Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
For a moment, the sound of crashing waves overtook the music from inside the bar.
“Can you tell me where you’re going?” she asked.
“Afghanistan.” It had been all over the news, so it wasn’t like I was violating OPSEC over here.
Her face fell. “And you’ve already been there once?”
I nodded. “We got back a little under a year ago, but I joined the unit a little late, and left a little early, so I wasn’t there the full time.” An IED had ended that deployment a month early for me, but at least I was alive.
“And you’re already going back?” Her eyes flared. “How is that fair?”
“Fair isn’t a word that really plays into military life.” I shifted my weight.
“That’s what you’re doing here, huh?” She gestured to the bar. “Letting loose before you leave?”
“Yeah. We’re stationed at Hunter. It’s about a half hour from here.” I took the obvious opening for a subject change. “And you live in DC, but you’re here for a bachelorette party?”
“I just moved to DC for law school.”
I did the math, and it didn’t add up. “Shouldn’t you be a senior this upcoming year?”
“I graduated a year early.” She shrugged like it was no big deal, but then she looked away, concentrating a second too long on her soda, and I knew it was, and not in a good way. “Anyway, Margo is from Savannah, and she wanted her bachelorette party to be close for her sisters, since the wedding is in Syracuse next month. We fly out tomorrow morning.”
“And we just happen to be in the same place at the same time for all of twelve hours.” I couldn’t stop looking at her, taking care to memorize every detail of her beautiful face. There were subtle changes here and there, the result of two and a half years passing, but she looked exactly like I remembered her. “Talk about coincidence.”
“Serendipity,” she said with a smile that went straight to my dick. Any other place, any other time, I would have asked her out.
But she lived over five hundred miles away, and I was deploying.
“I didn’t want to leave you.” The words slipped out.
Her eyes widened.
“At the hospital,” I clarified. “I wanted to stay until you were awake, to know you’d made it out okay. But the recruiters showed up for me.”
“Serena told me.” She sighed. “I couldn’t remember your name. Everything was a little fuzzy thanks to the concussion. I made out Nathaniel on my hospital records—your handwriting is something else, by the way—and then your bag showed up, and under this little flap, N. Phelan was written. The airline wouldn’t give out contact information, and you . . . you don’t exist online. No social media. Nothing. I looked.”
“Not a fan of random people watching a highlight reel of my life.” She’d looked for me. Me. A guy whose parents didn’t even bother to show up for my graduation from basic or ranger school, not that I blamed Mom for that.
“Did you at least get a phone?” She arched a single brow.
I shifted to the side and pulled my phone from my back pocket, sliding it across the table as proof.
She caught it and grinned, hitting the home button. It lit up her smile, and she tapped at it. “There we go.” She handed it back. “I texted myself—that way I can at least get your address to return your stuff. And can we talk about your taste in music?”
“Keep the stuff. You have a problem with Panic! at the Disco?” I asked, sliding the phone back into my pocket.
“No, actually. That’s one band you turned me on to, but Radiohead? Pearl Jam? Did you ever leave the nineties?” she teased.
“Hey, half the music on that iPod’s from this century. I think?” My brow furrowed. “Shit, I can’t remember.”
“I do. I can name every single song.” She sipped her drink.
“Can you, now?” Damn, it felt good to smile, and not one of those fake ones, but to really, honestly smile. This was the only thing I’d forgotten about her: how effortless it had been to talk to her in those minutes we’d been delayed on the tarmac.
She put her first finger up. “Panic! at the Disco, ‘Northern Downpour.’” She put up a second finger. “Radiohead, ‘Creep,’” she started, then shocked the shit out of me by naming every single song.
“And out of all those, what was your favorite?” I asked.
“‘Northern Downpour.’” She smiled. “I remember you doing that too. Asking me questions to distract me.”
“Maybe I was just trying to get to know you better.”
“Fine. Then it goes both ways. Which out of those is your favorite?”
“Same, ironically. ‘Northern Downpour.’”
We spent the next few hours out there, talking about music and books. She filled me in on how college had gone for her, and I told her about the classes I’d managed to take during the year we hadn’t been in the sandbox.