Liberty stopped and made a funny face halfway between a grimace and a smile. I returned her smile thinking the friendship thing was pretty all right.
Like Drake, Luke had never treated me like I was broken even though I clearly was. Luke was strong, firm, unrelenting. But he was also patient, kind, and gentle.
“Haven’t told him,” I confessed.
“Why not?”
“Honestly? I’m scared. If he’s not there yet with me I don’t want to make things weird.”
“Girl…” Liberty drew out the L and shook her head. “That man is gone for you. Totally and completely gone. And I’m not telling you this to be mean, but it’s you who’s gonna hafta put yourself out there and say it first.”
Gah.
Liberty was right. Luke had done all of the heavy lifting in our relationship. He’d spent a lot of effort breaking through my barriers and every obstacle I’d put in his way, he’d found a way to smash those, too.
“And before you go thinking you need to find the right time to tell him, it’s always the right time to share your feelings with the people you care about,” Liberty finished.
And she was right about that, too, and it was high time I started doing just that.
“It means a lot to me, you taking the time to talk to me. I know I apologized—”
“Yep, you did, and saying you’re sorry a second time means you didn’t believe me the first time I told you I understood. So, let’s leave that in the past, and let’s get to the part where you promise to tell me and the girls all about how the Love Reveal goes.”
“What does that mean?”
I asked the question even though I was fairly certain by the way Liberty was wiggling her eyebrows that I didn’t want to know.
“You’ll see.”
“You know you say that a lot. Which reminds me, you still haven’t told me your plans after the Army.”
“Right. Who am I, if not a soldier?” Liberty shrugged. “I’m me.”
“What?”
“I’m me. Just me.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you showed me the other day that being a soldier doesn’t define who I am. It never did. Somewhere along the way, I forgot what “be all you can be” really meant. I was so busy proving to myself all the things I could do while in uniform I lost sight of something. Being all I can be to the people who love me. Being all I can be to a friend who is struggling. I don’t need a uniform to do that. And saying that doesn’t mean I’m not proud of my service or what I’ve accomplished. It simply means when the time comes for me to leave the Army I now know I won’t lose what’s really important.”
I didn’t think I actually showed Liberty anything but I wasn’t going to quibble.
“I promise to call you and tell you about the Love Reveal if you promise to rally the girls and get them all to my house for…”
Shit, for what? What did a group of women do when they got together at each other’s houses? Did women do that, get together at each other’s houses?
Damn.
My gaze went over her shoulder and I felt my face heat.
“Sunny?”
“Huh?”
“Girl, stop. You look like you’re ready to bolt, which is hilarious considering twenty minutes you were blowing shit up. You don’t need an excuse or an occasion to call your girls over. You call, we come. Easy. You call and tell us you have snacks and wine, we come faster. You call and tell us you need us, we’re there warp-speed. All you have to do is call. Unfortunately for you, you’ve come into the family at a time where you’re gonna have to put up with a whole lotta talk about babies and weddings and I don’t foresee that ending soon. Mercy and Laney are going to pop their kids out, then it will be Hadley and Addy’s turn and right after them Quinn will be knocked up. Which is gonna be killer to watch Uncle Jasper have a freak-out with all of his kids back-to-back pregnant.”
From what little I knew of Jasper Walker, Liberty wasn’t wrong. The guy seemed rather protective over his children.
But I was stuck back on ‘all you have to do is call.’
That easy?
I just had to call.
“And you and Drake? Are you planning on having kids right away?”
“Yes.”
Well, alrighty then, that was firm.
Then Liberty did something strange, she busted out laughing. I watched her do this for a long