Shiloh couldn’t really absorb all the sensations—and Cary was too close for her to keep him in focus.
Feeling him actually inside of her body, feeling him actuallyconnectedto her... It was more intimacy than Shiloh could begin to process.
The first time was fast and incalculable.
The second time, she started to feel it. To understand what was happening. To recognize Cary’s face above hers. All her self-discipline came unraveled. All of her anchors lifted out of the ground. She held him too tight. She kissed him excessively. She told him she loved him, again and again.
Shiloh didn’t have an orgasm. (She thought that might justhappen? Incidentally? It didn’t.)
But, still, every part of whatwashappening felt so right...
Maybe Shiloh had been wrong.
Maybe she and Caryweren’tmeant for separate skies. Maybe the future could never offer anyone to rival him. Maybe the two of them fit—weremeantto fit.
Maybe they could bend their paths toward each other.
Shiloh held his face in her hands. “I love you, Cary. I love you.”
Cary had to take a city bus to the airport. He was starting a more specialized training program in Florida—nuclear science. He told Shiloh that aircraft carriers had their own nuclear power plants. Just floating in the ocean. She’d had no idea.
Cary had enlisted for six years. (Two more than usual.) Eventuallyhe’d be assigned to a ship—or possibly a submarine. Imagining him under the water, in the dark, in close quarters, made her feel panicky. She’d pinched his thigh while he explained it to her.
Cary was getting on a bus, and then on a plane, and then the Navy was going to bury him alive for six years.
AndstillShiloh was bending toward him. Trying to imagine them together. Wanting him to ask her to imagine it.
He didn’t ask.
Cary didn’t bend—in general, as a person.
He didn’t change his mind.
He wasn’t going to accommodate Shiloh.
He was just going to leave.
She wrote him letters.
He sent back postcards.
He said that he tried to call.
He wrote her one letter, about six months after that weekend.
“Shiloh, you’ll always be so special to me. You’ll always be in my heart. What happened between us meant a lot to me. You shouldknowthat it meant a lot to me.”
Shiloh felt like she was being wrapped in tissue paper and set in a shoebox, like she was being shoved under Cary’s childhood bed.
She’d already met Ryan.
A few months later, they were dating.
Twenty-Six
Shiloh started bedtime early. She gave the kids warm baths and Sleepytime tea.
Gus fell asleep easily, even with a nap. Maybe Shiloh’s mom was right about three-year-old hormones; Gus ate and slept like a teenager.
