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“No, I’ll see her in a day or two.” I shoved my hands into my pockets and turned back to the window. “What is it son? What’s eating away at you? I know it’s not your service, is it the wedding?” She moved closer and joined me at the window. I moved away quickly so she wouldn’t guess what I was doing. Who I was staring at.
“It’s nothing mother I’m fine.” I felt stifled with her here, and hated myself for it. It’s the same feeling I had earlier when Helen was here. Like the noose was tightening harder around my neck with each passing day.
She didn’t stay long, just said something about dinner before leaving the way she came, and I went back to my brooding. I don’t know how long I stood at that window waiting to get another glimpse of her, but she never emerged from the house again.
“What am I going to do Lucia? What the fuck am I supposed to do?” I’ll have to talk to her old man first things first. No way is she joining the navy, not on my watch. I have nothing against our armed forces, but as I’d so stupidly let slip to her, no way in fucking hell am I letting her go through the horrors that plague me at night.
I don’t give a damn about women’s rights and glass ceilings. My mind doesn’t go in that direction, not when it comes to her safety. I may not be able to have her, but I’m fucked if some asshole somewhere is going to take her life because she was running away from me.
I had to remind myself of all the reasons I couldn’t, shouldn’t have her. She was barely nineteen, she was innocent and she was too fucking good for me. That old argument didn’t seem to pack as much punch as it once did. I could feel myself weakening by the minute.
Where will it all end? When will this daily confusion come to an end? When will the day come when I go to sleep and wake up without her being the first and last thing on my mind? When will my dick stop getting hard at just the mere thought of her? That last one I could answer easily enough. Never!
3
I didn’t get to talk to her old man that night, but sought him out first thing the very next day. I’d spoken to him numerous times in the last year, more to learn more about her than anything else. Though I couched my curiosity in the broadest terms so as not to give anything away.
He had no idea that I wanted to sully his daughter. That if I had my way she’d be under me all day every day until her belly was swollen with child, my child. I’d never once let on to the need I had in me for her.
I found him in the garden pruning the rosebushes. I never understood how the world worked when it came to this class shit. Here’s a man who works as hard as any I’ve seen. He’d served in the navy, a bunch of pansy ass squids I know, but at least he’d manned up when his country needed him.
And yet, there’s a faction of our society who looks at this man, a man who’d come back from hell and done everything in his power to care for his family, as less than they are.
“Morning Thomas.”
“Mr. Ethan.”
“I’ve asked you not to call me that.”
“Yes I know, but not only are you my boss, but you outrank me as well, so…” There was no point in arguing because he was just as stiff necked as his daughter.
I couldn’t find the words to start the conversation without giving myself away. I’d walked the floor all night with my gut in knots. The only answer here was to let her go, but it was the only thing I couldn’t yet bring myself to live with.
“Ah, yeah, so I ran into Lucia yesterday. Has she said anything to you about joining up?” He didn’t even falter in his clipping, just carried on as if I hadn’t just told him his only daughter was about to put her life in danger.
Or maybe he doesn’t see it like that. Maybe he’d be proud to see her follow in his footsteps. In which case I might’ve just lost my only ally in keeping her little ass home, safe.
“She mentioned it. Why?” Isn’t that the leading question? How should I answer?
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.” And what the fuck does it have to do with you? I hope he doesn’t ask me that because I don’t have an answer I can give him.
I’m almost engaged to someone else and the whole damn town knows it. If she were mine, scratch that, because no matter what, she is mine. So, if she were my daughter, I wouldn’t want the likes of me sniffing around her either.
