Cupid's Bow: The First Generation Boxed Set

by Storm, Melissa

  She took his face in her hands and leaned in to brush her eyelashes against his cheek. “This isn’t goodbye, you hear? It’s just see ya in a while.”

  They embraced, and then Deborah headed inside alone.

  My Heart Belongs to Only You

  Chapter 1

  Cold. So very cold. Rip’s teeth chattered as he hugged his gun to his chest and ran through the hills, doing his best to keep cover in the open terrain. A rain of bullets fell all around him as the enemy drew closer. He tore off his glove with his teeth and tried to radio for help, but the frigid air had sucked the life from its battery. Not even static answered his calls for more men.

  “We’re all we’ve got,” George said from beside him. “So we’ve gotta be enough.”

  Rip nodded. He wanted to communicate something more, but each staggered breath brought searing pain. The icy air entered his nostrils like sharp claws trying to grab onto his heart and tear it out. It would save the commies the trouble.

  With all the resolve he could muster, he crept toward the enemy encampment on the horizon. His breath poured out of him, a disjointed stream of dragon smoke when what he really needed was fire—anything to warm him up.

  More bullets.

  George let out a sharp cry and pulled away from him at a rapid clip.

  Rip tried to keep up, but the ice had gotten to his muscles—and now held on tight, forcing him to take short, quick steps rather than the long bounds he needed to provide backup for his buddy.

  More bullets. A warmth blossoming out from the center of his chest, a warmth which failed to bring relief. Sharp pain, and he fell to his side, clutching at his heart and praying for a quick death.

  George continued forward, jack-rabbiting across the field. He raised his gun to take aim, and then… nothing. The bullets would not come. “Damn ice jammed it up!” he shouted and tried to fall back.

  More bullets. Coming at George rather than from his gun.

  Rip watched in fear as his closest friend buckled at the knees and fell face-forward into the earth, the last thing he saw before everything went white.

  He kicked furiously and shot up with a start. The winter landscape fell away revealing an empty room with dull brown walls and no windows. He sucked air in and pushed it out easily. Cold droplets of sweat clung to his skin, and only the phantom memory of wounds past pained him. Seconds before, they had been so real.

  The nightmare was always the same, coming to him with such vivid detail he had no choice but to relive that battle every night since he’d so narrowly escaped with his life. Sometimes he needn’t even fall asleep. Just shutting his eyes drew out the carnage, reminded him how his failure to keep up had cost George his life.

  He couldn’t run then, but he could certainly run now. And he would. If he ran far enough, perhaps he could finally escape the memory.

  * * *

  A soft knock sounded at the door. Tuesdays were her mother’s salon days, and she attended them as fervently as she did church on Sundays, which meant the task of answering the caller would fall to Deborah. She forced herself up from bed, tugged a housecoat over her shoulders, and padded to the door.

  A man in uniform stood before her, his arm fastened into a sling. “Ma’am,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Yes? How can I help you?” She tried—and failed—to stifle a yawn. Exactly how early was it anyway?

  “I’m Airman First Class Morrison—or Tommy. Are you Deborah Walker?”

  “I am. What’s this about?”

  “I…. Well, I’m a friend of James Morgan.”

  Fear flooded Deborah’s heart. She couldn’t remember moving, but somehow she and Tommy ended up in the living room sharing tea as if they were sitting together for a nice, friendly visit, and not…

  Finally she spoke. “Is James…?” She refused to finish the question. Words held power, after all, and she wouldn’t lend them any extra in this situation.

  “Dead?” Tommy steepled his fingers before his chest, taking a painful pause.

  Deborah wanted to shake him hard until the answer to her question spilled out, but she didn’t have the strength enough to say anything.

  “No, but he is missing in action, ma’am. Some people say that’s as good as, but I know ol’ Jimmy, and he had too much fight in him to surrender.”

  Deborah remained quiet as the information sank in. For months she had waited for him and with only a single letter to tide her over. Had he been missing all this time? Was he…? No, she refused to even think it.

  “Anyway, I thought you should know before the public caught wind. Seeing as you were his girl and all.”

  “Thank you very much, Airman,” she muttered, keeping her eyes fixed on his freshly polished shoes.

  He said a few other things, but she didn’t catch them. And after a while she watched as Tommy’s shoes carried themselves up and out of her house.

  One night, one kiss, one memory where he was hers. That was all Deborah got before life—or quite possibly death—took her love away from her. If she were more the religious type, she’d believe God had decided to have some fun at her expense. Instead, she chose to think this was just the way the world worked in these terrible days, which were filled to the brim with war.

  Still, she prayed James would find his way back to her safe and sound, that they would one day be together for good. Just in case there was a God, and he was concerned enough to help her out.

  Chapter 2

  “What we have here is a classic case of shell shock,” the doctor had explained before handing Rip a brochure to outline the finer points of his diagnosis.

  He found the brochure now wedged in between Orwell and Camus on his sparsely populated bookshelf. He’d once taken pride in his possessions, kept them meticulously arranged—but this place no longer felt like home, and his possessions now all seemed like someone else’s things.

  Remember, the doctor had said, sometimes the best medicine is time.

  But how much time? And would the wounds ever fully heal or would his mind be forever scarred, his heart forever empty? Rip ran his fingers over his chest, scratching at the fleshy scars on his chest. Sometimes digging his nails in caused enough physical pain to give him a temporary reprieve from the tremendous sense of guilt he carried everywhere he went.

  The relief never lasted though. The moment his pain ebbed away, the hollowness returned. Time had done nothing to heal those particular wounds, but perhaps distance would.

  He hauled another box onto the bedframe and tossed in clothes, books, linens—whatever lay nearby.

  “Do it for George,” he muttered to himself. He had to get better and quick so he could return to the front lines and fight in his fallen friend’s honor. And that’s why he was moving away from base now. Seeing the active servicemen go about their duties only added to his sense of longing. At least they were being productive, contributing to the greater good, while Rip simply waited for his head to straighten out so the doc would clear him to return to war. Rip had become a shell of what he was supposed to be, which was fitting—he supposed—since it fit the diagnosis and all.

  He dug into the back of his closet and fished out a photo of George and him with the rest of their troop mates. After carrying the crinkled portrait over to the half-filled box, he tossed it instead into the waste bin at the other end of the room.

  Memories of adventures past weren’t what he needed. He needed an escape.

  A normal life, a boring one. That’s what he needed to get better. But how could he return to normalcy when the very substance of who he’d been oozed out from him as he lay dying on that icy field in Korea? One way or another he’d figure things out. His sense of honor depended on it.

  * * *

  A year had passed since she’d learned of James’s disappearance—four seasons, twelve months, fifty-two weeks, and infinite heartbreaks. Deborah had become a modern-day Prometheus. Each day the vultures of loss tore her heart to pieces, and each night the Gods cruelly restored
it, forcing her to suffer the same fate anew.

  She held tight to that solid brass ring of hope. Maybe it would be enough to pull her from the depths of sorrow. Maybe her faith would be rewarded, and James would return home unscathed and still full of love for her.

  It seemed she was alone in her optimism, though. The town had already held a memorial service for James and the other hometown boys who’d failed to return home. She’d been too afraid to introduce herself to his mother who sat in the front pew, dabbing at her tears with a lace-embroidered hanky. What good would revealing herself to the grieving mother do, telling the unknown woman how she’d once hoped—still hoped, in fact—to marry her son?

  A year was a very long time to wait without receiving any news. Sometimes she wished they could at least find James’s body and give her some closure—but she realized how terribly selfish such a wish was and she hated herself for so much as thinking it.

  And just as the status of James’s life was on hold, so too was the future of hers. Her parents didn’t have enough money to send her to college, and, besides which, they didn’t really see the purpose of educating a woman when her main role would always be inside the home—much to Deborah’s chagrin. She’d fought hard for her right to be taken seriously, to be sent to college where she could work toward pursuing her passion for writing professionally, but at the same time, the money just wasn’t there.

  Everything had changed when she’d met James, though. He almost made her parents’ old-fashioned ways seem right. She’d found herself daydreaming about life as James’s wife, sharing strawberry milkshakes in bed, exchanging jokes and secrets well into their golden years.

  It would’ve been a good life. It still could be, she chided herself. Hope. She could still hope.

  Deborah frowned as she continued through the neighborhood on the seat of her bicycle, riding in that awkward time of day when the sun got into her eyes no matter where she directed her gaze.

  Most days she volunteered her time at the nursing home. It only seemed fitting since she had so much to spare, and the residents had so little of their own remaining. Besides, she spent most of her visiting hours reading them books, and, occasionally, she’d even slip in something of her own—a new dime novel she’d procured from the corner pharmacy or a poem she’d written in her head on the ride over. The residents never seemed to mind.

  Reading and writing were both lonely habits, but they seemed much less so whenever she could find a way to share them with others.

  She constructed the next verse of a poem as she rode, but found herself hopelessly stuck on a particularly tricky couplet. Although she generally wrote in free form, if she chose to follow a rhyme scheme, she refused to sully it with lazy almost-rhymes.

  Now what would work perfectly with forward she marches with a heart long besieged? The possibilities churned in her mind, but before Deborah could land on the perfect complement, the slam of a screen door caught her attention.

  She slowed her bike to a roll and searched for the source of the noise. Almost instantly her eyes landed upon a boxy truck parked in front of the Suttons’ old place. The rear hung open, exposing a hodgepodge of stark brown boxes, none of which appeared to be labeled.

  “Who on earth…?” she wondered aloud, letting the thought hang before her, unfinished. Well, regardless, a new neighbor had come to town, which meant she’d need to pass along her family’s welcome, and soon. She’d give the new resident tonight to finish unpacking, then return bright and early with a freshly baked batch of her mother’s famous blueberry muffins. After all, it was the neighborly thing to do—and, for Deborah, maintaining these small niceties went a long way toward keeping herself stable as the earth spun dangerously fast beneath her feet.

  Chapter 3

  The doorbell rang.

  Rip dragged a hand across his forehead and stood. He’d been hard at work hauling boxes and furniture all morning and had very nearly finished moving into his new temporary home, a small Craftsman with two bedrooms and no bathtub.

  Neighbors had been dropping by all morning with steaming hot casseroles and fresh fruit baskets, eagerly peering over his shoulder when he opened the door to accept their greetings—clearly interested in learning more about him, but only for the sake of gossip. He’d thought old Mrs. Thompson had been the last of them and he could finally focus on his work, when the bell rang again.

  “Someone’s impatient,” he muttered to himself as he shuffled toward the door. His T-shirt clung to his chest, glued down with stale sweat. If the sight of him didn’t scare away this new gawker, perhaps the stench would.

  He grabbed the knob and yanked the door open, startling the petite blonde who stood on his porch holding a large wicker basket. The smile fell from her face almost instantly, but still she was much more pleasant to look at than old Mrs. Thompson or any of the others who had been by that morning.

  “Can I help you with something?” he prompted when she failed to introduce herself.

  A flush rose over her cheeks and she pushed the basket into his arms. “Hi, I’m Deborah Walker, and I’d like to personally welcome you to the neighborhood.” She smiled, apparently relieved to have delivered her lines in this skit of social niceties.

  Rip lifted the corner of the checkered cloth that covered the contents of the basket. The delicious scent of brown sugar and blueberries escaped into the air, mixing with the stench of sweat and sawdust surrounding him. “With muffins,” he stated.

  “Yes, with muffins.” Deborah smiled, though it seemed forced now.

  Apparently he was doing a poor job keeping up his end of the exchange.

  “Like I said, I’m Deborah Walker. And who might you be?”

  He took a deep breath before replying. He was far too tired to have to deal with this right now. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to sweep the pretty, young woman away with his charm. He didn’t have it in him. “Sargent First Class Rip Rockwell. How ya doing?”

  “Oh, um.” She tucked a stray curl behind her ear and looked awkwardly at her feet. “Well, I’m sure I’ll see you around town. Enjoy the muffins.”

  He raised his hand to wave goodbye, but she had already taken off down the walkway and back toward the street.

  Oh, well. He needed to get back to work anyway. The last thing Rip needed was excitement, least of all that which only a woman could provide. He took a moment to re-imagine the scene that had played out on his porch, to pretend he had invited her in and served sweet tea, that they had engaged in witty repartee, had made a date for the weekend.

  No matter. Their love story wasn’t meant to be, and that was fine by him. Less trouble meant a quicker recovery; it meant returning to his country’s call, avenging his fallen friend. It meant staying away from Deborah Walker at all costs.

  * * *

  Deborah kicked the quilt off her bed as she turned over once again. For some reason her brain simply refused to shut off for the night, and she was pretty sure this reason was the handsome—albeit rude—new neighbor.

  “With muffins,” he had said, teasing her for her hospitality. Only he wasn’t teasing. Teasing would imply he cared enough to have a go at her. No, his face and tone had both remained flat the entire time she’d stood before him on his porch, doing her best to make a good impression for the sake of her family’s reputation in the neighborhood.

  A lot of good that did.

  So why couldn’t she just brush off his indifference and move on? He hadn’t been openly hostile toward her. He hadn’t been interested in making any friends, at least not making friends with her.

  Sargent First Class Rip Rockwell back on home soil while there was a war on. There had to be a reason for that. Had he been dishonorably discharged and stripped of his title but still bullishly clung to it anyway?

  He didn’t seem the dishonorable sort. He didn’t seem the friendly sort either, but still.

  Why did she care so much? Aargh.

  “Because he’s handsome,” a small voice whisp
ered in her head. “Because he reminds you of James.” She hated to admit it, but she also couldn’t hide the truth from her own consciousness. The inner Deborah knew what the outer Deborah was loath to admit.

  She closed her eyes and pictured him before her—the sharp jawline, the high and tight haircut, the two-day stubble lining his cheeks. Would it scratch her if they were to kiss, or would it tickle instead?

  Stop thinking like that. Think of something else, anything else. Or, better yet, get some sleep. Lord knows you need it.

  She flipped over in bed again and thought of his strong arms as they accepted the muffin basket…of his plump lower lip and those gorgeous hazel eyes.

  Yes, it was definitely the eyes. They were just like James’s. No wonder she couldn’t get Rip out of her head. Not because she liked him. Only that she missed James. So why couldn’t she picture any part of her lost lover besides his familiar eyes?

  She was forgetting him already—and, for that, she was deeply ashamed.

  Okay, there’s no way I’m getting back to sleep, she finally admitted to herself as she set both of her bare feet onto the plush carpeting below. Perhaps a few quick laps to clear her head?

  She shrugged off her pajamas and stepped into her swimming costume, then pulled a dress over top. Nothing quite cleared her head the way swimming did. It was why she’d always loved the water almost as much as she loved the written word.

  Yes, a quick swim would set her straight. Perhaps afterward she’d compose some new verses. She had far too much to do to lose sleep over some rude former soldier.

  Time to move on.

  Chapter 4

  It wouldn’t stop snowing. White fluff rained down from above while bullets flew in from every other direction. Rip was stuck, hopelessly stuck. George ran ahead, and—