Military Romance Collection: Contemporary Soldier Alpha Male Romance (117 page)

Her feet are silent on the floor. It is freezing out here. She hurries downstairs, and finds her outer shoes at the back door, pulls them on. She does not know why she feels her feet take her to the back door; she only knows that she has to go there.  Her heart is guiding her outside, towards the path into the woods.

Outside, the night is deepest charcoal-grey, the greyness the only hint of morning. It is silent out here.

Bryce? Sweetheart? Her mind is calling out as she walks. She is walking into the woods

Bryce? The call her heart heard is somehow fainter, as if the caller faded.

Ten more minutes. She is far from the house, now. The air is becoming colder. It is closer to the dawn.

Then she sees it. Sees him. Ten paces ahead of her, there is a huddle in the pathway. A dark shape, with sandy hair spread limply out before it, one  hand  thrown forward, the other beneath his body, sprawled on the path.

No! Sophie did not know it was possible for the heart to break.

She throws herself forward, crouching beside the inert form curled in the path. He feels cold. He might not be dead.

She  sits back, takes stock. Feels for a pulse at the throat. It is there. Faint, but there. She almost weeps with relief. She does, in fact, stand; words of thanks to whichever deity has preserved him, on her lips.

She takes a breath, and feels along his ribs. He has been shot. The bullet has lodged at the shoulder-blade, not far from where it entered. If it had not, he would be dead. More miracles.

              She rolls him over, as gently as possible. He groans.

“You're alright, dear. It's alright.”

              She straps the shoulder and chest with a strip torn from her night gown.

“We'll get you back home, dear.”  She wonders how. She will have to try.

“Let's lift you up.” She bends over and eases his arm around her shoulders.

Together, they walk back, her dragging his weight, which is lifeless against her shoulder.

              It takes almost an hour, but they reach home. She pulls him over the threshold, and they both collapse in an exhausted heap. Then she goes to the kitchen. Calls Mhaire.

Mhaire returns, with Master Leeson, as it will take all of them to cauterise the wound. One to hold the iron, and strong arms to hold him, with a third on hand with bandages for the wound. As soon as Sophie has removed the bullet, they will help with cauterising it.

After about an hour, Bryce, his face sheened with sweat,  is sleeping peacefully. Sophie sits beside his bed, keeping watch, half-asleep herself, exhausted.

When she wakes, the candlelight is brushing pale highlights in his hair, his face completely relaxed in sleep. Sophie feels her heart warm with love for him, and she also realises she has come to a decision.

***

“Lover?”

“Yes?”

It is eleven days since Bryce's wounding, and he is in bed with Sophie. He sweated out the fever after five days, and judicious use of yarrow. By the eighth day, he could again eat solids. He has been sleeping beside Sophie since the accident, and they are back to making love, if with care for his wounds.

Now, Sophie is beside him, her head on the pillow.

He is about to fall asleep.

“Lover?”

“Yes, dear?”

“I have something to ask you.”

“Yes? You know you only have to ask.”

She smiles at him, kisses his nose. “Yes, dear. But this is a big question.”

“Try me.”

“Could we...how would it be, if we were not here?”

“Not here? You mean not in this house?”

“Not this house, dear.  This land. This war.”

Bryce is silent for a moment.

“That is a big question. But it is one I have thought about myself.”

“And?” She is looking down at him, wide-eyed.

“And...This is nothing, to me. Nothing I would not give up, to see you safe. To see us safe.” He strokes her shoulder.   “I don't want to die, either.”              He adds. “Not now I have so much to live for.”

They are silent for a moment.

“We could... where would we go?”

“France is... open to us.” She says it, musingly.

“Yes.” Bryce says, after a while. “Clever.”

She smiles, and giggles. “You, too.”

“To have come to the same conclusion?” He smiles.

“Yes. Certainly.”

They laugh. It is a long time before they rise that morning. They tell the staff that they were busy with matters of household concern. The staff smile, but don't believe them for a second.

At the Forest House, all is well in the world.

***

It is night. The sea is roaring. The fire from the torches spills, liquidly, into the rising flow of the tide.

              “Bryce?” Sophie squeezes his hand. He holds hers tighter, reassuring.

They are on the beach, just after midnight.  It is a month since their talk, and Bryce has found a passage for them, on board a whiskey-trader, bound for France. 

His existence is enough to have him shot, never mind any attempt by him of fleeing  the country. That would see him hanged.  They could both be killed for this.

“He should be here any minute with the boat.” Bryce says. He is looking out to sea, holding the torch.

“Bryce?” Sophie asks. Her voice sounds cautious. “I don't like this.”

“Why?” He sounds genuinely concerned. He knows she has a strong intuition.

“That man...at the tavern. It felt wrong. Felt like he was watching us.”

It is true. At the tavern that evening, a man had sat opposite, watched them very carefully.

Bryce lays a hand on her shoulder, reassuringly. “I know, dear.” He says. He kisses her hair. “We have to hope it will be well.”

“I do.” She squeezes his hand, gently.

They are silent a while. The tides rises, scarlet in the spilled torchlight around their feet. The sound of the sea is constant, a soughing hiss.

“Bryce?”

“Yes?”

“It doesn't feel right.”

“I know.” He is also starting to feel uneasy.

It seems peaceful enough out there. At their feet, the tide is lapping over their shoes.

“Get
down
!”

Bryce pulls Sophie down beside him. They are both crouching, now, her skirt and his trousers soaked in the salty, icy seawater

“What?”

“Listen.”

They both hear it. Shouts, whipping along the shore, torn on the wind. And horses. Coming closer. Fast.

“Whoa, there! Coastguard!”

“Ride, boys!”

“Sound the horn.”

The watch are calling the other coastguard troops. Soon the beach will be crawling with English soldiers.

“We have to go,
now
.”
“Where?”

The coastguard is coming straight towards them, and there is nowhere to go.

“We have to swim. We have no other way.”

“Right.” Sophie is brisk.

“Right.”

Sophie removes her petticoats and unfastens the long skirt of her gown, leaving her in her under shift and bodice. Bryce removes his shirt.

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

The look that passes between them, a swift glance, is soft, her eyes gentle, his tear-damp with the weight of his emotions.

Then they are in the water, wading out until it reaches their chests.

“There!”

There are suddenly cries from the beach. They have been spotted.

A shot whizzes overhead, as Bryce and Sophie swim across the aching, wrenching waves.

Bryce and Sophie look at each other, terror and resignation mixing with the deep well of their love.

After ten minutes of aching, bone-numbing cold, they see what they never expected to see, but always hoped for. Ahead of them, rowing out, is a longboat.

“Yes!”

The sound is a hiss of jubilation.

              After two minutes, they are hauling themselves, gratefully and exhaustedly, aboard. They flop in the boat, too exhausted to sit.

Ten minutes later, and they are alongside the ship. The coast is a dark blur, now, streaked with morning's grey, and covered with troops. No-one has yet thought to fire on the ship

Bryce is shivering under the blanket around his shoulders.

“Haul up anchor!” The captain is singing out. “We're on course.”

The ship is suddenly a hive of activity, with men climbing in the rigging, setting sails to the wind.

Bryce and Sophie stand close beside each other.

“We did it.” Bryce says it, slowly, and with awe.

“We're here.” Sophie agrees. She squeezes his hand. He squeezes back. They kiss.

The light is brighter, ahead of them. It pulses on the water. All their dawns will be like this, soon. Togetherness, and freedom.

The shore disappears into the mist behind them, and before them there is only light.

***

THE END

Chapter 1

You're not supposed to make it out of my hood. Those who do are called "survivors".

I didn't want to be a statistic. I had seen too many of my family and friends leave my neighborhood in squad cars or body bags. I had seen that, on the rare occasions that they did make it onto the news, their fates weren't treated as the tragedies I knew them to be. They were treated as numbers, just one or two more brown people succumbing to the expected.

It would be nice to say that my mother or father taught me to be better. That they taught me to find my own way, to fight against the odds. Unfortunately, the truth is less romantic and more typical. My father was not in the picture. He was simple. I had met him once or twice, usually on special occasions when I was young. As an adult, I still saw him now and then, down at the corner store. We would nod to one another. That was enough, or at least that’s what I tried to tell myself.

Unlike the stranger who was my father, I knew my mother well enough to call her complicated. She was strong, as all single mothers are. As all black girls who grow to be black women are. She worked hard as a grocery clerk for me, her only daughter, so that I could eat and go to school. She was also selfish, though. Her weakness was not booze or gambling. It was men. I still don't really know how many of the "uncles" who stayed at our apartment were actually related to me. I couldn't fault her for wanting to feel loved and supported, and I still admire her optimism in keeping up her search for the right man. A casting call for husbands can confuse a girl though, and I grew up with complicated ideas about what a relationship was supposed to look like. As an adult, I started putting pieces together, and I eventually accepted that my mother must have been a prostitute for at least some of my youth. It isn’t definitive, but that scenario would answer many of the questions I’d been dealing with for years.

My brother, Sean, was my only sibling. He was older by three years, born to a different father, and for most of my formative years, he was a model of all that I aspired to be. He was cool, he was confident, and to my young eyes, he was successful. With maturity, I grew to realize how much of his persona was tied into Hollywood's version of a thug. He was slinging dope and packing heat the whole time. While it would be easy to fault him for being reckless, for endangering his mother and younger sister, his lifestyle was really the only way a young man could make something of himself in our hood. Make an honest living? Easier said than done.

Ultimately, I lived long enough to see clearly just how much more difficult their choices made their lives. I made a promise to myself that I would not follow the path of least resistance. That I wouldn't start dealing, or hooking, or relying on an unreliable man. I would find work that I enjoyed, however unglamorous and for whatever modest pay.

I didn't want an exciting life. But I got one anyway.

Chapter 2

Graduating high school was the first thing I did to find my own path. Neither my mother nor my brother had made it through their senior year before getting lured into the street life. I was able to land a job at a local bookstore called Harold’s. It was in poor repair and was not well attended by the locals, but I liked being around the books, and I liked the quiet. There were a few neighborhood kids who came in pretty frequently, mostly latchkey kids who got bored at home and wanted to chill with me for an hour or two. It seemed like a good way to keep a couple more kids educated and off the street.

A few of the kids would come from the nearby group home. Lucy, who had been my best friend from childhood, worked as a Care Specialist (i.e., mother-for-hire) for the children. She grew up in the same group home after being left at the hospital by her birth mother. She and I graduated high school together. We’d both grown sick of the culture in our neighborhood. It prioritized money over people, and the only people profiting were drug cartels and the prison system.

Of course, we ourselves weren’t totally innocent. Our teenage years, like most, featured promiscuity and drug experimentation. The catch was, in our area, those features of teenage recklessness were more likely to get you killed than in most of America’s cities. Harder drugs and a pervasive lack of respect for women meant that you never quite knew what you were getting yourself into when you wanted to do something a little wild. We got out by the skin of our teeth, and barely a day went by in our adult years when we wouldn’t see another young sister nearing the edge of the cliff for herself. Sadly, there wasn’t really anything we could do for a girl who thought she had it all figured out. Ultimately, seeing those young ladies make those destructive decisions on a regular basis made us all the more grateful for having survived.

But surviving childhood didn’t guarantee surviving adulthood.