The Elite: The Complete Series of Boomer and Player (With Bonus) (26 page)

Rachel glanced over at me, her eyes full of concern. “I understand, Holly, I do. But I don’t want you getting so worked up again. Until you hear from Jack, you’re not going to know what’s happening. Compulsively watching the news is only going to torture you and make your mind run even wilder. I think it would be better if you focused on taking care of yourself.”

“If Jack’s the one who got—shot down—I can’t just—” I stopped to suck in a breath. “Rach, I know it’s not what I should be thinking but he could be dead.”

It was an ugly, dark thought, but one I found impossible to push out of my mind. I had no proof, but the churning and cinched feeling in my gut was enough to tell me that it was too much of a coincidence that he wasn’t involved in the events of the day before.

The possibility had been in my mind ever since Jack unexpectedly cut off our phone call that afternoon. I wasn’t so naive to think that he’d be put in some kind of bubble just because he was in a plane instead of on the ground. If anything, flying above the war torn land was more dangerous, because if anything went wrong, he’d be sent crashing to the ground below.

Even though I’d been harboring the thought since our call ended, there was something about saying the words out loud that pushed past the last remaining barrier of sanity I’d built in my mind and a wave of fresh tears slid down my cheeks. Hunter shoved himself up off the couch, climbed into my lap, and started to lick away the salty tears from my face. I tried to smile at him but when my lips parted, a strangled sob pushed out instead.

Rachel shooed the distraught puppy from the couch and scooted over closer so she can wrap her arms around me. “Shh, shh, Holly. It’s gonna be okay.”

I wanted to believe her. Every fiber of my being wanted to believe that it would be okay. That if it had been his plane that had gone down, that by some miracle he’d survived the crash, and that he’d find his way back to safety. But the reality was that his odds of survival were low of even walking away from the crash, let alone getting back to the rest of his unit without interference from people who would want to harm him just for being an American soldier.

Rachel continued stroking my hair. “We don’t even know if that was his plane.”

I nodded, hating the selfish desire to wish the crash was someone else. No matter who had been in that plane, there was a family out there hurting and terrified.

“I never even told him,” I said, unable to bring my voice above a whisper. “I never even told him what he meant to me. How much our time together meant to me. I’ve wanted to say it a dozen times over the last few weeks but it always felt like the wrong time or place to talk about something like that from thousands of miles away over a spotty internet connection. But I should have. I see that now. Now that it’s too late.”

Rachel didn’t say anything—she’d apparently run out of comforting things to offer me. Instead she continued to stroke my hair and let me cry until I fell fast asleep.

* * * *

Later that afternoon, with some persuasion, Rachel managed to get me away from the TV and phone long enough to take the medicine the doctor gave me, and eat a proper meal. Afterward, I took a long shower and found some rejuvenation under the spray of hot water. When I stepped out onto the fuzzy bathmat and dried off I found myself somewhere between normal and complete devastation. There were no more tears to cry, at least not for the moment, but in place of them, everything felt empty and numb. Back in my room, I shrugged Jack’s shirt down over my head and breathed in the lingering scent of his cologne that had been left around the collar. I’d been wearing it almost every day since I returned home from Holiday Cove and found it stashed away in my suitcase. I didn’t want to wash it. The warm, comforting scent was getting faint but it was enough.

Rachel knocked softly on the door and I called for her to come in. Hunter followed behind her, close on her heels, still buzzing with energy, and completely oblivious to the events of the day. I smiled down into his sparkling eyes as he looked from Rachel to me, and then back at Rachel expectantly. “I was gonna take this guy down stairs to walk around the block a few times and burn off some energy. Did you want to go too?”

I shook my head. “No, but thank you for taking him.”

She nodded. “Of course. Do you need anything while I’m out? I could stop at that little drugstore on the corner on the way back.”

Nothing sounded good. The food I’d eaten was bland, it had no flavor, but nothing else appealed to me. “No. I’m okay.”

Rachel considered me for a long moment, as though she was matching my words with my current state of mind. With a nod, she turned and left my bedroom, snapping her fingers when she got to the doorway to get Hunter’s attention. He loped after her and minutes later I heard the sound of him getting leashed up in the entryway and then the heavy front door closing.

I sat down on the edge of my bed and heaved another long sigh. My lungs were better and it was easier to get a full breath. I lay back against the pillows and set my hands flat across my stomach, feeling the gentle rise and fall of each breath, thankful that I no longer felt like I was gasping for air. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted my phone laying on the nightstand, plugged in to charge, and my fingers itched to reach for it to see if there had been any new developments since I’d taken a shower. The last thing I’d heard was that an F-18 plane had crashed and a rescue team was being put into place to go in and search for the pilot. None of the news outlets had given further detail.

I started to reach for it, but then remembered the promise I’d made to Rachel, that I’d take a little break, and decided against it. Instead, my eyes landed on the leather bound journal underneath my phone. I’d taken up journaling in the wake of my divorce, at the suggestion of my then therapist, as a way to get my thoughts and feelings out onto paper in regards to the end of my marriage and a way to heal from the negative feelings towards my ex-husband. I had journaled religiously every day for months, before it petered off into a less frequent habits. These days it was something I still did on a weekly basis, using that time as something of a meditation session. With all of the turmoil in my mind, I decided there would be no better way to clear my mind then to write things down, so I reached for the journal and pushed myself up straighter, using the headboard to brace my back as I flipped to a new page.

I journaled the entire time that Rachel was out walking with Hunter, taking the time to reflect on the feelings that had been building inside of me since returning from my vacation. It was as if each word or thought I got on paper uncovered a new layer to the way I felt. About Jack, Hunter, my ex—like an archaeological excavation into my heart and soul—removing layers of doubt, fear, uncertainty, and all I could see staring back at me was the truth.

I was undeniably in love with Jack McGuire.

It didn’t make sense how or why. The timing sucked. The circumstances sucked. But there it was…all the same…I’d fallen head over heels in love with a strong, secure, confident man that made me feel safe, treasured and adored, sensual and sweet. And most of all…
free
. He’d freed me from the pain of my past and helped me see that giving someone my heart wasn’t the end.

It was just the beginning—our beginning

The ink filled pages were dotted with smudges where tear drops had fallen, blurring the ink in navy blue circles against the ivory colored paper. I swished them away, leaving inky streaks behind. The tears I’d shed over writing the journal entry were not the same tears that I’d cried over the course of the day. They weren’t tears from fear, or anticipation or loss. They were tears for the beautiful thing that I’d already found.

My journal entry spilled over into a long email letter. I’d held off far too long in telling Jack exactly what I felt for him. There had been many times I’d felt those three little words itching to roll off my tongue, but I’d always held them back, figuring it was too soon to really
know
how I felt about Jack, or that our relationship was still too new and undefined to bear the weight of what those sacred words meant.

But now, in light of everything going on, both inside my head and across the splashy news pages on my TV and computer, I couldn’t hold them back any longer. If I could have, I would’ve gone to the roof and yelled them out for the entire neighborhood to hear.

In the end, there was only one person who needed to hear, and even if I’d climbed the building, and shouted my declaration, he would’ve never heard it. Although, I was fairly certain he’d laugh over the visual if I’d shared the story with him later.

So, I wrote it all down, a stream of consciousness flowing from my mind and heart, through my fingers, as they tapped out a beat against the keys. When the message had been sent, I laid back against the stack of pillows I’d arranged at the head of my bed, and let out a long sigh.

My eyes rolled to the ceiling, and I whispered, “I love you Jack. You have to come home.”

Chapter Eleven

Holly

I woke up the next morning with Hunter curled up beside me in the bed. “Hey there, boy.” He opened his sleepy eyes at my whispered greeting and reached for me with one of his over-sized paws. We stayed in bed, snuggled together, until the scent of coffee filtered through the open bedroom door. Hunter’s ears perked and he lifted his head from the bed, looking towards the door, and then back at me. “Smells good, huh boy? Although, I think we’ve already discussed that you plus coffee would be a disaster.”

I giggled at his puzzled expression and pushed to the edge of the bed. As I stood, I caught sight of Jack’s shirt and the smile slowly faded from my lips. Hunter jumped off the bed and led the way out into the hallway, stopping when he reached the kitchen and spotted Rachel standing at the sink, scrubbing the dishes that had been left from the day before.

“You don’t have to do that,” I told her, stepping into the kitchen.

“I don’t mind.” She smiled over at me and shrugged. “How did you sleep?”

“I don’t want you to be late to work,” I replied. Monday morning had arrived, and although I’d woken up at the same time I usually woke up to get ready for work, going to the office was the absolute last thing on my mind. I was thankful that I’d caught up Saturday, before my entire world had been flipped upside down. Otherwise, there would have been no way to get back on top of everything. While a day spent out of the office would inevitably lead to a backup in my work load, and had the potential to annoy my clients, at the end of the day, I had the flexibility of taking a day off as needed. However, Rachel worked as a dental hygienist and if she missed a day, she’d be eating up her limited vacation and sick days. I appreciated that she wanted to stay and help me get through the day, but I didn’t want her to suffer professionally on my account.

Rachel wrung out the sponge in her hand and set it back in the silver holder near the edge of the sink. “I took the rest of the week off actually.”

“Rach!” A surge of guilt shot through me.

“It’s fine, Holly. I had some sick time. What’s more important is making sure that you’re going to be okay.” She crossed to the coffee pot, the source of the smell that had stirred Hunter and I from bed, and poured a piping hot stream of cocoa brown liquid into one of the two waiting mugs. She topped the mug off with a splash of cream, swirled the contents around, and handed it to me. “Did you hear anything last night?”

I took the mug from her and sipped deeply. “Nothing more than yesterday.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She shook her head slowly and I could see the wheels turning. “It’s so frustrating that the news won’t give any more information. I mean, sadly, this kind of thing happens all the time these days. How do they expect military families to cope when they have to wait for days to find out if their loved one was involved?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. When Kenny enlisted in the Marines, I remember talking with some of the other wives before his first deployment, but none of them really had much to offer in the way of advice, other than to practice the art of patience.” I shook my head as I recalled the hollow advice. “In the short amount of time I did live on base, there weren’t any major incidents, at least not involving any of the people that I knew.”

“Sometimes I forget that you’ve already gone through this,” Rachel said thoughtfully.

“Yeah, glutton for punishment I guess.”

After my marriage had ended, it had taken a long time to reach the point where the idea of dating didn’t send me into a panic. When I did, I’d made some ground rules in preparation for the day when I would want to put myself out there, and the very first one on that list had been to not get involved with someone in the military. It wasn’t that I blamed the military for the end of my marriage. No, that fault lays one hundred percent with my ex-husband. However, I’d lived the life of a military wife long enough to know it wasn’t something I was cut out for. I didn’t like living on base and never knowing when or if my husband’s name would be called when the next tour of duty came around. Living with that kind of constant uncertainty wasn’t something I could do long-term.

Thinking back, I wasn’t quite sure when I’d decided to ignore my own rule for Jack, but obviously at some point, I’d decided that he was worth the uncertainty. Then again, that decision had been made before I found myself glued to CNN at two in the morning, pleading and praying into an empty room that he hadn’t been the one shot out of the sky.

“So, what did you want to do today? Do you need to go into the office?” Rachel asked.

At her question, I shifted my attention back to her, and watched as she sipped on her own cup of coffee. I knew myself well enough to know that even if I did go into the office there was no way I was going to be able to concentrate well enough to be able to get anything of significance done. The entire trip would be pointless. “I really don’t know. All I feel like doing is sitting by the computer, refreshing the news, and praying that at some point, I’ll open my email and there will be a new message waiting for me.”