Live Free and Love (7 page)

“Now, when I look at you, it just seems right, Danny. Me and you, it’s just seems right.” Kristina paused, not knowing if she should tell him everything.

“You’ve come this far,” she said to herself.

“Danny I fell in love with you when I was young, and I’ve never stopped loving you. Being with you now, these last couple of weeks, it just reminded me why I loved you so much. Just… give us a chance.”

Danny was quiet for a long time. He just stared into Kristina’s eyes. He was silent so long that Kristina didn’t know if he was going to answer her at all.

After a while he gave her the handsomest smile she had ever seen .

“What in the world are you smiling at?” she asked him.

“Oh, nothing, you love me is all.” He started laughing as she punched him in the chest.

“I’m serious, Danny.”

“I know you are, Tina. And to be totally honest with you, I love you too. You’ve helped me through so much in the short time you’ve been here. Even though that was awesome, that’s not why I love you.”

“Then why do you?” she said, unable to stop a smile from spreading across her face.

“You have shown me your heart. You’ve shown me that yeah, shit is going to get hard, but also that you won’t run from it.

“I struggle with my experiences daily, and it’s going to be a long road ahead of me, but you’ve shown me that, even as a friend, I can count on you to be there for me. That’s why I love you, Tina, and that, at least on my part, will never change.”

“Same here. So what now?” she asked.

“We’ll talk in the morning, love. For now, go to sleep,” he said as he kissed her.

Kristina—content for the moment—cuddled up to him and was asleep moments later.

Chapter 7

“Absence sharpens love, Presence strengthens it.”

Kristina waited outside the office building that Danny had entered only moments before. She stared out at/over the base. Military personnel walked here and there, and she spoke to the few who said anything to her.

She felt good about the conversation between her and Danny last night. He loved her. She had loved him for so long that she didn’t even think it was possible that he could love her too.

Knowing Danny felt the same way made it a little easier to look into the future and see a life with him. She was still scared of what would happen when she had to return to Philadelphia; she had never been in a long-distance relationship before.

She didn’t know if Danny would move to be with her, and her career didn’t give her the option to move at the moment.

She was at a loss as to where they would go from here, but she knew that whatever they chose they would do it together and make it work. It would be okay. That was all she kept telling herself.

Kristina clasped her hands together, leaned against a cement wall, and waited for Danny to come out of the office. She had been sitting there for about fifteen minutes when her phone rang.

Checking the caller ID she saw it was her office back home. Cursing, she answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Kristina, its Mr. Cooley. I haven’t heard anything from you on your progress of the story. Fill me in.”

***

Danny stood in front of the base psychiatrist. The woman looked through his file as if she didn’t already know why he was here.

She made small talk and then began to review the reason he had been sent to her in the first place.

Danny didn’t care about any of that. He wanted her to get to the part that had required his presence.

She set down the folder and look him in his eyes.

“How are you feeling these days, Danny?”

Danny almost lost the battle not to roll his eyes at the woman.
Just get on with it
, he thought.

“I’m fine, Ma’am.”

The woman shook her head. “That’s good. That’s real good. Lance Corporal Knight, you have been evaluated and cleared for active duty. You are to report for duty at zero eight hundred hours in two days’ time.”

Danny almost buckled. His knees felt like jelly, and he couldn’t breathe. His worst nightmare had come true. He was going to have to complete his enlistment.

He had prayed the woman had found something that would make him unable to fight, unable to go back into the war zone.

But the order had been issued. He was going back, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Danny began to sweat, his vision swirling. His breathing came in short bursts, the faces of those boys at the forefront of his mind. “You can’t send me back there,” he whispered.

“Excuse me?” the woman said. She had gone back to her paperwork, thinking Danny would have left once he received his orders.

“I can’t go back. I just can’t.” Danny turned and walked out of the office. When he got to the exit, he took some deep breaths and tried to calm down.

Get yourself together
, he nearly screamed at himself.

He took a few minutes to calm himself, not wanting Kristina to see him so shaken. He wanted to tell her on his own, not have her find out because he was having a nervous breakdown on the steps of the base psychiatrist.

Once he had a semblance of his control back, he walked a little unsteadily at first towards where he had left Kristina.

His day had taken a turn for the worse. The craving for a drink was very strong, and he almost shook from its call to him.

If he just saw her, saw her beautiful face, it would make things bearable.

He saw her off to his right, sitting on the steps.

Danny quickened his steps, trying to get to her quickly and leave the base. He would return soon enough, and wanted to get some distance between himself and the base as soon as possible.

As he approached her, he noticed she was on the phone, and couldn’t help but overhear her conversation.

The hurt and anger that exploded from him surprised even him.

“It was all for a fucking story?”

****

Kristina spun around. She saw Danny behind her and knew from the look on his face that he had heard what she had been saying to her boss.

“Danny, please, let me explain,” Kristina said, walking up to him, her phone call forgotten.

She had been in the middle of telling her boss that she wasn’t going to use Danny for the story and that she had found a replacement for him and would need maybe a few weeks more on her timeline.

She hadn’t realized Danny had come up behind her, or had heard anything she had been saying.

“I trusted you.” The hurt in his voice made Kristina want to cry. She knew what this looked like, knew that it seemed like she only was there to gather information.

“Danny, please. Listen to me. This is not what it looks like,” she pleaded with him.

“Then what is it Kristina? Because to me it looks like you were playing me. All for a fucking headline.”

The use of her full name let her know exactly how mad he was. Danny never called her anything but Tina.

“Yes, I am doing a story, and yes, at first, I was here to do one on you, but that changed once I got to know you. I decided not to use you weeks ago. I was just telling my boss.”

“I let you see the worst parts of myself. Opened up my heart to you, and all I was, was a story to you. Well add this to your story. They're sending me back. So I guess this is goodbye anyway.”

Kristina could right now he was past trying to listen to her, so she let that part go. What caught her attention was that he said they were sending him back.

“They can’t do that.” Kristina looked into his eyes, even though he avoided hers. “They can’t send you back there.”

“Why, because I’m crazy, because you think I can’t handle myself?” His face was a twisted snarl. Kristina could see uniformed officers coming their way. “I am a United States Marine. Hoo Rah,” Danny said, then turned and walked away.

Kristina watched him walk away. Everything in her wanted to follow. She wanted to chase after him, try to explain that she was sorry, and that she had no intention of putting about him in her story.

She knew it would be no use, at least not right now. He was too angry, too hurt, and wouldn’t hear a word she had to say.

Two military policemen had come up to her and were asking her questions. She didn’t even hear the words they spoke. She just nodded and stared at Danny’s disappearing form.

She had told Janine this was a bad idea, keeping this all from him. Now she didn’t know a way to fix it.

A few hours later, Kristina sat at the airport, alone. She had made it back to the hotel room that she had shared with Danny, only to find all his belongings gone. He had left her the rental car, but that was all.

She had tried calling him, but his phone had gone straight to voicemail. She was worried about him. She wanted to see him, to see for herself that he was okay, but nothing she said on his voicemail made him call her.

The next morning, Kristina packed her belongings back into her suitcase. She looked at the black lace lingerie and remembered her night with Danny. Things had been going so well. He had told her he loved her.

They were going to make plans for their future. Now she sat alone in an airport, with no idea where he was.

Her heart was breaking more each second. She wanted nothing more than to be spending this time in his arms, making love. She wanted to hear him tell her she was beautiful.

The flight back to Humble seemed longer than ever. The minutes ticked away slowly. Kristina had to stop herself from crying more than once.

This is your own fault. You should have told him,
she said to herself.

She stopped at Danny’s apartment as soon as she got back to Humble. She banged on the door, but heard nothing inside and all the lights were out. It was apparent that no one was home, but she kept knocking, hoping beyond hope that he would miraculously appear and open the door.

Giving up, she went back to her hotel. She had already spoken to the airline and changed her ticket. The third person for her article was in Philly, so she had changed her ticket on the off chance that Danny wasn’t here.

There was no reason to stay in Humble if he wasn’t here. She had the thought to go visit her parents one more time before she left, but quickly tossed it aside.

She would just leave mad and disgusted at her mom and dad. Those two would never change, and she felt sorry for them, that that was how they chose to live their lives.

Walking into the lobby, Kristina checked out at registration. She asked the woman manning the counter if she had any messages. Maybe Danny didn’t want to speak to her directly and had left his whereabouts with the hotel.

There was nothing there. She tried not to notice the pang of disappointment that stung her chest.

Please let him be okay. Please,
she prayed silently.

She paid her final bill and headed back to the airport to wait on her flight. Her nerves were all over the place. She figured once she got away from Humble she would be able to think clearly.

Danny said they wanted him back. Those were direct orders. She knew Danny well enough to know he wouldn’t disobey a direct order. She just didn’t know the timeframe they had given him to report for duty.

She would wait a few weeks and try to contact him there. In the meantime, she would continue to try and reach him by phone, to try to apologize for what she had done, to try to make him understand that she was here for him, that she loved him.

If she couldn’t do that, she had no hopes for a future with him, and just the thought of that made panic well up in her chest. Things could not end this way. They just couldn’t.

****

Kristina landed at the airport in Philly late that night. Janine was waiting for her to get off the plane.

As soon as she saw her, Kristina walked into her arms and finally let her tears fall.

“I can’t find him, Janine. He won’t answer any of my calls.”

Kristina had called Janine as she waited for her flight to board. She had told her everything that had happened between her and Danny.

“He’s just mad right now. He’ll come around,” her friend said. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

Janine drove Kristina back to her condo and sat with her talking all night. They had a few drinks and Kristina told her in detail about her trip and also about the news Danny had gotten from the base psychiatrist.

“I can’t go into detail about why, but they can’t send him back on to the battlefield. It will kill him. He tried to put up this front when we were yelling at each other, this whole ‘I’m a Marine’ crap, but he won’t survive it if they send him back,” Kristina told Janine.

“Maybe they’ll realize that before he goes. I don’t know, love; you just have to hope for the best is all.”

“I know, but hoping for the best is killing me. I just want to read a message, to hear his voice on the other end of the phone, something telling me that he’s okay. I don’t think I’m going to be okay until I know that he is.”