“And you’re sure that you’re okay here?” I had to ask. He’d given up so much for me. For us.
He smiled, and my heart faltered. “It was selfish of me to ask you to give up what you worked your ass off for. I’m here. I’m not leaving you until the army says we have to move, and then I’m kind of hoping you’ll come with me. We should have at least a couple years here, long enough to finish your degree. But I promise we’ll keep this house. Our kids will mark their heights on that door.”
I arched up and kissed him. “I love the door. I love the house. I love you, and I’ll go wherever I have to so I can be with you. I used to think that home was a place. Walls, and windows, and home-baked brownies, but it’s not, Grayson. That’s just a house. You are my home. So where you go, I’ll go.”
His mouth met mine in the sweetest kiss we’d ever shared. “I promise I’ll always put the coffee on the bottom shelf.”
“That, or you always have to be around to catch me when I slip off the granite.”
His smile was brighter than the sunlight streaming through the windows. “I told you once—I’ll always catch you.”
I lifted an eyebrow and ran my hands down his naked back.
“You are pretty good with your hands.”
He scoffed. “Pretty good? We’ve been apart for what, four months, and now I’m only pretty good?”
I brought my leg up to hitch around his hips. “I guess I could use a reminder.”
“Oh, I’ll remind you.”
“I might forget pretty often.” I gave him my best wide-eyed stare.
“I’ll remind you every fucking day, Samantha.”
Yes. Every day. He was my future, my home, my universe, this phenomenal man who’d altered my world and claimed it for his own. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
Epilogue
Seven years later
The hangar doors opened on Butts Army Airfield and the crowd roared above the music of the army band playing. They marched in, all one-hundred-and-twenty-five of them, filling the empty floor with row after row of camo.
My eyes swept the front of the line until I found him, and my heart started to race. He was here. Finally. After the longest nine months of my life, he was finally home. No, this hadn’t been our first deployment, but it had been the hardest.
Then again, after three of them, it always seemed to feel that way.
He faced forward, standing at attention at the head of his company while the General took the podium, but I could see Grayson’s eyes scanning the bleachers looking for me. For us.
“Daddy’s here!” I said to Delaney as I adjusted all forty pounds of her on my hip.
“Daddy!” she shrieked, breaking the silence to the laughter of those around us.
Who could blame a four-year-old?
I tucked one of her long, caramel spiral-curls back over her ear. “We have to wait a minute, baby.”
When I looked back to the formation, Grayson’s eyes had locked on to me. My stomach clenched. Five years of marriage, and he still had the power to knock me to my knees with just that look.
I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
The general dismissed the troops, and the crowd rushed from the stands in a tidal wave of joy, until the hangar floor became a sea of welcome-homes. Careful in heels with Delaney in my arms, I picked my way down the bleachers until we reached the last row, where Grayson had just arrived.
“Daddy!” Delaney cried and lunged. He caught her tiny frame easily and crushed her to him, his eyes closed in bliss for all of two seconds before he yanked me into his chest with his free arm.
God, he smelled like tangy metal from the aircraft and freshly applied deodorant. Nothing had ever been more of an aphrodisiac. I held on as tightly as possible, savoring the feel of him, the steady beat of his heart beneath my ear.
Contentment overpowered every other emotion.