Finding Mikayla

by Samantha Christy

  His hot breath on my face, his strong hands on my body, his unique smell that I’ve craved for days, his possessive proclamation . . . they all come together, stimulating each of my senses and taking my carnal need for him to a level I’ve never before experienced. “Please, Mitch . . .” I beg, working the button on his jeans.

  “God, I’ve missed those words coming from your beautiful lips.” He pulls off his jeans and boxer briefs all at once, leaving him gloriously naked in front of me. He then slowly peels my jeans down my body, stopping to kiss my stomach, my navel, my soft curls, my thighs, all in a slow seduction that is driving me to the brink of hedonistic insanity.

  He kisses his way back up my body—my entire body—causing involuntary quivers of pleasure. As soon as he slips a finger inside me, I convulse around him and he must hold me up with his other hand as my knees attempt to buckle beneath my uncontrollable spasms.

  “Mikayla, you are so sexy,” he says, kissing me through my waning tremors. “I can’t wait to be inside you. I need to feel all of you.” He lays me down and hovers over me in contemplation as he picks a piece of grass from my hair and examines it. Then in one swift move, he maneuvers us so that he is lying on the ground with me straddling his hips.

  Oh, how I’ve missed his barbaric ways.

  “Is it okay like this, sweetheart?” he asks.

  In answer, I smile and reach between us to rub my hand up and down him a few times before placing him at my entrance. His eyes glaze over as I lower myself onto him and begin to move. His mouth forms a perfect ‘O’ as he releases a slow breath. I now understand why he likes to watch me. The fact that my body can bring him to this heightened plane of existence is only fueling my own appetite for him.

  “You are so beautiful. I could watch you like this forever,” he says. I could have said the same words to him, but hearing him speak them in his deep, seductive voice merely drives me higher. He brings a hand down to where our bodies join and when his thumb finds me, I scream out his name as waves come crashing over me, pulling me under and tumbling me around before allowing me to come up for air.

  “Mikayla!” I hear him shout as he joins me, grunting my name through his own release.

  I collapse onto his chest and our panted breaths mingle while we come down from another extraordinary experience.

  “Damn, sweetheart,” his breathless voice proclaims, “every time with you is better than the last.” He shakes his head as if trying to understand the inexplicable pull we have on one another.

  I shake my own head, wondering if there has ever been another woman on earth who has ever loved a man as much as I love him.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Later, when we are fully clothed, but still not ready to leave, we lie on our backs, enjoying the setting sun as he tells me about who he is—filling in all the blanks for me. Not that it matters in the least. I love him. Nothing he could reveal to me would change that.

  He tells me that two weeks after his mom died, he went back to Afghanistan and joined up with another battalion where he met Jeff. They had medicine in common, but that’s about as far as their relationship went, until something happened to solidify them as lifelong friends.

  “Are you sure you want to know everything? This may be hard to hear, Mikayla.”

  “Yes. I want to hear it all. The good and the bad. I want to know everything about you.” I sit up and pull his head into my lap. He looks up at me with hesitation. I can tell he’s scared to divulge something. I smile and nod at him in encouragement as I join our hands over his chest.

  “I had only known Jeff for a few weeks. It was December fifteenth. A Thursday—that’s the day he became my brother.”

  I marvel over how he can remember the date, let alone the day of the week. Then as his eyes take on the expression of a frightened child, I know he only remembers it because it represents a day something terrible happened. Something unimaginable.

  “A bomb had gone off in a civilian area, causing dozens of casualties and even more wounded. It was near a school and several of us, Jeff and me included, volunteered to go to the scene. It was pretty close to a hot zone, but when we heard kids were hurt, it didn’t matter. Unfortunately, we never made it. Our convoy of three Humvees was ambushed. We lost six men immediately, all soldiers who were defending us. The remaining six of us were bound and taken to an abandoned warehouse.”

  As I listen to his every word, I have to remind myself to breathe. I can’t imagine what they must have gone through. And Jeff had just arrived in Afghanistan only a few weeks before. Then it hits me—that was the week he didn’t contact me. He said later it was due to some Com Link failure and I didn’t even think to question him. What I realize next brings instant tears to my eyes.

  “Oh, God—your scars,” I cry. I run my fingers through his hair hoping that it provides a modicum of solace while he re-lives his terror for me.

  He lifts a hand to catch my tears and asks me, “Sweetheart, are you sure you want to hear this?”

  I nod. “Yes. I need to know.”

  “Okay.” He brings my hand to his lips and kisses it tenderly before placing it back over his heart. “Yes, that’s where my scars came from. We were all beaten. They made us watch each other as we were whipped with a long switch while our captors laughed and got drunk. Then a man came running in with a small child who was bleeding profusely. The man was delirious. He started shouting at us, saying it was our fault his son was dying, that if it weren’t for the Americans trying to control the world, his family would be safe. He came over to where we were restrained by chains, unable to move, and he started shooting us one by one, execution style while our other captors just watched indifferently, like they were simply viewing a movie. The man still held his bleeding son while he killed four of us. We were all yelling at him to stop, begging for our lives. He put the barrel of the gun to my head and Jeff yelled ‘Doctors! We’re doctors, we can save your boy!’ He kept yelling it over and over until the man heard him through his hysterics.

  “Some of the men spoke English and Jeff told them if they could bring us the supplies from our convoy that we could save the man’s son. Of course neither of us knew if that was true or not, but it bought us some time anyway. A few hours later, after Jeff had worked a miracle, the boy regained consciousness.

  “But it didn’t seem to escape one of our captors that I hadn’t done much except assist Jeff. He took out a knife and said to Jeff, ‘You claim your friend is a doctor. If you are lying, you’ll bleed out and he will be shot.’ Then he sliced Jeff’s lower back practically from hip to hip where he wouldn’t be able to fix himself up.”

  “Oh, my God, Mitch. No!” I cry, pulling a hand up to my mouth to cover my sob.

  He squeezes my other hand. “Luckily, he didn’t slice deep enough to cause any major damage, but it took over a hundred stitches to sew him up. I even had to put in some sub-dermal sutures, which, fortunately, flight medics are trained to do in emergency situations.

  “After that, they started bringing some of their wounded to us and it became clear that we were being kept alive as long as they needed us to provide medical treatment. They continued beating us and constantly letting us know we didn’t have too long to live. There were times when Jeff and I were alone, and that’s when we bonded. We vowed to seek out each other’s families if one of us made it out without the other. I vowed to find you, Mikayla.

  “Jeff was incredible. I was scared to death that they would figure out I wasn’t a doctor, but he kept making me do things that he thought I could handle so we could keep up the façade.

  “A week after we were first captured, we were rescued. He saved my life, Mikayla. I can never repay him for that.”

  “It sounds like you ended up saving his, too,” I say through the tears that haven’t stopped falling since he spoke those first words.

  “That’s when we became brothers,” he said. “You go through that with someone and it changes who you are. No matter what happens in life,
we are connected in a way no others can be. When we returned to base, we were inseparable. He told me all about you and I told him about my family. We said that even though we made it out of that situation, we would still uphold the promise to find each other’s loved ones if anything ever happened to one of us.

  “So when the blackout happened just two weeks after my tour ended—knowing he was still over there—I knew that I had to find you. So after checking on my own family, who I’ll tell you about later, I set out for Gainesville. I had no idea where to find you. I knew where you worked and where you lived, but after the outage, none of that mattered. Still, I had made him a promise and intended to honor it knowing that it would be difficult if not impossible for him to get to you.”

  “Thank you,” I say, leaning down to place a chaste kiss on his lips.

  “For what?” he asks.

  “For everything. For helping Jeff. For being his friend. For keeping your promise . . . for finding me.”

  “Don’t thank me, sweetheart, it was all him. I owe everything to Jeff Taylor.” His eyes light up and he says, “We should name our first kid after him.”

  Holy shit!

  My heart rate just went from zero to sixty at Mach Two. I laugh, pretending I’m not totally freaking out while simultaneously having visions of children running around this meadow with us. “I hardly want a daughter named Jeffrey,” I joke.

  “Okay then, Jeffrey for a boy, Taylor for a girl.” He smiles up at me and runs a thumb across my face as he stares intently into my eyes. “She’ll have your beautiful green eyes,” he says.

  “He’ll have your dark, wavy hair,” I say.

  “She’ll have your adorable freckles,” he says.

  “He’ll have your strong hands,” I say.

  “She’ll have your amazing heart,” he says, and he pulls my head down to his, kissing me with so much passion that my heart hurts. It actually hurts—because it is bursting with my overwhelming love for this man.

  After another round of life-affirming sex, I find myself absentmindedly tracing his tattoo with my finger while we lie side by side on the ground on top of our shirts.

  “I got it shortly after we were rescued,” he says. “I figured if being a medical professional saved my life, I might as well advertise it just in case I ever got taken again.”

  “That’s brilliant,” I say, leaning over to kiss it. “I love it.”

  When I look back up at him, he locks eyes with me. “I love you, Mikayla Katherine Parker,” he declares.

  “Promise?” I ask, smiling at him.

  “Promise,” he pledges, before leaning in to seal it with a kiss.

  ~ ~ ~

  We find Claire upon our return to camp and he tells her the same story of their captivity and ensuing friendship. I can see in Claire’s eyes that she has decided almost instantly to consider Mitch family, just as she does me.

  Tears dot her shirt where they have landed after falling from her cheeks. She says, “I’m a big believer that everything in life happens for a reason. You two are meant to be with each other. God brought you and Jeff together for the sole purpose of you finding Mikayla.” She takes Mitch’s hand. “I can see it in your eyes. You love Kay, but you feel guilty for it. Well, don’t, Mitch.” She points between us and continues, choking slightly on her words. “This is a great love story. One you will tell your grandchildren. Things like this don’t happen every day. In this life, you take every opportunity for happiness and I can see without a doubt that you’ve found that with each other. You certainly don’t need my blessing, but for what it’s worth, you have it.”

  We hug Claire and spend the remainder of the evening sharing funny stories about Jeff. I learn that he was the one who taught Mitch how to play guitar. Mitch tells us about pranks they would play on each other and I smile, thinking how un-Jeff-like that sounds. Mitch brought out the playful side of Jeff and Jeff taught Mitch how to perfect his stitches. I am so grateful that they had each other.

  Later in bed, Mitch spends half the night telling me about what happened to him after the blackout.

  “I was spending time with some buddies of mine in Lake Tahoe when it happened. We knew right away what was going on, so we gathered supplies and found some bikes to get us back to Sacramento where our families were. It was about a hundred miles and we were all in pretty good shape, but the terrain was rough—up and down mountains almost the entire way—so it took a couple of days to get there.

  “I headed straight to my dad’s house, where I lived when I wasn’t deployed. He wasn’t anywhere to be found and it looked like he never made it home after the outage so I traced the route I knew he took from home to his dental office.”

  I can feel the tension in his body so I know what he will tell me isn’t good.

  “I found his car on the highway. It was mangled up with a semi-truck. I couldn’t even get to his body to give him a proper burial.”

  “Mitch, I’m so sorry,” I say, trying to comfort him while at the same time, reliving my own memories of the aftermath of my parent’s accident.

  He kisses the side of my head through my hair. “Just another thing we have in common now, huh?”

  I lay my head on his chest as he continues the story.

  “When I got back to my dad’s house, my brother Mark was there, looking around for supplies. He and his wife and kids lived in the next town over and they were going to head to a fishing cabin back in Lake Tahoe that was owned by his wife’s family. So we gathered up everything we could carry on our bikes. But before I headed out, I got a picture of you and Jeff that he had given me and I cut it up to fit in the locket from Gina. I figured I would need to know what you looked like if I was going to try to locate you. I wore the thing every day, and looked at it every night before bed. It became my inspiration to keep going when things got tough.”

  I think of all the times after he came to Camp Brady that I saw him grab at his chest. I was beginning to think it was some kind of tick. Now I know that it was his subconscious trying to remind him why he was here. He was simply reaching for the locket that held my picture.

  I close my eyes. I still can’t believe he was searching for me the whole time.

  “I helped Mark, his wife, Grace, and the others get settled at the fishing cabin. I had to make sure my nieces were going to be okay. They were so young. Megan and Melanie were six-year-old twins and Katie was only three. It took a couple of months to go out and gather the supplies that would keep them fed and safe and then I told Mark I had a promise to keep and set out for Florida with just a bike and trailer.

  “The first month wasn’t bad because I had the bike. However, I quickly ran out of food and had to stop often to try to scrounge up something to eat. After a while, all the obvious places were stripped bare. I also started running into bad groups of people and ended up getting my bike and trailer stolen. Luckily, I got away with a backpack and my guns, but it was slow going after that because I stuck to back roads to avoid large groups.

  “I would sometimes find generous people that would allow me to stay with them for a week or two to recover from the elements and to rest my legs. I would help them with whatever I could in exchange for a bed and some meager supplies to get me through another week or so out on the road.

  “It wasn’t until I had made it all the way to Alabama before I ran into Harold and Jenny Starke. They are the ones Carson told us about. I delivered her baby and he gave me the pickup truck I was driving when I crashed into the scouts from Camp Brady.

  “So, that’s it in a nutshell. That’s how I found you, Mikayla.”

  I know he downplayed his journey for my benefit. It took him almost eight months to get here from Lake Tahoe. He went through eight months of hell to cross the entire country to find me. All to keep a promise to a man he had known for what, sixteen weeks? Unbelievable.

  I’m amazed by this man who, against all odds, set out to find me, not even knowing where to look and only having a general location to go on. I�
��m not sure I’ve ever met a person with more integrity, more sincerity, or more honesty than Mitch. Yes, this is the man I want to be with forever.

  Like Claire said, we were meant to be. Nothing will ever change that.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  I spend most of the morning in the clinic, thinking about the events of the past few days and how unreal it all seems.

  Everyone that comes in is talking about the future.

  The future!

  It’s something we didn’t think of much until recently. We simply worried about how to survive in the present. But now that the government is reaching out to people and setting up programs to get society functioning again, there is excitement in the air. Everyone is wondering where they will fit in. Some people fear they won’t have any worth, especially those who worked in professions such as information technology. I suppose someday, we will need those folks again, but right now, the extent of today’s technology needs consists of getting cars and generators to work.

  I, too, wonder what use I can be, having only gotten part of the way through residency. It may be years if not longer before they will figure out a way to get medical schools and residency programs back on line.

  Perhaps I should have learned another profession over the past year. Mitch has been out in the fields with Craig every chance he gets. He’s smart like that. There is nothing my caveman can’t do.

  Maybe I could work as a psychic or something with my ability to merely think of Mitch and have him appear before me. I smile as he walks up the front sidewalk to the clinic.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” he says, coming over to plant a kiss on my lips. “What’s so funny?” he asks when I giggle.