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Hailey holds her ring in her hand. It’s warm because she hasn’t taken it off since last December. It’s been covered in mud, sweat, gun oil, and blood. It’s gotten scrapped up right along with her knuckles and washed clean as she’s picked her fingers through her hair in the shower after long days spent in the field and at her desk.
And now it’s off.
Something tastes bitter in her mouth, but relief opens in her chest.
Voight’s right. She’s like Lee. Killing herself for someone who won’t meet her at all, nevermind half way.
She’s still confused. Still hurt and there is a knife in her ribs and in her back. One driving it’s way to her heart and the other crippling her with the pain of the betrayal she feels.
She trusted him not to do this. She trusted him life she had never trusted anyone. Not Garrett. Definitely not her own family. All the promises he’d made to her. All the promises they’d made together-
They weren’t promises anymore if they were broken.
She turns the ring over between the tips of her fingers. It was growing cold now, no longer warmed by her hand.
She puts it on the coffee table and looked at it. A perfect little black circle on the wood, farther away from her now than it had ever been since it had been hers.
~~~
Jay hasn’t worn his ring since October. He wasn’t even supposed to have it where they were, but he’d slipped it onto the chain of his dog tags and nobody ever saw it tucked under his Kevlar anyway.
He could feel it there, a slightly different texture than the smooth metal of his dog tags. Some days, it caught against the chain and was pressed into his skin by the armor he wore so that it rubbed until it blistered and he would spend the night with his hand over the spot thinking it was some kind of karmic punishment. Just another reminder that he was failing Hailey. Of the pain he was causing her because reaching for his ring was so, so, so much easier than reaching for her. Burdening her on top of everything else.
He couldn’t bring himself to pick up the phone when he had it at camp. He’d sit holding his phone in one hand and have his other wrapped around the chain at this neck, thumbing at his ring while it spun around and around and around.
The day he finally broke and called, he couldn’t even say anything at first.
She’d been understanding. Too understanding for already knowing about the extension he’d been afraid to tell her about.
He sobbed sitting on his low bunk, the back of his hand pressed against his mouth to keep from being heard and his ring gripped so hard in his hand that dog tags caught with it left angry red lines when he finally let go. Her voice was there in his ear and he wanted her, wanted to go home.
He tried to find the words and couldn’t. He was there because he scared himself in Chicago. He was there because he didn’t think he could be the man he wanted to be if he stayed in Chicago. He wanted to tell her he was still looking for him and he didn’t even know if he was out there anymore.
Would she still be so understanding if he couldn’t be the man he was? How could she trust him when he couldn’t trust himself?
He forgave her a thousand sins he could never forgive himself for and the guilt he wanted to banish always seemed to return tenfold just when he thought it had lost his scent. He was drowning and there were nights the only thing keeping him grounded was a little black ring on a chain around his neck. He’d slip it around his ring finger with the chain still looped through it as he lay looking at the top of the mud brown tent, the closest it had come to being on his finger since he took it off the night he shipped out of Chicago. The closest he could be to Hailey.