Page 133 of Forged By Sacrifice

YOU ARE THE REASON

“I'd climb every mountain

And swim every ocean

Just to be with you.”

Performed by Calum Scott & Leona Lewis

Written by Sanders / Maguire / Calum

The snow was falling, and Christmas lights sent sparkles across the wet surfaces as I headed toward the apartment where Georgie was waiting for me. It reminded me of Fourth of July and the drops that had dripped through the heavens while I’d watched her instead of the fireworks. I’d been fascinated by her then, and now, only five months later, I was equally fascinated. And grateful. Grateful that every day I got to wake up next to her. Tangled with her body that fit perfectly with mine.

We were leaving D.C. the next day for Delaware and the chaos of my family, so I wanted it to be just us tonight. Quiet before the storm. Quiet where I could ask her to be mine forever without everyone looking on.

I’d always thought I would know when the woman I was meant to be with had walked into my life. And even knowing that, I remember still thinking Eli was insane when he’d moved in with Ava after dating her for two months and proposing to her after only six. I’d wondered if it could last, the passion and intensity that you could see in them when they were together. I’d doubted it because I hadn’t experienced love.

And now I was a believer. A believer in everything.

Love. Happiness. The ever after.

Life could fuck it up. We could lose each other because of illness, or I could be sent out on assignment and lose my life there. But maybe knowing all that made me love her more each moment I was with her. Made me want for her to be mine in every way possible for as long as we had.

I just hoped she’d agree.

I’d barely convinced her that dreams and reality could be one. I wasn’t sure she’d gotten to the white wedding, happily ever after part yet.

When I walked in the door, it was quiet, but the Christmas tree was lit up, and Christmas music was playing. Georgie was as big of a fan of Christmas as she was Fourth of July. I thought maybe she was just a fan of holidays. She’d certainly gotten a kick out of Thanksgiving with the crazy Whittaker clan, and even her sister, Raisa, who’d joined us, had commented on her smiles.

“Georgie?” I hollered, dropping my wet gear by the door and heading down the hallway to the bedroom we shared.

“Up here,” she hollered back, and I turned and headed back toward the loft she hardly ever spent time in anymore. The loft that hadn’t been her bedroom since before Florida and the shitstorm we’d all survived.

I took the steps two at a time and then stopped near the top to catch my breath. Not because the stairs had winded me, but because she did. She was standing in a white silk nightie that barely covered her butt cheeks, hair down just like I liked it most, and she was watching the city move below her.

She turned, and I realized she had my note in her hand. The note I’d written this morning and shoved into her textbook just where I knew she’d find it. Once upon a time, I’d been afraid to write anything down that I felt. Afraid that someday it would be used against me. Not anymore. Now I wrote Georgie notes all the time. Love notes. Sex notes. I miss you notes. Anything and everything that would make her smile like she was smiling at me now.

“What took you so long?” she asked.

I growled and was at her side in a bound, pulling her to me and kissing her like we’d spent days apart instead of a few hours. There was a smell of cinnamon twisted in with her normal cherry scent tonight. It was enough to make me feel like I’d had more than one beer with the clowns at the Christmas party.

“I had to make a stop,” I told her, pulling away from her lips.

She had her fingers on the buttons of my uniform. The uniform I’d put back on this fall and had vowed not to take back off again. I wouldn’t either. Not unless they forced me to. I stilled her hands. “Slow down, Georgie-Girl.”

“What?” she laughed. “Aren’t you usually the one saying to hurry up?”

I smiled and pulled her down the steps to the Christmas tree.

“I want you to open your Christmas present here,” I told her.

She smiled. “I’m already in my lingerie, Mac-Macauley. You already get to have your way with me.”

I kissed her.

“Shh. I don’t want to get sidetracked.”

She laughed, and I almost forgot what I was trying to do, because her laugh and her smile always made me feel like the world had stopped around me.

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