Page 22 of My Forever Soldier

She smiled again, and this time he knew it wasn’t the smile he’d been hoping for.

“Charlie, did you tell your dad that it’s your birthday soon?”

Luke watched his son, determined not to show how rattled he was, but inside his stomach was twisting like a Rubik’s cube. Was she just saying that to see if he remembered? He knew the date, had never forgotten it, but he obviously had a long way to go before he could convinceherof that.

“I’m gonna be four!” Charlie enthusiastically flicked the spaghetti he was eating for emphasis. “One, two, three, four!”

“And what do you want for your birthday, big guy?” His kid’s excitement was contagious.

“Soldier toys.”

Luke smiled, but reined it back when he saw how concerned Olivia looked.

“What else, honey?” she asked him.

Luke looked at Charlie, waiting for him to answer his mom’s question.

“Guns!”

Luke cleared his throat. It wasn’t that he didn’t love that his boy liked soldiers and guns, because he’d always been the same, but he knew what a raw nerve it had probably just hit in his wife. Given the fact she looked as if she’d just sucked a lemon.

“Charlie, what about the lovely toys you wanted last week? The books?” Olivia persisted.

“I wanna be like Daddy. Bang, bang!”

Luke stepped up and removed the fork from his hand.

“Guns are serious, bud. You don’t point them at your mom, and you don’t use your fork like that.”

Charlie stared back up at him, tears in his eyes.Oh, sheesh. Luke had tried to do the right thing and the kid was going to start bawling. Luke bent so he could look him in the eye.

“Don’t cry, Charlie. We just need some rules, and I don’t want you to upset your mom.”

Charlie started wailing, fled the chair and flew into Olivia’s arms, his little body heaving with sobs. Luke felt like an idiot. A mean, unloving idiot. Had he been too serious, too tough on his son? Wasn’t he meant to be firm at times?

“Ollie, I’m sorry, I was just trying to say the right thing.”

She shook her head, her lips on Charlie’s blond hair. “He’s just not used to you telling him off,” she said, giving Luke what he guessed was a reassuring nod. “You’ve been his friend, and now he’s seeing you as a parent.”

Luke went to answer, then snapped his jaw shut as she carried their son to his room. Luke definitely needed to find that elusive manual on parenting. Maybe then he’d stop making a fool of himself at the worst of times…

Real fathers laid down ground rules, took charge, but he guessed that was the problem. Most dads did so since childbirth, whereas Charlie was used to being with his mom. Used to his mom’s rules, his mom’s love, his mom full stop.

Luke picked up his beer and took a good swig, until he realized Olivia had reappeared. He put it down on the side table and sat back in the chair.

“He must have been exhausted. Fell asleep in my arms and now he’s tucked up in bed.”

Luke nodded. She was trying hard, he could tell that. But so was he, only he wasn’t succeeding in his mission

“You know when we met, how I told you a little about my past but never wanted to talk about what had happened in foster care?”

Olivia lowered herself slowly into her chair, as if she was afraid that if she moved too fast he’d change his mind and stop talking. “I remember, Luke. You told me that you’d buried that part of your past and had no intention of ever digging it back up.”

He shut his eyes and let his shoulders fall, leaning deeper into the chair. Talking about his past was never going to be easy, but right now, it was the only way he could think to open up to Olivia. To make her understand.

“Maybe if I’d dug it up, back when you’d asked me about it, we wouldn’t be here now.”

She looked sad, her head on an angle as she stared at him. As if she couldn’t believe what he was saying. “You mean we never would have gotten married?”

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