Page 5 of Forever My Soldier

“I wanted to be with him that night just as much as he wanted to be with me,” I refuted. I didn’t know why I felt the need to defend myself, but I did. At the very least, Deacon deserved to not be seen as a bad guy, not to my mother or anyone. He was one of the greatest men I’d ever known. Probably would ever know.

“It ends now,” my mother said simply.

She acted like it was the easiest thing in the world to just fall out of love. But she should only know that I tried and failed so many times before. He was in my heart and my head. I was never going to be rid of him. And just because our child didn’t make it, didn’t mean it was all forgotten, didn’t mean we hadn’t conceived a life.

I knew what I needed to do, though. So I stood tall and asked, “What do you propose I do to get over this then?”

She rolled her eyes. “Forget about him. You’ll move on, Jenna, and this will become nothing but a very distant memory.”

That was the last thing I wanted. But the ache I felt in my heart was undeniable and I needed it to stop, so I’d do anything to dull it.

I sniffled one last time and wiped away the rest of the tears. “Let me get dressed and wash my face. I’ll be right out and you can take me home.”

She nodded and walked over to me, awkwardly patting my shoulder. “I’ll be right outside.”

Before leaving, I stopped in my tracks when I heard her say, “And, Jenna, it’s probably best if you don’t talk to Mary anymore. Break all ties with that family.”

I slowly nodded and waited until she left before letting myself go completely and crying.

It was the last time I’d let myself cry about any of this.

That night when my mother brought me back to my apartment, I put together a shoebox with all of the letters I’d written but never sent to Deacon after we broke up. It was my way of feeling close to him. After I found out I was pregnant, I started up again, but never had the nerve to send them. Along with the letters, I put one more thing in the shoebox: the ring Deacon gave to me before he left the first time—a promise that when he returned he’d propose and we’d get married. I held onto it tightly in my hands before finally laying it in the box with the rest of our memories.

Chapter Two

Jenna

Present Day

We were runningout of time, I knew, as I watched the sun creep in from the bedroom window. “Tell me something that’ll make me stay,” I begged. “I don’t want to go, not yet.”

It was the truth. I didn’t want to leave Michael’s bed where I laid tangled in the sheets, leaning into him, his arm over my shoulder as he pulled me closer and kissed the top of my forehead affectionately. He rubbed gentle circles on my arm and I sighed, happier than I’d been in a long time.

Michael Dean was ten years my senior and my father’s CPA, had been for years now. He hated the idea of doing anything but working in accounting, always insisting the thought of it made him want to hurl himself off a building. However, playing golf with my father was the one exception to that rule. Accounting was all he knew, though, and he couldn’t understand people who didn’t obsess over it like he did. He thought it was one of the most important professions.

Truthfully, we didn’t have much in common and often times I wondered how we got here. But he was the definition of high society and fit my world like a glove. It was easy for us to fall into a rhythm. And I never had to worry about him breaking my heart into a million pieces because, while I loved him, I wasn’tinlove with him. He’d said the L-word in passing, but it didn’t make me weak in the knees or swoon the way he said it. And that was just fine because the way I loved Michael had nothing on the way I’d loved once before. Frankly, it was comforting to know that our relationship was a lot different.

Michael moved from his position and finally responded, “I’d love to stay here with you all day, but we both know that’s not how this works.”

I shimmied up to the top of the bed and pulled the sheet over me so it covered my chest. “It’s Sunday, we have this hotel room all to ourselves, at least for another two hours. Why not? We can tune everything else out and stay in this cocoon of happiness.” I glided my feet up and down, loving the way the soft sheets felt beneath my feet.

He sighed as I watched him put his shoes on. “Can’t. I got a last minute meeting with your father today, then we’re going to the country club.” He looked over his shoulder at me and questioned, “Shouldn’t you be working anyway? You just landed a huge client.” He was talking about the cosmetic company that signed with me earlier in the week. They were one of the most successful cosmetic brands. Every woman under forty was wearing their products and every millennial wanted a job there. They were the very definition of a big fish.

I looked down at my manicured nails and shrugged. “Work can wait.”

He patted the bed before getting off it. “You’re a wonder, Jenna.”

Being a lawyer was all I ever wanted and I was damn good at what I did. I graduated summa cum laude from the University of Miami and knew this shit like the back of my hand, but that didn’t mean I wanted to make it my whole life. There was more to life than work, and I wanted those things life had to offer.

There was a time when all I needed was my work. I got absorbed in it and everything else paled in comparison. Even today, I was sad to admit that my life consisted of two things: my job and playing the part of good little daughter in my parent’s world.

And had Mary never called me with news that Deacon’s chopper went down and they didn’t know if he was one of the missing or dead, I probably would’ve remained happy with my life just the way it was. It seemed like a cruel twist of fate, being that his enlistment was almost up. After that call from Mary, I was barely able to wrap my mind around much else. All I could think about was Deacon returning home safe and sound. I needed him to be okay.

Thankfully, Mary kept me updated and I learned he was okay. In fact, she recently informed me he was coming home soon, which lifted a huge weight off my chest.

I didn’t have any girlfriends to spill my guts to, and I wished I felt more comfortable sharing these things with Michael, but I didn’t. He wouldn’t understand where I was coming from, why I still cared about an ex-boyfriend. The truth was, he was an emotionally distant person, so I doubted I’d get anything from him. Frankly, he wouldn’t want to hear that I was even being kept abreast about my ex-boyfriend’s situation.

“All right, well, that doesn’t change the fact that I have to go.” He walked to the bathroom, swiping his phone and earbuds off the nightstand to take with him.

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