One, Pru had to be the only woman on Earth that didn’t like sweet and sour chicken. Luckily, I’d gotten a few extra kinds just in case. She was more of a beef and broccoli kind of girl.
Second, Pru liked my favorite show—Forged in Fire. It was a contest show where three metal workers competed to make the best knife or sword, and a group of judges chose the winner.
Three, Pru was a cuddler.
And I’m not talking about a minor cuddler, either. She was a major cuddler. She was also a happy cuddler. When she was curled up into my side while we were eating, her entire demeanor changed—became sweeter.
“You finished?” She held out her hand for my empty boxes.
I nodded but didn’t hand them to her. Instead, I took her empties out of her hand and walked them over to the trash with mine before coming back and picking up a fortune cookie.
“Here,” I tossed it to her.
She ripped into it and started to break hers open with the same enthusiasm that I did mine.
“A short stranger will soon enter your life with many blessings to share,” I read. “What does yours say?”
She squinted and pulled her paper in closer.
“Sometimes you must wait for what you most desire,” she read. “I think they’re both kind of creepy.”
I snorted and picked the little piece of paper out of her hand and placed both mine and hers on the coffee table in front of us. Then I leaned back in the couch and put my feet up on the table beside the fortunes. “Come ‘ere.”
She dove under my arm and cuddled in next to me, groaning like a contented cat.
Chuckling, I reached for the remote that was on the arm of the couch and scrolled through her DVR for the next recorded show of Forged in Fire.
“This episode is one of my favorites,” I told her as I hit play.
She hummed in agreement. “I like the way the judge gets all animated about the scroll work that the contestant had time to do. I think that’s what won him the show.”
We stayed like that for hours, talking about the show. What we wanted to do the next day, and whether or not I was attending a party in two weeks’ time.
Which ended up taking us somewhere I hadn’t really wanted to go.
“You’re leaving,” she guessed.
I nodded, not wishing to put voice to the words.
She sighed. “I was expecting it, to be honest. I was just hoping we’d have longer.”
As much as I wanted to remain right where I was, I had other responsibilities.
Knowing that she wanted me to stay, though? That was making my heart warm.
“When I was fourteen, my mother and father committed suicide.”
She gasped. “Oh, no.”
I nodded. “I was lost and alone. I had Bayou and Brielle. I had my grandfather, Dixie. I had my other aunts and uncles…but I was lost. I acted out. Seriously, the only thing that kept me in line was this Army recruiter I met at the mall.”
“You met an Army recruiter at the mall?” she asked.
I nodded. “I was trying to steal a dildo from Spencer’s—the gag gift shop?”
Her lips turned up at the corners.
“I had it down my pants and one of the salesmen ran after me. I was a fast little fuck and made it out of the mall and to the front doors when I was caught around the throat by an Army recruiter. He power slammed me like those wrestlers do and that goddamn dildo nearly rammed up my ass. It was awful.” I grinned. “After returning the dildo and being humiliated by not just the recruiter but the salesman, I went back home only to find that the recruiter followed me. He told my uncle—Bayou’s father—who I was living with at the time what happened. Then I was forced to join their ROTC program.”
Pru’s lips went wide as she smiled full out. “My sister did that. I went with her once. It sucked so bad I never went back.”
“It’s definitely not for the faint of heart, but when I went into it, I found a place in the world that was all mine. A place where there were other kids that didn’t have their parents there either. And when I turned eighteen, I joined the Army and then never looked back.”
“You want to do it for the rest of your life?” she asked softly.
I had.
“Yeah,” I answered. “I do.”
But if there was one person in this world I’d give it up for, it’d be you.
I didn’t tell her that, though. We were too new. She wasn’t ready to hear the depth of emotion that I was feeling for her.
She’d run, and I’d have to chase her to get her back.
I wasn’t sure she was ready for my kind of chasing, though.