Before That Promise

by Violet Duke

  A look of soulful affection warmed his dark gaze…before slowly turning to one of regret.

  And she felt the change punch her clear in the gut. Along with the wave of sheer disappointment crashing down all around her.

  In her heart, she really had thought he was going to say yes.

  “Sweetie, I can’t. My fellowship…”

  He was trying to let her down gently, she could tell.

  Always the white knight.

  When she remained silent, he lifted her chin up gently so she couldn’t hide her embarrassment from him anymore. She’d gone this far, so she finished it off with the truth. “I know you’re going to be in DC for your fellowship. That’s why I told my dad I was going to wait until you got back. Since I’ll still be busy with school, too, I figured it was good timing. And my being three years older actually made my dad freak out less about the whole thing.” She added quietly, “I thought it was a win all around.”

  He shook his head. “Honey, three years. You shouldn’t wait that long, not for me. It’s not right. Besides, have you thought about the fact that if you wait three years for you to enjoy this gift from your mom, it’ll run into your mom’s final gift for you?”

  She froze and furrowed her brow, scanning her brain for an important piece of information that she was sure just went missing somehow. But no matter how much she turned her brain over, she couldn’t find it.

  Until she realized exactly why her thoughts were fixating on his last statement.

  Eyes wide with shock, she jerked away from him.

  “How did you know my mom’s last gift is for the year I turn twenty-one? I never told you that.”

  She expected some sort of logical explanation. Maybe a confession that he’d been in fact spying on her, possibly hacking her email all along.

  What she absolutely did not expect to see was the stark look of guilt on his face.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Skylar.”

  Drew watched her back away from him quickly and yank her phone out.

  It didn’t take a crystal ball for him to know what was going to happen next.

  A few quick, angry taps on her screen and then they both heard it. The quiet double-beep from the phone in his pocket.

  An instant message alert, signaling a new message…directly below the one he’d left unanswered from her on Christmas morning.

  Shock and something close to fury overtook her expression. “It was you all along! You’re the one I’ve been messaging and chatting online with for the past five months.”

  “Yes.” Drew reached for her again. “Skylar, let me explain.”

  She retreated another few steps and shoved her phone back into her pocket as if it had been deceiving her this whole time, too. “What’s there to explain? It’s pretty clear-cut to me. You’ve been pretending to be someone else, lying out of your ass, and basically making a fool out of me.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” rumbled Drew, frustrated at how this had unraveled. “When I first saw you posting this summer on the ‘Active Duty & Military Family Donations’ outreach forum the Spencers had started, I actually stopped logging on because honestly, I knew I’d be too tempted to talk to you. But then questions started going unanswered, or worse, answered by random folks who didn’t know what they were talking about. I had no idea the other moderators weren’t pulling their weight. So when folks eventually started running into major problems with project execution, and the local state charters began getting reports of countless errors and mishaps without proper online guidance for all the hundreds of folks with hundreds of questions for their unique fundraising and donation projects—not to mention the half dozen cases of fraud using our name—Lia begged me to resume my role as senior moderator.”

  He’d started helping out with the cause a few years back when Lia and her new husband Hudson, a former soldier himself, had expanded the organization’s local outreach umbrella program to an additional six states. Basically, lots of folks wanted to help the military but couldn’t do it on their own. That’s where the ADMFA organization could help. But since it existed entirely online, they’d needed a lot of online moderators to help with the increased load. It had been a cinch for him to do in his spare time so he’d kept at it. And now, three years later, he was the most senior of all the moderators who handled most of the bigger projects.

  “The site has grown so much over the years. And there’s a lot that goes into coordinating all the different efforts that funnel into the organization.” He gave her a pointed look. “You of all people should know. You’re minoring in non-profit management. So I eventually went back to logging on regularly to keep everything running smoothly.”

  Skylar crossed her arms. “And as luck would have it, the moderator I was put into contact with for help with the book drive I was starting for soldiers overseas just happened to be you.”

  Despite the way she was glaring at him, he couldn’t help but smile at the reminder of their first chat session. She’d been just as passionate as he’d remembered from high school, and just as impressive, with a truckload of donations that had unfortunately, been accepted without the proper paperwork. “Okay, to be honest, I’d been following your thread comments for a while and I thought your idea was great. So yes, it wasn’t coincidence that we got paired up. But it was all business. It was my job to help you filter everything through the correct channels, especially since there were a few other similar projects in Washington running through other organizations.”

  “Was it part of your job to chat with me for two hours online that first day? Is that the kind of attention you give all the girls you’re paired with?”

  “No.” He locked his gaze on hers. “You were the exception to my strict rules, the only exception. Or rather, my only weakness. Just like you’ve always been.”

  That made the intensity of her glare come down a few kilowatts.

  But then some wayward thought revved her right back up again. She sliced her hand through the air. “Wait. That all doesn’t excuse you giving me a fake name—not just an alter ego handle, but an actual name I spent months calling you. That’s flat-out deception in my book.”

  He sighed. “You caught me off guard. And don’t think it was a picnic all these months hearing you call me by some other guy’s name, by the way. I just hadn’t been prepared for the question. I’m left-brain dominant, which means my right brain doesn’t usually engage very quickly in situations. So…”

  She gaped in disbelief. “You just blurted out a name that rhymed with mine?!”

  It all sounded pretty stupid now. “Yes. Aaand that’s how Tyler was born.”

  “B-but you even have a Facebook page. With a ton of friends.”

  “Yeah…that one got a little out of hand.” He raised a shoulder up in a half-shrug. “What do you want me to say? When you’re a hacker, social media is pretty easy to bend to your will.”

  Eyes narrowed in annoyance, she shot back, “What happened to your pristine white hat?”

  “I never said it was pristine. And besides, you’re the one who kept asking me if you could friend me on Facebook. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Use your real name?”

  Dammit, she was addictive when she was all spark and sass. “I couldn’t do that.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I would’ve had to stop talking with you. And I didn’t want to give that up.” Even the thought of it now was making his chest ache. He’d grown to love his online chats with Skylar.

  “Who says you have to give it up?”

  “I do.”

  Suddenly, the wind went out of her sails. “Why, Drew? Why can’t we just be friends, talk regularly, and see where it leads?” Raising her hand tiredly, she sighed, “And enough with that ‘I’m too young for you’ load of bull because we both know there’s more to it. So just…tell me. Please.”

  She was right. There was more to it.

  “I just don’t want you to
get hurt, sweetheart. Honestly, that’s the reason. With all that you’ve already been through…I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if you ended up getting hurt because of me.”

  “Are you planning on hurting me?” she asked seemingly baffled at the possibility.

  How she managed to have so much faith in him—more than he had in himself—never failed to make him feel ten-feet tall. And simultaneously unworthy.

  “Skylar, you know I wouldn’t ever intend to hurt you. But you have to understand, with my fellowship starting up after next summer—”

  “For chrissakes, Drew, you’re just going to DC. You’ve been acting like you’re flying to the moon.”

  When he remained silent, she came to a complete standstill and stared at him.

  One second. Two seconds…

  “You’re not just going to DC are you?”

  And there was his smart girl.

  “No. I’m not just going to DC.”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re going to go look for your brother.”

  Part of him always knew she’d be the first to figure it out. “Yes. The assignment I requested will have me stationed in the Middle East as an independent contractor. I’ll be training in DC and then heading overseas next winter.”

  “Is it…” Her eyes clouded over with worry. “Is it safe?”

  “I’ll be in a dangerous part of the world, so of course there’s some risk involved. But I won’t be doing anything reckless. I swear to you. I’m not going there on some sort of suicide mission. That much, you have to believe.”

  There was a brief silence during which he watched a hundred emotions flicker over her face.

  “If you’re standing there trying to make me believe it, then that means you believe it too, right?” she countered with just the tiniest hint of challenge in her voice. “That you’re going to come home safely?”

  “Yes,” he said with a smile over her look of triumph. “I believe it, too.”

  “Good.” She crossed her arms and leveled him with a cute as hell I-mean-business look. “Then you should have no problem agreeing to be my travel partner on this trip.”

  She tapped the envelope firmly against his chest, returning them back to her original proposal at a speed that made his head spin. “Now that I know what you’re planning, I get why you’ve been so worried and cryptic. And I officially maintain that I think you’re being overly dramatic, and I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Her reasoning made no sense at all. “Skylar, that’s completely illogical.”

  “Only because you’re letting your brain singlehandedly dominate this analysis. Call me fanciful but I believe in things beyond what our brain knows to be tangible and logical. I believe in karma and juju, and in my heart and soul, even when my brain tells me otherwise, I believe in believing. So if you want me to forgive you for deceiving me these past five months—” She smiled angelically. “Then you need to agree to this trip. That’s my terms. If you don’t take it, I will remind you of how you deceived me in daily texts and Facebook posts to Tyler until you eventually give in. Or go crazy.”

  She went from angel to fiercely ruthless war goddess in two seconds flat.

  Cripes, that was sexy.

  “By promising to come on this trip with me, not only will you be wiping your karmic slate clean, but, it’ll in effect, help practically ensure you come home safe.”

  She was so unbelievably cute. “Because of the good juju from my concession?”

  “No.” She gave him a look like he didn’t understand a concept as simple as the sky being blue, before it softened into a look of affection. “Because I know you. I know you’ll do everything in your power not to hurt me. Which means you’ll do everything in your power to keep your promise and come back here safe and sound to fulfill that promise.” Her voice trembled at the edges. “This is the one thing I can do to help you make it home safe. So just…agree. Promise me. Three years from now, the two of us, one epic trip. Deal?”

  Jesus, he was tempted to go along with that very Skylar-esque logic. Not because it made any sense at all, but because he wanted to. He wanted to promise her something, and be the man to keep that promise.

  But more than most, he knew how the universe tended to decide who got to keep these promises…and who got hurt when those promises ended up becoming broken ones.

  “Honey, I can’t ask you to wait for me. I’ve been on the other end of that, waiting over a decade for my brother to return home. Some days, it’s all I can do not to feel strangled by it. The not knowing, the imagining, the looking back instead of forward. You don’t deserve that. I don’t want you putting your life on hold for me.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me putting my life—especially my love life—on hold.” A taunting, matter-of-fact light danced in her eyes. “Per your instructions back when I was sixteen, we’ve already established that I’m not allowed to wait for you, but rather, I am to date a whole bunch of guys. Does that about sum it up?”

  He growled at the prospect. When she put it like that…

  In response to his second growl, she just simpered in silence.

  Then let him stew for a good twenty seconds before finally putting him out of his misery by saying resolutely, “I want to wait for you, Drew. You’re worth waiting for. You, your brother—everyone deserves to have someone waiting for them. To have someone needing them to come home. To have someone to come home to. So you may not be asking me to wait for you, but I’m telling you: I want to be that someone for you.”

  His very own someone special.

  Had there ever been any doubt as to who his heart wanted to cast in that role?

  As the depth of what she was saying sank in more and more, he found he didn’t have a reply for her. Not one with words anyway.

  So instead, he reached into his pocket and handed her a small, flat box. With red Christmas wrapping and a shiny green bow, the whole nine yards.

  Her eyebrows hopped up in surprise. “You got me a Christmas gift?” Her eyes danced, hell, sparkled in delight, and he swore the air in his lungs started to thin.

  When he reclaimed enough oxygen to be able to answer, he explained casually, “I remember you telling ‘Tyler’ that you loved collecting beach and sea glass.” He flicked away some miniscule lint from his jeans. “And, well, the last few times I went out to the water in Texas, I happened to come across some so I picked ‘em up. Just to see what the big deal was.”

  He left out the part about him driving to nearly every body of water in the state to hunt down beach and sea glass pieces of a very specific color.

  She opened the box and stared mutely at the dangling silver and glass earrings he’d had a friend, a local jeweler, design today out of the dozens of tiny little pieces he’d been collecting and keeping in his bag for the past five months.

  “They match my eyes,” she observed softly.

  “Yeah. Weird how that worked out.”

  “Drew, they’re beautiful.”

  He dropped the casual act and smoothed a thumb over her cheek. “Well, then they’re perfect for you, sweetheart.”

  The slight frown that suddenly darkened her gaze had him quickly pulling her into his arms in concern. “What’s wrong?”

  Lordy, how did folks do this whole gift-giving thing? The idea that a gift he’d given her was inspiring a frown was enough to give him an ulcer. “If you don’t like something about it, I can fix it.”

  She clutched the earrings to her chest and looked ready to snap her teeth at his hand if he dared take them from her. “Mine. Don’t touch,” she declared forcefully.

  Yep, he knew full well how that felt.

  “If you like the gift, what’s wrong? You looked sad just now.”

  Her lower lip peeked out a bit as she admitted with an dismayed sigh, “It’s just…now I wish I’d gotten you a bigger, better gift than the one I brought.”

  It was a little shocking how happy he felt over the idea of her having gotten him a gift. Then again, he was
getting used to Skylar shocking him. “You got something for me, too?”

  Reluctantly, she pulled out a big Tupperware container. “I can get you something else—”

  He gave her a look that, astonishingly, managed to stem the rest of that sentence.

  When he opened the lid of the container, he couldn’t help it; he let loose a grin so big, his face muscles started complaining. “Microwave popcorn balls with M&Ms and candy corn.”

  Handing him a thermos, she added, “And hot cocoa.”

  Circling his arms around her, he rested his forehead against hers and reassured her softly, “You’re amazing. Best present ever.”

  She studied him for a bit as if checking to be sure he wasn’t fibbing, and whatever was showing on his face apparently passed her lie detector test because her lips curved up into a pleased thousand-watt smile that made him understand why grass came right back to life at the sun’s beck and call after the end of winter.

  Lifting her onto his lap, he murmured in her ear, “Share them with me?”

  He felt her lips twitch to the side as she admitted, “I sort of had a few…dozen already.”

  Of course she did. The little sugar addict. Laughing, he shook his head and locked in on those gorgeous blue eyes he could spend a lifetime getting lost in. “So tell me, this whole waiting thing you’re so insistent upon. Does that extend to first kisses? Meaning, would you be willing to wait for a first kiss?”

  Before the hellion could try to convince him what a terrible, awful idea that was—probably successfully—he explained, “Because if you would be willing to wait, then I want to save the first kiss I’m admittedly dying to give you for when I return.”

  It was a crazy idea, which really only made sense to him when using Skylar’s newfangled, totally illogical looking glass at life. But the more he thought about his reasoning behind the crazy idea, the more lucid it sounded. “If we wait until I’m back in three years, then our first kiss will be your last first kiss.” Feeling that haze of possessiveness over the idea of being able to have sole ownership of all of Skylar’s future kisses roughened his voice to a gritty growl. “You can count that as another promise I’ll be damn well coming back home to keep, sweetheart.”