh," he cupped my cheek, "that's all in the past. I've gotten through it."

"I could have lost you," I whispered.

"But it was you that got me through the night, remember? It was your voice that I held on to, your voice that forced me to stay awake."

"And what was I saying?"

"You were calling me home."

Author note: I have never had a chapter flow so easily out of me that it felt like it wrote itself. This is the last of the prewritten chapters I had for this story. Updates will now slow down. I feel like I've been saying that, but I just didn't want to give you guys any surprises. Enjoy!