I’m not sure what it is about coming home from deployment, but the sex I had with Maddie the night I got back from my first mission was definitely some of the best sex of my life. Not just because she was amazing in every way possible, either. I loved her curves. I loved the way she smirked when she tried to pretend she wasn’t as worked up as I was. I loved the way she needed me when I finally had her where I wanted her. But mostly, I loved having her under me. Where she belonged.

Safe.

Mine.

The next few days I barely saw her at all as I got checked back in. The Air Force had to make sure I was still suited for stateside duty. We had a welcome home party to attend. I thought the party would be fun for both of us, but she was kind of standoffish at first. By the end of the night, and after a few drinks, she finally let me tell her why I’d been so distant. The night of that party, we went home and the walls between us came down. She admitted how badly it hurt when I was gone. She admitted how badly it hurt her when I was distant after my first night home. It was a “cleansing of the demons” night, and it was good for us.

She finally understood what a weird mental state I was in. Processing all the shit I saw and did internally was one thing. Having to talk to a psychiatrist about it hashed it all up again. I hated that fucking shit. But, they had to make sure I wasn’t gonna lose my grip on the new reality I was living. They needed to make sure I was still physically and mentally capable of doing my job. It got easier after that night. When she understood it wasn’t just a switch I could flip, she let her guard down and was my Maddie again.

We got into a rhythm of day to day. I was given a three-month leave time. We went to visit family. We went to visit Cash when he got home from deployment while I was stateside. It all became familiar again to hold my wife while I slept at night. It was mundane. It was quiet. I loved it. I loved touching her every day. I loved coming home to see her wrapped up in a blanket and a book. It was perfect. Except, it wasn’t perfect.

I missed the field.

I wish I could say every day of the three months I was home were the same as the happy days. I didn’t really know what to do with the leave time they’d given us post-deployment. I loved being with Maddie. I loved hugging her whenever I wanted, kissing her whenever I wanted, fucking her whenever I wanted. I loved having her around me. I loved knowing she was safe. I’m pretty sure she’d say she loved all of those things, too. But, I felt pretty useless not saving a life in weeks. By month two, I was begging to go back to war. I needed to be helping people.

It drove Maddie crazy. She couldn’t understand how I’d rather be in a war zone than at our home with her in the safety of our borders. I tried a million and one motherfucking times to explain it, but I could tell she never really got it. I understood her selfishness. I was glad she wanted me around, but I had things that needed to be done. I had a calling I couldn’t ignore. I had to hope this leaving and coming home got easier. That being home got easier, for that matter.

I got orders to deploy again at around the two and a half month mark. Maddie pretended it wasn’t happening. That was how she coped. I couldn’t judge. None of us are fuckin’ saints. I had this gut feeling this deployment would change us. I just didn’t know how. I hoped I could hold on to her while doing what I loved. I knew keeping us together would be work on both of our parts, and I was ready to do it. I would go back into this deployment as I did the first—with my relationship with Mads a priority. We would be okay.

The sex we had before I deployed again rivaled the sex we had when I’d gotten back. She let me take her in so many positions. Promised to do what she could to help me out with getting my rocks off while I was gone. We definitely fucked. A lot. But we made love too. I guess that’s the difference, right? Fucking is great, but really owning one another was something entirely new and bold. That kind of sex was like an exclamation point on a relationship. Something about deployment sex made it possible to go deeper emotionally than we ever had gone before. I know that sounds like some stupid girl shit, but feeling connected to my girl as we came together was one of the most intense emotions I had felt in my short life. To this day, it’s one of the most intense emotions I’ve ever felt.

That night she was my bad girl and my good girl. She was my devil and my angel. She was my dirty and my sweet southern girl. She’d always been pretty submissive, but she told me my new rescue alpha male status made it hard for her to be anything but whatever I wanted. I felt awful, until she said she liked it. We learned a lot of things about each other that night, and not just in the sexy arena of our bed. We stayed up all night talking in between amazing sex sessions. We talked about high school nights by the creek in the bed of my truck and muddin’ on four wheelers at the runoff. We talked about how her writing was going. We talked about how amazing it made me feel to save lives. We cuddled naked, and we made a late night breakfast, her in my T-shirt and cute boy shorts, looking hotter than any fire I had ever seen. I wished my last few months had been like this every day, but life didn’t work that way. We had to go through the ebbs and flows. We had to go through the valleys to get to the mountaintops.

She was my everything. Leaving her for a second deployment was even harder than leaving her for the first. The embraces were longer. The tears flowed more freely from my emotional girl, who had seemed to give up on being strong. She handed me a leather-bound notebook as we were saying good-bye.

“What’s this?” I asked her, flipping through the pages. She placed her hand on mine, slowing my movements.

“I worked on it because I knew this day would come. Your heart is too pure. I sometimes selfishly wish it wasn’t. I love you for wanting to save so many lives. I just wish I had you with me while you did it. I’m a selfish lover, I guess.” She shrugged.

I started to tell her she wasn’t selfish at all when she interrupted me. “There should at least be one thing to make you smile on those pages for every day you’re gone.”

Fuck me sideways. I’d been with this girl for nearly eight years, but she still stirred something deep within me. I pulled her chin up to look at me, and she was blushing. She was always so fucking cute. I smiled and ran my nose along her jawline as I whispered in her ear how it was the best gift ever. She shivered, and as I ran my hands along her arms, I felt the goose bumps rise and wished I could take her one more time. But I couldn’t.

I kissed her lips softly, then her forehead. Squeezing her hands, I told her, “I love you Madelyn.”

She hugged me tight. “I love you too Seth. Please come home to me. Remember, save every single person you can, but don’t be crazy,” she said in a shaky voice.

“You know I’ll do the best I can.” I winked as I tried to let go of her hand. She squeezed my hand three times, and I felt a little choked up. I squeezed her hand back and turned to head out on my second tour of duty.

This tour didn’t start like the first. We were thrown immediately into calls that shouldn’t have even been happening. Sometimes I wondered what the fuck we were even fighting for. I was glad my job was to help keep everyone alive, not kill them, but I still had to fire my weapon far more than I’d ever like to actually admit. My tally list grew. Saves always higher than kills. Sometimes those two lists were dangerously close to each other though, and I fuckin’ hated that shit.

The first day we went out on my second tour, I had to fire my weapon. That was much quicker than the first time around, and I wondered how much good we were actually doing. Shouldn’t it have been better by now? Taking a life is not something I take lightly, and I wouldn’t wish the responsibility on anyone. Saving people was more my speed, but we were in a very hostile town. We knew there was a chance that the alert for a child hurt could actually be a set-up for an attack. We knew the ways the enemy attacked evolved and that it was a possibility every single time we went into a call, but we never really expected it to be the case.

On the day we were attacked, we got a call that a child was hurt. We headed out, as we always did, no questions asked. When we got to the drop zone though, there were no children. There were only militant soldiers waiting to attack us. I fired my weapon a lot that day, and I got to as many men as I could before we got air support and finally had some room to breathe with the militants down. One of our guys was hit, but thankfully his armor took most of the blow and he got to go home much earlier than planned with a promise to be back as soon as he could. We lost one patient. We had eight. We saved seven lives, but losing even one was too many. It was a terrible day. There was a lot of blood on my hands, and there was a lot of hurt in my heart. I guess the guy we zipped up in the body bag had a much worse day though.

I needed to hear Maddie’s voice. She was my center, and as soon as I got officially off-duty, I ran into the computer room and called her. She answered, and it was echoing, like she was in the bathroom.

“Babe, I can totally call you back in a sec if you need to pee.” I laughed. I knew she would bring the old me back in seconds. She had that way about her. I heard Matt behind me laughing.

“Damn, Blaze, that’s some next level love.” He punched me in the shoulder lightly as he walked out of the room to give us some privacy.

“I already peed,” she mumbled, completely emotionless.

On alert, I sat up. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong... I... we...” She stumbled on her words.

“Madelyn. Deep breath. Talk to me,” I encouraged her.

“Switch the call to video,” she told me numbly. I did, and I was greeted with a pregnancy test, showing a very clear positive.

I don’t know. Maybe it was the day. Maybe it was just that I was more mature now than before when I thought I never wanted kids. But it made the terrible day I had turn into the best day I had, in a matter of seconds. There was a child after all. My child.

“Fuck. Mads. I feel so—” I started.

“Please say excited,” she said, almost sadly.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Maddie? I’m over the goddamn moon,” I told her as she finally pulled the camera to face her, tears running down her beautiful face. The things I would’ve done to be able to dry her eyes were endless. I wanted to really let her know how excited I was. She smiled and my heart felt lighter, though I hated that she’d thought I would be unhappy. Building a family with this woman was nothing short of a miracle. There was nothing more amazing than calling her my wife.

I was more than excited to have a baby I didn’t know I desperately wanted.