Lucky Soldier_A Memorial Day Brother's Best Friend Fake Fiance Romance Read online

  Lucky Soldier:

  A Memorial Day Brother’s Best Friend, Fake Fiancé Romance

  Copyright © 2018 by Eva luxe; All Rights Reserved.

  Published by Sizzling Hot Reads

  ***

  This book is a work of fiction and any similarities to real places, people or events are entirely coincidental. This book may not be reproduced or distributed in any format except for short quotes for review purposes, without the express written consent of the author

  Dedication:

  To all those who have served and continue to serve our beautiful country and to all those who have loved and continue to love them.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Rhett

  Chapter 2

  Rhett

  Chapter 3

  Rhett

  Chapter 4

  Sommer

  Chapter 5

  Sommer

  Chapter 6

  Rhett

  Chapter 7

  Rhett

  Chapter 8

  Rhett

  Chapter 9

  Rhett

  Chapter 10

  Rhett

  Chapter 11

  Sommer

  Chapter 12

  Sommer

  Chapter 13

  Sommer

  Chapter 14

  Sommer

  Chapter 15

  Rhett

  Chapter 16

  Sommer

  Chapter 17

  Sommer

  Chapter 18

  Sommer

  Chapter 19

  Sommer

  Chapter 20

  Sommer

  Chapter 21

  Sommer

  Chapter 22

  Rhett

  Chapter 23

  Rhett

  Chapter 24

  Sommer

  Chapter 25

  Sommer

  Chapter 26

  Sommer

  Chapter 27

  Memorial Day

  Rhett

  Chapter 28

  Sommer

  Epilogue

  The Fourth of July

  Rhett

  Sommer

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  Chapter 1

  Rhett

  Today’s my homecoming; but there’s no parade arriving from the town square for me. The people in my hometown don’t even know I’m coming back. And that’s just the way I like it.

  They won’t see me with an automated weapon on my back. They won’t see my red face covered only by sweat and the sand of the Middle East. They won’t see the residual fear in my eyes being hidden by a facade of bravery and heroism.

  To them, I’ll just be little Rhett Atkins, all grown-up and back home for good.

  No more zits or braces with missing brackets. No more spotty facial hair that was the target of many jokes from high school bullies and the occasional passerby with zero to no verbal filter.

  Just fourteen hours ago, I was a good little soldier, obeying my orders, running into streets turned into battlefields hoping I could stay alive while fighting for my country’s freedom. I had nothing but freedom and worries on the mind, although that may remain the case even once my feet touch US soil again.

  A decade of action prepared me for a lot, but not the anxiety of returning home from a war zone. Sure, a motivational speaker would come in every now and again to teach us new breathing exercises or steps to be more emotionally intelligent, but that only goes so far.

  We were told that there would be help provided once we get back home; people who would help us transition into our new lives. My friends who went back home before me assured me that wasn’t the case.

  But even as these lies were being told to us, I knew that they were leaving out the important fact that this help would only be provided if our healthcare covered it. For many of my brothers back home, that turned out not to be the case. There were long waiting lists for the so-called “help,” if it was covered at all.

  I should be more grateful.

  My healthcare will be able to cover a lot of the assistance I’ll be needing. I’m able to return with all my limbs still intact. I have some minor nerve damage in my right arm, but it’s nothing that half a year or so of physical therapy and some very minimal surgery won’t fix.

  “Everything will be fine,” I whisper to myself over and over.

  But these words have been tainted by war. I’ve repeated this phrase over and over throughout my life, but its meaning has changed now.

  These are words that may no longer ring true. Still, I repeat them until they become the only words I can think about.

  I wake an hour later to the sudden shock sent through my entire body, the cause of which is the airplane as its wheels make contact with the tarmac. Having been woken by such a rough landing, I find my body tensing up.

  My right arm is immediately sore from having to contract so harshly. I breathe in and out and slowly relieve the muscles in my arm. Even unballing my fists hurts now.

  The world around me brightens up when I set foot inside the airport, and it’s not only because of the fluorescent lights. The shift of being in a war-torn part of the world and a crowded airport is enough to give me whiplash, but it instead whips a smile on my face.

  Mothers are holding hands with their kids. There are people too busy to pay attention to anything other than the phones they’re screaming into. I even see a few people trying to calm their pets before takeoff.

  It’s my first taste of a normal life in America and it’s exactly what someone like me needs right now.

  The people pushing past me aren’t looking up at me, afraid of being shot. In fact, they’re not even looking at me. They’re too busy with their lives. I’m not a harbinger of death here. I’m just an honorably discharged United States citizen.

  A wave of relief comes over me. In the throes of battle, when I wasn’t thinking of being killed and all that I’d have missed out on, I’d think of how lucky I’d be to come back home and see my folks. My dog. My old home.

  I’d think of going on a road trip with my best friend Kyle, his little sister Sommer, and our other friends from back in school, seeing the best parts of the country we had spent so long protecting. We’d hit the open road and see where it took us, loving every fun minute of the entire trip.

  That road trip may not be happening the way I envisioned anymore, but I do still have the opportunity to see the country now. I made it out alive when so many of my brothers in arms didn’t.

  I have to live my life to the fullest for them. For Kyle. And I’m determined to do it, even though I already feel like a fish out of water; a stranger in a foreign land, even though it’s the land in which I was born and for which I’ve spent a decade fighting.

  Chapter 2

  Rhett

  With the longest stretch of my three-part trip back home over, I sit down with my camouflage pattern duffle bag and wait for the bus to take me to Marysville.

  A woman and her daughter sit down on the bench next to me. The mother is carrying an impressive number of bags of food and luggage.

  She sets
the bags of food down on the bench beside us and stands the luggage up at her feet. My stomach instinctively growls once the enticing bouquet of fried chicken hits my nostrils.

  “Hungry, huh?” the mother laughs.

  I place my hand on my stomach and pat it lightly, as if I were asking a pet to calm down.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve had fried chicken. Since two Christmases ago, if I remember correctly. And I haven’t anything to eat in fourteen or so hours,” I admit.

  “Fourteen hours, my goodness. What are you, fasting or something?”

  The woman’s laughter dies down when she notices my sizable luggage and its design.

  “Oh, you’re a soldier?” she asks.

  “Veteran, I think is the operative word now. Though, I guess I’ll always be a soldier.”

  “Oh, oh! Oh, my goodness, are you just coming home from—”

  “Yes, ma’am. I did my time overseas and now I’m back home in the land I was born in.”

  The woman sets down her various bags of fast food fried chicken and picks one of the lighter looking bags to place next to me.

  “Here’s a proper thanks for your service,” she says with a smile.

  I do a double take unintentionally derivative of The Three Stooges, amazed that this woman would just give me some of the food she paid for only because I served in the military.

  “Ma’am, I can’t possibly take this,” I insist.

  “Please. You’re hungry and we have too much food here. My sister called me saying she and her kids can’t make it to our little family get-together right after I walked out of the restaurant. And if they’re anything like any other restaurant, I’m sure they’re not going to accept returns,” she tells me, with a chuckle.

  Even her daughter nods her head enthusiastically, “And— and— now we have more biscuits for us. My cousins always eat all the biscuits first and never leaves me any.”

  “Are you sure you want me to take some biscuits?” I ask the girl.

  “Well,” she says, blushing, “you should just take one.”

  Her mother laughs and playfully scolds her daughter. “Jenny! Please, sir, take as many biscuits as you want.”

  “One is fine,” I tell her. “I’m not terribly fond of biscuits anyway, but one would go great with the chicken.”

  “One, it is then,” she agrees.

  The generous lady grabs two disposable plates from the largest bag and in it places one biscuit, two legs, a wing, and a breast, and a sloppy handful of seasoned fries on one of the plates. She removes three safety pins from her purse and pins the second plate on top of the first. “Please take it.”

  Without another hesitant word, I take her kind offering and place it on my lap.

  “Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate it more than you can imagine.”

  “Jenny and I appreciate what you’ve done for our country. I bet your family is super excited to see you,” she says.

  They’ll definitely be happy to see me, but excited wouldn’t be the word I’d use. Surprised would be more apt.

  The three of us board the bus once it arrives and sit close to each other. Once the bus gets going, I unpin the plates and start chowing down. The lady and Jenny watch me with the most heartwarming and heartwarmed expressions on their faces.

  Jenny looks as though she’s watching Santa chowing down on some cookies and milk she left out for him. Her mother doesn’t look much different.

  Since the bus isn’t too populated, Jenny and her mother, whose name she tells me is Veronica, get to chat a bit more, although Jenny falls asleep shortly after I finish eating.

  They’re on their way to a place that’s a few towns past Marysville. Veronica is moving in with her sister after she split with her abusive husband.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She waves her hand dismissively. “Don’t be. I’m happy to have had the courage to leave and I’m lucky that Jenny is… safe. She’s not even upset that we’re moving away from her dad.”

  “Why’s that, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “She was unfortunately a witness to how horribly he treated me. He even… hit her a few times. I’m sure she’s hiding a lot of her true feelings, but she’s been great so far. Sorry. This is a lot to dump on a stranger,” she says, wiping away some tears that haven’t yet spilled over her eyelids.

  “No, no, no, please don’t apologize. You and I are in a very similar boat. We’re both starting new lives after spending more time than we wanted in a sort of hell.”

  Veronica nods her head and swallows some sadness.

  “I’ve got my sister and a whole lot of family waiting for me. What’s waiting in Marysville for you?”

  I shrug my shoulders.

  “My folks. I haven’t seen them in a decade. I mean, I’ve Skyped with them and I was able to visit them a few years back for the holidays but… that visit was so short I felt like I wasn’t even really there.”

  “Anybody else? Anyone you’ve been dying to see in your old town?”

  “My dog, Plato. My old stomping grounds. And… I have to see… someone important.”

  “A girlfriend?” Veronica asks with a curious smile.

  I let out a short laugh. “I wish. No. Just someone I promised I’d see once I came back.”

  “So, you wish she was your girlfriend?”

  Seems as though Veronica is quite the sleuth. She’s backed me into a corner here.

  Without giving her a straightforward answer, I shrug and share a very telling smile. Veronica smiles and taps my knee a few times.

  “Good luck then, Soldier. Maybe you can make some magic happen. There’s very little that’s more attractive than a military man. I’m sure you can win her over,” she says.

  “She’s another person I’ve only seen through a screen for the past 10 years. Aside from what she looks like, and a few tidbits she’s shared during our sporadic chats over the years, I don’t know anything about her life anymore. She could be dating someone. I’m not going to hold my breath,” I admit.

  Veronica cackles but catches herself from being too loud when Jenny fusses. “Oh, boy, look at your face. You are head over heels for this mystery girl. You better try to get with her, for your own sake. If she can make you smile just by looking at her, imagine how happy you’d be if she was by your side every day.”

  It’s a nice thought. But there are a few things keeping us apart. It used to just be the many miles between us but now it’s… a lot more complicated.

  “We’ll see what happens, I suppose.”

  Veronica leans over to me and extends her pinky out to me.

  “Let’s make a deal, Soldier. I’ll keep my Jenny safe from creeps like her father for as long as I live, and you make a real attempt to be with— what’s her name?”

  “Sommer.”

  “Sommer, then. Do we have a deal?”

  We lock pinkies.

  “Good thing. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have kept Jenny safe,” Veronica jokes.

  This gets a good laugh out of me— a loud guffaw that wakes up Jenny.

  Groggily, she looks up at us and asks what we’re laughing at.

  “Nothing important, honey,” her mother tells her. “Just a joke. Now go back to sleep.”

  She brushes her hair with her hand in a very nurturing manner that makes me smile and feel nostalgic for my own youth, when I had parents keeping me safe, and only woke up to sounds of laughter rather than gunfire.

  The bus stops at Marysville to drop some passengers off. I stand up from my seat and thank Veronica for her company.

  “No problem, uh… Wow. This whole time, I didn’t get your name.”

  “Rhett. Sergeant Rhett Atkins. But just call me Rhett.”

  I turn away to hop off the bus, but Veronica grabs me by my shoulder and hands me a crumpled-up piece of paper.

  “I expect an update on the Sommer situation, Mr. Sergeant.”

  I open the paper and see her phone number.

 
“You got it, Veronica. Bye-bye, Jenny!”

  The child smiles at me from her mother’s lap. She’s now already halfway back to sleep.

  The surly bus driver lets out a frustrated sigh once I hop off the bus and take a long, hard look at the town I left behind so long ago.

  Chapter 3

  Rhett

  Marysville hasn’t changed very much. It’s a place stuck in time. The people have changed. I see a lot of men sporting man buns and unruly beards, a lot of shops replaced by Starbucks, and some parking spots for electric cars.

  Having been overseas for the better part of my adult life, coming back to the modern United States has me feeling like a time traveler. Sure, we had phones and laptops, but there’s so much that is new to me. Politics, movies, pop culture in general. Even something as unimportant as fashion.

  Back in high school, I thought only the more effeminate guys wore tight pants, but now everyone seems to be wearing them. There are billboards advertising products I’ve never even heard of, or sequels to movies that came out when I was a kid. Christian Bale isn’t Batman anymore, but Robert Downey Jr. is still making movies as Iron Man. There’s so much I need to catch up on.

  Before I can continue thinking about how life in Marysville and the rest of the world has changed since my military absence, I feel someone tap me on the shoulder.