Bring Down the Stars (Beautiful Hearts Duet #1)(73)

“He cleans up good, is all.”

“Agreed, but maybe don’t look at our own flesh and blood like you wanna hit that.”

“Maybe fuck yourself.”

Mebbe fuck ya-self.

Felicia rolled her eyes and smacked a smoky kiss on my cheek. “She’s a perv. You look great, Wes. But I’m with Ma about the haircut.”

“Thanks, Leesh,” I said. Carefully. Another minute in my sisters’ strongly-accented company would pull my own Southie out of my mouth.

Paul came over, hand outstretched. “Congratulations, Wes,” he said. “I hope it’s not too forward, but I’m proud of you.”

I’m proud of you, son.

I shook his hand but let go quickly. “Thanks.”

The two families joined up and for a moment, we stood in silence under the afternoon sun, exchanging glances. No one wanting to voice the inevitable question, What now?

“Any word on your deployment?” Mr. Drake asked and his wife closed her eyes slowly, then opened them. “When or where?”

“Fort Benning, in two weeks,” Connor said. “Then Qatar. From there, we don’t know yet.”

“To the front? Where the fighting is?” Kimberly asked.

“We don’t know yet,” I repeated, slowly.

“But we have you both for now,” Autumn said. “For two weeks.”

It felt like nothing.

Paul put his arm around Ma. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? Let’s enjoy the picnic and having these young men home.”

The feeling of dread lodged itself deeper. Not for the combat we might face—I was trained to deal with that. But for the first time, I couldn’t see my future. No track, no writing, no job on Wall Street or even a life in the military. After this two weeks’ of leave, there was nothing but ominous blackness.

“Weston?”

I blinked. The group had begun to walk off the field, but Autumn waited for me. A few steps beyond, Connor waited as well.

“Coming, man?” Connor asked.

“Yep.”

I caught up to them and we walked together, Connor and I, with Autumn in the middle.





At the family picnic, Sergeant Denroy morphed into a different guy. He took off his Drill Instructor personality and set it aside, like a tool he was finished using until his next company of new recruits arrived. He smiled wide and easily as he congratulated Connor and me in front of our families, as if he hadn’t spent the last ten weeks screaming that we were no better than dog shit on the bottom of his shoe.

Autumn’s hand looked welded to Connor’s, and every time I snuck a glance at her—which was often—she was gazing up at him.

I managed to peel him from our group, and we watched our people eat and drink and talk.

“Listen, Autumn might mention the letters.”

“What letters?”

“The ones I wrote to her. I mean, wrote for you. To her.”

He shrugged. “Okay.”

“I’m just saying, she’s probably going to bring them up.”

He frowned. “Okay,” he said again, drawing the word out. “How many did you write?”

“A few.”

“How many is a few? Like, once a week?”

“More or less.” I coughed. “Or more.”

Connor’s eyes widened. “Every day?”

“Not every day.”

“Well shit, Wes, what did you say? How did you have so much to say?”

“Calm down,” I said. “I wrote what you told me to write. News and weather. And… sometimes I got in the groove and kept going. I needed the outlet after all that damn PT.”

Connor scratched his chin. “What else? Anything in there I’ll need for reference?”

Only that her happiness is the ultimate measure of yours. No big deal.

“You care about her, right?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “She stood up for me at Thanksgiving. I stood up for me at Thanksgiving. And now here we are, made it through fucking Army Basic Training, man. My dad hugged me. We’re going to serve our country and I have a girl like Autumn, waiting for me at home.”

He inclined his head to Autumn, who sat at one end of a picnic table, speaking animatedly to Mr. and Mrs. Drake who listened with warmer interest than at Thanksgiving.

“For the first time, my parents are taking me seriously,” Connor said. “And goddammit, I’ve earned it.”

“Yep, you have,” I said. “And I’ve been right there with you to see it, and that’s what I wrote about. It’s all there, stretched out over a few letters.”

A metric shit-ton of letters.

“You’re sort of like my interpreter.” Connor slugged my shoulder. “And you’re the fucking best, Wes. For real.”

He pulled me in tight, and I hugged him back.

“Look at the…what do they call ‘em? BFFs,” Ma called from the other side of the table. “For life.”

For life.

Connor rejoined the group, but I hung back to lean on the fence and stare out at the parade grounds.

Autumn joined me a few minutes later. Every muscle in my body tightened at her nearness, fighting the magnetic pull that wanted to touch her again. Hug her again, and kiss her, and that kiss would be my confession. Every word I’d written to her was hanging in the air between us; a fog only I could see. But if I kissed her, the truth of who authored those letters would come pouring out, and she would know it had been me then… that it had been me all along.