Page 16 of Always You (Guardian Hall #1)

Chapter Sixteen

Alex

I don’t know why I asked to sit down. Until that moment, I’d been so good at maintaining my distance, holding myself back from bombarding Jazz with the hundreds of questions swirling in my mind. Where he’d been, what he’d gone through… how he’d survived on the streets.

And as for apologies, I had a list of them stored up, each one crafted over countless sleepless nights. But I knew laying them out between us, hoping for absolution, when none of this was about me, would be futile. No words could ever be enough to bridge the chasm of hurt and betrayal my actions had caused, so I’d tried so hard to be patient and respectful for his space. That was my job.

So, when I asked if I could sit with him, it was with a cautious hope he might be ready to share a little more with me. Despite how desperate I was to get back to the days of being friends, any chance of getting back there wasn’t about making grand gestures or declarations. Keeping my eyes on my bagel, I was aware of the space between us—both the physical gap and the emotional one.

Fuck, I hope that one day he needs me to make him smile. I used to make him smile in the most stupid of ways.

“Nice bagel,” he said after a pregnant pause, but he hadn’t tasted his yet and was slicing it into pieces.

“Fresh,” I added, because, yep, that was the level of my conversation.

“I need?—”

“I wanted?—”

We spoke over each other, and I waved for him to go first. Please go first because I don’t know what to say.

“I need to talk to you about Harper visiting. I mean, I assume that’s okay?”

Oh wow, that was a step. I knew he’d been emailing his daughter, but to have her visiting was something new, and my heart filled with the warm fuzzies. The vulnerability in his eyes suggested he had the usual worries I’d seen from veterans before. Would his family want to see him? With Harper, what would she think of seeing him face to face? How would he handle things? Would they hug?

“Of course, it’s okay. We have the family room, and procedures are in place to ensure she’s safe.” The safe part wasn’t only for Harper but for our struggling veterans who wouldn’t like strangers in the middle of things. It was why the family room ran on a booking system and had a separate front door from the main building.

Jazz stood abruptly, rigid with an anger that seemed to electrify the air between us. “I would never hurt her.” His eyes flashed with a mix of defiance and pain. Clearly, he thought I was accusing him of being a threat to his daughter, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

“No, Jazz, that’s not—” I started, my words tripping over themselves in my haste to correct the misunderstanding.

He cut me off, his voice low and fierce. “You think I’m so fucked up and out of control that I would hurt my daughter?” His accusation stung, a sharp reminder of how delicate our newfound rapport was, how easily it could fracture under the weight of past grievances and misunderstood intentions.

I took a deep breath, trying to steady the tremor in my voice and find the right words to bridge the gap widening between us. “No, Jazz, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry if it came across that way. I just wanted to ensure you were aware of the procedures we have in place. It’s standard for everyone.” The tension in Jazz’s posture didn’t ease, but he didn’t walk away either, which I took as a sign to continue. “We have safety protocols to protect everyone involved, and no one on the team believes you pose a threat to Harper.”

He deflated. “Your team? You mean, you, the docs, you think I’d hurt her.”

“No! Jesus, it’s protocol, as much for you as any visiting family and friends.”

He winced, and I regretted my reaction; what the hell was I doing?

“I wouldn’t hurt her,” he repeated, his tone more controlled now, the edge of anger dulled as he sought reassurance. “ You know that. You know me.” He collapsed back onto the chair, white-knuckling the table.

“Of course, I know,” I said to reassure him. Despite everything life had thrown at him, I still knew him in my heart. “Not one person on the team is worried that a visitor wouldn’t be safe in the family room with you. It’s just that we manage the zone carefully and with respect for our veterans and their families.”

Jazz nodded, and I kept quiet until he released his grip on the table and, at last, lifted a piece of the bagel to his mouth. He chewed, his earlier anger receding into a quiet contemplation.

While watching him, I couldn’t help but think that the fear of reuniting with his daughter must have been overwhelming.

“I overreacted,” he murmured after swallowing, his gaze locking with mine.

“No, I just didn’t explain.”

He grimaced. “I’m an idiot.”

“Same.”

He cautiously smiled at me, then focused on his plate and cut the bagel into even tinier pieces, making his plate a mess of cubes and curves.

“So, what did you want to say?” he asked me after the pause, but he didn’t look up at me.

“When?”

“Just now, when you let me go first.”

“Oh, I wanted to check in with you, is all,” I said.

He frowned, then shrugged. “I’m good, just the Harper thing is intense.”

“I get that.”

Jazz’s voice cracked a little as he continued, the words spilling out with an urgency that was hard to witness. “I worry about her, about whether she will forgive me for not being here. Her mom explained Harper was better off without me, without the toxic behavior—hers and mine—and I agreed Harper needed stability, so I stayed away. I mean… whenever I was stateside, I stayed near them. I tried to be part of Harper’s life, but I missed so much, and I can’t get that time back. I can’t undo me not being there.”

“You have to remember it was Harper who gave you the details for Guardian Hall.”

“Yeah, she did.”

“Then, she must have wanted you to have help and found the right place for you.”

“She’s the best daughter,” he said, his voice soft, pride and affection clear in every word.

“I bet,” I replied, trying to match his tone.

He let out a huff that sounded almost like a laugh. “When I told her I was bi, way back when I talked about you, she just accepted it.”

“You told her about me?” I asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” he said with a shrug, his eyes flicking up to meet mine briefly before dropping again. “You were part of my past, and she knows all of me—well, everything apart from the Army stuff now.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. Instead, I focused on the emails, the safer topic that wouldn’t expose the ache I couldn’t fully understand. “See?” I said, forcing a lightness into my voice. “You’ve been emailing, and now she wants to visit. It’s all good.”

He gave me a small, tired smile, but I couldn’t tell if he believed it, then he took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m trying to piece myself back together to be someone she can be proud of. I want to show her I’m more than what the military made me, that I’m more than the nights I spent away from her.”

I nodded. “You’re doing the work, Jazz. That’s all anyone can ask for. You’re here, you’re fighting, and that means she gets her dad back.”

He glanced up, his eyes meeting mine. “I need her to see that I can be the best dad, and that her mom wasn’t completely right about me.”

“I know,” I reassured him, and for some inexplicable reason, I reached over and placed my hand on his.

Jazz appeared lost in his thoughts, making me uncertain whether he noticed the comforting touch until his hand tensed beneath mine. For a moment, neither of us moved. The only sound in the room was the distant hum of the refrigerator. Then, gradually, I felt him relax a little, the stiffness giving way to a cautious acceptance of the gesture.

We sat there in silence, with the tiny act of connection hanging between us, and I felt weighed down by all the things I hadn’t said to him over the years. When he withdrew his hand, severing the connection, I felt the loss.

The link between brain and mouth disintegrated as I stared into his beautiful eyes, and the desperate apology I’d been holding back fell out of me; it should never have left my thoughts. “I should have put you above everything, not decided things for us, and you wouldn’t have left. It’s my fault all this happened to you.”

Sitting upright in his chair, horrified, he shoved his chair back. “What?”

Fuck, I’d dug the hole and now I kept on digging. “If I’d been more honest with you, told you how I felt, cut myself off from my family and chosen you instead, we could have been together, and you would have stayed with me and?—”

“I was always going to enlist.”

“I could have stopped you.”

“What? No.” His words hung in the air between us and forced me to look up and meet his gaze.

“But I wanted…” I started, my voice faltering as I tried to reconcile his assertion with the narrative that had played over and over in my head for years.

Jazz shook his head, a rueful smile touching his lips. “You thought you could stop me from making my own choices, from living my life? Jesus, Alex, I loved you with everything a teenager could, but I had a path I was following, and I grew up.”

And unspoken?

I loved you.

But I don’t love you anymore.