Emma had once thought she’d found that kind of love. Now she knew no matter how strong the connection between two people, love alone wasn’t enough to make a relationship work.
She turned off the light and waited to see if either would wake. The television mounted on the wall flickered across their sleeping faces, but they didn’t stir.
She picked up the remote from the bed and lifted it toward the television. The Baxters had been watching a mainstream network news station, and the screen showed an anchorman on the left and a map of Syria on the right.
Her breath caught. One part of her yelled Turn it off!, another whispered, Watch, just for a minute.
Sure enough, a still image of Dylan’s face appeared in a little square beneath the map with a tag that read, Reporting from Syria, Senior Correspondent Dylan Wright.
Emma’s air left her lungs in a slow stream. And ache as old as time bloomed beneath her ribs, and she crossed her arms over the pain.
“Dylan,” the anchorman said, “while we’re trying to get a live feed, can you give us the latest update from northern Syria?”
“Sure, Dennis.”
Those two words tied a noose around Emma’s heart. Oh, that voice. It always threatened to drop her to her knees.
“A Russian air strike killed thirty today,” Dylan said, “including twenty children, when bombs hit a school in the Raqqa province of Manbij.”
Emma’s stomach folded. “Jesus.”
The screen flickered, and in the next instant, a live image of Dylan filled the screen, and Emma’s breathing hitched.
He wore an olive-green flak jacket with PRESS emblazoned on the chest, and his face was scraped and bruised, reminding Emma of just how much danger he put himself in every day. After what he’d been through, she’d never understand how he could run straight at danger on a regular basis.
In the background, flashes of light marked where bombs connected with the land. Underneath the image, the words “recorded earlier” indicated this wasn’t a live feed, but Emma still tightened her arms around herself.
His dark hair was longer than the last time she’d seen him on air, his jaw covered in stubble. She barely saw the boy she’d once known. He was a full-fledged man now, intelligent, talented, sexy. So sexy. She had no doubt the combination of his balls-to-the-wall profession, his looks, and his charm had women falling all over him.
Emotions eddied through her—longing, love, hurt, anger.
So much hurt. So much anger.
Even after all this time.
“Our intelligence sources say they are within days of a full-scale military assault here.”
There was a hollowness to him that hadn’t been there a month ago. One she’d never be able to explain to anyone. It was something she sensed more than saw. A spark missing in his eyes, a lift missing from his tone. He seemed subdued. Detached.
“I can tell you firsthand that the cease-fire reported by the Syrian regime and Russian government is absolutely false,” Dylan reported. “They claim to be targeting terrorists, but after weeks of investigation in this region, we’ve encountered no terrorist cells, only civilians simply trying to survive.”
Despite whatever was going on inside him, Dylan’s voice was hypnotic, a deep, smooth, sophisticated timbre. His broadcasting experience had taught him how to project emotion into his tone, and Emma heard the grief he surely suffered while covering this story, just one of so many equally devastating stories coming out of Syria.
It was one more illustration of how much help people needed all over the globe. One more reminder that while Dylan was out living his dream, Emma was saddled with the kind of debt that would keep her from living her own.
The asshole had promised her the world, then pulled the rug out from under her and turned his back.
She’d stayed in Germany after his accident, where they’d met, married, and lived after their military fathers were deployed to other areas. An entire year passed after he’d told her to go back to the States. She’d buried her pain beneath her studies, hoping against hope he’d come to his senses and let her in again.
But that never happened.
Once she’d returned home to Tennessee, Dylan had remained off the radar, and she’d spent years with no idea whether he was dead or alive. Then, four years ago, he showed up on news channels as a foreign correspondent.
The last time she’d seen him in person, he’d been furious at the world, despondent over his situation, hopeless about the future. Having him turn up successfully living his dream left her with mixed feelings. Relief that he’d healed. Heartbroken that he’d moved on without her. Fury over his lack of communication. Disgusted that he’d broken his commitment to her. To them.
“Dylan,” the anchor said, “can you respond to statements made by the Syrian foreign minister saying the images of the injured and dead coming out of the area are fictionalized?”
“You can’t fake this kind of devastation.” Anger leaked into his voice, his passion shining through. “That’s just a sample of the blanket denial from a dictatorship that has suppressed the country for the last fifty years. The only difference between this regime and the Nazis is that the Syrian regime has learned the art of deception.”