Don’t laugh, but sometimes I swear I catch the smell of your shampoo in my rack. Maybe I’m losing it. Or maybe it’s the only thing keeping me sane.
Write me, Malibu. Mail’s slow as hell out here, but I’ll take whatever scrap of you I can get.
Love you,
Jackson
I read it once. Then again. And again. My hands pressed to my mouth, tears blurring the words, but I couldn’t stop. Relief and panic and hope crashed through me all at once.
He loved me. He missed me. He was still out there—still mine. The letter shook in my hands. My chest felt too full, like my ribs couldn’t hold it all in. I leaned back until I was flat on the carpet, the letter pressed to my chest, staring at the ceiling with wet eyes and a smile that wouldn’t quit.
For the first time since he left, the silence of my apartment didn’t feel empty.
It felt full of him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
? Jackson ?
The desert didn’t care if you were bone-tired. The sun still came up hot enough to cook you in your cammies, the dust still clawed into every seam of your gear, and the routine still chewed you up the same way it had the day before. Run. Drill. Chow. Wait. Do it all again.
By the time mail call rolled around, every single one of us were crowded around like eager puppies waiting on a treat. When the corporal shouted my name, my whole body went tight. The guys and Hannah wrote every now and then, but there was one letter I was still holding out for.
Then there it was. An envelope. Plain. Thin. A familiar swirling penmanship on the front.
I shoved it into my pocket before the guys could get a good look. Everyone was grinning, tearing into their boxes of cookies, letters, bad perfume-sprayed notes from girlfriends. I kept my face blank and waited until lights-out.
That’s when I pulled it out. Sat back against my pack with a flashlight propped on my knee, hands almost shaking as I slit the edge. I swear I could hear her voice in every loop and curve.
And then something stiff slipped free—a photo. My throat closed up.
Holly.
Perched on the hood of Sally, barefoot, clubhouse porch in the background. Sunlight in her hair, eyes on the camera butreally on me. Like she’d carved out a moment from home and mailed it across the ocean just to remind me what I was fighting through all this shit for.
“Jesus,” I muttered, pressing my thumb against the corner. For a second, the squad bay disappeared. It was just her and me and the Georgia heat clinging to our skin.
I read the letter three times before the words stopped blurring.
Jackson,
I’m sorry it took me so long to write. I didn’t know what to say. Maria says I looked like an idiot pacing on the porch, chewing the end of my pen before I finally sat down. But you asked for me, so here I am.
Classes are the same. Professors talking like their words will change the world while half the room scrolls through their phones. Willow’s Harbor is keeping me alive—I can hear Hannah’s voice in my head every time I stall, and Mom’s not far behind. Between the two of them, I don’t have a chance to quit even if I wanted to.
Dalton’s still playing big man on campus. He pretends he hates the attention, but I caught him signing someone’s jersey last week. Don’t let him tell you different. He still checks on me, though. Won’t let me walk across Tate without trailing behind me, his herd of fan girls not too far behind. But I think he does it to remind me he’s still watching.
The truth is, I miss you so bad it scares me. So I asked Maria to take a picture—me on Sally, the way you left me. If you hold it up to the sun, maybe it’ll feel a little closer. Remember what you’re missing out on.
Come back to me, Jackson.
Always,
Holly
By the end, my chest hurt worse than any hump pack ever had. I folded the letter slow, careful, like it might tear if I breathed wrong, and tucked it back in the envelope. Under “Always,” she had written and erased “Love,” but I would take it.
I kept the photo out, and the next morning, the squad noticed. They always notice. A couple of them grinned, and one whistled low. “Hey Morgan, damn—your girl back home, huh? Lucky bastard.”
