Page 14 of Diesel’s Second Chance

"I love you too."

The words are out before I can stop them. Simple. Devastating. True.

Jackson goes completely still, like he's afraid to breathe. "June…"

"Not for twenty years," I say quickly, the words tumbling out in a rush. "Not during my marriage. I loved Tommy. Completely. He was my whole world and I never… I never looked at you that way when he was alive. I swear."

"I know." His voice is rough. "I know you didn’t."

"But after he died..." I have to stop, swallow against the tightness in my throat. "After he died, you were there. You handled everything I couldn't handle. You sat with me in that house, you helped me make decisions I couldn't make, you just... showed up. Every single time. And somewhere in that second year, maybe the third, I started noticing things."

Jackson doesn't move, doesn't interrupt.

"I noticed how you always remembered how I take my coffee. How you'd fix things around my house without me asking. How you'd call on the hard days, the anniversaries, like you had them memorized." Tears are streaming down my face now. "I noticed that you made me feel less alone in a way nobody else could. And I told myself it was just grief, just dependency, just me clinging to the only person who understood what I'd lost."

"June…"

"But it wasn't," I continue, voice breaking. "It wasn't just grief. It was you. The way you'd touch my shoulder or my hand and it would feel like like coming home. The way these dinners became the best part of my month even though they're supposed to be about remembering Tommy."

I'm crying harder now, years of buried feelings spilling out.

"I fell in love with you sometime in those first few years after Tommy died, and I've hated myself for it ever since. Because how can I love my husband's best friend? How can I sit at Tommy's grave and then go home and dream about you? How can I honor his memory while wanting—" I stop, chest heaving. "While wanting something I have no right to want?"

Jackson closes the distance between us in two strides and pulls me against his chest, wrapping his arms around me so tightly I can barely breathe. I break completely, sobbing into his flannel shirt while he holds me, one hand cupped against the back of my head.

"You're not a terrible person," he murmurs into my hair. "You're human."

"I loved him," I choke out. "I loved Tommy so much."

"I know. So did I."

"So how can we… How can we feel this and not be betraying him?"

Jackson's quiet for a long moment, just holding me while I cry, years of grief, guilt and longing into his chest.

"I don't know," he finally says. "I've been trying to figure that out for two decades and I still don't have an answer. But June..." He pulls back just enough to tilt my face up to his. "You loved him when he was alive. You were a good wife to him. You didn't betray him then, and you're not betraying him now."

"How can you say that?"

"Because love isn't finite." His thumbs brush away my tears. "You loving me doesn't mean you loved him less. It just means your heart didn't stop working when his did."

The words crack something open in my chest. I've spent all those years believing I had to choose: Tommy's memory or my own happiness. That I couldn't honor one without sacrificing the other.

"I'm scared," I whisper.

Jackson's arms tighten. "Of what?"

"Of this. Of what it means. Of how wrong it feels and how right it feels at the same time." I pull back just enough to look up at his face. "Of losing you if we try and it doesn't work."

"You're not going to lose me."

"You can't promise that. You said it yourself. There's a war, men are dying, you don't know if you're going to survive."

"Then we make the most of whatever time we have," Jackson says, and there's a fierce determination in his voice I've never heard before. "We stop wishing things were different and we start living in the reality we've got. Even if it's complicated. Even if it's messy."

"What about Tommy?"

"What about him?" Jackson cups my face in his hands. "You think he'd want us miserable? Want us spending the rest of our lives alone because we're too guilty to be happy?"