Page 3 of A Veteran’s Second Chance

Her figure has filled out into womanly curves, and her loose pants hug her ass that has rounded into a perfect peach.

From this distance, I can’t see her face properly, but I remember every inch of it. I remember her wide eyes and shy smile, and how it transformed into a wide beam when she turned it on me. I remember her girlish laugh and her enthusiasm for everything.

I’m not foolish enough to think she’ll be exactly the same. No one is exactly how they were at eighteen. I just hope some of that light is still there.

She doesn’t see me. I’m standing in the memorial garden, tucked away from the main path. Part of me wants her to turn around and notice me. The other part is terrified of what she’ll do if she does.

But I had to see her. As soon as I arrived this morning, I headed for the main treatment facility. I’m supposed to be at orientation, but I didn’t want to miss Savanna arriving at work. I’ve waited a long time to see Savanna Hart again, and I couldn’t wait another moment.

My first appointment with her is this afternoon, and anticipation pulses through my veins. I’ve waited a long time to meet the woman I left behind over a decade ago. She was barely a woman then, just out of high school and on her way to college. Smart and beautiful, and so damn young. I was almost thirty, and that age gap didn’t look good. It’s why I tried to keep it innocent, but the damn woman got under my skin.

I told myself I was doing the right thing when I broke up with Savanna, that I couldn’t expect a woman so young and with her own ambitions to become a military wife, to follow me around from base to base and never know where I was or whether I was coming home. I saw how that played out with my father, and it wasn’t good, not for his first wife or his second. Maybe number three’s the charm for him.

I told myself leaving Savanna was the kind thing to do. But damn, I’ve thought about her every day for the past eleven years. I thought her memory would fade, but when missions got rough on long nights in the desert, it’s the memory of her that got me through.

I saw special operatives’ marriages fall apart, as well as my father’s marriages, and it confirmed my decision was the right one, but it didn’t mean I stopped thinking about her. And here I am, eleven years later, recovering from one dislocated shoulder too many and about to walk into her clinic. I have no idea if she even remembers me, if I was just a young girl’s infatuation. She probably hasn’t thought about me for years.

Savanna enters the building, and the door swings shut behind her. I let out a long sigh. I’ve got four hours before my appointment with her.

I pull out my phone, and a message pops up reminding me it’s my father’s birthday. I send him a quick text. There’s no point in waiting for a reply. Gordon barely remembers to message me on my birthday. I guess he’s too busy with his third wife and their young kids.

I slide my phone back into my pocket and stand up to stretch my legs.

Jake’s Retreat is nice; the gardens are beautiful, and it’s peaceful with the mountain setting. A buddy of mine, Jace, spent some time here and now lives in Hope, the local town. I send him a text to meet up later. Then I head down the path to join the orientation.

3

SAVANNA

Joel hands me the roster for today, and my gaze snags on one name: Logan Winslow. My pulse quickens, which is annoying. It’s been years since I last saw Logan. I was eighteen, still a girl really, yet his name printed on my appointment sheet for one o’clock makes my heart flutter as if I was that girl again.

Joel’s speaking about the new patients, and it takes me a moment to realize he’s stopped talking.

“Huh?” I look up from the roster, and he’s staring at me.

“Everything okay? You looked flustered.”

There’s no getting anything past Joel. I frown at the sheet. I may have been eighteen when I knew Logan, but that didn’t make the heartbreak any less painful. Or less embarrassing, when I remember the way I clung to him and begged him to stay. When he broke things off before his deployment, I cried for days. I was so upset I was physically ill. I almost didn’t go away to college. It was only because Cassie dragged me out of bed and drove me across two states, and frog-marched me into registration that I went. She stayed with me for a week despite my barely getting out of bed and made sure I went to my lectures.

Slowly, I began to function again, but the pain took a long time to fully go away. Which is why it’s so annoying that reading his name makes my stupid heart skip a beat, as if it wants to get broken all over again.

“I’m fine,” I say to Joel.

He peers at me and then at the sheet. “It’s a full schedule. I can transfer a patient to Cliff. He’s been asking for more shifts. Just say the word.”

Cliff has joined us part-time as a physiotherapist. He’s a single dad, and the part-time hours suit him.

I glance at Logan’s name on my schedule. We spent one summer together. Enough time for an eighteen-year-old to become infatuated and believe she’d found the love of her life, but a summer fling for a hardened soldier looking for distraction while he was stateside.

He was over a decade older than me, already with a career in the military and a life that felt grown-up. A life I thought I was ready for. He probably left a string of heartbroken young women every time he was back stateside. I was a foolish girl who gave her heart away too easily. At least I didn’t give him everything. We fooled around a lot, but we never went all the way. He always pulled back, telling me I was too young, and he didn’t want me to regret it. I’ve thought about it many times since, wondering what it would have been like, which is why the last thing I need is Logan on my treatment table where I have to put my hands on him.

I have a chance to palm him off on Cliff. It’s tempting, but that’s the coward’s way out. I’m a grown-up woman now; I’m a health care professional, and I’m not going to let one man get the better of me.

“It’s all good. I can handle it.”

Joel peers at me, as if he can read my thoughts, but he doesn’t push it.

I swallow hard and flip over to the next page and pretend to read the history of my first patient.