by Tracey Ward
“Because you’re happy to get rid of me?”
I pull away, smacking him hard on the stomach. He laughs and rubs his palm across the sting I’ve left there. “No, ass, I’m not happy to get rid of you. I’m never happy to see you go.”
“Me either. It’s too soon. I feel like I just got here.”
“I know. It wasn’t her fault though.”
He laughs with disbelief. “She got pregnant less than a month before her deployment date. Happened two years ago with her first kid too. You really think that’s not intentional?”
“I can’t believe someone would have a child to avoid a deployment.”
“Well, believe it. It happens. And guys like me get screwed over, sent out before our cycle to replace her. It’s not fair. Especially not to you.”
“I still don’t hate today,” I insist.
He reaches up pushes my hair aside so he can see my face. “All right, then tell me. How can you love today instead of hate it?”
“Because today is a day with you. I’m not looking at it as the day I say goodbye. I’m looking at it as my last day.” I lean down and kiss him gently. “My last kiss,” I whisper against his mouth. I wrap my arms around him and press my chest against his. “My last hug.” I swing my leg over his hips and straddle his body. “My last—”
His mouth takes mine, his tongue pushing hungrily past my lips as his hands grip me hard. He’s almost frantic as he pulls aside clothing, centers me on top of him, and joins us together. But then he’s slow. He’s pure breath and heat, hands and feeling. Exploring. Savoring. And then I’m shuddering, trembling from head to toe as he growls my name and holds me close to him. He cradles me in his arms, his voice turning to a whisper that calls to me over and over again.
And I answer him. Every time.
“I don’t love today,” he breathes, planting a kiss on the top of my head, “but I hate it a lot less now.”
I laugh as I sit up and disentangle myself from the long limbs of his body. “I need to take a shower. Then we should get going.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
He growls again, this time in annoyance.
I kiss him quickly before sliding off the bed to head for the shower. He touches his hand to my stomach as I go, his palm dragging warmly over the slight bow of my belly.
“I love you,” he says the way he always does when he touches me that way.
I don’t know which of us he’s talking to, but I always answer, “I love you, Jax.”
We’re almost silent on the way to the airport. He’s handsome and romantic-looking in his uniform, but he’s not Jax. Not my Jax, not entirely. He’s the soldier now. The piece of him that isn’t his and it definitely isn’t mine. My Jax was left behind in the cooling sheets of the bed that will smell like him when I get home. I’ll cry over them, I won’t be able to help it, but then I’ll strip them from the bed and wash them.
Then I’ll wait.
I try not to think about that now, though. I’d rather just be with him than be sad with him. It’s something I’m learning being married to a military man. You can’t feel everything all the time. Not the anxiety or dread or loneliness. It will destroy you, and not just you as a person but you as a couple. It’s good to miss him when he’s gone but I can’t miss him every second of every day. I have to live my life and turn the pages as I wait for him to return because our story isn’t told only in the grandiose moments. It’s not just the sorrowful goodbyes or the joyous reunions. Those are glimpses. They’re the fairy tale. Real life is lived in the little things—in the ordinary threads that weave the world together, building a tapestry that tells our tale in perfect, vivid detail. Even the imperfect parts.
When the time comes and duty calls, he kneels down in front of me, his hands on my hips and his eyes on my belly. “Goodbye, Baby Bird,” he whispers, kissing my stomach gently.
I smile, the nickname reminding me of Sanchez, which always makes me think of the poem he sent me. The one that floored me and rebuilt me. Reshaped me as I learned its meaning. As I live it now with a piece of Jax’s heart beating inside my body.
As I watch him stand and walk away, a piece of my heart ever with him.
Thank you for reading This is the Wonder!
I hope you enjoyed. If you did, please leave a review.
They are invaluable to indie authors such as myself.
Keep reading for an excerpt from my bestselling NA Romance, Brawler.
This is not a cookie cutter romance.
It is a knockdown, heartbreaking journey through friendship, love, and loss - all to find the one person who can see you clear as day, even when you've lost all sight of yourself.
Jenna Monroe never cared which side of the tracks I came from. She didn't care what my reputation was, what my face looked like, or what my body could do. She never asked for anything but me. The real me.
The boxer.
The orphan.
The animal.
I met her my senior year when she was just a thirteen year old kid with honest eyes and fire in her veins. She was the greatest friend I'd ever known and I loved her like blood. I fought for her, I protected her, and as she grew older, I wanted her. Now my biggest worry isn't how to keep her safe from the world.
It's how the hell am I going to keep her safe from me?
Chapter One - Brawler
“Where the hell did Kellen go?” Will asked.
“Beats me,” Callum slurred. “One minute he was here… then… you know. Poof.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. Great job, Callum.”
“Bonfire.”
“What? Jesus, man, you almost ate shit into the sand! Stop moving!”
“Nah, nah, nah, nah, see, ‘cause he’s over there. By the fire. By the water. The fire is getting closer to the water. It’s drifting too close. It’s gonna go out.”
Will sighed audibly. “It’s not going to go out and the fire isn’t moving toward the waves, the wave—never mind. I’m not arguing with you when you’re drunk.”
“’Cause you know you’ll lose!” Callum shouted triumphantly, the shadow of his stocky frame elongated to incredible heights by the distant light of the party.
“No, because you’re an idiot. Come on. Let’s go look for him by the fire and for the love of God, do not fall into it. I’m not pulling you out again.”
“I didn’t fall in the fire.”
“Then why do you only have one shoe?” Will asked impatiently.
“Holy shit,” Callum mumbled, stunned. “I only have one shoe. When did that happen?”
“When you stepped in the fire.”
“Where’s my other shoe?” Callum demanded, his voice rising with panic.
Feet shuffled over the sand, followed by a loud grunt.
“Kellen has it,” Will lied. “Find him and you find your damn shoe. Now get up out of the sand.”
“Help me make a sandcastle.”
“I’ll kill you and bury you here before I help you build sandcastles. Get. Up.”
Nina muffled a giggle into her hand, her body shaking with silent laughter under my palms.
“Shhh,” I hissed, reminding her to stay quiet.
She looked up at me with bright eyes glowing in the shadows of the trees just at the edge of the sand. We’d left the party to sneak away into the patch of forest down the beach, hoping no one else would come this far. So far we were dead wrong.
A few minutes ago I’d spotted the telltale glow of a cigarette or a joint somewhere deeper in the trees to my left, then Will and Callum had shown up looking for me. Luckily Nina and I were tucked far enough into the dark that they couldn’t find us. Her shirt was off, tossed somewhere nearby on the sand, and my pants were still up, but just barely. Nothing holding them in place but the cockblockers now stumbling away down the beach.
“Your friends are wasted,” Nina whispered, still laughing.
“Only one of them is my friend. Callum is a teammate and
an idiot.”
“Will sounds pissed that he’s playing babysitter.”
“Uh huh,” I mumbled, burying my face in her neck and picking up where I’d been forced to leave off. “He’s going to have play the role a little bit longer.”
“Mmm,” she hummed, going soft and pliant in my hands. “Maybe a lot longer?”
I pressed her harder into the tree behind her as I ran my hands over her naked sides, up to her bra, pushing it aside. She moaned deep and low in her throat where I felt it against my lips. Then her hands were dropping. Sliding down to my hips and nudging my pants gently until they fell in a pile at my feet.
“Do you have a condom with you?” she breathed, her fingers skating across the hem of my boxers, then sliding slowly inside. Her long nails brushed across my tip gently, making me shiver.
I slipped my mind out of the driver’s seat, going on autopilot. “I always have one.”
“Even when you’re not with me?” she sighed.
I paused, fighting the urge to groan in annoyance. This question was coming up a lot lately. “I’m only ever with you, Nina,” I told her patiently.
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
I pulled back, raising a distrustful eyebrow at her. “Okay?”
“Yeah, it’s okay.”
I leaned in close to her again, pressing the side of my face against hers until our bodies were perfectly in line and her mouth was at my ear. I drove my hand into the back of her jeans, taking firm hold of her ass so I could grind my bulging boxers against her core.
“Come back,” she groaned, pushing on my shoulders to make me look down at her. “I want you to look at me.”
I shook my head tightly. “I’d rather hear you.”
“And I want to see you.”
“Shhh.”
“I want to see your eyes,” she whimpered.
I ignored her. I kept my face pressed close against hers, my free hand on the rough bark of the tree behind her scratching my palm to shit. I breathed in and out twice, steeling myself.
“Hey,” she demanded more forcefully. “I want you to look at me, dammit.”
I hung my head, frustrated as I snapped back to reality. “I heard you.”
“Then why aren’t you doing it?”
“Because it’s not me. You know that.”
She pushed against my chest hard, shoving me a step back until we were separated. Her eyes were hot and angry as she glared at me. “You never look at me when we have sex. Why?”
I sighed heavily, sick of this argument, and not just with her. With all of them. “I’ve told you, I just don’t.”
“Three months and nothing. No eye contact even once. What the hell is that? What’s wrong with you?”
“More than you want to deal with.”
“I could be any girl in the world because you’re never looking at my face. Is that why you do it? So you can fantasize about other girls?”
“No.”
“I’m surprised you even say my name,” she spat, winding herself up. “Aren’t you worried you’ll use the wrong one?”
And there it was. The inevitable accusation that I was a liar and cheater. Second time in five minutes. She was going for a record.
She’d been on my case ever since the first time we had sex. She thought sex somehow meant we were closer than before, connected somehow, but to me it meant the opposite. I never looked at her or anyone else during, and I pulled away immediately after. I wasn’t a cuddler. Sex to girls seemed to be some validation of my emotional attachment to them, when really it was when I was the most distant. My body was there, but my mind was gone. Hidden away somewhere else while I ran through the motions and registered the pleasure. I liked sex, don’t get me wrong. In fact, I loved it, but what I loved was the feel of it. Not the girls.
Nina was right about one thing – she could have been any girl in the world. As long as it felt good, it wouldn’t have mattered to me.
I leaned over to pull my pants up, resigned to the fact that this was no longer happening. Any of it. “I’ve never called a girl by the wrong name.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed by that?”
“I don’t care,” I replied coolly.
“Of course you don’t. That’s just it. You don’t care. You’re such an asshole!”
“Why?” I demanded, exasperated. “Because I won’t stare at you like a lunatic while I’m inside you? It’s weird.”
“It’s intimate!”
“It’s not me,” I repeated. “I said it at the very start. It’s not me.”
She took a sharp, shuddering breath before whispering shakily, “Then this relationship isn’t me.”
“I understand that.”
“You understand it, but you don’t care.”
“I do, but it’s not going to change.”
Her eyes welled with tears. “You mean you aren’t going to change.”
“Neither are you.”
“What? So that’s it?”
I spotted her shirt on the ground. I leaned down to pick it up, then offered it to her. “What else is there?”
She stared at me in shock before snatching the shirt from my hand and running from the trees.
Just like that, another girl at Weston High hated my face.
I didn’t like it. I wasn’t a fan of the fact that I was steadily being considered more and more of a manwhore, douchebag, asshole, but that’s the image that gets cut of you when you can’t manage to date a girl longer than a couple months and it always ends ugly. And the thing that always ends it is that you’re cold. Distant.
It started going around last year when I was a Junior that I refused to commit to anyone. One girlfriend said I had cheated on her and suddenly every girl I dated after that was convinced I was cheating on them too. You can tell a girl you’ve never been unfaithful – to them or any other woman – until you’re blue in the face, but she’s never going to believe you. If she already has it in her head that you’re a liar, then you’re a liar. End of story.
Bitch of it is that I’ve never cheated on anyone, not once. I’m not a piece of shit and I’m not a coward. If I’m not feeling my situation, I change it. It’s as easy as that. No, I don’t like breaking up with girls and hurting feelings, it doesn’t give me some sick egotistical rush, but I also don’t like wasting my time or theirs. If I know a relationship is over, I end it. Like tonight with Nina. She’d been harping on the cheating shit for too long. The trust was gone and I hadn’t done anything to lose it, it was all her own insecurities. I can’t fix that, and honestly, she and I weren’t worth the effort anyway.
They all wanted the same thing, exactly the thing that I was notorious for being unable to deliver – closeness. That emotional connection. The hand holding and staring into each other’s eyes. I couldn’t stomach it. I’d never been able to. And it wasn’t because I didn’t care about them, it was because I simply wasn’t wired that way. My wiring had been crossed and hacked and built against code for so many years that it was amazing I was even still standing. It was also amazing they kept trying. That girls still wanted to date me knowing the reputation I had.
It came down to my face. My body. My wrong-side-of-the-tracks-boxing-champion status. I was hot, edgy, dangerous, thrilling. It was all superficial, so if they came into the relationship that way, what right did they have to be mad at me when I wanted to keep it that way?
I stared down the dark stretch of private beach leading to the bonfire where all of the trust funders of wealthy Weston High were partying and laughing, and I wondered why I even bothered anymore.
I was at the start of my Senior year, the scholarship kid from the ghetto watching my ‘peers’ line up colleges, internships, and engagements. Everyone was prepping to take that great leap up into the gilded world their parents had poised them to enter, and I knew our paths were about to split. They would go their way, I would go mine, and I wondered if it wasn’t a really good thing
that Nina and I had fizzled out tonight. Maybe it was time to stop playing Cinderella at the ball and get back to reality.
“Just stop,” a voice whimpered from behind me.
I spun around, my eyes scanning the dark trees. They struggled to adjust after looking into the fire. Darkness seemed darker, shadows were deeper, and any shot I had at seeing where I was going was lost before I even started.
That didn’t stop me from bolting forward.
I spotted the red glow of a joint burning on an inhale, caught a whiff of cannabis on the wind, and headed straight for it.
As I burst into a clearing, heads turned to stare at me in surprise.
There was a small crowd of three people – one girl and two guys. The girl had dark hair and a dark fleece jacket zipped up high around her despite the warm night. The guy in front of her was a little shorter than I was but built like a brick shit house. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew him immediately. I’d met him on the football field often enough to recognize his shape.
“What do you want, Coulter?” Jenner demanded.
I ignored him, focusing on the girl. “Are you okay?”
Jenner took a menacing step toward me. “She’s fine. We’re taking good care of her. Get lost.”
“Take it easy, Jenner,” I warned him, irritated that he was trying to crowd me. “She sounded upset. I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
“She’s great. Get lost.”
She wouldn’t look at any of us. She’d turned her face away toward the other side of the trees where the road was just out of sight. I watched her shoulders shake. She brought her fist to her mouth to stifle the noise. The crying.
I knew that stance. In my neighborhood it was more common than sunshine in California. Crying women, angry men, alcohol and drugs in the air. The booze they drank here may have been better, the cars and the women sleeker, but in the dark it all looked the same.
Ugly.
“Do you want to leave?” I asked her gently.
Jenner put himself between us. “She’s not going anywhere.”
