May Contain Wine

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  “All right, boys,” our drill sergeant bellowed. “Let’s get to chow.”

  ***

  Seven and a half months later

  “Yo!”

  I turned to see a man from my unit stopped at the foot of my cot.

  “Yeah?” I asked, utterly exhausted.

  Being deployed was nothing like I thought it would be.

  I expected constant fighting. Battles. Firefights.

  Anything.

  What I got was a fuckin’ whole lot of nothing.

  Every day was monotonous. A whole lot of sitting around and doing nothing.

  We walked. We patrolled. We went back to our bunks. And we did it all over again the next day.

  It really, really sucked.

  What sucked even more was that I wanted to be back home, in the states, where I was supposed to be.

  Instead, I was one of the oh-so-lucky ones that got deployed. According to my CO—commanding officer—while in bootcamp, that almost never happened.

  Except, apparently, for me.

  What fuckin’ luck I had.

  “You got a call from your pop, I think. An emergency,” he said. “Jordan took a message since you were out. He wants you in his office.”

  His ‘office’ was actually a tent.

  I ran to the command tent and halted outside, even though I wanted nothing more than to barge in and demand to know what happened.

  I looked at the man at the door, and he announced me.

  I gritted my teeth as I waited for Jordan to allow me entrance.

  “Come in.”

  I sighed and pushed through the tent flaps, nodding my head at my commander.

  “Sir,” I said, trying to temper my irritation.

  “Kid,” he said. “Your baby’s on the way. Your dad called.”

  I felt my heart lurch into my throat.

  My baby was on the way.

  My son.

  Over the last seven months, I’d gotten quite a bit of mail, emails, and letters, as well as a few packages. All of them I awaited with bated breath.

  I was so goddamn excited about having a kid on the way that it wasn’t even funny.

  I swallowed hard.

  “Really?” I all but croaked.

  Jordan’s eyes crinkled at the edges as his mouth formed into a semblance of a smile.

  “You’ve got four days. Make the best of them,” Jerk, aka Jordan, muttered.

  I blinked.

  Honestly, I was surprised to get any days to go, let alone four.

  Especially with the escalation in fighting we’d seen over the last few days.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said softly.

  Jordan looked up at me with a grin.

  “You know, I had my first kid while I was deployed, too,” he said. “Didn’t even know about it until I got home. Nine months after he was born. So I get it. I know that it’s hard. It’s like your guts have been ripped out, and they’re rotting and exposed, just hanging there but you’re unable to fix it.” That was true. Very descriptive and imaginative, but true. “See the kid. Don’t let that baby grow up without you.”

  I didn’t want him to grow up without me.

  The sad fact was, the US government owned me lock, stock and barrel for another five years.

  And, unless I was hurt to the point where I could no longer perform my duties for them, I was stuck.

  Also, even if I did get to the point where I was no longer deployed, I highly doubted that I’d be able to convince Delanie to move where they stationed me.

  So what did it matter if I was deployed or not? At least this way, I didn’t feel like a piece of shit for not being able to see my kid.

  Rubbing my chest over my heart where it was at a constant ache since I’d found out about my child all of those months ago, I looked at Jordan.

  “And your son?” I said softly. “How’s he doing now? Does he understand your job?”

  Please tell me that he understood.

  Jordan’s face went utterly blank. “I haven’t been able to find him again. When I deployed the next time, my ex was gone, and so was my son.”

  That caused nausea to well up and fear to intrude.

  Delanie would never do that, would she?