Page 19 of Finally Mine
Aldo knew the story. After a very bad day, Harper had coasted into Remo’s parking lot on fumes and spotted Glenn Diller attacking Gloria. When Glenn had turned his fury on Harper, Luke had appeared and smashed the monster in his fucking face. Aldo’s hand balled into a fist in his lap.
What he wouldn’t give to have been the one to finally stop him.
“And then?” Aldo asked, keeping the conversation moving.
Luke cleared his throat. “Well, you’ve met her.”
“I have,” he nodded. “Think she’ll stay?”
Luke shook his head, his jaw tightening. “Nah. She’s got things to do, places to go. Six months is a long time to ask someone you just met to wait.”
“It’s a long time to ask anyone to wait,” Aldo reminded him. “She would, you know.” Harper would. The way she looked at Luke, like that grumpy son of a bitch had invented vibrators, screamed the big L-O-V-E.
Luke scrubbed a hand over his chin. “I don’t know if I’d want her to.”
“Bullshit,” Aldo argued cheerfully. It was fear that had Luke by the throat. Fear that feeling something for another woman would somehow lessen what he’d once felt for his wife.
“Kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“Where do you think I learned it?” Ina Moretta’s vocabulary would make a trash-talking UFC fighter at weigh-in blush. Her mastery of four-letter words was legendary.
“Speaking of women,” Luke said, suddenly chipper. “Harper seems to think you have a thing for Gloria.”
Aldo let out a sigh through his teeth. “She’s not wrong.”
“You’ve always had a thing for anything with a nice pair of legs and big brown eyes,” Luke pointed out.
“Where do you think I got my type?” It was true. Aldo had sowed his wild oats, expecting that high school crush to fade away into nostalgia. He’d dated. He’d fucked. He’d enjoyed the hell out of himself, all the while wondering where the connection was.
He’d found it, finally. Monday night with Gloria wrapped up in his arms under that lonely streetlight.
“So, if you’ve been carrying this torch since high school, how is Glenn still alive?” Luke asked, knowing his friend so well.
Aldo automatically tamped back the reflexive burst of fury. It hadn’t been his business. When she stayed, he accepted her choice. She wasn’t his to defend and protect. “I ask myself that every day. The deployments made it easier to think about something else. Gave me something to focus on.”
They’d also given him an escape from what happened the first and only time he’d done something about Diller. The price paid hadn’t been his. And that haunted him to this day.
Aldo drummed his fingers on the roof of the truck. “I gotta say,” he said, changing the subject. “I’m thinking about retiring. This is number four, and I want to make it my last.”
“Really?” Luke asked, sounding surprised. To Luke, the Guard and the deployments were what kept him going, kept him trudging one foot in front of the other.
“We’ve been doing this since high school. That’s twelve years of packing up and moving out and hoping we come back after the job’s done. I’m ready to stay put. I want to put more time into some engineering projects. And then I want to make a nice girl the next Mrs. Moretta.”
“Jesus, Aldo.” Luke sounded shocked…and a little sick. “When the hell did you decide all this?”
They’d enlisted together, trained together, deployed together. This was the first time Aldo’s course had diverged from Luke’s.
“About ten seconds after I found out Gloria moved out.” It was the truth. It was time. Aldo felt it in his bones. He was ready to be a full-time civilian, a husband, maybe a father. It was time for the rest of his life to start. “Don’t tell me you’re not ready to hang it up.”
“It’s all I’ve got,” Luke said quietly. “The Guard and my business.”
“You’ve got your family and could have Harper, too, if you wanted. Come home to that sweet face every day and find out what trouble she got herself into? There’s something to look forward to.”
Luke’s lips quirked. “She is trouble. I’m concerned about releasing her into the wild.”
“She needs you.” And that was what Luke needed most, someone who needed him.
“She needs her fucking parents, but they’re dead. She’s got no family. Just scars from all those years in foster care.”
