Skylar laughed, hating the nice woman deep in her chest. “Wow, you remember that?”
“Luke opened up a delicious-smelling box and shared them, and the entire unit was, like, you haven’t left home yet! You two were famous before he even hit Basic.”
The woman grinned, and Skylar was stabbed with several kinds of envy. She clutched her messenger bag and said, “So, you work with Luke then?”
“We trained together and kept in touch. Calls in the same region, hanging out when we were stationed in the same base. Email, of course.”
“Yeah, he’s great at email….”
“Well, not really,” Luke’s fiancée said. “About average for a guy. A paragraph here and there.”
This woman got paragraphs. Could Skylar just leave right now without even seeing Luke?
She backed toward the ladder. She’d been waiting for five years for this night, getting to really know Luke a sentence at a time. The loss of him now reverberated over and over like a gong in her chest. She had missed him. She had missed him. She had missed him.
“I only ever got single sentences,” Skylar said.
“Only one sentence every couple of months?” The woman shook her head. “I would have given up.”
She didn’t bother to tell the woman it had been every day. That didn’t matter now. “Apparently I should have.”
“Ha ha.” The woman’s voice started to wobble. She cleared her throat, glanced over her shoulder, and seemed to struggle to hold on to her smile. The expression trembled, flattened out and then returned, like an image on water, and she was smiling again when she said, “I actually really hate you.”
Skylar’s chest heaved, a laugh surprised out of her. “What?”
“Skylar. You’re late.”
Luke’s serious voice tickled her eardrums, jolted her system like a warm finger sliding up her spine. Skylar swayed and turned to face him, mouth reacting before her mind could catch up. “You look great.”
His eyes made familiar crescents to match his beautiful smile. “Thanks.”
He did look great. Better than his last pictures taken in front of his new Black Hawk. The same dark brown eyes focused on her like only she existed on the roof; his hair, a flat Ice Man sheared cleanly up the sides made her want to dig in her fingers; and the adult muscle tone in that hard body perfectly filled his creased, off-duty jeans and starched, THIS WE’LL DEFEND T-shirt.
Skylar’s mouth went dry, and the crowd faded away and her chest ached. Ached for the boy she hadn’t made hers and again for the man that she had already lost.
“Sorry I missed you earlier. I made some wrong assumptions about…well, a lot of things, I guess.” The words stuck in her throat and she blinked back tears. “Congratulations.”
His gaze flicked over her shoulder, and Skylar’s followed…into the now empty space where his fiancée had been standing moments before.
“She brought it up on the boat,” he said. “Nothing’s settled.” His voice sounded flat.
“She seems really nice.” Skylar hugged her bag tight to her chest. “My boyfriend planned this big, suspicious dinner with all of our friends and family, but I put him off until after. But, he’s a really great guy, too, and so I’m sure we’ll both be super happy.”
Luke’s eyebrows lowered.
She didn’t mean to make him feel bad. Just because he hadn’t told her he had a fiancée or even a girlfriend—
Her chest hitched. Losing it. She was definitely losing it.
She pressed her cold hands against her collarbone. Her eyes burned. Oh God. She dashed away the moisture and turned, ready to run for the ladder, or possibly she could just throw herself off the edge. “See you at the ten-year reunion, maybe.”
His hand shot out and closed over her wrist, and he pulled her away from everyone into a dark corner of the roof. “Skylar.”
Her chest trembled. She squeezed her eyes shut and spun away. “Yeah?”
He tugged her backward, turning her around to face him. When she couldn’t look up at him he took her bag off her shoulder and set it gently on the ground. He cupped his hands around her bent elbows and drew her into his warmth. “You’re here.”
She took a shaky breath and covered her face so he wouldn’t see. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so late. I thought I could still catch you.”
He gently peeled her hands away from her face. “I love you.”
Her chest dropped and lifted and dropped like there were turbulent air currents in her body. “But you…and her…”
“She showed up at the boat. I didn’t bring her. I couldn’t get her off the topic. She just kept talking.” He pressed his lips to her palm, and warm commitment streaked up Skylar’s arm like a secret language, whispering his gentlest reassurance. “I’d always told her you were the one. She knows now. You didn’t arrive at the boat, and I suppose to her that seemed like it might alter the situation. She started telling everyone what she wanted to believe. It didn’t seem right to contradict her in front of everyone.”
Skylar’s chest hiccupped again. She was having trouble taking in what he was saying. “So…if I hadn’t shown up you’d have to marry her?”
He snorted. “No, you’re the one I’m going to marry.”
“But— You— I missed you. Wait. Marry?”
He tugged her forward and touched his lips to hers. Her heart rose, flying high above the star-dotted island. He tasted like promises, and Skylar gasped.
“Luke—”
His arms wrapped around her, hard, pulling her against his wide pectorals, the ones she had long ago admired in the weight room. He sucked in a breath like he wanted to take in all of her. Like he couldn’t believe he had her here, finally, in front of him. That they were here together.
His lips moved against hers, and hers curved into a smile, and her chest began shaking like the whipping staccato of a rotor blade turning, and her laughter bubbled up, uncontainable. He kissed her through her smiles, through her giggles, through her salty tears. He kissed her and erased all the bad stuff for the past five years, like the trauma of failing to get into flight attendant school, and for the good stuff, too. The high of getting accepted to a college where she could get a degree in education, despite her grades, and for every little moment of their shared everyday one-line-email life.
“I can’t believe you’re really here,” he murmured into her ferry-mussed hair. “Nothing scared me so much as not seeing you on that cruise. And then not seeing you on this rooftop tonight.”
“I was so excited about coming to see you that I spaced on the details.”
He cupped her hands with his, so warm, and drew them to his face, resting them along the smooth plane of his jaw so she could feel as well as see the gentleness of his dawning smile. “As long as you’re aware of the detail that we’re engaged now.”
Engaged. He’d just said they were engaged. She pulled her hands away and looped her fingers in his belt, her heart fluttering madly. “I…still have to break up with my boyfriend, actually.”
He flipped open his phone and held it out to her.
She took it and made the call while Luke held her. Her boyfriend tried to talk her out of breaking up. She reminded him about their agreement, because she had always been honest with boys, all of them. When she’d first met him he had said he understood and didn’t mind being second. Up until now neither she nor Luke had had the courage to shove the easy options aside and embrace their true happiness. Now they did. No matter where in the world it led them.
She handed back Luke’s phone and gazed up into his eyes. They were dark with love. And with hope, with eagerness, and something more. Trust.
He kissed her eyebrows. “I wish you would have done that five years ago.”
“I was only ever serious about you.”
He touched his forehead to hers. Together at last, mind to mind and heart to heart. Five years late, perhaps, but burning just as bright as a dawn’s new sun.
He slid a perfec
tly-sized sparkling diamond onto her ring finger. “Ready?”
Her heart lifted off. “Oh, yes.”
“Sure?”
She clung to him. “Absolutely. Seal it with a kiss?”
He smiled. “Absolutely.”
And then he did.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wendy Lynn Clark loves nothing more than a happy ending—except maybe typing THE END with the help of her two happy calico cats and endless cups of delicious tea. Friend her on Facebook for adorable cat photos, check out her sci-fi/fantasy addiction on GoodReads, sign up for free stories on her newsletter, and find out how to construct the elliptical-writing desk that made her lose 14 pounds at her website, http://wendylynnclark.com
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I'll Be Waiting (San Juan Island Stories Book 6) Page 3
