Page 42 of My Forever Soldier

“I just have to make a quick phone call.”

The old Luke would have run. Would have said yes to any promotion offered his way, would have bolted when the going got tough. But that wasn’t him anymore. The new Luke was a dad, then a husband andthena soldier. Because if he couldn’t put his priorities in that order? Then he had no business being back here at all.

13

OLIVIA LOOKED UP as Luke, his hands full, backed through the door. She wanted to get up to help him but her legs were dead, her body like an iron weight that was just too heavy to lift. Her nose was the only thing up to the task of reacting.Real coffee.Not the machine rubbish she’d been living on these past few hours.

“He’s asleep.” Olivia kept her voice low, almost a whisper.

Luke passed her a take-out cup and grinned. “One skinny large latte, two sugars.”

“Mmm, you’re my savior.” Even as she said the words, she knew they went deeper. After tonight, he was her savior—hands down, no question about it. Her knight in shining armor, complete with the white horse.

“He looks so peaceful. Like he’s dreaming about something good.” Luke sat down next to her, his leg touching hers. Denim to denim, thighs brushing.

“Luke, how did you know what to do today?” She’d been wanting to ask him for hours.

They were talking at a normal level now, no more whispering. Charlie was sound asleep and she doubted that beating drums would wake him.

When Luke didn’t answer, she continued. She could tell from the way he suddenly avoided her gaze that there was something he wasn’t telling her. That there was something, else. Something she needed to know.

“Don’t tell me it was in your army first aid training course.”

Luke delayed by taking a sip of his coffee, but she wasn’t going to let him stay silent. He’d saved Charlie’s life, but his actions had been practised. He’d known precisely what he was doing. What he had to do.

“I got some practice when I was a kid.” His tone was flat.

Olivia didn’t get it. What did he mean by practice? “Luke, I don’t understand.”

He gave her a half smile, and she wondered if she’d missed something. Was she so sleep deprived she was missing what he was telling her?

“I have asthma, Ollie,” he told her. “Or at least I did when I was younger.”

Wow. How did she not know that? “I can’t believe all this time I’ve never known. That you’ve kept it from me.” But it made sense. Of course it made sense, when she thought back to how he seemed to know exactly what Charlie was going through, how he felt.

Luke shook his head slightly. “I mostly grew out of it, so it’s no big deal.”

He was lying. She knew it was a big deal, whether he wanted to admit it or not. “How did you even make it into the army with asthma?”

He stretched out his legs and placed his coffee cup on the floor. She could tell he was uncomfortable, but she wanted to know. Had to know. It affected her sonandher husband, so the more she knew about it the better prepared she’d be.

“I almost died when I was a little older than Charlie,” he said, voice low. “The doctors told me if the ambulance had come five minutes later I would have died waiting. “

The force of his words shocked her. Who had looked after Luke when he’d been suffering, when he’d been rushed to hospital? Who had been there for him? Olivia gulped. “Was it just like Charlie?”

“Yup.” The shrug Luke gave, the way he couldn’t look at her, told her it was hard for him to be telling her about his past. “I know what it feels like to try so hard to suck in air and fail. But the difference is that Charlie had two people fighting for him to live, and I had no one.”

Olivia had thought she was all out of tears, but she was wrong. Sometimes she forgot how bad Luke had had it as a kid, how much he must have suffered.

“What happened after that?” she asked in a choked voice.

Luke looked up at the ceiling, fighting what she could only guess was his own emotion. Olivia reached for him, touched her hand to his thigh and never took her eyes from his face.

“I had a great doctor and he helped me. Even kept me in the hospital for a few extra days because he could see what was happening,” Luke told her. “Then I read up all I could, as much as I could understand at the time, and just decided to do everything I could to fight it.”

“Like it was a disease or something? You were fighting the symptoms?” she asked.

Luke nodded. “I went from being a sickly kid who couldn’t even run a block to the fittest kid in school, and I always carried my inhaler. That was when things changed for me.”

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