Facing Home (The Clover Series Book 4)

by Danielle Stewart

  Facing Home

  Book Four Clover Series

  Danielle Stewart

  Copyright Page

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictionally. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locals, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  An Original work of Danielle Stewart.

  Facing Home Copyright 2014 by Danielle Stewart

  Cover Art by: Ginny Gallagher

  Website: Ginsbooknotes

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  Author Contact

  Website: AuthorDanielleStewart.com

  Email: AuthorDanielleStewart@Gmail.com

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  Books by Danielle Stewart

  Piper Anderson Series:

  Book 1: Chasing Justice

  Book 2: Cutting Ties

  Book 3: Changing Fate

  Book 4: Finding Freedom

  Book 5: Settling Scores

  Book 6: Battling Destiny (September 2014)

  Piper Anderson Series Extras:

  Choosing Christmas - Holiday Novella - Chris & Sydney's Story

  Betty's Journal - Bonus Material (Suggested to be read after Book 4 to avoid spoilers)

  The Clover Series:

  Novella & Book 2: Hearts of Clover – (Half My Heart & Change My Heart)

  Book 3: All My Heart

  Book 4: Facing Home

  Dedication

  To Benita, Denny and Hemi Kay:

  Thank you for your contribution to this book. I could not have written it without your guidance.

  That is a small thank you compared to the enormous gratitude I have for your service to this country. Because of you and your fellow service people, my family is able to choose what religion we practice. We are able to send our child to the school we choose. Because you sacrifice, we are free.

  I was naive to so much of what a military family, as well as returning soldiers, experience. Thank you for the education

  For the rest of my readers remember to thank a veteran today! Whether online or in person.

  To all the military families and personnel out there - THANK YOU.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Synopsis

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Books by Danielle Stewart

  Synopsis

  Vitorino “Click” Coglinaese shouldn’t feel more at home in a war zone than he does in his own backyard. But when you earn yourself a nickname like Click, the only sound the enemy hears before you strike, transitioning back to civilian life is a more insurmountable task than any combat mission. Click knows his family is longing for the kid who left for boot camp six years ago, but now he finds himself feeling like a stranger amidst his loved ones. The only thing strong enough to pull him back to Sturbridge, Tennessee is knowing one of his four sisters is in trouble.

  Can Click fight his nightmares and haunting memories long enough to save his sister? Can Jordan, the woman he loves, help him navigate his way toward peace with his family? Or will facing home be the one fight Click can’t win.

  Chapter One

  Jordan

  I thought I was prepared. I spent the entire car ride from Clover, North Carolina, to Sturbridge, Tennessee, memorizing names and trying to remember which children belonged to which of Click’s sisters. I tried to brace myself for the warnings Click had given me. Everyone might sound like they’re yelling, but really, that’s just how they talk. If my mother offers you food, take it. There is no amount of turning her down that will work. I’ve planned to gain five pounds. I can hit the gym hard when all this is sorted out.

  As we pass a sign welcoming us to Sturbridge I realize there’s no turning back. I’m committed now. Whatever’s waiting here for Click, we’ll face it together. But I’m still scared. That’s not something I often admit, not even to myself.

  As we get closer to our destination, I slip my pinky over the latch of the car door and contemplate opening it. Could I hit the ground running and hope Click keeps driving? Probably not. He’s too much of a gentleman for that. He’d feel obligated to stop and pick me up off the pavement.

  “You look nervous.” Click smirks, patting my thigh gently. “They’re going to love you. And if they don’t, they’ll be happy enough to see me that they’ll probably leave you alone.”

  “I don’t make a great first impression.” I clear my throat as I flip down the mirror on the visor for the hundredth time and check between my teeth. “I tend to come off as a little . . .” I pause not knowing the right word.

  “I know you do,” Click agrees, seemingly aware there might not be a good adjective to describe me. He flips the mirror closed and softens his eyes empathetically. “It doesn’t matter what you look like, so stop worrying. They don’t judge people based on appearances.”

  “That’s good to know.” I nod my head, trying to convince myself. Click is the first guy who’s taken me home to meet his family, and I don’t want to screw that up. Knowing they won’t critique me based on superficial things is putting me at ease.

  “Yeah, appearances don’t matter to them. They’ll judge you on how much you eat, how well you cook, and how many kids you plan to have.”

  “They’ll watch how much I eat, like health food wise?”

  “No, I should say they’ll watch what you don’t eat. It’s an insult if you turn down food, and being thin is somehow equated with being rude. You have to understand, we’ve always stuck out like a sore thumb here in the South. My parents are a couple of first and second generation Italians. Showing up in a small town like Sturbridge, they didn’t exactly fit in. Everyone kept saying, Just give them time. Before you know it the Coglinaeses will be adapting to life here in Tennessee. And do you know what happened?”

  “You acclimated and everything worked out?” I ask hopefully as I try to read Click’s expression.

  “No, my parents turned our neighborhood into Little Italy. They launched a take-no-prisoners push of their ideals and traditions. My family doesn’t mold into their surroundings, they force the backdrops of the world to change in order to match them.”

  “Why
isn’t this making me feel any better?”

  “Oh come on, big bad Jordan isn’t afraid of anything. She’s a tiger,” Click teases as he brushes my hair off my shoulder.

  “Yes, at work I was, but that’s because I didn’t care what people thought of me. This is different. Very different.”

  “Why do you care what they think of you? You know who you are and so do I. I happen to love that person. So forget what they think.”

  “That’s easy to say but they are your family, and I’m hoping to be around you for a while—if you’re lucky—and that means I’ll be around them. It would be easier if they liked me.”

  “Let me put your mind at ease: I don’t plan on staying in Tennessee. I’m going to help out whichever one of my sisters is in trouble and then move to somewhere else. I don’t belong back here.”

  “They’re your family. Like a huge, tons-of-kids, big-dinners-every-Sunday family. How can you already decide you don’t want that in your life anymore?”

  “Do you know why I was home a total of twenty-nine hours before I took off and ended up in Clover? I can’t be who they want me to be. I’m not happy about that, but it’s reality. They’re all remembering the kid who left and aren’t comfortable with the stranger who’s come home.”

  “You didn’t give them much time to get comfortable with him. I’m positive they must miss you. I’m sure they just need time to adjust, and so do you.”

  “Adjust to what?” Click asks, and I see his grip on the steering wheel tighten. “You don’t flip this stuff off like a switch. I’m programmed. Something happens and I react. A loud noise, I’m tackling you to the ground to protect you. I’m always on. That’s why Clover worked for me. I needed to be this guy.” He slaps his hand to his chest. “None of that exists in Tennessee for me. No one needs me to use the skills I have or live in my mindset. They want me to be something I don’t know how to be anymore.”

  “So you plan to live in a constant state of danger in order to feel like yourself?” I almost don’t want to hear his answer. I don’t want to think of him as always needing to risk his life to be happy.

  “I have no idea. I didn’t think you had much of a plan either.” He says this almost like an accusation, and I feel bad for bringing any of it up. I know he’s stressed about going home and not knowing what he’s up against. His father called and told him his sister needed help, but didn’t give any more detail than that. The last thing I need to do is add to that unknown.

  “Being back here should be nice. You should be able to relax.” I’m trying to put him at ease as I reach my hand across to touch him, but I can sense his tension and slight recoil. I’m saying the wrong thing, even though I don’t mean to.

  “It’s not like I can just go put my ass in a hammock and daydream my life away. My mind isn’t really some calm oasis right now.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, seeing his stress level grow higher than I’ve seen it before. Going home to be with his family makes him more on edge than anything we encountered in Clover, including gunfire and imminent danger.

  “Nothing. It’s complicated. All I’m saying is, I do better when I’m challenged, when I put into action all the things I’ve learned. Being back home reminds me of everything I’m not anymore. My mother has always been overbearing and she can’t understand why I don’t pour my heart out to her about what it was like being deployed. She wants to know every detail. She wants to help me work through stuff, but it drives me crazy. It’s like the Spanish Inquisition every time I talk to her, so I don’t talk to her much anymore. My dad is the opposite, completely silent about it. He acts like I was at summer camp instead of in a war zone. And while I prefer that over my mother’s approach, it still grates on me. My choices are having someone ignoring where I’ve been for the last six years or acting like I’m a grenade with the pin pulled and could blow up any minute.”

  “Parents can mean well but miss the mark.” I’m trying to soften the tension that’s building. “You have your sisters. They must understand things better than your parents. No generation gap.”

  “My sisters think I’m an elitist, or something along those lines. They assume missing their weddings or their kids’ christenings were choices I made deliberately to hurt them. Like I checked out of our family because I felt like it. It’s tense and, like I said, complicated. I’m still readjusting to civilian life; I don’t need that pressure.”

  I contemplate driving my point further. I can see where his family is coming from. I’ve been on the naïve side of understanding the motivations of someone in the military. Frankly, I was a downright bitch about it when we met. Click and I started on rocky ground on this topic ourselves, so I clam up. I’m here to support him and give him something to ground himself to, not to gang up on him.

  “I just want to get to the bottom of whatever mess one of my sisters got herself into and then get out of here.”

  It’s odd his father wouldn’t tell him what was going on over the phone. He wouldn’t even tell Click which of his sisters was in trouble. I’m worried this was a ploy to get him home, and Click won’t take that well.

  “That’s fine.” I touch his shoulder and am relieved it has now relaxed. “I’m here for you. Whatever you want.” As we pull onto a quiet dirt road I can tell by the five cars spilling from the driveway this is Click’s house. They’ve all gathered, just like he warned they would. The welcoming committee, the interrogation group, and the well-meaning mob of his family are about to lay siege on my senses.

  The house is loud, not in volume—well it probably is that too—but I’m talking physical appearance. It makes no sense for its location in the quiet woodsy neighborhood. Hanging on an enormous flagpole that towers above the house, is an Italian flag and, just below it, an American one. The door is red, but not a subtle red, a blazing one. There is no sign of a single piece of southern style. No decorative wagon wheels or cute little signs with old-fashioned sayings. The house looks more like it was dropped in here from some northern city.

  “Just remember, they can smell fear,” Click whispers. “If you cry they will never respect you again. So if you feel yourself on the verge, just run to the bathroom. They’ll probably still know, but at least you can save face.”

  “Wait, why would I cry?” I demand, but Click is already stepping out of the car and coming around to open my door. I’m searching his face as he approaches, looking to see if his lips are curling into a playful smile. But there isn’t one. He’s either trying hard to play a joke on me, or I’m screwed.

  As we walk to the front door I already hear what sounds like a herd of arguing elephants charging toward us. There is laughter and shouting permeating the walls and floating onto the porch where we’re standing. I’m sweating, literally dripping sweat all down my back, and I wonder if anyone will notice.

  “Click, I don’t know if I can do this.” I clutch his bicep, digging my nails in and trying to steady myself.

  “It’s too late now.” He shrugs, cupping his hand to his ear, listening to everyone approach. “They’ve spotted us.”

  When the door flies open I’m face to face with a sea of children ranging from wobbly toddlers to waist-high and wide-eyed preschoolers. Suddenly, like the Red Sea, they all part obediently to let a short, wide, round-faced woman charge forward.

  “My baby,” she shrieks as she throws her arms around Click’s waist and plants her head on his chest. After a tight hug she yanks him downward with her hands on his cheeks and plants red lipstick kisses all over his face. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

  Up to this point she hasn’t noticed me. Which, judging by the aggressive kisses, relieves me. I don’t want any of those. Her world looks like it has shrunken down and closed in around her and her baby boy. After a few moments she steps back and takes us both in.

  “All things holy, boy, I didn’t believe you were really bringing a girl with you. I didn’t even set an extra plate.”

  “It’s nice to meet you Mrs. Coglinaes
e,” I say, extending my hand and silently celebrating that I nailed the tough pronunciation of their last name.

  “What are you, a businessman or something?” she snipes, looking down at my extended hand as though I’m offering her a moldy tuna sandwich rather than a handshake.

  “Um, sorry.” I drop my hand and try not to look baffled that I’m apologizing for attempting a socially acceptable and very common form of greeting.

  “Call me Corinne. Mrs. Coglinaese was my husband’s mother and I hated her.” She waves at us to hurry up. “Come on in and get settled. Where are your bags?”

  “We’re not staying here, Ma. We’ll check into a hotel after we visit for a bit,” Click asserts, and I brace myself for the backlash he warned me to expect.

  “A hotel. What are people going to think? My house isn’t good enough for you anymore? People are going to talk.” Corinne is waving her hands animatedly as she tries to make her point. I take notice as the children start to scatter like animals sensing an approaching storm.

  “The only people who talk about other people’s business all live in this house. I think we’ll be fine,” Click snaps back.

  Corinne’s eyebrows knit together as she lets out a low and disapproving hum. “You’ll eat here, right? My food is still good enough for you, isn’t it?”

  “Ma, your food is still the best on the planet,” Click assures her as he pulls his mother in for another hug, and she seems to relax slightly.

  “Yes, it smells delicious in here,” I say, trying to navigate my way through compliments.

  “Do you eat?” Corinne looks me over slowly, her eyes running from the tips of my shoes to the top of my head.