“Look up,” he told her.
A smile spread slowly across her face, but Fin did as he asked. She tilted her head upwards, her long tousled waves flowing in the breeze as they fell down her back.
He looked up with her. It was the perfect night. No clouds. Black sky. Clear bright stars.
“I read the other day that our universe contains more than a hundred billion galaxies, and each one of those galaxies has more than a hundred billion stars. Did you know that every single one of those stars is unique? Out of all of them, not a single one is the same.”
“I did know that,” she murmured, a smile playing on her lips.
“And they’re all beautiful,” he told her.
“They are,” she agreed.
Ryan’s heart started pounding a little harder. What if after everything they’d been through, she decided that life with him—a soldier—wasn’t something she could deal with anymore? Was love enough? It had to be. He had to take that chance.
He took his eyes off the stars and looked at Fin, the weight of love he felt for her crushing his chest. “Ask me, Fin, what I see when I look up at all those stars.”
She met his eyes, shifting closer, her smooth skin brushing against his rough, hardened body. “What do you see?”
“You,” he said simply.
Tears filled her eyes.
“You’re all I see. Nothing holds more beauty in my eyes than you do. No one will ever love you the way I do.”
“Ryan,” she whispered thickly.
“Remember that day I let you drive my car? You had to agree to that one condition, and when I eventually told you what it was, you weren’t allowed to say no.”
“Uh huh,” she murmured. “But you never told me what it was.”
“Marry me, Fin.”
Feeling Ryan’s eyes on her, that prickle of awareness tickling her spine, Fin tore her eyes away from her son and looked up.
Ryan was standing at the kitchen window chatting to Kyle, but his eyes were fixed on her. Catching her glance, he winked and her heart fluttered. His eyes dropped to the ring on her finger, turning those flutters to hard thumps at the reminder of him asking her to marry him.
It had been the singularly most beautiful night in all her life.
He’d looked down at her, his eyes dark with love and apprehension and asked, “Marry me, Fin?”
She’d had to close her eyes for a brief moment against the waves of emotion that took her on a wild path down memory lane.
The first time she’d met him that connection had been instant, and had never gone away. Growing up, she’d always been aware of him, the love for him growing inside her, falling into an ache that she was too young to recognise as heartbreak when he’d walked away, leaving her and joining the Army, giving them the heart that should have been hers all along.
“Six years, Ryan. Do you know how hurt I was, each day passing by and getting nothing—not even a note or an email? Both of you left me, and I was okay with that. I understood that this was what you needed to do, so I moved on. I built a life that doesn’t include you … I’d have given you my entire heart if you’d only asked, but it’s not yours now. It’s not yours.”
She hadn’t meant the words because she’d already given him her heart. It had only ever been his.
“I hurt too. For six years I fought every day not to think of you, and I lost, because every day you were all I could see.”
And now here he was, in her arms, telling her she was still all he could see, and asking her the one thing that would tie them both together forever.
The smile on Fin’s face grew wide. “Yes, Ryan. I’ll marry you.”
Jacob’s little legs kicked her in the thigh, startling her out of the memory. “Hey, little man,” she murmured as she tickled his belly, warmth spreading through her as he giggled. “Beating on your poor old mum already. That’s not nice. We’re going to have to get daddy to teach you how to treat a lady, huh?”
He babbled noisily, the sound ranging from a sweet, low pitch to a decibel breaking squeal.
“Wow, Fin. Your son is loud,” Rachael told her, as if Fin couldn’t hear it already. “It feels like a thousand rusty forks are stabbing me in the ears.”
She swooped down on the blanket to pluck Jacob into her arms, but her mum snatched him up before Rachael got the chance. Lifting his little white singlet, she blew a noisy raspberry onto his little belly.
Rachael watched on, her eyes flat, hands on her hips, making sure Fin’s mum could see she was unimpressed. “Excuse me, Julie, but I believe we agreed it was my turn?”
“We did.” Julie paused to nibble on Jacob’s fingers. “But it’s bath time, isn’t it, my little darling?” she said to Jacob.
Fin’s mum started walking away, her grandson tucked securely on her hip.
“Well I can do it,” Rachael told her, hot on her heels, her voice fading as they trailed inside and left Fin alone.
She sighed, splaying out on her back on the blanket and staring up into the blue sky, feeling a pang at the knowledge this was her last night with Ryan.
Deeming him fit for duty, the Army were deploying him to Afghanistan, so he was trying to do too much, wearing himself out around the house in the need to fit the coming six months into just a few days. Fin tired easily now—her heart too damaged to function normally—and though she never said, she knew he could see her exhaustion, and it only pushed him harder and wore him out faster.
How could they send him back? Hadn’t they suffered enough? When would this war torn country be ready to stand on its own two feet and give her back the man she loved? They’d had him long enough, using him up until there was nothing left for the rest of them.
Fin closed her eyes and an icy breeze dusted her skin gently, causing goose bumps to skate down her arms. She shivered.
“Jacob’s beautiful, Fin.”
“Jake?” she breathed, her heart clutching at the sound of her brother’s voice.
“You’ll tell him about me, won’t you? I want him to know the person who’s watching over him.”
Her bottom lip trembled. “Every day. I promise,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “He looks so much like Ryan but already he reminds me of you. He has your smile, Jake. It hurts Ryan to see it. He still cries your name sometimes in his sleep, but I don’t think he knows.”
“He knows, Fin. He’ll always have scars, but he’s accepted them because he has you, and you make his world beautiful.”
“You did too, Jake. The world doesn’t shine as bright without you in it. I miss you.”
“You can’t miss what’s already in your heart, honey.”
The cool breeze chilling her skin began to die off.
“Wait, Jake!” she cried out, choking on a sob. She wanted to see him one last time, but there was nothing tangible to hold on to except empty air.
“Don’t be scared. Just remember to smile when you think of me.”
The warmth of the sun began shining through, creating dappled sunlight through the trees.
“Jake?”
Nothing but silence greeted her.
“Fin?”
Her eyes flew open. Ryan was hovering above her as the sun set on the horizon. “You’ve been asleep for over an hour.”
“Oh,” she murmured, pushing up on her elbows. She rubbed at her eyes, echoes of Jake’s voice still lingering in her heart.
“Are you okay?” His brow was furrowed with concern as he reached down and picked her up effortlessly in his arms.
“I’m fine. I can walk you know.”
“I know that. I remember a girl once telling me that she did have legs …” he told her, hugging her to his chest as he carried her over to the deck table where everyone was starting to sit down. “But if I wanted to carry her around forever, then she’d let me.”
“Ryan,” she replied softly, reaching up to cup his cheek in her palm. “You could carry me into Hell and I’d go with you.”
“I’ve been to Hell, baby,” he replied. “It’s the one place I’ll never take you.”
The next morning with Jacob tucked in her arms, Fin watched Ryan, dressed in his fatigues, walk out on the tarmac towards the plane. She tried blinking rapidly to clear her blurred vision, desperately wanting the last image of him to be perfect, but the tears were spilling out faster than she could control them.
Holding her breath, Fin watched him reach the stairs of the plane. He took the first step, and then the next, until he turned, as though looking right at her. She knew he wouldn’t be able see her from outside—the tint on the windows was dark to keep out the glare of the sun—but she pressed her hand flat against the glass anyway.
“I love you,” he mouthed silently.
“I love you, too, Ryan,” she choked out through tears.
Then he was gone.
Fin watched the plane eventually taxi off the runway and lift into the sky. When she couldn’t see it anymore, she turned and walked away, Jacob held tight in her arms, her heart broken, and knowing it would stay broken until he returned.
As she stepped out into the bright, morning sun, she knew the world would never know her brother, or Ryan, or any of the other silent heroes of the SAS. No one would ever hear their story—what they did, what they gave, and how much they lost. But that was okay, because the world hearing their story was never what it was about.
Epilogue
Present day…
“What is it about, Mummy?” Jacob asked her, placing his chubby hands on her cheeks as she was nearing the end of her story.
“It’s about being the best you can be, Jacob,” she told him, turning slightly to kiss his palm before taking both his hands in her own and squeezing lightly. “It’s about being brave enough to stand up for what you believe is right, giving everything you have to see it through, and finding peace knowing that what you did mattered to someone, somewhere.”
“Did Daddy give everything?”
Fin’s bottom lip trembled. “He gave so much, sweetie. So much.”
She shifted Jacob in her tired arms, trying not to let exhaustion get her down. After years, her body still had not fully recovered. It never would.
“Daddy’s heart beat for us, didn’t it? Just like he told you it did in the story.”
“It did,” she murmured softly, trying desperately not to cry in front of her son. “And you know what?”
“What, Mummy?” Jacob’s dark eyes, so like his father’s, were wide as they peered up at her, waiting.
Fin didn’t immediately reply to his question. Instead, she pointed through the crowd at the airport, her broken heart once again finding peace as her gaze fell on the man she loved with every breath in her body.
“It still does, my baby, and it always will.”
Following her direction, Jacob’s eyes lit up. He wriggled in her arms until she set him on his feet and he ran towards his father.
Ryan’s eyes were bright with love, meeting hers across the crowded airport as he lifted their son into his arms and hugged him hard.