Jordyn's Army, page 22
Her face softened. “I lost my husband not too long ago in Afghanistan.”
“Hannah, I know this sounds forward, but there’s something between us. I need to get to know you better.”
“I get off at midnight. Maybe a quick drink and we can commiserate on widowhood?”
“Deal,” I agreed.
I waited for her to close out her register, drinking only water. I wanted to be perfectly sober for Hannah.
When she finally sat across from me, I decided to tell her the entire truth.
“Hannah, this is going to sound crazy, but my wife’s name was Rachel. She spoke to me that morning I met you – she told me to bring her roses.”
Her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open but she said nothing.
“I know it sounds insane, but I’m not talking about in my mind, or feelings and shit. It was out loud. She sent me directly to you.”
She nodded. “I believe you about the voice. But, Jonah, send you to me for what?”
“For another chance at happiness. At love.”
“We can’t…we aren’t…what?”
“You feeling nothing?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then can we just explore where this might lead? Can I buy you coffee or something?” I glanced at my watch, realizing I had zero pickup game. Coffee at midnight, idiot, I thought.
And then it happened. In the still-buzzing club, I clearly heard her speak again. But this time, she didn’t speak to me.
“Go with him, Hannah.” Hannah’s head jerked around, searching for the source of the voice.
“Did you hear that?”
She shook her head. But we both knew damn well that she did.
“Hannah, something’s…”
“Stop it, Major Jones!” She was shaking, her eyes nervously darting around the room.
“Jonah,” I said quietly.
She leaned in closer, as if I might shield her from the voices from beyond. “I’m afraid of all of this, Jonah,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Don’t be scared. Like I told you, it’s my wife, Rachel. She sent me to find you.” I paused to let her absorb my insanity.
She gulped hard and nodded. “Yeah, I think I know that.”
We stood up next to each other. I towered over her – this frail looking creature. She was ridiculously younger than me. I doubted that we had anything in common. And yet, standing there looking into her eyes, I knew I was home. I knew at that very moment that not only had Rachel forgiven me, she was giving me a second chance. No, not giving me. Demanding it of me.
I let my hand drift to Hannah’s shoulder. Her face was so pale that her freckles emerged like the first stars at twilight. “Can we go some place and talk?” I asked.
She nodded. Without a word, we headed out of the crowded club and toward the parking lot. There was no hesitation when I opened the passenger door of my Corvette, the epitome of a fighter pilot cliché.
As I shifted out of park, it dawned on me that I probably shouldn’t take this exquisite creature to my trashed room.
“Uh, it won’t look that cool if I take you to my—”
“My apartment at Eagle Trace then.”
I nodded and headed toward the front gate. “Yeah, cool. Oh and hey, despite the messed up thing I am now, I am a gentleman.”
“It doesn’t matter. Levi just told me to take you home and tell you our story.”
“Levi?” I raised one eyebrow. Was this chick nuts? She had a dude at home?
“My husband, Levi. I told you they blew him up in Afghanistan last summer. Friendly fire, we all know it but Big Blue denies it, of course.”
“Yeah, I heard about that.”
“Then I’m right?” I could see her staring at me in the dashboard lights.
“Probably. I honestly don’t know, Hannah. Shit gets tricky out there.” We pulled into the gate, and she directed me toward her unit.
“Do you want a drink?” she asked from across the tiny kitchen island.
I felt my hand shake, my mouth salivate. There was almost nothing in the world I wanted more than whisky at that moment. Almost nothing.
“No, I’m good. Coffee maybe? I feel like it’s going to be a long night.”
She glanced around the tiny space of her apartment, as if our dead spouses might magically appear. When no apparitions surfaced, Hannah opened a drawer and popped a coffee pod into the maker.
“I don’t have any cream or sugar or whatever people add. I don’t really drink it. This was a wedding gift.”
“Just black. Thanks.”
“Does he talk to you a lot? Levi?”
She stared into the stream of the dark roast gurgling into the mug.
“Never before. It was the day you bought the rose; that morning. He told me it was time to let Rachel go and live my life.”
I shuddered a little at hearing her name from Hannah’s mouth. She handed me the steaming cup and gestured toward her small sofa. After setting the coffee cup down on a side table, I reached a hand toward her. I suspected it wasn’t exactly going to be a night of romance, but I needed to touch her.
Nervously, she took my hand and let me pull her close on the sofa. “Okay,” I said with a loud exhale. “So your Rachel? Tell me about her again.”
Her head nuzzled into my chest, as if seeking safety. “Levi’s mother.”
“And the roses…?”
“I made the first one as a gift to her when Levi and I were first dating. My own family is, well, a story for another time. But Levi’s mom was the closest thing to a mother I’ve ever had.”
“Was?”
“She has Alzheimer’s.”
“Ah, that’s right. I’m sorry.”
“She doesn’t even know who I am now.”
I pulled her even closer, and she didn’t resist.
“So you do the roses for her?”
I heard her sniffle, and an ache inside me wanted to take away her pain. And then I realized another truth – for the first time since the night Rachel died, the crushing guilt I’d felt was gone.
“I love making them; it keeps me sane. The money I raise from the rose stand all goes to her. Insurance pays for hospice care, but I pay for the extra things she needs. There’s an experimental drug that they won’t pay for. My goal is to maybe be able to get a trial for her.”
“I see. And the bartending?”
“It pays the other bills, along with the benefits I get from the Air Force.”
“But you said Levi told you to let her go?”
“It was out loud, just like we heard her tonight. He said, ‘Hannah, let Mom go, let me go. The rest of your life is about to start.’”
I shuddered against her. I didn’t believe in much, and I certainly didn’t believe in ghosts. But yet…
“But yet this is powerful between us, Jonah. I’m terrified of it, but at the same time I feel like I’ve waited for you for so very long.”
“I never thought I’d feel anything again.”
“But we just met, and we’re so very broken.”
“We were meant to be, Hannah. I’ve wanted to get to know you from the moment you handed me Rachel’s rose. She sent me to you. And Levi spoke to you for a reason.”
Her body tensed as she twisted her face up toward mine. “We’ll never stop loving them!”
I took her face into my hands. She was so angelic, so pure. Another angel sent to me from my angel – I knew that. I still do.
“Hannah, loving each other doesn’t mean not honoring them.”
“L-love? This is all crazy - we just met!” Her body betrayed her words of resistance. The more she wanted to pull away, the more our bodies melded into each other’s.
“I knew I loved Rachel the second she handed me my sandwich one scorching day in a deli in rural Mississippi. She knew, too.”
Hannah took a deep breath and pressed her forehead into mine. “Levi and I knew, too. Instantly. And it was perfect. But we only had less than a year! There wasn’t time for reality to set in.”
My lips grazed hers. This was right, this was real. I wasn’t about to let fear stop me. “Well, we went way past reality. It got downright ugly between us. So ugly that one rainy night she stormed off into the night. I can still hear the squeal of her tires.”
“Everyone fights…” Her upper lip quivered, so close to me that I could feel it.
“Oh, we fought. She wanted kids, I didn’t. My career was always first, that was the biggest thing. I stupidly thought I could put flying first, my wife second. It took us to the brink at times, but yet we still never let go. There wasn’t one day that I didn’t send her a rose, in one capacity or another. We never stopped loving, Hannah. We never will.”
Her lips met mine again, before she pulled away as if she’d been burned.
“It’s too much – I never want to feel that intensity again. It’s too hard!”
“This is real. I’m not letting it go because we might get hurt.”
Our arms wrapped around each other. I was never letting her go.
“Jonah, how did she…?”
“Die. You can say die.”
She nodded, her eyes wide in anticipation.
“Yesterday, I would have told you I killed her.”
She gasped for a second in shock. “No!”
My nose grazed against hers. “But tonight, I know that she died in a horrific car accident. A freak thing, random. We had a big fight over my work schedule. I howled at her that I had no time for a family. She grabbed her keys and stormed out. In the rain on the desolate interstate, the semi couldn’t stop in time and she died in an instant.”
Tears streamed down Hannah’s perfectly freckled cheeks. “It wasn’t your fault!”
“No, it wasn’t. If I had it all to do over again, I’d make so many changes. I’d put her first; I’d cherish her every second. But no, I realize now that her death was not my fault.”
“I don’t know where to go from here, Jonah.”
“Let’s start here,” I said, pulling her in for a kiss so deep, so true, that neither of us questioned our connection.
4
Well, we didn’t question it that night, anyway. Until sunrise, we were able to cast away the doubts and become one. Our connection was so intense, so spiritual, that I was sure nothing would ever come between us.
But, of course, real life is often different than movies.
“I just…it’s too soon, Jonah.” She sat at the end of her bed as the morning sun streamed in.
“Too soon for what, Hannah?” I waved my hands across the sheets we’d rolled in for hours in ecstasy. “This?”
She shook her head. “No! I don’t feel bad about the physical stuff… But us. The emotion – it’s too much too soon. Let’s just slow it down a little.”
I took a deep breath. “No, it’s all or nothing with me. I don’t do slow. I nearly killed myself the other day, and today, I’ve found love again. I’m sorry, Hannah, I have no intention of not going all in.”
“I need time…”
I crawled across the bed and took her in my arms – where she belonged. “One thing I’ve learned from all of this – we’re not guaranteed time. Today, now, that’s all we can be sure of.”
Our bodies fell together once more, forgetting our doubts and the world outside her door.
We awoke to the buzz of her phone on the nightstand.
“Oh my God, yeah, I’ll be right there,” she said to the caller.
I reached for my jeans, still on the floor from our frenzy to get skin-to-skin the night before. “Where are we going?”
“Oh, no, I’ll…I need to do this alone.”
“You’ll never be alone again.” I meant it.
She sighed and nodded. “Okay, it’s Rachel, she’s missing again.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Again? Missing?”
“They don’t watch her well enough. I was going to put an alarm on her door, but I didn’t quite have the money yet.”
I hopped up and grabbed my shirt from a chair. “Where do we start looking?”
She paused for a moment, as if to argue, then gave in. She was already learning how obstinate I can be. “Uh, she usually escapes down to a nearby gas station for cigarettes.”
“Let’s start there. I’ll drive.”
“Good, because I don’t have a car,” she said from behind me.
As we rolled out of her parking lot, I asked, “No car? Isn’t that rough?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “But I sold it the last time they wanted to put her on some therapy that Medicare wouldn’t cover.”
“How do you get to work?”
“I walk – it’s not far.”
“In this neighborhood? Hannah!”
“I’m fine, Jonah. I Uber back from the club after dark or if the weather is bad.”
“Unacceptable. We need to get you safe wheels.”
“Protective, much?” she chuckled.
“You have no idea,” I said, pulling on to Nellis Boulevard and heading toward the coordinates she’d plugged into the GPS.
We arrived at the gas station far too quickly for Hannah’s nerves. Fingernails dug into the dash, she’d pretty much yelled at me the entire way.
“What?” I said with a shrug as I stomped on the parking brake.
“Do you always fly that low, Major Jones?” She narrowed her beautiful eyes at me.
“You do realize, Miss Green, that I operate a fifty-million dollar fighter plane within three feet of another multi-million dollar jet at over five-hundred miles per hour at six miles high in the sky? I think I can handle whipping around Grandpa in his minivan.”
“Okay, point taken, but I’m not sure I can handle the G-force from your turns, Jonah.”
I leaned in and kissed her. “I could try to take it easy, but it would be far more fun to just swipe you a G-suit and mask from Life Support.”
“Thank you,” she laughed, the most effervescent sound I could imagine. “Now let’s go see what this jerk-face facility director has to say.”
“Jerk-face,” I teased, pressing my forehead into hers. “Such strong language from a lady.”
The day only got worse for Hannah. After four hours of searching, hand in hand, the call came from the director of the hospice center. Hannah’s beloved mother-in-law, her last and only link to Levi, was found in a drainage ditch less than a hundred feet away.
Later Las Vegas police determined from an eyewitness that Rachel had wandered out the rear entrance to follow a stray cat. She lost her footing and slid down the steep, concrete grade. It was over a hundred and ten degrees that afternoon and she’d quickly succumbed to heat exhaustion.
Hannah was inconsolable that night.
“I have nothing left,” she said into the darkness of her bedroom.
Pulling her close, my heart broke for her. “You have me.”
“What is this, Jonah? With us? I barely know you; you barely know me.”
“No one’s ever known me the way you do.”
“She did.”
“No, she didn’t. I loved her deeply, but she didn’t know me. That’s why it was always so very turbulent. It’s why she came back – to point me in the right direction. Your direction.”
“I’ve never felt anything this strong,” she said with a sniffle. “It can’t be real.”
“It’s the realest thing, Hannah.”
5
She was calm throughout the cremation and the settling of her mother-in-law’s small estate. We were closer than ever, and within weeks I’d pretty much moved into to her tiny apartment. For the first time in years, I was happy.
Even at work, my star was once again rising. Danno seemed to have bigger things on his mind and was pretty much leaving me alone. Without my nightly whisky binges, the others in the squadron respected me again. I’d love to say it was happily ever after, but of course, that would be too easy.
One evening, we were meeting at our favorite Italian place before she went to work. I’d had a shitty day, and I couldn’t wait to see her. By the time I changed and left the squadron, I was half an hour late.
She was at the table, a bottle of red wine half empty in front of her. As she looked at me, her face lit up.
“Jonah, I was worried sick!”
“Oh yeah, sorry. I should have texted or whatever. I suck at that.”
Her eyes narrowed at me as I sat down across from her. I reached for her hand, but she pulled away.
“No, Jonah, I was freaking out.”
“It’s half an hour, baby. I had a mask malfunction and had to fill out a report with—”
I knew, in that instant, I’d said the entirely wrong thing. Hannah had been married to a young airman – and he had nothing to do with actual flying. Rachel had been raised as an Air Force brat; nothing fazed her. But Hannah….
“Wait, what? What does that mean? A mask malfunction?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter, just standard shit that happens. Next time I’ll call or text if I’m running late – I swear.”
“When do you deploy again?” she asked. Her hands were wrapped in a ball and her face was pale.
“Oh, uh, not with this squadron at all, we just play aggressor for war games. We don’t deploy.”
“Mm hm,” she said, her lips drawn together in a tight line. “And your next assignment? How does that work?”
She’d been an enlisted spouse for a brief period of time – she had no clue how the officer world did things.
I reached for the bottle of Chianti and filled my glass. “I just got here, so I have about two and a half years here at Nellis.”
“And after that?” There were tears in her eyes.
“After that, I’ll get a kickass assignment back in an Ops squadron – you know, killing bad guys and defending freedom.”
“Ops?”
“Operational. I was born to be out there, Hannah. Tip of the sphere, not sidelined as a support act for Red Flags.”
“Jonah…”
“You’ll go with me! Oh my God, is that what you’re worried about? I love you, Hannah. I’m never leaving you behind.”
