Page 59 of Soaring and Steadfast

He wanted to be alone with Lila. To hold her, to press her against him, and memorize the way she fit so perfectly in his arms. To breathe her in, whisper everything he had dreamed of in the lonely nights at sea. He needed to feel the steady beat of her heart against his, to reassure himself that this was real—that she was real.

Slipping into the car, he quickly followed the other couple off base.

Maybe tonight, they would talk about her moving here. Maybe she already had. Maybe he was getting ahead of himself, but the thought of falling asleep beside her and waking up with her in his arms every morning wasn’t just a fantasy—it was something he craved down to his bones.

She had come for him. That alone meant more than he could ever put into words.

“Is Ohio going to be okay?” Lila’s voice was soft and hesitant, and Louis felt the weight of it press against the heavy thoughts clouding his mind.

“He’s being discharged,” Louis said quietly, forcing himself to answer even as his throat tightened. “I can talk about it now, but before... it was a powder keg on the ship. No one knew how to handle it—so many people were shocked, so many were furious.”

“With good reason,” she murmured.

“Oh, I know.” He exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “I kept thinking, ‘what if it was me?’ And every time I did, I just… broke. I couldn’t stand the thought of you getting that call, of you having to go through something like that.”

Lila’s fingers tightened around his, and when she spoke, her voice trembled. “Is there a chance it could happen to you?”

“No,” he said, though even as he spoke the word, the image of Ohio’s plane haunted him. The impossible had happened once—who was to say it couldn’t again? He swallowed hard. “The cables don’t snap. Not like that. If you were going to win the lottery, that wasn’t the one you wanted your number drawn for.”

Her eyes searched his face, and he knew she wasn’t convinced. He wasn’t sure he was, either.

“We have four chances to hook a cable on the flight deck,” he explained, his voice thick. “He missed the first three. It should’ve been fine. He should have stopped on the fourth. And if you miss all of them, you just take off again. That’s how it works.” He hesitated, then shook his head, horror flickering in his eyes. “For his plane to spin off the deck like that... I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t think I ever will again. It was a one-in-a-million thing.”

Lila’s expression was tight, her lips pressed together as if holding back a thousand words. “You said he was screaming?”

Louis exhaled through his nose, the sound ragged. “He’s terrified of the water now,” he whispered. “Every time a jet engine would spin up, he’d break down. They had to sedate him just to get him off the carrier. It was bad.”

“I’m so sorry,” Lila said, her voice full of quiet sorrow.

“Me too,” he admitted, his chest aching. Then, almost desperately, he turned toward her, needing to shift the weight of the conversation. “Wanna know a secret?”

Her brows lifted slightly, and he could see the curiosity sparking in her eyes. “Sure.”

“Just you and me,” he teased, nudging her gently. “You can’t say a word to Trophy or Stephanie.”

“I would never.”

“I know,” he said, the words carrying a quiet reverence. “Which is why I feel like I can share it with you… with my wife.”

Lila’s breath hitched, but she didn’t correct him. The flicker in her eyes, the way her lips parted slightly—he could see the way the word settled into her, warm and welcome.

“What’s the secret?” she asked softly.

Louis grinned, leaning in conspiratorially. “Ohio is with Laura.”

Lila’s expression morphed into intrigue. “Trophy’s little sister?”

“She’s four years younger than Ohio,” Louis clarified. “And he’s pushing twenty-nine.”

Her eyes widened in disbelief. “That guy wastwenty-nine?He looked like he was twenty-one.”

Louis laughed, the tension finally breaking. “He gets so mad when he gets carded at bars.”

“I bet.”

He grinned, a spark of something lighter flickering back to life as he put the car in park and saw Trophy with his family, walking inside to their apartment nearby. He got out of the car,circled around, and opened Lila’s door, holding out his hand to her.

“All right,” he began, tugging her toward the couple’s apartment in the distance. “Let’s go in, make a little small talk, say hello, grab the carrot cake… and run to the nearest hotel.”

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