The silence stretched. My heart pounded, thumb hovering over the keyboard as doubt started to creep in. Before I could spiral, Dani broke it with her trademark grin.
“Plus,” she said, leaning back and sipping her milkshake casually, “you know if he hurts my bestie or my nieces and nephew, I’ll just have to kill him.” She laughed, the sound bright and ridiculous in the heavy air.
I couldn’t help it,I smiled, shaking my head. “You’re insane.”
“Insanely loyal,” she corrected, winking. And just like that, the knot in my chest loosened.
Finally, I typed:Ice Cream sounds good. Sunday?
The reply came almost instantly.
Hunter:Perfect. I’ll pick the place. And I
promise notto make you play mini
golf again. Yet.
I smiled, setting the phone down. The exhaustion was still there, the fear still lingering at the edges, the past still a shadow I couldn’t fully shake. But beneath all of it, something new stirred; a flicker of warmth somewhere between anticipation and quiet excitement
Chapter Seven
Hunter
Istared at her text again.Ice cream sounds good. Sunday?
It had been a simple message, barely a handful of words. But to me, it felt like a green light I had not expected.
It was not that women never said yes to me. They did. I just had not let myself get emotionally invested in a long time. Not since my marriage ended. Not since I decided it was easier to keep people at arm’s length than to risk letting them in again.
The divorce was only a year behind me, although the marriage was over, and the separation happened long before the ink was finalized. Regardless, it was still fresh enough to sting if I thought about it too long. Ten years in the Marine Corps had been hell on both of us, but the last few deployments were the nail in the coffin. She wanted stability, but I could not give it, and eventually, she walked away, finding warmth in another man’s bed. I told myself I understood. I told myself it was for the best. But some nights, lying awakein an empty apartment, I still felt the weight of that failure.
Now, for the first time since then, I was dipping my toe into life outside the Corps. Civilian clothes. Civilian schedules. Working as a contractor on base. A foot still in the world I knew, but no longer part of the brotherhood that had defined me for a decade. It was a strange and unsettling feeling.
So why was this woman, the one who laughed too easily, the one who admitted her chaos up front, the one who had three kids and a full plate, suddenly make me want to risk it again? That was the question I could not shake.
???
Sunday came faster than I expected. I pulled out a shirt I had not worn in months, scrubbed my beard down, and checked myself in the mirror twice, hoping that would erase the parts of me that still felt flawed. I had not felt this nervous about a date in years. Not the “first-date butterflies” kind of nervous. I had already had that. This was different. These were the types of nerves that came when you realized you were in way over your head and did not hate the feeling. It had been a long time since I cared about how I looked for someone else, but tonight I needed to show up for her.
Camille. Even her name felt different in my mouth.
She was not what I expected when I downloaded that app. Truthfully, I was not expecting much at all, just a distraction, a little flirting, maybe something casual to fill the silence. But from the first message, she had been different. Witty. Guarded, but not bitter. Soft in ways I did not think existed anymore.
And then she told me she was a mom of three kids.
You’d think that would make me hesitate. The truth? Her being a mom did not scare me. What scared me was how much it did not scare me. The idea of sitting at her kitchen table, hearing little voices call her name, tucking kids into bed did not feel like baggage. This was a chance at the kind of life I thought I had lost. That was dangerous because it was way too soon.
I splashed water on my face, trying to wash away the heaviness that always lingered when I thought about my past. The nights overseas when sleep would not come because every sound might mean danger. The sandstorms. The firefights. The long flights home to an empty bed. The way I woke up, even now, sweating from dreams I did not talk about. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, the doctors called it. I just called it normal. How could I hand that to her? To her kids?
But then I remembered her laugh at mini golf.
I grabbed my keys. A simple ice cream date, nothing big.
Driving over, I caught myself running through things like a pre-mission check on what to say, what to ask, how not to let too much slip. This was not combat. It was ice cream. Yet for some reason, my pulse did not seem to know the difference.
The shop was one you noticed more by smell than sight. Sweet cream, sugar cones, and the faint sizzle of waffle irons drifted into the parking lot before you even stepped inside. The neon sign above the door flickered just a little, buzzing in protest, but the window displays were cheerful: painted cones, rainbow sprinkles, little chalkboard doodles announcing the “flavor of the week.”
Inside lay pastel walls, polished linoleum, tubs of ice cream behind foggy glass, flavors chalked out: Rocky Road, CookieDough, Pistachio, all of it buzzing with families and teenagers and background noise. I picked a table in the back near the window, facing the door. Habit. Always keep an eye on entrances. I told myself it was about safety, but if I was honest, it was more about nerves.
