Chapter 11 #2
Lukas and I briefly met in Copper Ridge over Christmas. I had a small break to spend the holidays with my family, and naturally, I spent as much time with Lukas as I could. We said our tearful goodbye, thinking that day was the last time I’d see him until after boot camp.
He moves over me, one long arm resting on the bed beside my head, and he crawls in, adjusting himself so his back is facing the wall. “Moved a few things around. I had to spend my last twenty-four hours with my girl,” he whispers, curling his free arm against my hip, tugging me to him.
My body falls into his perfectly with my cheek pressed to the inside of his bicep. We curl up together in the center of the bed, legs tangled around one another. Once we settle, a heavy rattle rises in my chest, and I let it out, followed by a sob.
“I owe you an apology.”
Lukas chuckles, pulling me closer into his chest. “What could you possibly have to apologize for?”
“Because I’ve been selfish. Kind of a brat.”
He laughs at that, and I wrap my arm around his side toward his back, splaying my fingers over the thick muscles in his shoulders as he pulls me tighter to him. “Babe, be serious.”
“I am! This whole time, from basically the moment you said you joined the Marines, all I’ve been thinking about is how scared I am.
How worried I’ll be. I realized tonight that I don’t think I even asked you how you’re feeling about it.
If you’re excited. Maybe this is the change you need.
I want you to be happy, baby, I do. I want you to feel how you felt playing ball, it’s just …
I’m scared,” I whimper, my chest cracking as I finally say the words out loud.
“Don’t be scared,” he mumbles against my hair.
“This is just a change for us. We’ll make it through this just like we’ve made it through everything else.
” He presses a soft kiss to the top of my head, and then my forehead, using his palm to tilt my face up to his.
“Besides, this is just boot camp. I’ll be in California, spending my days getting yelled at, and probably doing push-ups and missing you—it’ll be fine.
And am I excited? I don’t know yet. I know I feel like I’m doing something, at least, so that’s a start. ”
His lips brush against my cheeks, kissing away the tears that fall. “No matter where I am, or what I’m doing, I spend all day with my mind on you and only you.” He works his way down my face until his lips are against mine, and I inhale sharply at the feel of him.
“But what if you deploy?” I croak out as another wave of hot tears moves down my face.
He doesn’t have anything to say for that.
Since the night he called and said he was enlisting in the military, my thoughts haven’t stopped racing.
We aren’t in active war, but from what I’ve learned about the military in the last month is that troops are often deployed on missions to protect us from things we never even hear about.
Lukas sighs heavily, reaching his free hand up to smooth away the damp hair from my face.
“I know, baby. It’s all happening so fast, and there’s a lot we don’t know.
It scares me, too.” He pushes out a heavy breath.
“It’s not my dream to do this, Mags. You out of anyone should know that.
But this could be so good for us. The sign-on bonus is nice; it’ll be deposited into my bank account back home and rack up interest for the next few years.
You know I don’t need much to live off of.
I don’t care about fancy clothes. I already have my truck.
Any money I make will just be saved, and when we’re older, it’ll be a start for our house, our future. ”
“I don’t want the money,” I croak out. “I want you—healthy, happy, alive.”
My voice cracks with the last few words, and I bury my face in his chest. This conversation is one we’ve had nearly every day for the last few weeks since he broke the news to me.
He’s worried he won’t be able to provide for us in the future if he doesn’t do this.
That life on the farm will mean living paycheck to paycheck. And maybe it will, maybe it won’t.
I don’t view money the same way Lukas does. As long as I have what I need to survive, all the fancy extras don’t matter.
“I don’t want to fight about this, baby.
As hard as it is to say this, it’s a done deal.
But you need to remember…” He moves his hand to curl his finger under my chin, tipping it up so I’m forced to look at him.
“This is only four years. Four years active, four years reserve. We’ve already done almost five years long distance, this is just another four. ”
I move the hand that had been resting against his chest up, curling it around to rake my fingers through the longer strands of hair at the nape of his neck. “I got an offer … in France.”
The hand that had been therapeutically running over my head, smoothing back my hair, pauses for a brief moment.
His muscles tense, each one like stone against mine for a second before he relaxes, and his hand picks up the motion again.
“Okay,” he says, thinking. “We knew something international was a possibility. You’ve been talking about Paris since we were kids, so this is a good thing, right? ”
“Yeah. The company is smaller, but it sounds promising. It’s year-round, some travel within Europe, but there are more opportunities for solos, which means more exposure.
” I applied all over the States, to France and Germany.
Lukas was the one that encouraged me to apply everywhere, and we agreed that wherever I was hired would be where I was meant to go.
“You know I suck at geography, Mags, what is the time difference between California and France?”
“France is nine hours ahead. So, when you’re going to bed, I’ll just be getting up.”
The first thing I did after I received the offer was look up the time difference. It won’t be easy. There will likely be days on end that conversations flow through emails or texts. Phone calls might not happen unless one of us stays up late or the other gets up early.
“But Paris, baby. You’ve been dreaming about Paris your entire life.” His hand slides down my arm to grip my hip, wiggling it once. “We’re sad right now, yeah, but we have so much to look forward to. Like you, dancing on a stage in some fancy French opera house.”
I smile at the thought of that, my heart fluttering at the prospect. “I still can’t believe it. I don’t think it’ll hit me until that first show, you know?”
He nods at that, and I twirl my finger tighter around the longer strands of his hair, losing myself in the feel of the silk sliding across my skin.
Lukas used to always keep his hair on the shorter side, and I remember the day …
God, how old were we? Maybe fifteen or so, not quite dating but the feelings were there.
He had gone a few extra weeks without a hair cut one summer.
The ends started to curl around his ears, and when it was humid out after he’d been playing ball in the hot sun, it’d get all sun-kissed and wavy, and I told him how much I liked it.
Since then, he’s kept it on the shaggier side, and as I twist it around my finger, I realize that he won’t be able to keep it this length in the military. “Are they going to buzz your hair?”
He nods once. “I plan to shave it off as soon as I get back home.”
I nod at that, but my vision blurs the more I stare at the lock in my hand.
He slides his arms around me, pulling my frame so we’re chest to chest, his warm skin against mine. The slight tremble of his movements tells me that the uncertainty of all of this, of our futures, might terrify him as much as it does me.
“Well,” he says, clearing his throat roughly, “I know one thing for sure. One thing we can count on when there’s so much we don’t know about the future.”
“What’s that?”
“How much I love you,” he whispers into the dark, and I squeeze my eyes shut, burying my face into his neck.
“How much I'll support you, no matter what,” he whispers again, tightening his hold on me. “I know some day we’ll be back in Copper Ridge, back at our farmhouse, sitting on the front porch watching the sunset, and we’ll think back to these days, to these really scary times right now, and laugh at how foolish we were for being scared. ”
I chuckle a little at that, my laugh watery and thin. “We’ll say we were such stupid kids, not realizing how fast the time would go.”
“Right,” he agrees. “And when people ask us how we did it, you know what we’ll tell them?”
“Hmm?”
“That all that mattered to us was that we had each other. It’s going to hurt, yeah, but the future we make for ourselves will be worth all the hurt.
Whether it’s one hundred miles apart or ten thousand, we’ll still make it work, Mags.
There isn’t a life out there for me if you aren’t in it. Simple as that.”