What if the car batteries died in the cold and Tara was stuck out here during a blizzard? What if she rebuffed some guy’s advances during her shift and he waited outside for her to finish? What if someone figured out she was in the house by herself and attacked her in the middle of the night, confident no one would hear her scream?
He held her more tightly against his side, squeezing his eyes shut to banish those thoughts. Tara had taken care of herself for nearly thirty years. She could manage another six months.
Her fingers moved where they were splayed on his chest, and he looked down at the woman sleeping against his ribs. Even unconscious she looked determined, unyielding, her brows drawn together slightly, her mouth a serious line. She was the most frustrating, complicated woman he’d ever met. He couldn’t imagine ever loving anyone else.
And although she still hadn’t said it, he had to believe she loved him too. There’d been something different when they’d made love on the couch a few hours before, something newly intimate and emotional. He had to keep the faith that she wouldn’t leave him, that it would be her smiling face he saw when the bus pulled up in six months’ time. She’d find her way around to the words, like she found her way around to everything else.
Or so he hoped.
He thought about the phone call he’d had with his mother after dinner, the last conversation they’d have before he left the country. Her words were slurred and she was on the brink of tears through the whole thing, interrupting him to recall random anecdotes about his childhood, unwittingly repeating herself, telling him again and again to stay safe over there. He believed she loved him, and he believed she would worry about him, but he wondered how much of that call she’d remember in the morning.
Maybe he was being too harsh on Tara. From the sounds of things she’d had it even harder than he had—at least his mother had come home every night, and he never doubted that he’d be fed or sheltered. Maybe it was too much to ask her to make such an overt expression of commitment. Maybe her inability to say it didn’t mean it wasn’t how she felt. Maybe he expected too much, too soon.
But damn, he wanted to hear it.
The alarm squealed sooner than he expected, and he silenced it with the flat of his palm. Tara groaned and rolled into his chest, where the flutter of her eyelashes against his skin made his groin twitch. Good God, he was going to miss her.
Neither of them ate much of the scrambled eggs he made, Tara claiming it was too early as she pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders, his own stomach too busy doing nervous backflips to digest solid food. They both drank coffee like it was water. They drained the pre-set machine in minutes, and he had to brew two mugs of instant before either of them felt human enough to converse.
He showered quickly and crossed off the last few items on his checklist as he added them to his carry-on. Toothpaste, shampoo, comb, deodorant. Tara watched him draw ominous black lines on the paper with eyes just as dark, just as inscrutable. The final pull of the zipper echoed loudly in the silent room.
They piled his camouflage luggage into the trunk of the Challenger, their breath showing in vapored puffs as he drove through the heavy, pre-dawn darkness to the post. When he passed their IDs to the gate guard the young soldier gave him a needless and borderline inappropriate salute.
“Y’all be careful out there,” he urged before disappearing into the guard shack and raising the boom.
Tara hadn’t said a word since they pulled out of the driveway, and when he parked the Challenger in the gymnasium lot and cut the engine her silence suddenly felt heavy, like a fully loaded field pack strapped onto his shoulders. He took the key out of the ignition, reached for her hand and dropped it in her palm.
“You’ll be the third person, apart from me and Trey, ever to drive this car. Try not to crash it.”
If she caught the humor in his tone she gave no sign. She leaned down to drop the key in her purse, then straightened and stared through the windshield.
He cleared his throat. “It’s fine if you don’t want to go through the whole check-in thing with me, we can say goodbye—”
“Goddammit, Chance,” she shouted, turning on him with fury in her voice and tears in her eyes. She grabbed fistfuls of his uniform, pulling him across the gearshift and pushing him away all at once. “I love you, you stupid grunt. I love you like hell and you’re going to come home to me in one piece, you hear?”
His throat tightened and his arms shook and he pulled her across the car into his lap, squeezing her so hard he thought he might crush her but unable to restrain himself. He’d never felt such elation, such soaring delight as those three words inspired. She sobbed into his shoulder, heavy, heart-wrenching, and he pressed his face into her hair and closed his eyes and tried to memorize everything about her, from the vanilla notes in her shampoo to the exact curve of her hips beneath his hands.
“I love you so much, Tara,” he rasped. “When I get home I’m gonna show you, just you wait.”
“Fuck that,” she muttered, pulling back to smile at him with tearstained cheeks. “Just come home. We’ll deal with the rest when we get there.”
More cars were filling the lot on either side of them. Wordlessly they climbed out of the Challenger and unloaded his bags from the trunk. Tara trailed him into the brightly lit gymnasium, stood patiently at his side while he waited in line to check in, waited for his bags to be inspected, waited for them to be loaded onto an overfilled trolley and rolled away.
Then it was time to go.
The room around them was full of the sounds of sniffling as wives and mothers bit back their sorrow, tried on the brave faces they would wear for the next six months at least. Only Tara stood stiff and strong, her eyes clear, her smile genuine. That’s when he knew he’d underestimated her, doubted the depth of the reserves that ran all the way to her soul. That’s when he knew she was the perfect woman for him.
“I guess I’ll see you when I see you.” She beamed up at him.
“I guess so.”
“Don’t do anything crazy.”
“Crazy’s all I know.”
“Not anymore.” She took his hands in hers, pushed up on tiptoe to kiss him square on the mouth. “Have fun out there. Call me if you need me.”
“I surely will. I love you, sugar.”
“I love you too, Sergeant. Travel safe.”
He inclined his head in farewell and shouldered his pack, then set off across the room to join the line of soldiers readying to board the buses. In a few minutes he’d be on his way to the airfield; in a little over an hour he’d be on a plane headed for some of the most hostile, dangerous territory in the world.
He couldn’t stop grinning.
As he filed out of the gymnasium he took one last look at Tara, his wife, the love he’d always wanted and never dared believe he could handle. She smiled, nodding encouragingly. He winked. She rolled her eyes playfully.
He turned his smile back toward the neck of the soldier in front of him. He couldn’t wait to leave. The sooner he got off the ground, the sooner he could start counting down the days until he came home. Because for the first time in his life, there was someone waiting for him.
He recalled that fateful roulette spin almost a year ago. It must’ve been nearing six o’clock in the morning, and the casino was practically empty, the slot machines beeping and blinking unheeded. They staggered and weaved between the unoccupied poker tables until he backed into the roulette wheel, earning a dark look from the croupier. She maintained her bored expression as Tara cajoled him to make a bet, opening her wallet to see how much she had left to put down.
He plucked it from her hand and dropped it back in the bag. “Those aren’t the kind of stakes I’m interested in.”
She arched a challenging brow. “What did you have in mind?”
He put the five-dollar minimum bet on the table, his eyes never leaving hers. “Let’s make a bet, sugar. If this lands on green, we get married.”
The humor drained from her face. She stood straighter, lifting her chin. She nodded.
