“Travel sounds pretty good,” he said finally. “I like your answer.”
“But haven’t you been all over the world already?” Stella asked.
“I’m always working when I travel,” Nate said ruefully. “I never go around seeing the sights. I look at everything tactically. A nice building—well, what are the entrance and exit points? What are its vulnerabilities? What would be the safest place to store something valuable, and how would you protect bystanders who lived or worked there? I’m never thinking about the architecture or the history of it.”
“That’s a shame.” Stella was struck by the sadness of it—so many opportunities, so much experience, but it was all in the service of others, and all with the heavy thought of wrongdoing weighing it down. “Maybe you could take a vacation sometime soon, travel somewhere just for fun.”
“Maybe,” Nate said slowly. “I don’t know where I’d go. I’d have to think about it.” He smiled at her. “Maybe I could ask you what you think would be best.”
> “Oh, but there’s so many choices! Maybe you could go to Cambodia and see the temples there? Or—what about Machu Picchu? Although if you’re going to see pyramids, really, you should definitely go to Egypt. Although...” Stella trailed off, because Nate was laughing.
“You know, none of those are places you named the first time around?” he asked. “How many exploration destinations do you have floating around in your head?”
“At any given time, it could be different,” she admitted. “When I was bored in school as a kid, I used to read National Geographic inside my textbooks, and think about going to all the fantastic places they talked about.”
Nate’s eyebrows flew up. “National Geographic, huh. Weird kind of rebellion.”
Stella laughed. “I know! Once a teacher caught me and said, Well, at least you’re learning.”
“But you never got out of the country?” Nate asked quietly.
That brought her back down. “I was saving up,” she said. “I’d kicked it all around the US since I was nineteen, hitchhiking and Greyhounding and dating guys who were heading somewhere interesting. I’d settled down and gotten a cashier job, and I was keeping it boring, living with my boyfriend, and saving all my money, because I was—we were—going to backpack down through Mexico into Central America, see how far we could get. But then...”
“Eva,” Nate guessed.
Stella nodded. “Eva. I didn’t figure it out until I was a few months along. And my boyfriend couldn’t handle the news at all. He said he was going on the trip with me or without me, and when I said I wasn’t going to have a baby in the wilds of Peru, he just...left. Quit his job, took everything he thought was valuable, and disappeared.”
The pain and anger had dulled over the years, but it still made her fists clench. “So I was all alone and pregnant, and I had a decision to make. And that was the beginning of putting Eva first. I took all my money that I’d saved, and I moved back home, so Eva could be born with a solid roof over her head and plenty of food and clothes and whatever she needed.”
Nate set his tea aside and reached out. He seemed to have forgotten his aversion to touching from the kitchen, and Stella knew she should probably remind him, so that he didn’t regret any unprofessional contact again...but she couldn’t quite summon the strength. Instead, she reached her hand out, too, and shivered at the slight shock when they touched. He twined his fingers with hers and held on tight. The memory of Eva’s father seemed to fade away until it was almost nothing.
“Once she got old enough to be in school, I started moving around more again,” Stella continued, “because...I had to. I couldn’t stay here any longer. Lynn was a lot more sanctimonious then, and I was surrounded by all the people I’d grown up with, all the guys I’d made dumb decisions with, and I just had to get out. But I never traveled as far as I had when I was young. Mostly I stayed in Montana. It’s beautiful here, and there’s a lot to see.” She shrugged. “But I never had that sense of purpose I’d had when I was younger.”
There’d been a lot of aimless drifting, clutching Eva to her side and wondering what on God’s earth it was that she wanted. That she could have.
Nate's hand tightened on hers. He was so warm, and his hand was rough but his grip was gentle. Stella just wanted to let herself go, fall sideways until she was lying against him, close her eyes and soak him in.
“I can't imagine the sort of bravery that took.” His voice was suffused with emotion.
Stella frowned at him. “You were in the Marines. You went overseas and got shot at. I think you understand bravery.”
He shook his head. “That's a different kind of bravery. Everyone's afraid for their lives, sure...but none of us were alone. We knew the Corps was behind us. We knew our brother Marines were beside us. One thing you never are in the Marines is alone...whether you want to be or not.” His eyes crinkled a little.
Then he sobered. “But there's some things...some things I think that only women can really understand. Being alone and pregnant is one. That takes a sort of bravery that I've never had to muster.”
Stella couldn't help but smile, feeling warmed now by more than his body. “I never thought I'd out-badass a Marine.”
“Believe it,” Nate said with an answering smile. “And you came through. You raised a wonderful girl.”
Stella's smile grew as she thought of her daughter. “That's on her as much as it is on me.”
Nate shook his head, still smiling, and raised their joined hands to his lips. He kissed her knuckles.
Stella shivered.
Nate's eyes caught the movement. She could see his attention snap into focus. His pupils dilated.
The warmth that had filled her body began to turn to heat. Her cheeks flushed, and the muscles in her lower stomach tightened. Could he feel this, too?