Page 67 of When the Stars Fall
He ran his hand through his shower-damp hair and winced. “Two weeks.”
I stared at him. No. He didn’t just say that. He couldn’t have said two weeks. I’d heard him wrong. “What did you just say?”
“Baby. Don’t give me that look.”
I pulled away from him and wrapped my arms over my chest. “Don’t tell me how to look at you. You said we’d have a few months. You said your recruiter didn’t have a slot until the fall. We were supposed to have the entire summer together. Then I’d go to college and you’d go to boot camp.” I was hyperventilating. We had so many plans. We were going to make it the best summer ever. “Now it’s only two weeks?”
“Yeah.” That was all he said. Yeah.
“Is that why you went on that male bonding camping trip with Brody? Did everyone know? Am I the last to find out?”
“No, that’s not why...” He exhaled loudly.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I not allowed to ask why my boyfriend deserted me for three days?”
“Don’t be like that.” His jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed. “The shit with Brody has nothing to do with you. It’s his story to tell, not mine. If he wants to tell you, that’s up to him. And I didn’t desert you. I was only gone for three days.”
“And now you only have two weeks and I’m working... I’ll be working forty hours a week at the garden center and it’s too late to take that time off. Stella’s on vacation and I’m picking up her hours and...” I stopped and covered my face with my hands. It was too much. I couldn’t deal with the thought of him leaving me.
Arms wrapped around me and he pulled me close. “Hey. It’s going to be okay. I’m going to boot camp. I’m not dying. It’s not as if the doctors have only given me two weeks to live,” he joked.
“You don’t know that,” I said, my voice muffled by my hands.
His chest rumbled with laughter. “You’re acting crazy, Rebel. Come on. Let’s get in the water,” he urged. “I’m sweating my balls off out here.”
I snorted. “Better get used to it. Soon you’ll be sweating your balls off with a drill instructor barking out orders.”
How could anyone be looking forward to that? But he was. Apparently, I wasn’t moving fast enough for him. He swooped me up in one swift motion and tossed me over his shoulder.
“Let me down!” I pounded my fists against his back but he just laughed and waded into the water. When he was chest-deep, he tossed me in the air like I was a rag doll.
That guy. As soon as my head emerged, I launched at him.
“You’re so predictable, Rebel.”
“You’re such a pain in the ass.”
“So are you.” He smiled, showing me those dimples I loved, his eyes so blue in the sunlight, his wet hair slicked back, and I had an ache in my heart the size of Texas. “The most beautiful, infuriating, stubborn pain in the ass.”
“Right back at you.” Instead of trying to dunk him, I looped my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist and buried my face in the crook of his neck.
“Everything is going to be okay. Promise. After you graduate college and after I finish the Marines, we’ll have our whole lives to be together. I’ll be with you so much you’ll get sick of me.”
“You want to spend your whole life with me?”
“Planning on it. Why? Did you have something else in mind?”
“Forever is a long time. How do you know I’m the one you want to spend it with?”
“I’ve always known. You’re it for me.”
“You might change your mind.”
“Yeah, and I might get eaten by a crocodile.”
I laughed. “What are you saying?”
“The odds of that happening are slim to none. That’s what I’m saying. What are you saying?”
