Letters Home (7 page)

“How do you always get things exactly right?” I asked between bites.

“Easy.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “I pay attention. For example you love my chicken salad—you hint about me making it every time we have leftover chicken.”

“Chicken salad
plus
a picnic? I love you, Nate Lewis.”

He rested his hand on my knee. “The picnic was my way of getting you to take a break. Our wedding will be perfect, but you’re going to make yourself crazy spending all your time off doing wedding stuff. I figured the easiest way to get you away from it all was to get you out of the house, so here we are.”

I finished my sandwich and wiped my hands on a napkin. Leaning down I placed a quick kiss on his cheek. “You’re right. I needed—”

He cupped his hand around his ear. “Say that again.”

I looked at him quizzically. “Say what again?”

“The part about me being right. I’ve never heard that before.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s ’cause you’re not usually, but today you were. I needed to get away from it all, and just enjoy the day.”

“I know.” He cupped my face, pressing his lips to mine. The taste of him was something so familiar. Craving more of him, I opened my mouth, letting his tongue slide against mine. I needed to touch him, to feel him. Sliding my hands around his waist, I pulled myself closer to him until I was near enough to feel the heat of his body radiating to mine. It was so easy to get lost in Nate that I almost forgot where we were. When a child’s yell pierced the fog of desire I was in I pulled away from his lips, both of us a little breathless.

“Why’d you stop?” he asked, eyes narrowed in confusion.

“Did you forget we are in a public park?”

He looked around, as if trying to get his bearings, and the moment his eyes registered the kids on the playground, his face became slightly flushed. “It’s so easy to get lost in you.”

“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

He wrapped his arms around me. “What would I do without you?” He laughed burying his nose in my hair.

“Probably lead a very boring life.”

“Probably,” he agreed, chuckling as he went back to his lunch.

When Nate finished his sandwich we cleaned up the trash and I lay down with my head on his lap. Nate took turns feeding us the cut up fruit pieces. Even with the feel of the summer heat on my face, it was easy to get to such a tranquil place and I felt myself dozing off. It wasn’t much later that I felt Nate brush the hair from my forehead.

“Come on, sleeping beauty, let’s get you home.”

I cracked an eye open to see Nate staring down at me with a smile on his face.

“Okay,” I answered, my voice thick with sleep. “Thank you for planning this today. I needed it.”

“Anything for you.”

He helped me up into a sitting position, giving me time to stretch out my muscles before helping me to my feet so that we could fold up the blanket. After I picked it up, Nate took the basket with one hand and laced the fingers of his other hand through mine. I glanced down at our joined hands. Such a simple gesture, but little things like that always reminded me how much Nate cared about me. There was a part of me that wanted to stay here with him forever, to forget all of the stresses in life, but then my responsible self would show up and remind me that ,faster than I could blink, the weekend would be over and we’d both be back at work, waiting for another opportunity to spend some time together. It seemed as if we spent a lot of our time waiting. Waiting for the next day off, waiting to be with each other. That was the exact reason we needed to enjoy these moments together—to make every moment count. Unfortunately, as it always did, time flew, and soon enough it was time to head back into the real world.

Sometimes life throws a wrench into your plans. It’s your job to find a way around it.

The yawn I’d been trying to stifle all day finally broke free. I’d gotten some sleep the night before—well, as much I could with Nate sleeping next to me. Tina must have seen it out of the corner of her eye because she turned toward me. “Look, we’ve been at this all day. Let’s take a break and look at everything again on Monday. I know there’s something in here that will help us win full custody, but we’ll never find it with tired eyes.”

“All right, I think my brain has absorbed all it can for the day,” I said, standing up to stretch. We’d been working on the case for two weeks straight. Tina figured the divorce would be the easier of the two problems so after the first two days we’d moved onto the custody of the children, which was an entirely different scenario. Where our client and his soon-to-be ex-wife had invested equally in the monetary portion of the case, when it came to the children that wasn’t the case because their mother was almost never home, and didn’t really seem to care about her children—only about the status they provided her. This was the reason I became a lawyer in the first place. I loathed a system that placed children with their mothers simply because they were “the mother,” even if there was overwhelming evidence that they were not the better parent. Someone had to stand up for those kids.

“You’ve been great these past two weeks. I think we both need a couple of days to process all of the information. What are your plans for the weekend?”

“Probably more wedding stuff. Nate’s on duty this weekend so I’m gonna take advantage and get my dress shopping done. What about you?” We collected the paperwork and placed it in the correct files.

“Oh, that’ll be fun. The kids and I are spending the weekend at my sister’s in Atlanta.”

“I’m sure your nieces are getting so big by now.”

“Yeah. I can’t wait to see them.”

Once everything had been put away we collected our bags and made our way to the door. It was long past quitting time but the end of summer sun was still in the sky, turning the clouds beautiful hues of pinks and oranges. “Have a great weekend, Tina. I’ll see you Monday,” I said, before turning off and heading in the direction of my car.

“You too, Danielle.” Tina smiled and unlocked her door.

When I pulled into the parking lot I noticed Nate’s car immediately. It was late, but it was still early for how much Nate had been working the last week. It was a little crazy how many hours he’d put in, and that was the main reason I’d stayed at work so late on a Friday. The apartment could get kind of lonely at night.

Opening the door, I noticed that something just wasn’t right. The lights were on, but the house was silent, Nate nowhere to be seen. My mind raced as put my keys down, trying to figure out what was going on. I listened for the running of the shower, thinking maybe Nate had come home and jumped right in, but the place was eerily quiet. When I walked farther into the living room, I looked down the hall and noticed the light underneath the door to our bedroom. Reaching out to the doorknob, my muscles tightened, a little wary of what I might find on the other side. But I pushed it open anyway, bracing for what was on the other side.

Nate was sitting on the edge of the bed, his arms resting on his legs, his head in his hands. The silence was deafening and I was shocked he hadn’t heard me open the door.

“Nate?”

He sighed and let his shoulders drop, but when his head lifted up to meet my gaze I ran over and dropped to my knees in front of him, the redness around his eyes telling me he’d been crying.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” I asked in a state of panic.

“Dani…” He pulled me into his arms and buried his face in my hair.

In an attempt to comfort him and get him to tell me what was wrong, I rubbed my hands up and down his back, but after a few minutes like this and he still hadn’t said anything my stomach began to churn.

I needed answers.

Determined to find out what was going on, I gently pulled out of his embrace and cupped my hands around his face. “Nate, please tell me what’s wrong?”

Taking a deep breath he answered with the last thing I’d been expecting, but the first thing I should have thought of. “We’re being deployed.”

Time stopped. The breath froze in my lungs. I never liked the thought of him being deployed, even as short as the time was for his unit. But Nate wasn’t normally upset over being deployed. He knew it was part of his job. There had to be something he wasn’t telling me. Then it hit me.

“When do you leave?”

That was the moment his eyes filled with tears. “Two weeks.”

Then I asked the question I was dreading the most. “For how long?”

“Three months.”

Right through our wedding. How could this happen? I’d been waiting for what seemed like forever for Nate to ask me to marry him, and now that we were in the planning phase with a date picked, it was all going to be thrown away. I stood up, taking a step back out of his reach.

“Dani, I—”

Without giving him a chance to finish I turned on my heel and went into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. Within seconds Nate was knocking on the door. “Dani? Dani, please come out and talk to me.”

There was nothing he could say to fix this. My vision blurred as I turned to lean against the door, eventually sliding down it as the sobs overtook my body. It seemed ridiculous to sit there and cry over something that really only had to be postponed a month, but after nine years of waiting to marry Nate, the idea that the career choice he’d made was pulling us apart hurt more than I imagined it would.

I couldn’t face him. I needed a few minutes alone to let my emotions run wild, before I got myself under control to deal with this. This was something I’d never expected. There was a thump on the door that sounded like Nate’s head. “Dani?” he whispered, his voice slightly shaky.

I wasn’t sure how long I sat there. Eventually, Nate’s banging on the door stopped—he must have finally realized that I had no intention of opening it. When I’d finally gotten the tears under control, I turned on the shower, knowing the hot water would not only help me relax my muscles, but it would also give me a bit more time to collect my thoughts and figure out a way to deal with this without hurting Nate in the process.

When I stepped out I couldn’t hear Nate in the apartment. Had he left? Where would he have gone? If he had gone out, it would be my fault for walking away from him when he told me. Without much thought, I threw on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. I needed to find Nate. The time in the bathroom was enough for me to realize that Nate and I would find a way. Nate was my forever and even if we had to wait another month, it would all be worth it in the end when we were pronounced husband and wife.

It was weird how quiet the apartment was. There was usually music or noise somewhere. When Nate wasn’t in the living room, I started to really worry. Slipping on a pair of flip-flops, I grabbed my keys from the table by the door but as I reached for the handle, it turned and I gasped and jumped back. The door opened and there was Nate, phone in hand, his eyes widening and his head jerked back. His eyes searched my face but before he had a chance to finish, I threw myself into his arms. “I’m so sorry I walked away.”

His reactions were a little slower, but as one arm wrapped around my waist, the other cupped my head to his chest. “Don’t be sorry, Dani. It’s not what I wanted either.”

“I know, but I should have stayed and talked about it.”

“Can we talk about it now?”

I couldn’t speak past the lump in my throat, so I simply nodded and let Nate lead me over to the couch. He sat me down and then took the seat next to me. Unable to look him in the eye, I kept my head down.

“Look at me, Dani.” I must not have moved fast enough because Nate took my chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned my head toward him. “I think I figured out a way to fix this. That’s why I was on the phone.”

Hope bloomed. “Do you mean you may not have to go?” I held my breath waiting for his answer.

He shook his head. “You know that’s not how it works.”

My brows drew together. “I know, but…I don’t understand?”

That’s when Nate stood up and went down on one knee in front of me. “Marry me, tomorrow.”

My mouth dropped open. Of all the things I expected him to say, that was not one of them. “What?” I whispered.

Taking my hand in his, he gazed into my eyes. “Marry me, tomorrow.”

Jumping to my feet, I started to pace. What was he thinking? Our families were all over, and we’d have less than a day’s notice. “How are we supposed to get everyone here?”