Stolen September: A Military Romance Read online

  Stolen September

  A Military Romance

  M.C. Cerny

  Dedication

  To those serving in the military and their families who support them.

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  Contents

  1. Bea

  2. Tank

  3. Bea

  4. Tank

  5. Bea

  6. Tank

  7. Bea

  8. Tank

  9. Bea

  10. Tank

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Love Under Construction

  Excerpt from Under The Mistletoe

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  Books by M.C. Cerny

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  1

  Bea

  “Bea, go get the door!” Mom calls from the kitchen currently filled with scents of all kinds of sweet and savory things. My legs trudge down the stairs in heavy footfalls. I pause halfway down as my eyes dart to the photographs on the wall: My parents at prom, followed by their wedding and then my dad’s night school graduation. My brother’s birth, and taking his first steps before I came along. My fingers touch the frame, missing my brother, Deacon, who isn’t home this holiday.

  “Beatrice Nicole, get the door!” It also has Mom in a bit of a mood to know that Deacon is spending this Thanksgiving with a girl and her family before my mother has met her.

  Another step down and my mouth waters for a taste of her caramel apple pie and nutmeg pumpkin cheesecake bites. I have to hand it to my mom—she knows how to coax me out of a bad mood with her home cooking. I almost feel bad about my thirteen-week funk, but she made an extra pumpkin pie I don’t have to share with my cousins…so maybe not too bad.

  “I got it.” Skipping down the stairs, I wonder why I’m the one who ends up answering the door every holiday. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of other people in the house perfectly situated to open the door. I bet it’s one of my bonehead cousins expecting a free meal (minus my pumpkin pie) and a chance to watch the game on the flat-screen television my dad recently bought. That theater-sized screen made our house the most popular in Darlington, North Carolina because we all know my Uncle Arty is a cheapskate.

  A hard knock sounds outside and I shout, pulling the door open wide, “Jesus, Evan, it’s not like you haven’t been here…before.” My bottom lip trips over the top, and the first thing I notice are the shiny boots peeking out from a set of military dress blues. My mouth dries up as my eyes slowly travel up the body of a boy who said goodbye thirteen weeks ago and returned looking like…I gulp in an unsteady breath…a man with broad, full shoulders stretching the seams of his crisply pressed uniform.

  Son of a…

  My eyes must be deceiving me, because this isn’t possible. I gave up hope that he’d call, text, write, or send a freaking carrier pigeon my way as an explanation for why he left, ghosting me. The uniform only enhances the newly bulked muscles that I fondly recall hoisting me up in his arms, or holding me down on a hot summer night under a full moon and lightning bugs mingling with the stars in the dark sky. I force myself to shake off the memories and remember this for what it is: an unwelcome surprise on Thanksgiving Day.

  “Oh hell.” I push the door shut as quickly as I opened it, squeezing my eyes closed saying a whimpered prayer. This can’t be happening. I’m not really seeing him here on my parents’ stoop, looking all smug and fine, as if the last three months hadn’t left me broken and in agony over a shitty goodbye. The worry that something might have—could have—happened to him churns in my empty belly.

  The sneaky shots of mulled apple cider I took with my dad earlier churn like acid, sloshing up toward my broken heart.

  A hand with neat-clipped nails curls around the wood doorframe. “Awe Honeybee, don’t be like that. At least let me come in and explain.” He sticks his booted foot with the blinding black shine in the door, having expected this reaction from me. His hand flexes, holding the door steady despite my best efforts to slam it in his cocky face.

  I strain to dislodge him but he chuffs at my efforts. The thing about this guy is that he’s real good at waiting me out. From the day we met, he seemed to understand what made me tick better than I did myself. I’ll exhaust every effort before he even thinks about giving up. From the moment we met, we were constantly running circles around each other.

  I hate it.

  I’m mad at him for breaking my heart. I’m mad at myself for letting him get under my skin in every way possible. I could close my eyes to the man in front of me, refusing to see him standing there, but I couldn’t close my heart to the things I felt while he was gone.

  The aunts dubbed it puppy love.

  It felt like an affliction.

  The flu, perhaps.

  “Beatrice? Who’s at the door?” Mom comes out of the kitchen cleaning her hands on a towel that’s seen better days, and I feel a pang of guilt for the sacrificial turkey about to feed twelve of us. Once she sees his face she’ll know exactly who this man is to me.

  I glance between them and growl. “No one, Mom.” His smile drops marginally and I think, good, about time he feels some of my pain. His chin drops like he wants to say something, but he holds back.

  “Sure don’t look like no one, honey.” Aunt Elisa pops up from practically nowhere, sharing her unsolicited opinion. The aunts have this sick sixth sense about things and show up at the worst times. I’ve come to accept this fact and merely look up at him, shaking my head no.

  “Yeah, Honeybee, invite this fine, strapping young man inside,” Aunt Doris drawls, crooking her witchy finger. My mother’s sisters are older than my mother, Irish twins born less than a year apart. They feel the need to comment on anything and everything they shouldn’t, assuming their age gives them a free pass. I love them dearly, but this is the last thing I want to hear about or discuss.

  “You know, Doris, I think this is the man that gave our Bea a case of the malaise this past September.” Elisa fixes her eyeglasses, checking him out, while Doris hums, patting her fluffy hair, which is a shade of powder blue.

  Aunt Doris drawls, dragging out her Southern accent slower than molasses. “Yes, I think you’re right. Bea was unfit for polite company this September. Only reason she left her room in October was for the Halloween candy we brought.”

  “Uh huh, she sure put on all that weight she lost real quick with those chocolate bars.”

  I glance at them, hissing, but I’m ignored. I don’t want him to know I was wallowing in self-pity and grief. It’s embarrassing.

  He gives me an appraising look up and down, like he’s trying to figure out where the weight went. My butt or my breasts sums up my curves. When his smirking gaze comes back to my eyes, he winks at me. Asshole.

  I groan, wishing the floor would suck me up right now.

  “Come on, Honeybee,” my visitor cajoles, letting his hand on the doorframe drift down to my clenched fingers. His touch still feels like little zings of electricity as he smooths my rigid digits. Furious, I snatch my hand back.

  Henry Edward Andrews, better known as Tank, winks playfully, holding out his hand. I despise how eager my body is to melt right back into his arms as if nothing happened.

  “Didn’t you miss me?” His lips turn up in a panty-melting grin.

  “Nope,” I pop, and roll my eyes when he frowns. I sigh, admitting in a whisper, “I missed you liked peanut butter misses jelly.” It hurts to think about how inseparable we were.

  We had the best six weeks to
gether, and then one day he was gone. Nothing. He vanished into thin air, and when I went to visit his house I was kindly and awkwardly told by his mother and little brother that he’d enlisted in the Marines and was away at training camp. His sweet mother didn’t realize who I was at first, until it clicked that I was the coffee shop girl. For a small town, Tank and I had kept our summer romance under wraps, perhaps a little too well. It was all I could do backing off their neatly white-trim-painted front porch without tripping to run back to my best friend Kate’s car, hot with humiliation. His mother chased me to the curb and asked if she could send Henry a message. I knew it had been too soon to meet his family. We pretty much snuck around those six weeks, just getting to know each other on humid summer nights in his apartment above his family’s garage. I had wanted that time for us, I hadn’t asked a lot of questions, and I hadn’t acted like a stage-five clinger even though I felt more. For all my efforts to play it cool, I got the surprise of my life that I really hadn’t been worth mentioning to anyone.

  I mean, who does that? Who just disappears like that? It was the worst kind of ghosting I could imagine, because when he left, he took my damn heart with him. He stole an entire month of my life, where I wallowed in the dark. I lost ten pounds and my summer tan right along with my will to attend school this fall, leaving me with the task of finding a job. Luckily, pouring coffee and cleaning toilets didn’t take much skill, but it also only paid minimum wage, shooting my pride in the foot.

  “Bea?” He catches my attention from the past. Big blue eyes I wish I could quit and warmth that radiates from his all too familiar chest that heaves with emotion.

  I let my anger fly and sucker punch him in the gut. It’s unexpected for both of us, and Tank merely releases an open-mouthed grunt. My punch did absolutely nothing to him. He laughs at me and takes my hand in his, rubbing my sore knuckles. His stomach is even harder than I recall. Of course, he had on much less clothing then, and my belly quivers remembering those details.

  “Talk, Honeybee. That’s all I want right now.” Tank pulls me gently outside the door and winks at my aunts, who stay perched in the window like cats clicking at birds, as if we can’t see them. Tank guides me further down the walkway, toward the tree-lined sidewalk reaching the mailbox at the end.

  I snatch my hand back, cradling it against my chest. I glare at him hard with a look that hurts him more than my sucker punch.

  “Bea,” Tank starts.

  I push against his chest. Clearly I haven’t learned he can’t be budged.

  “No. I’m not doing this with you.” I can’t stand the way his uniform makes his eyes glow bluer and how his short hair almost looks a different color with his deeper tan. I’m irritated at how well he fills out his uniform and how badly I want to peel it off of him.

  “Doing what?” he prompts, looking me over.

  I step back and keep my arms protectively over my middle. “You left me. You didn’t tell me anything. You didn’t even say goodbye. You ghosted me!” I force the words out, praying my voice doesn’t wobble. Wobbling is for the weak and I refuse to appear anything but strong around this man.

  His brow furrows. “I said goodbye that night at the bar.”

  I scoff. If he thinks for a moment that was sufficient closure, he’s dumber than a box of rocks.

  He takes a step forward. I take one back.

  “You made it sound like you were going back out to move your car. You said it so casually, as if you planned to see me the next day at the park concert. You made me think I was special.” I huff, out of breath from my word vomit. His expression changes to one of sympathy.

  I think that feels worse.

  “You know what, just forget it. Go back to wherever you were and leave me alone.” I brush him off.

  “Honeybee.”

  “Don’t you use that name with me,” I spit back.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “Well, you could have started the summer off with ‘hey, I know we just met and all, but I’m leaving in a few weeks because I’ve enlisted in the military.’”

  “I thought that goodbye would be enough.” Tank doesn’t come closer. Instead he rests his hands on his hips, I’m guessing so he doesn’t reach for me, and I wonder if I can run back inside the house before he catches me. He tenses, almost ready to pounce, and I think twice about running.

  “That’s not a goodbye.” I rally myself and suck down the emotion to speak. “Tank, that was a sorry-ass excuse for goodbye and you know it.”

  He steps toward me this time and I throw my hands up in the air so he backs off. I can feel the sets of eyes watching us out here, speculating. I remember how we sat at a large round table, Tank and I and two other couples, friends we’d all known mutually for years despite the two of us having never met until that summer. Rounds of drinks come to the table and a few games of pool are played—none of which constitute a goodbye.

  He grumbles out a deep breath that somehow makes him larger. “I didn’t know it would be like that. I thought about you every day.”

  My right brow cocks upward while my hip pivots defensively. “I find it hard to believe you meet a girl, spend six amazing weeks with her, and then vanish.” I snap my fingers.

  “You thought they were amazing?” He smiles.

  I sputter. “Seriously? That’s what you hear you me say?”

  Tank circles around me, rubbing his shaved head like he’s fighting an internal war for words. Well, landmine this, buddy.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and I almost believe him. I want to believe him, but the pain is too raw.

  “I’m sorry too.” I shrug. “So, what do you want?” I glance back at the house and see my entire family glued to the windowpanes in the front like this is better than football. My mother isn’t even trying to shoo them away, clutching her turkey baster, and I sigh. I feel about as defeated as the last bit of peanut butter stuck in the jar. You want it, you can’t have it, and the only alternative is to get rid of the jar, longing for that last taste.

  “Come with me.”

  My eyes narrow. “Where?”

  “The tree lighting tonight.”

  Every year at eight o’clock on Thanksgiving night, our town does a holiday festival, lighting a Christmas tree that stays up until New Year’s. Everyone goes and participates in the tradition along with spending time to catch up on gossip at the hot chocolate stand. Darlington as a whole is good for everyone in town knowing everyone’s business. The last thing I want is to be the talk of the town.

  “I’m not going,” I lie.

  Tank cocks his eyebrow this time. He knows I’m full of bullshit. Everyone goes. It’s not like I have a real choice anyway. Have you met my family? We all go wearing matching scarves.

  Tank sighs. “All right, Beatrice. How about you meet me for breakfast. We can talk.”

  “No.” I’m also quite stubborn.

  “No?”

  “We’re not meeting until I’ve had my first cup of coffee.” I pretend to check my manicure.

  “I’ll buy you coffee with breakfast.” He chuffs but it sounds like a frustrated growl and I hope it bugs him to not get what he wants. This guy is arrogant for sure.

  “You made me wait thirteen weeks for an explanation. You can wait a few more hours and after I’ve had my fill of caffeine.” I feel very grown up giving Tank the business, but not so grown up when he leans down and his minty, kissable breath brushes past my cheek. He’s so close I could inch forward and feel his lips on my skin, but I don’t. I stay as still as the statue in the town square.

  “All right, Honeybee, we’ll do this your way for now. I’ll pick you up for breakfast, after your coffee, at oh-eight-hundred hours.” He turns swiftly, leaving me in the wake of his fresh cologne scent and crisp body wash I can’t place striding down the sidewalk like he frickin’ owns it.

  Pfft.

  Marines.

  I fix my shirt that suddenly feels too tight or too twisted or too something, and sp
in myself around, heading back into the house. I try matching my stride to his and hold my head up high. Two can play this game. My attitude is kept in check by the crack in the sidewalk, and I catch myself before I fall. A glance over my shoulder tells me that Tank didn’t turn around, and thank goodness for that. I’ve got more than enough cracks in my armor for him to squeeze back in if I’m not careful.

  My aunts open the door, slow-clapping like I gave them a good show. Dad yells at the television and I think he’s the only one who bothered to respect my privacy with Tank outside in favor of watching the game.

  “Sit down, sweetheart, tell us all about it,” the aunts coo like Disney villain sidekicks you don’t expect curling around your ankles.

  “Not much to tell,” I deflect. We all sit down at the table and my father joins us as my mother hands him the turkey carver.

  “Anything I need to know about this boy, Bea?” Dad revs up the electric carver. So much for thinking dad heard and saw nothing.

  “No, I promise.”

  We all sit down and say grace over the meal.

  “Well, I want to know more about him,” Elisa says, filling her plate with those weird creamed onion balls we swear no one likes and yet magically appear every holiday.

  “I second that motion,” Doris chirps, heaping the sweet potatoes on her plate full of marshmallow fluff on top.

  “You should have invited him to dinner, Sweat Bea.” Mom uses my childhood nickname, looking tired from the full day of cooking. She’s upset Deacon isn’t here so she can have an inquisition with his girlfriend.

  “Mom, he left for the Marines weeks ago. This is the first time I’ve seen or heard from him.” I try to ignore everyone by stuffing food in my mouth, hoping they’ll all get the hint and leave me alone to eat.