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He chuckles. “I know you won’t. Darn integrity. Such a waste of a pretty day. And such a waste of an unmade bed, too.”
I laugh.
“Seriously, do you think you can get another evening off?” he asks. “We’re running out of time together.”
I groan. “Don’t remind me of that as I’m about to go to work,” I scold.
I’m not ready to start the countdown timer on us. I’m not ready to silently watch the days, the hours, the minutes slip away, knowing they are in limited supply.
We still have next weekend together—and it’s a three-day weekend too. So I’ll save my counting down until then.
“And I can’t do that to Harriet,” I add, more a reminder to myself than to him. “She was so nice to give me last night off.”
He frowns momentarily. “You sure? I was kind of hoping to take you someplace nice, or maybe we could go watch the sunset at Back River Beach.”
My heart aches, tempted. “I promised I’d close tonight. And Harriet made plans with her husband, soooo…” I set my coffee down and lean into him, sliding my hands to his back.
God, I want him now. I want him tomorrow and next week and forever.
I remind myself what he said to me that evening in Savannah.
What if something happened to him while he was away? What if some fleeting thought of my love for him was enough to distract him from his mission? He said he needs his focus. I have to honor that. I couldn’t live with the thought that I could somehow cost him an injury or worse.
So instead, I just kiss him, savoring the taste of him just like I always do.
I feel the tender slide of his tongue in me for a moment and then he pulls his lips away.
“Mmmmm.” He licks his lips after tasting me. “Thatisgood coffee, I’ll admit.”
I wipe my mouth, realizing I have whipped cream on me. “Thank you for it. How about I take tomorrow afternoon off?”
Something passes across his face—a thought, an emotion.Something.
“I have to get back to base early. With the rotation shift coming up, there’s a lot I have to get done.”
“Really?” I say, surprised. I don’t know why he can’t do all that next weekend. It is a three-day weekend, after all. But maybe that will just mean I get to spend more of it with him, so it might work out.
“Yeah.”
He looks more disappointed than I thought he would. And there’s a part of me that’s happy to see it. Because if he doesn’t like the idea of not spending tomorrow afternoon with me, maybe he won’t like the idea of spending his entire life without me after next weekend.
A girl can hope.
“Well, let me know if you get anymore spare time before I leave. I can get off the waves pretty quick. And I’d really like to make use of what time we’ve—”
I lift a finger in reprimand. “Nope! No more talking about that. We’ll deal with that when it comes.”
I hate to cut him off, but I can’t turn this into the long goodbye, stretching out my misery to span two entire weekends.
After I leave, I take a slight detour on my way to the diner and walk to the shoreline, trying to find comfort in the beauty of the ocean spread out in front of me. But feeling none, I take off my shoes, needing to feel its hypnotic rhythm against my skin.
I can’t control Dax. I can’t control where the Army might send him. And I can’t control that he doesn’t want someone waiting home for him, even as I’m discovering that I’d rather spend every day of my life worrying about him than not having him in my life at all.
