“Yep,” she said, taking her eyes off the road for half a second to look at me.

“Who? Me? You think you don’t deserve me?”

She shook her head slowly.

“Talk,” I said.

It took her a while to speak. She held her knee against the bottom of the steering wheel to use the back of her hand to wipe an escaped tear from her cheek instead of letting go of my hand.

I frowned. “Babe,” I said. “What is it?”

Death had already taken away someone she’d loved. Now she was dating some shmuck with a heart condition. She was exhausted and worried while I felt sorry for myself, and that was on me. I suddenly felt ten times worse.

My heart beat loudly in my ears, drowning out the road noise while I waited to hear what her tears meant.

“It’s just … you’re so good. You’re so good Zeke. You don’t deserve this. I wish I was a better person. I’m trying.”

I turned in my seat to face her. “You’re perfect. You’re better than perfect, Naomi. How can you think you’re not enough?”

“How can you think you’re not? It breaks my heart that you feel like that.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing I could say would make it better. If I explained that I barely deserved her before, that now I was so much less than she deserved, it would hurt her. She would never agree, but she didn’t have to. I knew the truth.

“You’re more than enough, Naomi. I’m just holding on until you’re gone. And I guess you’re holding on ‘til I’m gone too. And that’s shit. You deserve better.”

She frowned. She was annoyed now. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that to me again. Do I look like a pussy to you? Do I look like I would cut and run at the first sign of difficulty? That’s insulting.”

“I’m sorry. I just meant that … no. I know you’re not. I know you wouldn’t. But I also don’t want you to stay just because you’re stubborn.”

“I stay because I love you. I wasn’t kidding when I said it. I’m in this with you.”

“No man left behind?”

Her cheeks glowed red. “You’re not a fellow Marine—

you’re my boyfriend. It’s not duty. It’s not even loyalty; it’s just love.” She breathed out, as if the truth took more energy than she had.

I looked down, shame taking another swallow, sucking me into the hole I was already trapped in. I was punishing her for my insecurities, and that made me worse than a sick man in love with a woman like Naomi. That just made me pathetic. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to lighten the mood.” Liar.

She pulled into her drive.