Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It was that kind of afternoon on the Purple Heart Ranch; the kind that made it hard to remember the world had edges.
The light came in low and golden across the wide fields, making the grass look as if it had been lit from underneath.
The mountains in the distance appeared purple at the base and amber at the ridge.
The sky above them couldn't decide between blue and gold, so it did both.
The fields ran wide to the east, broken up by the working paddocks and the kitchen gardens and the long fence lines that the ranch hands kept in the kind of repair that said people here took pride in the small things.
Two horses moved along the far fence. A third stood alone near the water trough with the philosophical stillness of an animal that had found peace.
Much like the soldiers who cared for them daily.
A pair of dogs came around the corner of the equipment barn at speed — a shepherd mix and something smaller and indeterminate that was working twice as hard to keep up. They crossed the yard without stopping, pursuing something, and disappeared around the other side of the barn.
Finn looked at the soccer ball sitting in the grass where it had landed.
That was when he saw Fran DeMonti standing at the edge of the field.
He was thirty-four years old and had temples that had started going gray two years ago.
The gray wasn't from age; rather, it came with a diagnosis and a medication schedule and the reckoning of a man who had been told his heart had been working harder than hearts were supposed to work and had decided to keep going, anyway.
And there he stood, still going… and going gray.
Across the field, Carlos Lopez trapped a soccer ball with a series of complicated footwork while Fran looked on with a feigned bored expression. The bored expression turned into a scowl when the ball sailed past Fran.
"I'm the one playing goalie," called Carlos. "You're not supposed to dodge."
"That went left field," called Fran as he went after the ball.
"Left field? You're thinking of baseball, old man."
The ball rolled to a stop in front of Finn. Fran had a grin on his face as he bent to pick up the ball.
From the other end of the field, young Carlos groaned. "You're not supposed to touch the ball with your hands. That's why it's called futbol."
Fran dropped the ball and gave it a powerful kick. Carlos dove for it with his own hands to keep it out of the goal. Fran bent over, bracing his hands on his thighs, drawing in a breath that didn’t come as easily as it should have.
Finn was already moving before he thought about it. "Are you good?"
Fran lifted a hand without looking up, the universal sign for give me a second, and pulled in another breath. His shoulders rose, held, then settled.
"I’m fine," he said finally, straightening. "Just got winded."
Carlos jogged past them, tapping the ball from foot to foot with easy control. "That’s not wind. That’s age."
Fran snorted, but ruffled the kid's dark hair. When Finn had come here three years ago, Carlos had been half his size. The kid was rapidly approaching manhood. The term kid wouldn't apply to him much longer.
Carlos kept the ball moving, kicking it ahead of him, looping back, restless energy with nowhere particular to go. There was something in the way he moved that reminded Finn of the first few months on the ranch—motion for the sake of motion, like stopping might mean something catching up.
Fran watched him for a second, something quiet and satisfied in his expression, then looked back at Finn. "The field looks good. Grass came in even."
"We adjusted the watering schedule. Heat was pulling too much out mid-day."
"Yeah." Fran’s gaze shifted, settling on him in a different way. "We're all glad you stuck around."
Carlos called something out from across the field, half-formed, mostly nonsense, and kept moving.
Fran leaned back a little, rolling his shoulders. "You know how Eva and I met?"
Finn did. He’d heard the story before, in pieces, over the years.
"I wanted her to marry one of the men from my unit when we first came to the ranch," Fran continued anyway. "That was the plan. She needed a safe place to live for her brother and sister."
He glanced toward Carlos, who was now juggling the ball foot to foot with uneven success.
"I kept finding reasons each one of them wasn’t right for her. Because I was already halfway in love with her, the first time I saw her. Didn’t realize it until I’d run out of excuses."
Fran let out a quiet breath, something like a laugh. "Problem was, I had shrapnel sitting too close to my heart for anyone to call marrying me a good idea."
Finn knew that part too. The mission that had gone wrong. The fragment that had lodged where it shouldn’t have. The risk that had never fully gone away.
"I told myself it wasn’t fair to her, that I couldn’t ask her to build something on top of that. And then I married her anyway."
Carlos whooped from across the field. The ball had made it into the back of the goal.
Fran shook his head, still smiling. "Couple months later, they ran the scans again. The shrapnel had moved. Out of the danger zone. It was a miracle."
What Finn heard, what was left unsaid, was that Eva was Fran's miracle.
"You’ll move heaven and earth for the ones you love. Turns out, sometimes, the earth moves back."
Carlos sent the ball sailing toward them. Fran trapped it with his foot, then nudged it back out without effort.
"Ivy coming over today?" Fran asked.
"Yeah."
Fran nodded once. "Good."
That was all.
Finn turned toward the path that led back to the mess hall, leaving the field behind him. The kitchen was empty when he got there. Clean and orderly.
He set his phone down on the counter and moved through the space automatically, checking surfaces, clearing what didn’t need to be there, aligning what did.
He paused, then picked up his phone. He opened her page. There was still no new post.
Finn and Ivy had so much going on with preparing for the rally, then winning the rally, and now preparing for the state competition. He supposed she was too busy to post anything new.
Well, he didn't want to be the reason she didn't achieve her viral dreams. So he went to work.
He adjusted the cutting board. Shifted the bowl an inch to the left. Pulled open the blinds to let in natural light where it would hit clean without flattening everything out.
He didn’t like cameras. Didn’t like being on display. That was for the food. But for Ivy, for her, he'd do it.
He wanted to say he understood what the follows and the likes and all that virtual socializing meant to her. He didn't really. Didn't understand why she wanted to give strangers access to her. But it was important to her. So it was important to him.
Finn thought about Fran’s words. Heaven and earth. Finn would move them for Ivy if she asked. He'd meet her where she was. He'd stand in the light if that was what the moment required.
Finn was all in. He'd accept whatever Ivy was willing to give him. He'd hold on and hope that she never wanted to let him go.