Page 29 of Major Love

“Sunday’s back in town?” Mitch asks, his tone deep and gruff.

Harper glances between us, and then asks, “Sunday? Who’s Sunday?”

I rub my palm down my stubble, avoiding Harper’s eyes as I wait to pay the crew’s bill.

“His high school sweetheart,” Mitch rumbles, and I glance over at him, my biceps flexing.

“It was PG,” I reply, glancing down at Harper as her eyes widen with surprise.

“I didn’t know you had a high school sweetheart,” she says, a small smile on her lips.

“Didn’t really get going,” I tell her gruffly, shoving my card into the reader when the numbers pop up on the screen.

“Why’s that?” she asks. “You seem like you’re still invested.”

Damn straight I’m still invested. But I’m not sure that Sunday still feels the same.

I gave her my number the second I saw her and I haven’t heard from her all week.

I couldn’t even get down to the cabin because I’ve been so swamped with work.

But maybe I could head over to Casey’s this weekend and ask her for myself.

Peyton hands me the receipt and I pocket it, saying, “Thanks.”

Then I glance back down at Harper, exhaling quietly as I rub my stubble.

I don’t want to get into the minutiae, but Harper’s my brother’s fiancée, so I explain a little.

“We were in high school together, Sunday and me. I was a year older and friends with her brother. Case and I had this plan to join the Army, and work our way up the ranks until we hit the top.

“Their step-dad, Cash… he was also military. So Sunday knew about the service academy, and what it’s like to be with someone who deploys. And it was all really good. She was only seventeen so we didn’t…doanything… but we were heading in the direction of making things official before I left.

“Then the night of our prom, her mom gets a call. And I knew the second I saw her that it was over. She got some real bad news that evening, and after that she wanted to get out. Away from Phoenix Falls. Away from… military men.”

I remember it like yesterday, the feeling of wanting nothing more than to protect her.

But knowing that the only way to protect her would be to go our separate ways.

“Her step-dad?” I murmur. “He was KIA, Harper.”

“KIA?” Harper whispers. “What does that mean?”

But then she stops herself midsentence as she works out the acronym.

“Oh, Jason,” she starts, but I lean down and squeeze her shoulder.

And when I make my way out of the diner, I’m thinking nothing but the wordskilled in action.

Chapter 7

Sunday

I put the truck in park and stare out of Casey’s windshield with wide eyes, blinking up at the white-tipped pine trees towering in front of us.

“Uh, okay,” I say breathlessly, “I see that you weren’t kidding about the snow.”

Haven, my brother’s wife, shoots me a smile from the passenger seat beside me.

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