“Yeah?”
“Write me?”
I didn’t hesitate before offering him a half-smile. “If you insist.”
He winked at me. “Love you.”
And then he was gone. Swallowed up by the crowd and the sky and the damn uniform that stole him from me. Before I could tell him I loved him too.
I stood there, alone with the echo of his heartbeat and a promise I prayed the universe wouldn’t break.
Chapter Twenty-Three
? Holly ?
Classes hadn’t changed. Professors still droned on about syllabi, the cicadas still screamed like they owned every tree in Athens, and the football chants still spilled down Lumpkin Street on weeknights like the Dawgs were playing every damn day.
Everything was the same. Except me.
Summer had carved me open and stitched me back together, and I didn’t quite fit in this place anymore. Not when every routine lecture and late-night study session felt small compared to lying on the hood of Sally with Jackson Morgan’s heartbeat under my ear.
So I poured myself into Willow’s Harbor. When I wasn’t in class, I was hunched over my legal pad at Jittery Joe’s, scribbling budgets, grant targets, and staffing notes until the ink smudged across my hand. Hannah and Mom still hovered, checking in with sharp questions and sharper encouragement. Hannah refused to let me slack; Mom and Dad refused to let me dream too small. Between them, Willow’s Harbor wasn’t just an idea anymore. It was a blueprint.
And then there was Dalton.
Somehow, the same man who spent his nights raising hell in a clubhouse was now a semi-celebrity on campus—UGA football’s golden boy with half the freshman girls trailing himlike ducklings. He pretended to hate it, but the bastard loved the attention.
“Blondie,” he muttered, sliding into the seat next to me at Tate, his massive frame dwarfing the flimsy chair. “Tell me you’re not still taking notes in purple gel pen. No linebacker is gonna take me seriously if my sister-in-law-slash-business-mogul is doodling hearts in Psych 101.”
“It’s Maria’s favorite color,” I shot back, not looking up from my notes and eyeing my purple pen with the fuzzy feathers on top. Totally not me, and 100% Maria.
“Yet you’re the one using it out of all the pens in your bag.” He stole a fry off my plate and grinned when I scowled. Some things never changed.
Maria called almost daily. Diego would shout something in the background, Jewel would laugh, and I’d cling to those calls like lifelines. Between Dalton’s steady orbit and Maria’s constant warmth, the Saints still felt close. But nothing filled the hollow where Jackson should’ve been.
That’s why, when I opened my mailbox one Thursday evening, I froze.
It was just an envelope. Plain, a dirty off-white, nothing fancy. But the handwriting—crooked, rushed, familiar—hit me like a punch. My name. In Jackson’s hand. I wasn’t even sure how he got my address, come to think of it. But I didn’t care.
The world went muffled. The hum of the soda machine, the slam of the stairwell door, the scuff of someone’s shoes down the hall—all of it blurred until there was only me, the envelope, and my heart battering against my ribs like it wanted out.
I didn’t even shut my mailbox. I clutched the letter to my chest and bolted upstairs, nearly tripping over my own feet. My backpack slid off my shoulder, textbooks threatening to scatter across the hallway floor. By the time I shoved through my apartment door, I was shaking so hard I could barely breathe.
I didn’t make it to the couch. I sat right there on the carpet, legs folded under me, and ripped the envelope open with trembling fingers.
His voice spilled out in ink.
Malibu,
Writing this on my knee in the back of a Humvee, so if it looks like chicken scratch, too bad. Paper’s bouncing everywhere and I think this pen’s older than me.
Afghanistan’s exactly what everyone said. Hot as hell in the day, cold enough at night to freeze your sweat. Dust in my boots, my gear, even my teeth. The Corps calls it character-building. I call it bullshit.
Chow’s the same every day. Eggs that taste like rubber, MREs when we’re too far out to get back. Some boot in my squad trades half his pack for the peanut butter packets—says they’re gold. He might be onto something. Mostly it’s hurry up and wait, drill till your legs go numb, then drill again.
Got a letter from Dalton last week—took its sweet time getting here. He sent a picture of himself holding that fire extinguisher like he just won MVP. Tell him when I get back, I’m choking him out until he taps.
Nights are the worst. Too damn quiet. That’s when my head goes places. I close my eyes and try to be back on the hood of Sally with you. Georgia heat sticking to us instead of this dry oven air. You stealing my fries, your head on my chest, and for once I didn’t feel like I had to be anything more than a guy who was whole because you were there.
