Zero Day. He zipped up his MultiCam-printed backpack, and I sighed with the barest form of relief I could muster under our circumstances. He hadn’t found the note I’d tucked inside his headphones. Good. He’d need a pick-me-up once he was in the air.
“You don’t have to go with me,” he said, his gorgeous brown eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. “It’s three a.m. You could go back to bed.”
I zipped his hoodie around me and shook my head. “I’m not ready to let you go.”
He ran the backs of his fingers down my cheek. “Yeah. Me, neither.”
I swallowed back the panic, the fear that had gradually clawed its way into my throat since last night. Be strong, but don’t hold anything back. You’re scared? Tell him. You’re proud? Tell him. Leave nothing unspoken. Mom’s words ran through my head as we walked out the front door. Josh closed it behind us and then locked it, the sound way too final for my liking.
He loaded his last bag into the back of the Jeep, and I looked up to Jagger and Paisley’s darkened house. Jagger left tomorrow on a different main body flight, and I’d be lying if I didn’t envy them this last twenty-four hours.
Time felt so relative right now. Where these few hours might not have meant anything a few weeks ago, right now they were everything and not enough.
The roads were dark as we wound our way to Fort Campbell. Josh held my hand, pressing kisses to my palm every so often as we kept a charged silence. What was there left to say?
Too much for a twenty-five-minute drive.
We pulled into the drop-off line, and as our turn came, Josh hopped out of the Jeep and handed over his massive duffel bags stenciled “Walker, J” on the bottom in spray paint.
“Nothing like curbside check-in,” I tried to tease once he’d gotten back in.
“Fly army.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
He parked the Jeep in front of the hangar and almost pocketed the keys. “Wait. You might need these.” He handed them over, the weight heavier than it should have been. Everything about this morning felt heavy, oppressive, like a boulder had parked itself on my chest and was gradually stealing my ability to breathe.
Our eyes met in the dim light of the dashboard. I would have given anything to pause this moment, to keep us here for just a little longer where I could see him, feel his heartbeat. But that wasn’t the life I’d signed on for, and I was stronger than this dark feeling creeping along the edges of my heart.
We were stronger than any deployment.
“Are you ready for this?” he asked me.
“Are you?”
“I have to be.” He tucked an errant strand of my hair behind my ear.
“Same here.”
He nodded. “Shall we?”
“Okay.” I took a deep breath and stepped out of the Jeep.
His backpack slung over one shoulder, he held my hand as we filed into the hangar with the hundred or so other families who had gathered to send off their soldiers.
“Wait here. I’ll be right back.” He kissed my cheek and disappeared into the sea of MultiCam.
I sat on the lowest bleacher, everything in me going blessedly numb as I looked around. Soldiers stood huddled in groups, laughing and talking. They were newbies, the right shoulders of their uniforms lacking the combat badge Josh had on his. They had never been to war, never seen the horrors, or lost friends.
A few fathers held sleepy-eyed children, stroking their hair. I couldn’t help but think of the last time Gus had hugged Dad before he left.
No. Don’t let that in. Not now. I had to hold myself together for the next hour.
My eyes skimmed the bleachers to the right and locked onto an older soldier. His wife sat stoically next to him, her arm looped through his, her head resting on his shoulder, her eyes a vacant stare. He turned and placed an absentminded kiss on her forehead, his eyes focused anywhere but there. If I had to bet, I would have said they were on their fourth, if not fifth, deployment. She had the same gracefully defeated face Mom had worn when she’d dropped Dad off that last time.
That kind of look only came with years of waiting, strength, and weariness.
“Hey,” Josh said as he sat down next to me, jarring me from my people-watching.
“All signed in?” I asked.