A Lot Like Perfect

And there was no one to glue him back together.

“Let’s move on,” he suggested and she nodded without commenting on how tight his voice had gotten. A blessing.

“So far, I know that Tristan likes dance music and fire. What else? Does he read? What TV shows does he watch?”

That hadn’t exactly been the subject he’d hoped to move on to, but really, what else could they conceivably talk about if he insisted on staying away from conversation about his past life as a SEAL? Besides, he had one job here and Marchande was it. “I’ve never seen him pick up a book. He’s always said the best stories are already in his head and that reading just puts him to sleep.”

Aria made a noise of disgust. “I’d like to know what books he’s tried to read. I’ve read my share of books that kept me up until way later than I should have been awake but I’ve never had a book put me to sleep. He’s obviously doing it wrong.”

“Funny, that’s what I told him.” Isaiah had to grin at her choice of words. “Even as a kid, I loved the idea that so many worlds lived inside the covers of every single book on the shelf at the library.”

“Library day was the best.”

Aria’s happy sigh reverberated in his own chest as if she’d breathed on his behalf, forcing his own lungs to react. The sensation was so foreign, yet so cleansing that he immediately wanted her to do it again. “You used to like going to the library?”

“Still do,” she corrected freely. “There’s one in La Grange and the librarian is about a hundred years old, but she’s always been there. She orders books she thinks I’ll like and puts them on hold until I can get into town to check them out. I’ve racked up hundreds of dollars in fines over the years because it’s so hard for me to get a ride all the way out there to return the books, but she clears my account on the sly.”

Yeah, he knew all about lack of transportation. The foster parents he’d collected over the years could almost never be bothered to drive him to the library, so he’d had to find inventive ways to get there, which didn’t always correlate with a due date. A couple of times, he’d ended up returning the books to the library in a new city entirely, hoping they would have the resources to mail the books back to where they belonged. He sure hadn’t had the money to do so.

“My library card was my most prized possession,” he admitted, thrown back suddenly to the days when breathing in the smell of the library was enough to center him. “I saved every penny I could scrape together so I could buy a wallet to carry it in, and it went right behind the clear plastic where your driver’s license is supposed to go. I wanted to see it.”

“A library card is like a ticket to anywhere you want to go in the world.”

Maybe he should be more shocked that once again, they were on exactly the same wavelength. But honestly, the real shock lay in how long it had taken to circle around to the conversation he’d really rather be having.

He glanced over at her as she lounged on the blanket staring up at the sky. The moon had risen enough to cast a river of silver over her hair that was so beautiful, he couldn’t look away. Beautiful in a purely aesthetic way of course. He got the

same lump in his throat when he saw the ocean crashing on the shore or a horse galloping through a meadow.

The last thing he should do was engage her on a personal level again. But he couldn’t stop himself from stepping up to the glass and trying to peer inside Aria. “You like to travel?”

“Only in books,” she said with a hint of mirth. “I can’t say if I’d like it in real life since I’ve never been more than seventy miles from home. And in case you’re wondering, that’s the distance to Austin.”

Yeah, he figured that out pretty quickly, and while Austin wasn’t bad as cities went, it sure wasn’t the be all, end all. “If you like to travel, you should have that chance. I got to do that a lot during my stint in the Navy. In some ways, that’s one the hardest things about not being a sailor anymore.”

“What, being stuck in one place?” She wrinkled her nose as she half rolled to face him. “I could totally see that. I would hate to finally break out of here, only to wind up back where I started.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly what he’d meant. Moving from place to place had been a way of life since birth. He’d never felt “stuck” anywhere. Most of the time, circumstances had forced him to go before he was ready.

What the Navy had afforded him was a team to go places with. That’s what he’d always enjoyed about books as a kid. Each of the thousands of worlds between the pages had come readily inhabited with people, communities, culture—something to belong to. Then he’d found that in real life. Only to lose it.

Well, he hadn’t lost it. He knew exactly where the rest of his team was. What he’d lost was the right to be a part of it. The real killer would come when he finally moved on this time without his unit. Because that day was coming. He should do more to prepare for cutting himself out. Get himself excited about the idea of adventure and new horizons. He did like that part too, so he wouldn’t exactly be faking it.

“Yeah, being stuck in one place would be pretty tough,” he said, well aware that it was a bit of a generic response that didn’t begin to cover what was going through his heart.

“Tell me what it’s like to have the freedom to go wherever you want,” she instructed him lightly. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”

“You can go wherever you want right now. Can’t you?”

She shrugged. “Not unless I want to walk. I’ve never even gotten my driver’s license. No need, right? And you can walk a long way in Texas and never get anyplace much different than where you are now. So it never seemed like a good use of my time.”

“I’ll take you somewhere,” he offered impulsively. It might do them both good. “Where do you want to go?”

“Hawaii.” No hesitation, as if she’d been waiting a million years for someone to ask that question. “Then Italy. Maybe Spain after that but it’s a tossup between that and Greece, so either would be fine.”

Biting back a laugh, he held up his hands. “Whoa. I was thinking more like Dallas. Houston. Or New Orleans even. Something within driving distance.”

“Oh. Well any of those would be fine,” she said cheerfully enough that he believed it. “I thought we were talking bucket list stuff. I didn’t think you were actually serious. Does Tristan like any of those places?”