Nadia found her on the dock one night, staring at her phone. "Still nothing?"
"Still nothing. It's been four weeks. He said two weeks, maybe three if things got complicated." Mara set the phone down. "I know I'm being ridiculous. I know deployments run long. I know he'll call when he can."
"But that doesn't make the waiting easier."
"No. It really doesn't." Mara looked out at the dark water. "Is this what it's going to be like? Me waiting and worrying every time he deploys? Him doing the same when I'm on ops?"
"Probably. That's the reality of what you both do." Nadia sat down beside her. "Question is whether it's worth it."
Was it worth it? Mara thought about Logan's laugh. About the way he understood her without her having to explain. About video calls that made her feel less alone even when they were a thousand miles apart. About the week in New Orleans and the promise that they'd find a way to make this work.
"Yeah," she said finally. "It's worth it."
Her phone rang. Mara grabbed it so fast she almost dropped it. Logan's name on the screen. She answered before the second ring. "Logan?"
"Hey." His voice was rough, tired, but unmistakably him. "Sorry it took so long. Things got complicated."
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. We're all fine. Just took longer than expected and communication was locked down tight." She could hear the exhaustion in his voice. "We're back at base now. Should be stateside in a day or two."
"Good. That's good." Mara felt the tension drain from her shoulders. He was safe. He was coming home. "I was starting to worry."
"I know. I'm sorry. I tried to get word to you but there was no way to communicate without compromising security." He paused. "This is going to be our life, isn't it? Me deploying and you worrying. You on ops and me going crazy wondering if you're okay."
"Looks that way."
"Can you handle that?"
"Can you?" Mara countered.
Logan was quiet for a moment. "I think so. Because the alternative is not having you. And that's worse than the worry."
"Yeah. Same." Mara smiled. "Come see me when you get back. Take that long weekend we talked about. I'll show you the real Louisiana."
"It's a date. Give me a week to debrief and deal with the post-deployment chaos. Then I'm all yours."
They talked for another twenty minutes before Logan had to go. When they hung up, Mara sat on the dock for a while longer, watching the bayou and thinking about what the next fewmonths would look like. More deployments. More operations. More time apart than together.
But also more calls and texts and video chats. More visits when they could manage it. More moments stolen from the chaos of their lives. More building something real despite the distance and the danger and the complications.
Nadia was right. This was what their life would be. The waiting and the worrying and the relief when the phone finally rang. The balance between the mission and the relationship. The constant negotiation of what they could share and what had to stay classified or secret.
It wouldn't be easy. But nothing worth having ever was.
A week later, Logan showed up at a small airstrip outside Lafayette. Mara picked him up and for a moment they just held each other, making up for four weeks of nothing but voices through phones.
"You look good," she said, pulling back to look at him. "Deployment agreed with you."
"Deployment sucked. But being back with my team felt right." Logan kissed her. "This feels better though."
They spent the weekend exploring the bayou. Mara took him out on a boat through the cypress swamps, showed him where she'd grown up before everything went wrong, introduced him to the parts of Louisiana that tourists never saw. They ate at places that didn't have names, just local spots where the food was incredible and the people knew Mara by sight if not by name.
At night, they stayed in a small cabin Mara had rented. Nothing fancy, just a roof and a bed and a porch that overlookedthe water. They made love and talked until dawn and existed in their own bubble where deployments and operations didn't matter.
On Sunday night, lying on the porch watching stars, Logan said, "I've been thinking about us. About how this works long-term."
"Yeah?"
