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The picture was worn and faded. As if it had been held too many times. The edges were worn and frayed, but the smiling face in the photograph was still the same.
And holding it, he still felt the same familiar ache.
God, how could one person miss someone so fucking badly?
“Yo, James! Cap wants you!” his partner and best friend, Dean, shouted, and he quickly tucked the photo back into his hat and slid it on.
Dean gave him a look as he walked by, but didn’t say anything.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for Dean, he didn’t think he would have made it this far. Being away from home was hard enough. Being in a third world country, fighting some war, was worse.
Missing his Melanie.
That was just about killing him.
When he had been young and faced with a decision of college or building a life in Savage Valley, it had seemed simple. His family had lived there and died there, and Melanie was there too.
A no brainer.
But his prospects had been short and all he knew was that he’d had to support the life that he wanted with her.
When the marine recruiter had come to their high school, it had been like all his prayers had been answered. Little did he know that the recruiter was looking for numbers and would have told him just about anything to get him to sign.
That left him here walking across the desert sand, wishing like hell he was back at home.
“Cap. You wanted to see me,” he said, pushing the flap aside and walking into the captain’s tent, ignoring the plume of dust that rose and seemed to linger everywhere.
Being in the desert, you had to push aside some things to mentally make it, and the fucking sand dust was one of them.
Fuck, he missed the mountains.
“Sit, son,” Captain said, pointing to the chair across from his makeshift desk. They may be in the fucking marines, but they had been on this godforsaken mission for months, and protocol with each other had slid away somewhere around week one or two.
“Your papers came in. I need to know what you want to do.”
It wasn’t even a question.
“I’m done, Cap,” he answered almost immediately, and his captain nodded like he knew that had been coming.
“I understand. I’m sad to lose you, but I get it. You will need to fill these out, but you should be out of here in a couple of weeks.”
A couple of weeks? Shit!
“What about the mission, sir?”
“There will always be someone to fight, son. Now or later doesn’t matter. We haven’t had any new intel in weeks, and the brass knows we are stalled out. Nothing to do but wait and no sense in you waiting here if I can get you home.”
He hated to leave his team in a lurch while in the middle of a mission, but Cap was right. They had literally been sitting on their asses for weeks now, and he wanted to lay eyes on his girl.
He leaned forward and signed his name on the line, then set the pen down.
That was it.
His stomach churned as he sat back in his chair. A feeling that he wasn’t sure he was able to label.
He was officially done with the marines.
Cap nodded to him, and he got up, leaving just a quickly as he had gotten in. Cap never had been one for long, drawn-out conversations.
