“What have you built here?” he asked with genuine curiosity.
It was the first time he’d thought to ask the question. The first time he’d thought about the town as a whole entity already. Caleb had drummed into everyone’s heads about how critical it was to get the town profitable as a tourist draw, but Superstition Springs had existed for a long time before the SEALs had plunked down in the middle of Serenity’s resort crisis.
“A community.” Lennie let him absorb that for a minute and then heaved from the bench seat, nearly toppling Isaiah in the process. “You come on by my shop later and you can have my laptop for as long as you need. That infernal thing makes me nuts with all the updates and whatnots. Can’t never get a good signal even though I pay for fancy satellite internet service.”
Isaiah hid a grin. Given what he’d just learned, Lennie couldn’t be more than about sixty but he acted like he was ninety. “Appreciate it. And the call to your catering friends. I’d be proud to do business with any vets you send my way.”
Vets. Veterans. Vets were former military. Just like me. Isaiah forced himself to run those concepts through his head despite the pain, because pretending he was still a SEAL didn’t change anything. This was just the first time he’d allowed himself to grieve while thinking about the future in the same breath. Yeah. He was still breathing.
He’d jumped into the SUV with Hardy to come to Texas because what else did he have to do? Nothing. And he’d spent weeks in Superstition Springs waiting around for the signal to leave. Perhaps that signal hadn’t come because he was already more a part of this community than he’d credited. This is where I’m supposed to be. Where he’d met Aria. Where his life had begun to make sense when he wasn’t looking.
Here he was in the fold. If he left, he’d only be doing it to keep moving, which accomplished nothing. To heal, he had to stay. That was how he’d stick his pieces back together, once and for all. He saw that now. Aria was worth it, sure. But so was he.
He still had some fight left in him.
“What’cha working on?”
Aria’s voice slid over him, soothing the ragged places in his soul that the conversation with Lennie had roughed up. He hadn’t seen her since yesterday and it had been far too long. Greedily, he drank in her pretty face, which was highlighted by the fact that her hair had been pulled back in a long braid. He held out his hand and when she grasped it, he pulled her into the seat recently vacated by Lennie and kissed her soundly.
“Hey, you,” he murmured when the kiss finally broke after he remembered they were in public.
“Guess we’re going full bore on the PDA then,” she commented wryly, her eyes sparkling enough that he guessed she didn’t see that as a problem. “I’m sure the crowd enjoyed the show.”
“Forget them.” He waved away the onlookers. “They can find their own if they’re jealous. I’m working on plans for the party. You know, the one Caleb asked me to work on?”
After having such a productive conversation with Ruby and Lennie, he couldn’t wait to see what Aria might have to offer on the subject. Plus, he’d been hoping to make a rooftop trip out of it. That thought got him good and primed for something a lot more private than this corner booth in the middle of a diner.
“Oh.” Her face registered mild surprise. “I wasn’t thinking you’d sign on for that after…well, you know. What we talked about.”
He raised a brow. After they’d talked about how he needed to get his crap together? What, was she thinking he couldn’t handle it or something? Because she might be right. But he had to try. The more he thought about settling in here, the easier his heart beat. That had to count for something. “We talked about taking it slow. About how I’m not going to push you away any longer but I need time to figure it out. If I’m taking that time, why not dig into something that will help the town?”
“Because we weren’t talking about digging in, Isaiah.” Little frown lines appeared around her mouth and he got the first clue that this conversation was distressing her in some way. “We were talking about leaving. Together. I guess—well, I envisioned taking that time on the road. As an adventure.”
Shades of their last conversation replayed in his head and he definitely didn’t recall agreeing to anything of the sort. And after what had just slowly dawned on him, he definitely wasn’t planning an escape routine. Not now. “I told you I didn’t want to tear you away from here. I meant that. I’m working on ways to stay. Because I want to do that for you.”
But instead of taking a minute to consider what a big concession he was making, she shook her head. “You said welcome aboard. That’s a metaphor for sailing. As in sailing away from here. That’s what I want to do. I’ve spent the morning working out a plan, where to go. Putting up pictures of beaches and mountains on my dream board. Figuring out how to pay for it. Funny thing, I actually thought for a moment that’s what you were doing too.”
“Well it’s not.” Nor would it be. He had a lot of healing to do, none of which would happen under the circumstances she was describing. Instead, it sounded a lot like running away, which he frankly excelled at. It was past time to stop. “Besides, you said you’d follow me if I left. I took that seriously. So no leaving.”
That was the opposite of love in his mind—letting a woman pin her hopes on a broken man who’d lured her away from everything that made sense in her world on the premise that some mystical prediction would keep them together. How about no.
She fiddled with the salt shaker in the center of the table, one she’d probably refilled a thousand times if he didn’t miss his guess, so her fascination with the thing seemed off. “That wasn’t supposed to make you change your mind. It was supposed to show you that I wasn’t afraid of going.”
“I’m afraid of leaving,” he admitted, a little shocked at how easily it had come after so many weeks of torturing himself, and he wasn’t all that proud of how long it had taken him to get to this point in the first place. “No, not afraid of leaving itself, but what it represents. I have some things I’m trying to work through.”
“I know!” She glanced around and lowered her voice. “But those are things that being together someplace else can only help. I get that you’re conflicted about taking things deeper. We can figure that out together, away from here, where there’s so much pressure.”
“Aria.” He bit back his frustration. How could they still not be communicating after all the conversations they’d had? “I’m not talking about working through us. I have…scars from Syria that aren’t healed yet. That’s why I can’t take things to the next level. Not yet.”
But he wanted to. Badly. He wanted a lot of things, some he didn’t dare hope for but couldn’t help picturing perfectly, like his ring on her third finger.
“What are you talking about? You mean your time in the military is the reason everything is backwar
d all at once?” Confusion wormed into her expression. “Is that what you meant when you said there was more to you than meets the eye?”
“Yeah. Basically.” He blew out a breath and went for broke. “So I’m here. Digging in. Working through it. I want to do that with you by my side—in Superstition Springs. Don’t you see what I’m telling you? I don’t want to leave. For the first time. I’ve finally figured out what I need to do and it’s stay.”
Surely she could see how huge of a thing this was for him. Surely she could support that, especially if she loved him like she claimed to. They needed to have a really long talk about what was going on with him. The panic attacks that he pretended were something else. His inability to make a decision. To accept responsibility for anything. None of this was her fault, but finally, he could see a light at the end. Aria held that light.