by Jessie Lane
I would learn to live half a life and forsake the dreams of a white dress, a picket fence, and a happily ever after. I would give up on the foolish dreams of waking up next to the man of my dreams, forget the idea that I would get to lie my head next to his every night. I would trash the silly delusions of growing old together and being surrounded by a family we had created out of our love.
After all, there was no love. There was absolutely nothing now. And what friendship we’d had was wiped away between Lucas’s stupidity this morning and my own last night.
With all of my delusional hopes and dreams of love stripped away, all there was left was me—a blank slate that felt incredibly hollow.
Regardless, a blank slate was a clean slate. That meant I could rebuild myself, and this time, I was going to make my heart impenetrable. I would build a fortress around myself that would make Fort Knox look like a fucking joke. No one would ever hurt me the way I had stupidly let myself get hurt again.
Fairy tales and dreams were for suckers who believed in them, and I had been a sucker for far too long.
I knew better now.
Now I had to pick up the pieces that were left in the wake of Lucas blowing everything inside of me to smithereens. I had to put them back together. Then, when I was done rebuilding myself, I was never going to be vulnerable to a man again.
No wonder my mom was such a robot at times. Her world had been blown apart by a man, too, yet I had obtusely thought nothing like that would happen to me. Our circumstances might be drastically different, but the end results had been the same—two broken-hearted women who had to learn the hard way that you shouldn’t expose the soft spot inside of you.
Nope. You should lock it up and throw away the key.
Well, that was what I was going to do. I didn’t need a knight in armor. No way. I was going to wear my own flippin’ armor from now on, and nobody, not even Lucas, was ever going to get near my weak heart again.
I didn’t need anybody except my momma.
And my art.
And maybe Olivia, even if I couldn’t talk to her about what had happened today.
I would just go home, shore up my defenses, start building my metaphorical but totally kick-ass Fort Ginny-way-cooler-than-Knox fortress, and pretend to have a stomach bug for a few days to keep Olivia away. I would use that time to figure out my next move.
There was one thing I didn’t need time to figure out, though.
I never wanted to see Lucas Young again.
A sting against my palm made me realize I had unconsciously reached up to grasp the heart-shaped locket still hanging around my throat.
I guessed it might take my subconscious a while to figure out that Lucas was no longer in the picture. At least my poor, battered heart didn’t need to be taught that lesson again. Once in a lifetime was enough. I just had to remind my subconscious of the lesson we had learned until it stopped yearning for the boy who used to live across the street.
Men sucked.
And Lucas Young was the suckiest of them all.
Chapter
11
Lucas
Six Months Later …
Fuck you, you fuckin’ fuck!
The bold, black letters practically screamed at me from the crisp, white background of the front of the postcard. I was sure that was the point of the card’s design, along with the drawn-out middle finger right next to the written message.
Flipping it over, I saw dainty, scrawled red ink that read, The postcard says it all. Stop trying to contact me.
Ginny was lucky she was almost three thousand miles across the country from me, or I would bend her over my lap and spank her ass until she couldn’t sit for a few days. I had never been more pissed than I was now at being stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington when she was back in New York.
Fuck me?
She already had in more ways than one. That was why I was trying so damn hard to get her to talk to me.
Apparently, my angel had turned into a bit of a devil and was determined to drive me insane. Every time I reached out to her, I was given the proverbial middle finger. This time, she had given me the middle finger literally in black and white.
The last six months had been hell. I had been trying to get a hold of Ginny in one way or another since finding the smear of blood on my cabin sheets. Every phone call went unanswered. Text messages were always ignored except for the one time she did reply with, Take a long walk off a short pier and lose my number.
For a whole two days, I got my hopes up that maybe she would finally talk to me after that message. Then I found myself blocked from calling and texting her altogether.
Since she wouldn’t talk to me over the phone or through text messages, I tried emails. The first few I sent her were mainly apologies for my reaction. Then I screwed up and got frustrated one night, typing out a lengthy email about how she needed to pull her head out of her ass and talk to me. Just because we had made a mistake, it didn’t mean we had to stop talking to each other completely, right?
Evidently, that had been the wrong thing to say.
Ginny’s response was that the only mistake she had ever made was loving me. Then she’d blocked me from emailing her, too.
Nothing made a man realize he had really and truly fucked up than seeing his woman give up on him for good. It was at that point that I started to panic, and wasn’t that crazy in itself? I was a goddamn Green Beret, trained to be cool, calm, and collected, even if I was neck deep in terrorists, and I was panicking over one woman. She wasn’t just any woman, though; she was my woman. The trouble was that she didn’t know she was my woman because she wouldn’t talk to me, not that I blamed her.
After what I had done, I wouldn’t want to talk to me, either. Regardless, I needed Ginny to talk to me. I needed to apologize. I wasn’t some poetic schmuck who could sit down and pour my heart out with pen and paper. I would only fuck that up if I tried.
No, I needed something else, something tangible I could mail to my angel that would let her know I still knew her and that I really was sorry.
I started to give up hope of figuring out whatever that perfect something was until I happened to see it sitting in a little tourist shop on a street down by the water of Puget Sound.
On a stand next to one of the shop’s windows, a flash of color caught my eye. Curious, I strolled over to the window and examined it.
Postcards.
But they were more than postcards. They were the answer to my dilemma since they were the sort of thing Ginny would love: fantasy art of dragons, knights, fairies, and castles. They immediately brought up the many memories I had of my angel sitting with a pad of paper and markers in her hand, drawing away as if the rest of the world didn’t exist around her.
To me, those pictures were nonsense. To her, they were representations of her dreams and wild imagination.
I went into the shop and bought every variation of those crazy-ass, little postcards—all twenty of them. For the last four months, I had been mailing her one postcard a week with two words written on the back: I’m sorry.
Maybe if I apologized to her enough, she would give in and finally talk to me.
I could write more things I wanted to say, like, I love you and If you don’t start fucking talking to me, then I’m going to tie you down to the bed and turn your ass cherry red, but I thought those should be said at least over the phone, if not in person. That was why I stuck to my apologies.
Sixteen postcards later, this was the response I got back.
Fuck you, you fuckin’ fuck!
Frustration and anger boiled up inside of me until I exploded. The next thing I knew, my fist was throbbing in pain and buried in the sheetrock of the wall by my front door.
Pulling my hand out of the wall, I ignored the mess I had made, ignored my bleeding and busted knuckles, and walked over to where my cell phone sat on my kitchen table.
After a couple of rings, my sister answered with an exhausted, “Lucas?”
I didn’t give her the niceties of a greeting, just asked what I needed to know. “Why won’t she talk to me?”
“I don’t know, big brother. Why don’t you tell me why she won’t talk to you?”
What did I say to that? If Ginny hadn’t told her what had happened, I sure as hell wasn’t. As far as I was concerned, that was between me and my girl.
Since I couldn’t tell Olivia what had happened in the cabin, I moved on to the other thing buggin’ the shit out of me.
“Do you know what she sent me?”
“No, what?” Olivia asked on an exasperated sigh. I knew my little sister was tired of being put between Gin and me, but she was the only connection I had left to the woman I loved.
“A postcard. You know what the damn thing says? ‘Fuck you, you fuckin’ fuck!’ ”
Stunned silence was all I got from the other end.
“You got nothing to say to that, Olivia? Since when does our mild-mannered Gin send postcards out that tell people to fuck off?”
“Since some jackass obviously did something to hurt her!” Olivia snapped back. “If you would just tell me what happened, maybe I could help the both of you, but neither one of you will talk about it.”
Now it was my turn to be silent.
Could Olivia help me smooth things over between Gin and me? Probably. It wasn’t her fuck up to fix, though. That was all on me.
When Olivia realized I didn’t intend to say anything, she sighed again, sounding a little weary. “Look, big brother, I’m gonna say something that you’re not going to like, but I want you to think about it before you open that big mouth of yours. Ready for it? Here it goes. Give her some space.”
I was shaking my head. It didn’t matter that I knew Olivia couldn’t see me physically telling her no. I was doing it, anyway, because every fiber in my being couldn’t stand the idea of leaving my angel alone. Not talk to her? Not apologize a million more times if that was what she needed? Not hear her sweet voice tell me that we were finally okay?
I couldn’t do it.
Then again, I didn’t have a choice, did I?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized I had to walk away from my angel and give her the space she needed in the hopes that one day she would forgive me.
I was twenty-six years old, and I had already learned to survive through bullets flying at me, bombs going off around me, and the enemy trying to make sure I wouldn’t take another breath. But I didn’t know if I could survive this.
Ginny was vital to my beating heart and the integrity of my soul, even if she didn’t know it. Could someone live without their heart and soul? I wasn’t sure, but it looked like I was about to find out. At least for now.
Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to live without her for long.
During the weeks that followed the morning after Ginny stormed out of my cabin, I realized I had taken her virginity, and an epiphany the size of a metaphorical sledgehammer had practically pulverized me. My angel had waited all of this time to give me one of the most precious gifts a woman could give. That was something you didn’t take for granted.
It wasn’t some outdated sense of honor that made me feel as though I owed Ginny a ring in exchange for her innocence. It was more like a primal male who was unable to deny his mate. I had been inside my girl, possibly unprotected since my dumbass had been drunk as a skunk, and now that I knew I’d had her in the carnal sense, she was mine in all ways.
I wasn’t willing to be noble and try to let her live her life with a man who was kind-hearted, clean, and capable of acting more like a gentleman than a possessive asshole.
Nope. All of her chances to escape the dark, dominating beast with blood-stained hands were long gone, and now I was a predator waiting for the moment to pounce on his prey. As much as I hated it, now was not that time. I had given my girl some deep, serious wounds the last time I had seen her, and now I had to give her the chance to lick those scars and heal.
“Lucas? Did you hear me?”
“Yeah.” The word felt like sandpaper against my throat as it came out and probably sounded just as gruff. I cleared my throat then let loose a hollow laugh. “Yeah, I hear you. I’ll give her some distance. How about half a world away since I’m deploying in a few days? Not that Ginny knows that, though, since she won’t fucking talk to me.”
This new reminder of my mistakes burned like a motherfucker. I might have had good intentions in my past decisions, but I had ultimately made some extremely poor judgements. Now, as the military liked to say, I needed to “embrace the suck” and face the consequences of my bad decisions head on. That also meant it was time for me to make some better decisions, and unfortunately, since Gin wasn’t speaking to me, I was going to need my sister to help me do that.
“I need you to do three things for me if I’m going to back off.”
“Okay,” Olivia replied cautiously.
“First, I need you to give her my contact info after I get over there. I want to make sure that, if she changes her mind and wants to talk to me, she can. Second, check in with me every now and then to let me know she’s okay. The third thing …” I hesitated as the words got caught in my throat. I didn’t want to play telephone, passing messages through my sister to the woman I loved, but it was all I had for now. Clearing my throat, I finally croaked out, “Tell her I’m sorry, and I’ll be waiting when she’s ready to talk. Over the phone, through a letter, or face-to-face when I get back—it doesn’t matter; I’ll wait for her.”
Although my sister gave me a pity-sounding reply, I didn’t really pay attention to whatever it was she said and hung up the phone.
Sticking my hand in my jeans pocket, I pulled out the one thing I carried with me at all times besides the dog tags I wore around my neck: a small, gold key that unlocked the heart necklace I had given Gin when she was sixteen. No one knew about the key’s existence except for myself, and that was just the way I wanted it. For so long, the key had symbolized the secret plans I’d had to make Ginny mine when the time was right. The problem was, the right time had never come.
After writing one too many I’m sorry your boyfriend/husband/son died letters and constantly seeing too much blood on hands that I considered too soiled to touch anyone as pure as my girl, the key had come to mean something different. It was a reminder of what I was fighting for: a world where my angel could live safely and happily. Boy, had I ever fucked that mission up.
Once again, the key’s meaning changed for me as I held it in my hand and ran my finger over the smooth metal. This key was going to be my proof to the girl I loved that she would always be mine as much as I was hers. It was going to be the evidence I presented next time I saw her that, in my own sappy, clichéd way, I had given her my heart years ago, and that she was the key to my everything. Now I was just left to wonder how long I would have to wait before I got to talk to my angel again.
If only I had known how long it would end up being, I might have decided not to wait.
Walking to my bedroom, I let my body fall onto my mattress without taking my eyes off the gold symbol in my hand. Over the last few months, I had been having vivid dreams of my angel. It had taken me a while to realize they were not the fantasies I’d had before, but the memories of the night at the cabin. Reliving those moments was both a nightmare and a blessing.
They were a nightmare because every time I remembered something, I gained a little more insight into just how badly I had fucked this up between us and a blessing because having those swirling, drunken memories of us was better than having nothing at all.
“Why yous haunt me, Gin? I swear I sees yous everywhere I go.”
That was the God’s honest truth. I did see Gin everywhere I went now. I saw a bit of Gin anytime I saw a couple happy, holding hands, and obviously in love. I saw her in a piece of artwork in a shop on the pier. I even pictured her in the market one day as I watched a blonde-haired woman shopping with her small daughter. Looking at that little girl had been like h
aving a full-blown flashback of the first day I had seen Ginny all those years ago.
“I love you, Lucas.”
Her sweetly whispered words haunted me more than any nightmare from the war ever could.
That night, I now remembered telling her as we made love that my fantasies about her kept my nightmares away. What would she say if I told her losing her was my new nightmare? The worst one I’d had yet?
“Gimme all of you, sweetheart, and I’m gonna take it, but I’m also gonna give you back so much you won’t miss what I take.”
I hoped with every fiber of my being that she would give me the chance to prove I was finally able to and willing to give her everything she could take and so much more.
Ginny
“Gin? You hear what I said, girl?”
My best friend was talking, and I could hear her just fine, but that didn’t mean I wanted to listen to a word she was saying since the message was pretty unbelievable. Lucas Young was sorry, and he would be there, waiting for me, when I was ready to talk?
He had a better chance of seeing a flying unicorn than talking to me anytime soon.
That morning six months ago hadn’t just killed all of the dreams I used to have for Lucas, but my love for him, as well. It was the harshest slap in the face I had ever had, and I didn’t need another blow to know he was right; I had made a mistake by loving him.
It was time to move on.
At least, that was what my head kept telling my bruised and beaten heart.
It was saying it even louder since the man I loved, who had broken my heart for the last time, was heading off to a war zone again, and I was just now finding out because I had refused to speak to him. It made me doubt my decisions.
Should I call him? Say good-bye? Tell him to be safe?
It was tempting … to just give in a little bit and at least tell him I hoped he stayed safe while he was over there. However, Lucas Young was the type of man who, if you gave him an inch, would take a mile. If I called him to even wish him well, he would talk me into speaking to him about other things, like how I had stupidly seduced him and given him my virginity while he was drunk as a skunk. And I wanted to relive that night about as much as I wanted to bang my head against a brick wall. That meant I had to stay strong and not give in to the urge to call him and say good-bye.
