Page 121 of Duty Unleashed
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. I love you and I’ll marry you and you’ll come home to us.”
“Always. I’ll always come home to you. Everything in the world that’s important to me is in this house.”
He kissed me. Slow. His thumb against my cheekbone, his mouth warm and unhurried. A kiss of beginnings.
From inside the house, William’s voice drifted down through the open upstairs window. Talking to Jolly. A soft stream of plans and observations and questions the dog would never answer and didn’t need to.
“Hey, tomorrow, we’re going to the creek, okay? I already decided. And I’m bringing the big stick, not the medium one, because the medium one broke. Remember? You broke it. That’s okay, though. I’ll find a better one.”
A pause. Then, quiet and certain, he said, “Goodnight, Jolly. You’re my best friend.”
Ben’s forehead rested against mine. His eyes were closed. He was listening to the same thing I was. A boy who used to be afraid of his own voice, talking into the dark without a single hesitation.
There were things to plan and do and figure out. But right now, we just held each other in the silence. The stars did what stars did. The mountains held their ground.
And inside the house, a retired K9 with a graying muzzle and a permanent grin kept watch at the foot of a boy’s bed. Not because he was trained to. Because the boy was his, and he was the boy’s, and that was the whole story.
It had been, from the very first pinecone.
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