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“What about you?” he asked. “No boyfriends in Kansas?”
I bit my lip, worried to tell him the real reason I’d never had a boyfriend, trying to remind myself why I shouldn’t have one now. “It’s never been worth it to start something I knew would end.”
“Because of the moving?” he asked.
I nodded, trying to focus on the warmth of his leg against mine instead of the sinking in my stomach.
“But now that your dad’s not in the military, you can stay here longer.”
I hesitated. “Theoretically.”
“Are you going somewhere else to college?”
I bit my lip. “I don’t know.”
And you know what Diego did? He freaking laughed. “At least I’m not the only one who has no idea what I’m doing.”
“I know what I want to do. It’s just the location that’s tricky...” I realized he didn’t know the big reason I wanted to stay. My mom was my best friend, my ride or die, but she needed me too. Taking care of Dad on her own wasn’t fair, even if she now had the center helping five days a week. It wasn’t enough.
I bit my lip again, not sure how much I wanted to tell him. I’d barely even told Sadie anything about my dad.
Diego raised an eyebrow like he was prompting me.
I let out a breath. “My dad was injured in Afghanistan. Someone near him stepped on an IED. His shoulder and face caught the brunt of it. Between the brain injury and his PTSD, it’s just best for him not to be around people who don’t... understand his triggers and know how to avoid them.” Mom and I were still learning his triggers, three years into recovery.
Diego let the quiet settle between us. The story was short, but the truth was heavy.
There was nothing that could repay what our family had lost. No amount of money or worldly comforts could take away Dad’s injury. The deaths of other people in his platoon. It was a price, a heavy, irreversible one.
I prepared myself for Diego to change the subject like most people did when things got too heavy, but instead, he looked me in the eyes. “I think it’s amazing you want to go into nursing, that you want to support your mom, after all that. Most people would run from their problems. You might be the bravest person I know.”
A small sense of pride bloomed in my heart. With everything Mom and I dealt with, there wasn’t much time left over for recognition, praise. “Thank you. That means a lot.” More than he knew. And with each second that passed, I was realizing just how much I’d misjudged him. “You know, you’re not as bad as I thought you were,” I teased with a small smile.
He laughed. “I’ve wanted to say I’m sorry for that first day, when Heidi ran up to me on the beach.”
I shook my head. It seemed silly now, compared to everything else we’d just talked about.
“Really, I should have known the second I saw Heidi,” he said. “She clearly has a mind of her own.”
I laughed. “Can you blame her for wanting to get close to you?”
He sent me a grin that made me melt. “The real question is why she’d want to get away from you.”
Thirty-One
Diego
The more timeI spent with April, the more I loved her expressions. The face she made when she was annoyed, happy. And now the cute blush she wore with a repressed smile tilting her lips.
All of her faces were beautiful.
Even the sad ones.
And I wanted all of her faces to be mine.
Her expression changed to thoughtful. “I’m surprised you don’t have a grand plan for after graduation. Mom said practically everyone at the Academy goes to Ivy League schools and works high level jobs right out of college.”
My frown was instant.
