I stuck my hands back in my pockets, hoping the feeling would return to them soon. It had to be in the low twenties today. “I don’t know if I should be insulted or proud.”

“Both.” She grinned and turned back to her tablet, scribbling away. “And let’s face it. Sully would never have been in your position.”

“Because the town would have welcomed him with a smile.” I stepped over the support beam and made my way to where she was taking notes.

“Sure, that too,” she admitted with a shrug. “But I was thinking more along the lines that he never would have gone against Xander. Sully would have taken Xander’s word as gospel and moved on. He never would have stood up like you did—like you’re doing.” She glanced at me, knocking the breath from my lungs.

Green, gold, blue, and bronze. How was it possible for one person to have all those colors in her eyes?

“Maybe,” I conceded once she’d looked away and my brain started working again. “Or maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.”

“Maybe you would have come home after three years,” she said softly, face down in her tablet.

No, I wouldn’t have. Not for one very fucked-up reason.

“Maybe you’d be married to Sullivan.” I didn’t mean to say it.

She tensed but looked up at me after a minute, conflict etched in the lines of her forehead where her hat began.

“Maybe,” she whispered.

Maybe not. The unspoken words hung there between us, where they had no right to be.

Because they were a damned lie. I walked away from her, choosing to examine the joints where the south and east walls met.

Of course she would have married Sullivan. They were Alba’s golden couple. The outgoing boy and the quiet girl who spoke through her art. The ones who fell in love after living next door to each other for years.

They were the fucking storybook, and I was the fire-breathing dragon. And sure, I’d burned shit to the ground, but never them. Never him.

Never her.

I would have rather died than see any of my shit touch either of them.

Yet somehow, I’d given the order, and Sullivan had died in my arms.

And now I was standing here next to the woman he’d loved. The woman he’d wanted to marry. The woman he’d left behind to go join the army, not because Xander was finishing up his three years but because he thought it was cool that I’d just made it through the Special Forces Qualification Course.

I got to wear a green beret.

Sullivan got to wear his dress blues for eternity.

Willow never got to wear our mother’s ring.