war with Iraq" he said, dropping his head as emotion twisted his face into a grimace.
Tears flooded my eyes, sensing the coming crash of reality. Of everything Enzo had survived and seen.
Everything he'd lost.
"I wasn't as excited as he was about it. Afghanistan a few years earlier? Of course. But the Iraq War felt different, even then. Luckily when we were deployed, they sent us to Afghanistan, so my opinions about Iraq were irrelevant. I probably wouldn't have joined if Logan hadn't been determined, but I'd have followed him anywhere. He was always reckless, running into danger when everyone else ran away…” Enzo trailed off, staring at the city in the distance.
Leaning forward, I studied his profile intently. "He didn't come home, did he?"
"No,” he said, shaking his head slowly. "Some of the guys in our squad were cornered in a building. We had to shoot our way out. Our Squad Leader was shot in the leg. He couldn't walk on his own, so I was helping him out with Logan taking point. He caught a bullet in the throat. We got him to cover, but he bled out before back up made it."
I restrained the sniffle that pulled at my nose, fighting against the burn in my eyes and throat. "At least he wasn't alone."
"Yeah," Enzo said. "I guess that's all we can ever hope for really. Not to be alone when it all ends, and for the people we leave behind to know how much we loved them. His family knew, without a doubt, that he loved them more than anything."
I said nothing. I could have offered empty platitudes and words of reassurance about how he'd died fighting for something he believed in. That he'd made his family proud. But in the end, it was all irrelevant.
Gone was gone.
No matter how much we wanted to bring them back or make sense of the senseless death.
So I snuggled harder into his side, breathing in his scent and offering him the only comfort that I thought mattered in that moment. Enzo was such a physical man, wrapping my arms around him and squeezing him tightly felt like the only path to take. "I'm glad you made it home," I whispered, even as guilt consumed me for thinking it.
I was selfish enough to admit that I wouldn't have wanted Enzo to trade places with Logan. The idea of never meeting him, of never knowing him, saddened me more than I wanted to admit. Enzo couldn't die a statistic in a war he didn't believe in before I ever got to meet him.
If that made me selfish, then I'd be selfish for the rest of my days.
"I didn't bring you here to make you cry. Believe it or not," Enzo chuckled against the top of my head, making me crack a smile despite the bleak subject. "His last words to me were to live. I don't think I really did that until I met you."
"Lorenzo," I murmured, burying my face in his chest to fight back the flood of tears.
"You make me want to live, Baby Girl."
"I know the feeling," I whispered, feeling vulnerable with even that slight admission. He still terrified me, past fear that I’d ever felt before. But in the face of death and loss, risking my heart to Enzo felt like an inevitability.
He’d already worked his way beneath my skin and imprinted himself on my heart. All that remained was to see if he shattered it.
"My sisters always said that you should put the effort in when you tell a woman you love her for the first time. That you should show her you want to give her the world and leave no doubt that it isn't a throwaway statement." My heart stalled, fingers tightening around his waist. I couldn't bear to look at him, staring at the city in the distance instead.
"You don't have to do this. I don't —"
"Life is too short, Carina. We're at war with Murphy. If anybody knows how precious it is to tell people you love them while you can, it's me." His finger caught my chin, tilting my face up to meet his eye as terror must have filled mine. "I love you. I love you just the way you are. I love that you're stubborn as an ox, and I love that you aren't a perfect cookie-cutter shaped woman. You have jagged edges and cracks, but they only make me love you more."
Trying to shove down the hope surging in