“You still planning on signing them?”
“Yessir.” Nothing would stand in his way of getting out now. If he was formally asked not to, he’d give that due respect, because there was a way things were done in the forces, and when an officer asked you to wait, you waited. Officially. But this NCO had two important reasons back home to be done with the army. He’d given the crown two decades of service. That was enough.
“I’ll miss working with you. Anyway, that’s not why I stopped by. We’ve been contacted by 32 Brigade. They want to attach to our Arctic training.”
“Another week?”
Diwali nodded. “The week before.”
“As in, three weeks from now?” Zander cursed under his breath. “Who’s organizing troop lift?”
His captain just looked at him blandly.
Zander threw his hands in the air. “Come on.”
“They can do it.”
“But I need to tell them that. Got it.” He scowled at his boss, who retreated to a safe distance. Zander called after him, “You know, this is why I’m signing those papers!”
Diwali hollered something back, but Zander missed the exact words. He was already firing off emails to get an ORBAT, adjust accommodation and weapons requests, and have the safety plan approved. The whole time he was thinking about how he would describe what he was doing to Eric. Teach him that the ORBAT was the order of battle, a fancy word for the list of everyone involved in an operation.
It would have to wait until another day. Some days when he called, Eric was full of questions about the army. Tonight would be all hockey, all the time, and that was just fine by Zander.
Sure enough, as soon as he got home and called them, Eric grabbed the iPad from his mom and propped it up on the table so he could give Zander a very detailed tour of the skates and helmet. Then the skates again.
“They’re pretty nice, bud.”
Eric screwed up his face. “I don’t know how to skate, though.”
“I’ll teach you.”
“But you live a plane ride away.”
Zander nodded. “I know, but we’ll have time to learn at Christmas.” He held up his own skates which he’d pulled out of his storage locker. “See? These are mine, and I’ll bring them home.”
“You’ll definitely be home for Christmas?”
Zander hesitated. It was a knee-jerk reaction. Twenty years in the army, and he’d learned not to promise anything like that. In the background behind Eric, Faith looked up from what she’d been doing with Miriam in the kitchen.
Zander looked back and forth between her and Eric. “That’s the plan, yep. And you know where I’m going in a few weeks?”
“Where?”
“Pretty close to the North Pole.”
Instead of being impressed by Zander’s impending proximity to Santa Claus, Eric just blinked at the screen, his brow furrowed.
“What’s wrong?”
“How long are you going there?”
“Two weeks.”
“How are you getting there?”
“On a military plane.”
“Why can’t you drive?” With each question, Eric’s voice got smaller and smaller.
Faith pulled her eyebrows together and came closer. She leaned over Eric’s shoulder and looked right at Zander. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” Shit, no, not nothing. Zander took a deep breath. “I’m going on an exercise up north. I mentioned it earlier. There aren’t any roads that far north, bud.”
“Are there polar bears?”
Faith squeezed Eric’s shoulder. “I’m sure he’s not…” She’d trailed off when Zander tried to give her a look. “Okay, that’s enough questions about top-secret army stuff, right?”
She tried to make light of it. Eric was having none of that. He glared at Zander. “But you’re coming here after that, right? You’re coming back?”
Zander kept his voice calm, even though he had an impending sense of doom telling him it didn’t matter. “Yep, I’m coming back real soon.”
“My dad didn’t come back.” He said it matter-of-factly, but Zander could see Faith’s reaction over Eric’s shoulder. It cut her to the quick.
Zander didn’t have an easy, comforting comeback. There wasn’t one. He tried not to see Faith right there, tried not to feel the pain radiating off her so sharply he could actually feel it on the other side of the country, and he couldn’t just let the silence stretch. “He would have if he could, bud.”
He took a deep breath. Maybe Faith needed to hear that, too. He didn’t know anything about her ex, not really, but he knew something about the human spirit, and he’d lost people over the years due to combat and mental health-related problems. Whether it was an act of war or a tragic accident, every dying man’s last thought was for his family. His wife. His child.
“We’ll go skating, I promise. I love you, and I don’t want you thinking about me not being there, okay?”
Eric gave him a long, solemn look, then turned and glanced back at his mother. “Can I go play now?”
“Yeah, honey. You can for a few minutes. Then it’s story and bedtime, got it?” Faith took the iPad, the video on the screen swinging wildly as she told her mother she was going upstairs for a few minutes. Zander’s heart hammered in his chest. Had he said too much? Overstepped? Fuck, he hadn’t seen that coming.
“I’m sorry,” he said as soon as she was looking at him again.
She didn’t say anything.
“Something else we should have talked about first?”
She closed her eyes and shrugged her shoulders slightly. “Yeah. Maybe.”
Maybe
? “I didn’t know what to say.”
Fatigue tightened her brow and tugged at the corners of her mouth. “What you said was fine. Just…Don’t make him promises you can’t keep.”
“I can keep them.”
“You told my son you love him,” she whispered, propping her forehead in her hand. She’d curled up on her bed. He wanted desperately to be there with her, to hold her and let her get it all out. “Do you have any idea what it will do to him if you flake?”
Yeah, he’d said that he loved the kid because he
did
. But someone wanted to take things slow and it sure as hell wasn’t him.
At least, it wasn’t him now. Shit. He couldn’t remember a time before Faith made him want things that weren’t on offer.
He couldn’t get mad at her. It wasn’t fair. But the burn in his gut didn’t feel fair, either. “You don’t think I know how serious it is to tell someone they’re loved? To tell a child that I’ll never leave them?”
“Do you?” She shrugged, a little gesture that said way too much. “You’re a great guy—”
“Stop saying that.” His voice was cold as ice now. He needed to hang up. They needed to try this again another day when their feelings weren’t so unexpectedly raw. He knew that, and yet he couldn’t stop. “My earliest memory is of my father calling my mother a bitch and walking out. I must have been three. And it happened more than once, until one day he didn’t come back for a while.”
She stared at him in obvious disbelief. “But your parents…”
He laughed, not caring if it sounded hard and unfeeling. “Yeah. My mother dragged him back, and I guess he realized it was easier with her than without. My entire life, I’ve known that my parents love each other, but there’s a part of them that hate each other, too. And we never talk about it, so welcome to my dirty little secret.”
“No,” she whispered. “That’s not true. They’re so happy together.”
He clenched his jaw. “You’ve met them once, Faith. Don’t tell me anything about their marriage.”
She pressed her lips together. Even across the wobbly Internet connection, he could tell her eyes were welling up with tears. “But you get to tell me about my son?”
“No, babe. I was trying to tell you about
me
. Not Eric.
Me
. That I’m going to be there for him, no matter what. But you don’t believe that, do you?”
“I said I don’t know.”
“That’s not what you said. You questioned my word.”
“Okay, I don’t know what I meant. I’m…” Tears were flooding her cheeks now and in the background he heard her bedroom door open. Eric asked if she was okay, and she waved him over.
Shit, shit, shit.
He felt impotent to fix his blundering.
“Zander, I gotta go,” she whispered. Her fingers reached for the screen, and he reached out too, wanting to touch her if only through glass and fiberoptic connection, but instead of touching his video image, she disconnected the call.
It took all his willpower to not throw his phone across the room.
— SEVENTEEN —
Z
ANDER’S first text message pinged her phone before she went to bed that night.
I’m sorry. Call me back?
He had nothing to be sorry for. She’d lost her shit over old ground. So much for being ready to date. So much for the past being settled. It was her apology to make, and she couldn’t. Not yet. She sobbed herself to sleep, smothering her cries in her pillow, wishing everything was different. Easier, less fraught with history that was not of Zander’s making. She came with so much baggage, a lot of it unexpected and messy.
The next morning, he tried to call and she let it go to voice mail. She listened to the empty message over and over again. The silence followed by the nearly imperceptible sigh, then a click.
To listen to this message again, press three. Beep.
She zombied her way through breakfast and let her mom take Eric to school. When she climbed back into bed, her pillow was still damp. She lay down on it anyway.
The next text message ping made her cry before she even read it, and her heart cracked once she did.
What did you pack in Eric’s lunch today? I hope he eats it. I’m sure it’s delicious.
A ham and cheese sandwich with cucumber slices and goldfish crackers on the side was hardly gourmet, but it was Eric’s favourite. And she desperately hoped he’d eat, too. She worried about him so much.
Maybe Zander did, too.
It’s pretty fucking real for me.
He’d said that their first week together. Did he still feel the same way?
Would they even make it to the spring? Long-distance dating was hard enough. Long-distance fighting was a recipe for disaster.
Babe?
That one-word message destroyed her. She knew she just needed to talk to him, but she didn’t trust herself to say the right things that would protect their new relationship. So she turned her phone off, and left it off for three days.
She buried herself in edits and marketing plans, and rewarded herself for any reasonable amount of productivity with a curl-up on her bed where she let herself wallow in sadness. She hugged a pillow tight and tried to figure out how to be a better girlfriend.
Turning on her phone would be an excellent start.
But for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to do that.
At the very least, she should tell him that she knew he was a good man. That she saw his patience and his kindness, and she’d quickly learned to appreciate it—really—but now that she knew the root of it, she was even more touched. She was so angry at his parents, at his father, for not knowing the impact their fighting had on his child.
Every time she thought about him hearing that at the age of three, she started crying. No wonder he was a life-long bachelor.
At least he’d learned to live his own life differently. On his own terms, sure, but with kindness. He was the most considerate boyfriend she’d ever had. If he ever decided he wanted a marriage, he’d make a wonderful husband.
A wonderful father.
The kind who knew how scary it would be to be abandoned, either by fate or by choice.
Her phone was a heavy weight in her pocket as she watched Eric swing across the monkey bars. They’d stopped at the park on their way home, but that had been a mistake, because she looked at the curb and the bench and the swing set and heard Zander in each of those places. Felt his gaze and smelled his unique scent that had imprinted so successfully on her.
So much for just being her Mr. Right Now. She’d gone and fallen in love with someone who wasn’t available on her terms. Their first fight had been over
nothing
and it had still slayed her soul. What would it be like when their fight was over him wanting to ride his bike to Central America or climb a mountain?
She wanted those fights, though. They scared the pants off her, that was definitely true. But better to have them, to have
him
, than not.
She pulled out her phone and turned it on, and after it connected to the network, a dozen messages flooded in. The most recent was a re-iteration of some of the previous points, all pulled together in a plea that finally snapped through her frozen attitude.
I know I overstepped… Fuck, Faith, I’m no good at this, I get that. But I didn’t mean to hurt you. Please let me call you. Give me a chance to say I’m sorry straight to you.
Blinking back tears, she typed in a quick response.
I’m sorry.
I miss you.
But she couldn’t add that, her fingers wouldn’t tap the keys. She couldn’t do this at the park.
I’ll call you tonight.
“Faith!”
She turned, looking for the female voice calling her name. From across the grass between the playground and the fire station and ambulance bay, Dani Foster waved at her, then broke out into a jog. She was in her paramedic’s uniform.
Faith took a deep, fortifying breath. If he’d sent his sister to play peacemaker, that wasn’t going to go well. Faith didn’t want anyone else to know just how neurotic she was. So when the other woman stopped in front of her, she went on the offence—small talk, wedding-style. “How was your honeymoon?”
Dani grinned, looking just like a prettier version of her brother. “Not nearly long enough. If our entire family wasn’t on the peninsula, I’d be tempted to move to the Caribbean, because oh my God, that water is blue. And Jake could wear board shorts year round.”
“I went to Turks and Caicos on my honeymoon, I know what you mean. It’s just gorgeous.” Faith laughed. “As is your husband, of course.”
“I’m biased, but I know, right? Speaking of handsome men, I have two pictures for you.” Dani reached into the large pocket on her pant leg and pulled out a cream envelope. “Our photographer gave us all the digital files, too, so if you’d rather, I can email them to you? But I really love how these prints turned out. Way better than when I get them run off at the grocery store. I figured giving them to you made more sense than Zander, since he’ll just be packing stuff up and bringing it back here soon enough.”