by Evans, LJ
Brady left to go sing a song he’d written for the bride and groom about love lasting longer than the tides. It was good, but it wasn’t an Ava song.
And then, finally, Mac was at my side again, twining his fingers in mine and pulling me onto the dance floor. The song was slow and moody as he turned me into him. My entire body sighed. That’s what it felt like. Relief to be in his arms again after the ache of not being there. Of being apart.
“I’m redeeming my favor,” he said.
This caught me off guard. “I think you already did.”
“But you never granted it,” he said, all seriousness, but I could see the sparkle of mischief in his eyes.
“A dance is your favor?” I smiled up at him.
He chuckled. “Not hardly. I need you to hear me out. Can you do that here, or do we need to go somewhere else?”
I didn’t respond. I put my forehead on his chest, afraid of what I would say or not say. Afraid I’d let the what-ifs burden me down again. My heart was pounding because I so desperately wanted to hear what he had to say. I wanted to believe that the look I’d seen in his eyes all day was the same look that had been in his eyes when he’d said he loved me.
He drew me from the dance floor, through the storage closet, and up the ladder to the roof. The sun had faded, turning the sky deep purple. The wind had picked up, and I shivered. Mac ran his fingers up and down my arms, but it made the goosebumps worse instead of better.
“Georgie, no job―political, military, or otherwise―is enough for me to give up you,” he said, and my heart sped up, feeling like it was going to jump out of my chest. But it was hard to see his expression in the twilight.
“You’ve already reenlisted,” I heard myself say when I really wanted to say, “Thank God.”
“I can go down right now and have Eli and Truck break my leg for me. Get out just like Eli got out.”
“You’d break your leg so we could be together?” I asked, my heart beating a new tune. A tune of “what is.” A reality and a dream built together.
“If you want me out. If that’s the condition upon which you’ll take me back,” he said quickly and honestly.
“Mac, I don’t want you to give up your career—any of them—for me,” I told him, but he misunderstood. He thought I was saying what I’d said back in D.C.—that we couldn’t be together—when that wasn’t what I meant. I really meant that if he’d have me, I’d take him no matter his career.
But when I went to talk, he put a finger on my lips and said, “I understand that. I know that you don’t want me to, and that makes me love you even more. The fact that you want me to have the future I always envisioned. The thing is, once you walked into my life, the only future I could imagine was one with you in it. One where I get to wake up guessing what color your eyes will be when you come out of the bathroom. One where I get to kiss the place at the corner of your ear and your jaw that makes you shiver and moan.”
His words were so sweet they brought tears to my eyes, and he continued to misread them and said, “Do you know what I can’t envision? I can’t imagine living with the idea that you’re out there with some other man. Where some other man gets to hold you, and protect you, and make you his. I can’t imagine any other woman coming into my life and fitting into the curves of my life and my body and my soul the way you do. I can’t imagine any career that requires me to give up―”
I kissed him. I tangled my fingers in his hair and pulled his lips tight up against mine, and my body relaxed for the first time in over a month. I was where I belonged. In his arms. For as long as he’d have me. He didn’t even hesitate before he was kissing me back. Fiercely. Like a man who was drowning and asking to be pulled ashore. Like a man who loved a woman who loved him back.
I pulled away, and he groaned in protest.
“I was right, and you were wrong,” I told him, and he looked at me questioningly. “I told you that you have all the beautiful words when you speak from your heart.”
“It’s because you are my heart. All of it.”
He went back to kissing me and found my favorite spot below my ear along my neck that had me saying his name in desperation. Forty days of longing. He picked me up, tongues and lips still locked in a battle to show who had missed who the most, and headed toward the picnic tables that were on the roof, and we’d almost gotten there when we heard a ripping sound.
I pulled back from his lips as we both burst into laughter. My hand found the torn sleeve of yet another rental tux. He set me down on the edge of the table, moving in between my legs, my short bridesmaid dress riding up my thighs.
“Why did you pick me up?” I grinned up at him.
His smile faded. “I didn’t want to let you go in case you changed your mind.”
We stared at each other for a long time, and then I put both my hands on his face before carefully and gently brushing my lips along his. “I’m not changing my mind. Why would I want hamburger when I can have steak?”
“You’re quoting Newman to me?”
I smiled at him, and he devoured my lips in a kiss that took us both to a new dream realm where it was just us, his hardness rubbing up against my middle, making me wonder why I’d ever thought I could walk away from this. Why I’d ever thought I’d want to walk away from this. From a man who saw me for who I was and still loved me with all my pieces and parts strewn around the world.
Truck’s laughter from the rooftop entrance brought us to our senses.
“I absolutely won the bet!” Truck hollered at us.
“What bet?” I asked, looking over Mac’s shoulder at Truck’s grinning face.
“The bet that said he’d be kissing you before the wedding was over.”
“The ceremony ended hours ago,” Mac said, but his lips were smiling against mine.
“I didn’t say the ceremony, I said the wedding.” Truck snorted.
“Potato, potahto,” Mac responded.
“They’re about to leave,” Truck said and then disappeared back down the hatch.
“You bet on us?” I asked as he helped me down from the picnic table and entwined his hands back with mine.
“I’d bet on us a million times.”
His words tore a new hole in my heart. A hole that was anchored with the string that bound me to him. That would forever bind me to this man who was willing to sacrifice everything for the ideals and the people he loved.
“I love you, Mac-Macauley.”
“I love you right back, Georgie-Girl.”
Mac
YOU ARE THE REASON
“I'd climb every mountain
And swim every ocean
Just to be with you.”
Performed by Calum Scott & Leona Lewis
Written by Sanders / Maguire / Calum
The snow was falling, and Christmas lights sent sparkles across the wet surfaces as I headed toward the apartment where Georgie was waiting for me. It reminded me of Fourth of July and the drops that had dripped through the heavens while I’d watched her instead of the fireworks. I’d been fascinated by her then, and now, only five months later, I was equally fascinated. And grateful. Grateful that every day I got to wake up next to her. Tangled with her body that fit perfectly with mine.
We were leaving D.C. the next day for Delaware and the chaos of my family, so I wanted it to be just us tonight. Quiet before the storm. Quiet where I could ask her to be mine forever without everyone looking on.
I’d always thought I would know when the woman I was meant to be with had walked into my life. And even knowing that, I remember still thinking Eli was insane when he’d moved in with Ava after dating her for two months and proposing to her after only six. I’d wondered if it could last, the passion and intensity that you could see in them when they were together. I’d doubted it because I hadn’t experienced love.
And now I was a believer. A believer in everything.
Love. Happiness. The ever after.
<
br /> Life could fuck it up. We could lose each other because of illness, or I could be sent out on assignment and lose my life there. But maybe knowing all that made me love her more each moment I was with her. Made me want for her to be mine in every way possible for as long as we had.
I just hoped she’d agree.
I’d barely convinced her that dreams and reality could be one. I wasn’t sure she’d gotten to the white wedding, happily ever after part yet.
When I walked in the door, it was quiet, but the Christmas tree was lit up, and Christmas music was playing. Georgie was as big of a fan of Christmas as she was Fourth of July. I thought maybe she was just a fan of holidays. She’d certainly gotten a kick out of Thanksgiving with the crazy Whittaker clan, and even her sister, Raisa, who’d joined us, had commented on her smiles.
“Georgie?” I hollered, dropping my wet gear by the door and heading down the hallway to the bedroom we shared.
“Up here,” she hollered back, and I turned and headed back toward the loft she hardly ever spent time in anymore. The loft that hadn’t been her bedroom since before Florida and the shitstorm we’d all survived.
I took the steps two at a time and then stopped near the top to catch my breath. Not because the stairs had winded me, but because she did. She was standing in a white silk nightie that barely covered her butt cheeks, hair down just like I liked it most, and she was watching the city move below her.
She turned, and I realized she had my note in her hand. The note I’d written this morning and shoved into her textbook just where I knew she’d find it. Once upon a time, I’d been afraid to write anything down that I felt. Afraid that someday it would be used against me. Not anymore. Now I wrote Georgie notes all the time. Love notes. Sex notes. I miss you notes. Anything and everything that would make her smile like she was smiling at me now.
“What took you so long?” she asked.
I growled and was at her side in a bound, pulling her to me and kissing her like we’d spent days apart instead of a few hours. There was a smell of cinnamon twisted in with her normal cherry scent tonight. It was enough to make me feel like I’d had more than one beer with the clowns at the Christmas party.
“I had to make a stop,” I told her, pulling away from her lips.
She had her fingers on the buttons of my uniform. The uniform I’d put back on this fall and had vowed not to take back off again. I wouldn’t either. Not unless they forced me to. I stilled her hands. “Slow down, Georgie-Girl.”
“What?” she laughed. “Aren’t you usually the one saying to hurry up?”
I smiled and pulled her down the steps to the Christmas tree.
“I want you to open your Christmas present here,” I told her.
She smiled. “I’m already in my lingerie, Mac-Macauley. You already get to have your way with me.”
I kissed her.
“Shh. I don’t want to get sidetracked.”
She laughed, and I almost forgot what I was trying to do, because her laugh and her smile always made me feel like the world had stopped around me.
“Do you remember when we said we had a lot of chemistry?”
She nodded.
“And we do, right?”
She nodded again.
“And you kind of like me, just a wee bit?”
“I don’t just like you. You know that. I love you. You’re kind and smart and gentle―”
“I’m not always gentle,” I cut her off, and I could see she was wondering where my rambling was going, but I couldn’t help teasing her. “And I’m quite handsome, too.”
“But the best part of you is your family,” she teased back.
I tried to look offended but couldn’t. “I can’t really argue it. They’re great. Except Thomas.”
She laughed again, and I kissed her.
“You’re distracting me,” I told her.
“Sorry. Present. Right.” She stuck her hand out.
“I forgot what I was supposed to say,” I told her with a laugh.
“What you were supposed to say?” Her brow furrowed, but she was still smiling.
“Eli had it all planned for me, him being the word guy and all.”
I thought maybe she was getting a hint of what I was trying to do, because her smile slowly melted, being replaced with something in her eyes that wasn’t just love. Something that looked like my future.
“You can’t do this while I’m in my pajamas,” she said with a laugh.
“You look sexy as hell just like that.”
“Just propose already,” she teased.
And I couldn’t help but grin at her because she knew me well enough to know what I was doing from the moment I started. I pulled the velvet box out of my pocket and placed it between her hands, but covered them with my own so she couldn’t open it yet.
“I told you on the roof above the bar that I couldn’t imagine my future without you in it. And I mean that. But I’ve also seen how short a time that people can have together.” My throat caught, thinking of Darren’s wife spending her first Christmas without her husband. “And I’ve also seen how long they can have, like my grandparents. But because we don’t know what the road ahead of us looks like, I want to make sure that you’re on it with me every step of the way.”
“I’m already on the road with you, Mac.”
“You are, but I want it to be official. I want you to be mine in every way possible. If you’ll have me for the rest of your life.”
Her eyes glittered with tears, the pale green that was all her reflecting the lights from the tree. “I would be honored to be on any road with you for as long as you’ll have me,” she said.
“Forever it is, then.” I smiled and leaned in to kiss her before removing my hand and helping her open the little black box.
It was a ring that had a diamond in the middle with a rainbow of colored stones on either side. Multiple colors just like her multiple lenses.
“I didn’t want you to have to pick just one color,” I said quietly.
“Mac…” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.
I took the ring and slipped it on her finger and then picked her up and carried her down the hall. We were about halfway when the shoulder of my uniform ripped with a great big, resounding tear.
“Goddamn it,” I swore, and she laughed.
And I knew that I’d do whatever it took to keep her laughing for the next hundred years, and I wished on all the stars that shone out the window that we would have that long and more.
The story is all done, but if you want to check out a little bonus epilogue with Mac, Georgie, Truck, and Jersey, you can download it here:
FORGED BY SACRIFICE: BONUS EPILOGUE
Want to see how the whole gang first came together? You can read the standalone, Anchor Novel, Guarded Dreams, on Amazon now (and it’s free in Kindle Unlimited). https://amzn.to/2LJHHic
Keep reading for a sneak peek at the first two chapters.
You’ll see a bit more of Mac, Georgie, and all the gang in the next four Anchor Novels that you can add to your “To Be Read” shelf in Goodreads now.
Avenged by Love – Truck & Jersey’s story
Damaged Desires – Dani & Nash’s story
Branded by Love – Brady O’Neil’s story
Unmasked Dreams – Dawson and Violet’s story
Eli
GIRL LIKE YOU
“Turn out the lights and let me breathe you in,
Your eyes are so diamond, body so gold,
And I don't want to let you go,
I've never met a girl like you.”
—Performed by Jason Aldean
—Written by Boyer / Mirenda / Tyler
The heat and humidity assaulted me as I stepped out of the rented truck and looked up at the house on the shore of Aransas Bay. I groaned inwardly. I was so screwed. The guys weren’t going to let me live this down.
Somehow, the house had escaped Hu
rricane Harvey with only a few dents and bruises, but there’d been some reconstruction needed. The remnants of that renovation were obvious in the oversized trash container full of debris outside the two-car garage that took up the bottom floor of the home.
The house desperately needed a paint job. The color was, at the moment, a crazy mix of beaten yellow, raw wood, and leftover white. That was what the guys and I were here to do: paint the house.
I heard Mac and Truck grumble as they slammed the doors behind me.
“Holy fuck, Els-worth, what have you gotten us into?” Mac threw out. He only broke out the Els-worth when he wanted to make a point. He knew I hated it. Call me Eli, or Wyatt, or hell, even my full name of Elijah James Wyatt, but just don’t call me what the asshole lieutenant had our freshman year.
I turned to both of them. Mac was built like a linebacker. He barely fit in the cargo shorts and T-shirt he was wearing, looking as if he might go all Hulk any moment and tear the things apart. You could barely see his normally black hair under the crew cut he sported. His muscles flexed as he reached into the bed of the truck to pull out the military-style bag that we all had with us.
Truck—well, really Travis, but no one had called him that since freshman year—just shook his head at me. But his brown eyes were already flashing with mischief beneath the shaved head that made his ice-blonde hair practically invisible. His square frame was just as built as Mac’s, but he’d earned the name Truck for a reason. He blew through anyone and everyone that challenged him…just like a semi-truck. Together, they were Mac Truck. No one messed with them.
Except me. I couldn’t help it. I’d been born to razz them. Especially with their “ship-like” nickname that everyone called them when they were definitely not in a relationship.
If I harassed them too much, they’d try to give me shit back, and my frame might not be as thick as theirs, but I had enough of my own muscles to more than hold my own. For some reason, neither of them felt it a requirement to challenge me very often. But this…this house was going to make them challenge me for the entire eight days we were there.