Ada, Oklahoma

Three Months Later…

 

Jason waded his way through the crowd, listening to the fans talk about the show that was about to begin.

“I can’t believe this is happening here!”

“She’s so brilliant! I hope she plays my favorite song!”

“Such a good cause. She’s such a kind person.”

He had to agree with that last. A lot of artists donated money to good causes, or wrote songs whose profits were said to benefit a specific cause. No one ever knew for sure if they actually handed the money over, but it made everyone feel good to believe it did. But this? The money had already gone to the charity of choice and been put to good use.

He knew because he had delivered the check himself.

He continued making his way through the crowd, finally spotting the seats he’d been searching for. He waved to the woman who was standing there, speaking to some of the people around her as they all waited for the show to begin. A little boy, small enough to be a toddler, but old enough to be a kindergarten this year at his local school, ran toward him.

“Uncle Jason!”

Jason caught him and threw him into the air, catching him as he squealed with laughter.

“Hey, Mitch,” he said, kissing the boy’s neck. “Are you excited?”

“Yeah. This is really cool!”

And it was. Front row seats at the hottest pop concert ever put together in a rural Oklahoma town. People had come from all over the country, some even from as far as Canada and Mexico, to see this show. The small town council didn’t know what to do with the influx of tourists, the local hotels overflowing. There wasn’t enough food to go around, with the restaurants all at standing room only. It was definitely the biggest thing to ever happen in the great state of Oklahoma.

And it was all because of this little boy.

“Children like Mitch deserve more than just money being tossed at them. They need memories that can replace the ones they should have had with their lost parent. They need happiness and support, the knowledge that people care about the sacrifice their parents made.”

She put into words things Jason had been trying to say for two years. It wasn’t right what had happened to Shaw, Toliver, Martinez, and Wagner. But it was their widows and this little boy who suffered that loss every single day, who deserved so much more than being forgotten by the country their spouses—his father—had died to defend.

He and Kat had started a charity together. A nonprofit that would provide military widows, particularly those with children, with more than the financial support they might require. It provided trips to amusement parks, family photographs that could only be created with Photoshop, memories that provided happiness in place of the darkness of loss.

This concert was both an attempt to raise money for their charity and to provide some of those good memories for the widows and children of soldiers killed while on active duty.

The first five rows of the small arena were reserved for kids like Mitch. There were dozens of them, laughing and dancing to the recorded music being piped through the speakers, the anticipation of the coming concert sending them all into a frenzy.

Jason had to admit he was a bit excited himself. He’d never seen Kat Carlisle in concert.

He set Mitch on his feet and went over to offer Lesley a little peck on the cheek. Then he ducked around them, making his way to the side of the stage, walking up the steps past the security guard—provided by Mastiff Security, of course—to the small locker room in the back that had been turned into a green room for the band. Ricky waved as he walked in, too busy tuning his guitar to do much more.

She was in a little office to one side, dressed in a simple black gown that flowed over her curves like butter melting over a pancake. Her mother was with her, sitting at her side, but not saying anything. Camille had accepted, gratefully, the role of traveling companion, a role that required her to take care of Kat’s luggage and provide encouragement. Nothing else. Kat had hired a new manager and was taking control of her career, moving it down the road the way she wanted it to go, playing the music she wanted to play, appearing on the talk shows she wanted to appear on. Her acting career was on the shelf for now, to be revisited at another time. Maybe.

Her head came up when he walked through the door, nervousness dancing in her perfect amber eyes.

“Here it is,” he said, pressing a small coin into her hand. It was her lucky coin, and she’d left it on her dresser that morning, absentminded in her nervousness over this concert.

“I can’t believe I did that!”

“You’re fine.”

She moved into his arms, pressing her face against the center of his shirt. “Thank you for getting it.”

“Anything you need.”

“This is a good one,” her mother said, patting Jason on the arm as she walked past them. “Hold on tight, girl.”

She left them alone. Kat giggled softly. “She’s so infatuated with you that I think she might give me a run for my money.”

“Maybe twenty years ago.”

“I don’t know. Older women can be quite exciting, or so I hear.”

“You’re all the excitement I need.”

She looked up at him, her hand sliding over the scruff on his jaw. “Thank you for coming out here for this.”

“Where else would I be?”

Their relationship had become something of a long-distance affair, he still living in Los Angeles while she traveled between Oklahoma and Los Angeles, going where her business took her. But the charity was beginning to take up quite a bit of Jason’s time, making him think he might do better if he quit his job with Mastiff and devoted all his time to it. Taking care of the widows and children of fallen soldiers was important to him. Before Kat, he hadn’t known how to help them. With her, he was constantly coming up with new ways they could help, more things the kids could do, more things the moms—or dads—needed to keep their families safe. He was currently working on a letter campaign to encourage lawmakers to extend the time during which family members were allowed to use their soldier’s insurance after death, or to make it easier for them to get private insurance. It was going to be a long road, especially with the healthcare debate that was already going on in Congress, but he hoped to make some progress very soon.

Kat had given him a purpose when she suggested this charity. It’d gone from suggestion to fruition in a matter of days, moving so fast that it took them both by surprise. But neither had regrets.

About anything.

“Five minutes, Kat!”

She tensed in his arms.

“You can do this. You’ve done it a few times before.”

She grunted. “Yeah, but never in front of this kind of audience.”

“It’s no different from a regular crowd. They’re still expecting a good show.”

“I know.” She pulled back, slipping the lucky coin into one cup of her bra. “Stand where I can see you, okay? I want to see your face when I do that new song.”

“Definitely.”

He walked with her to the stage, leaving her with a kiss just as the band began the first few chords of the first song. He watched as she walked out onto the stage, listened to the crowd go wild. Sometimes he forgot that she was famous. But then they’d go out on a date and be overwhelmed by paparazzi, or they’d go shopping and a group of young women would come up, asking for her autograph. But this…this was new.

He went down the narrow steps and moved to the seat Lesley and Mitch had been holding for him. He didn’t sit, though, because no one was sitting. They were all on their feet, singing at the tops of their lungs the same song Kat was singing from the stage.

It was that song again, the first one he’d ever heard her sing. He had a feeling she was singing it just for him because he’d finally told her the rest of that story one night, deep in the night. And she’d listened closely, soaking up every detail.

She was something else!

Her nervousness seemed to have gone by the time she ended that first song. And then she moved on to the second and the third, stopping between each melody to speak to the crowd. She’d already introduced the charity, talked about some of the things they hoped to do in the future. But she didn’t go into any real depth until about halfway through the concert.

“I know a lot of you probably already know about this little movie I worked on this past spring. Joined As One will be out next summer. It was”—she smiled, her eyes searching for and falling onto his face— “a unique experience. I found myself in many uncomfortable situations during the filming of that movie. But I also met a man during that time who has turned my life completely upside down.”

The crowd both cheered and booed. Kat just smiled, raising her hand as she waited patiently for them to settle down.

“I’ve been a musician most of my life. I became a star when I was just a teen, protected from the realities of what that meant by an overprotective mother who most of you probably know better than you ever knew me. I was so involved in my music that I rarely engaged with the realities of the outside world, rarely thought about what it was like to have a parent in the military, to have a parent go overseas and never come back. It wasn’t until I met this man that I began to understand the sacrifices our men and women in the armed services make for us.”

The cheers and boos turned into mostly cheers. Kat’s eyes moved over his face again, an expression that was a mingling of affection and grief molding her beautiful features.

“This man I met, his unit was on patrol, the same patrol they’d run a dozen times before, and should have run a dozen times after that particular day. But this time, their Humvee hit an IED in the road, and the vehicle left the road, rolling across the desert floor, ejecting several of its passengers before coming to a rest on its roof. In a split second, four people were dead, and one man survived with an arm that was so badly mangled that the government told him he could no longer be a soldier.”

Jason’s story weighed heavily on the people in the small arena. Lesley took his hand and squeezed it. He stared up at Kat, hating that she was doing this, but loving her for doing this.

“This man, this survivor who still had his whole life ahead of him, was destroyed by the guilt of surviving. He wanted to do something for the wives and the child of his buddies, but he didn’t know what. And that’s where Making Memories was born. Making Memories is all about making things a little easier for those widows and children, it’s about injecting a little happiness into lives that have been turned upside down, and dealing with the practical side of this kind of sudden loss.”

The arena was completely silent now. And then Ricky’s bass guitar began a slow melody, joined by the electric guitar and then the keyboard. The melody was still so haunting to Jason.

“This song is for him and for everyone touched by the sacrifice of a fallen soldier.”

As she began to sing, Jason closed his eyes, remembering the night she first played this song, completed, for him.

This isn’t the way it was supposed to be,

Not the way I saw it ending.

This is not the way you were supposed to go,

Not the way I was supposed to go.

 

Making memories is supposed to be a shared thing,

A loving thing.

Being together is supposed to be forever.

Leaving was not what you were supposed to do.

 

Show me where to go from here.

Show me what my future is supposed to be.

Show me how to make memories that matter without you.

Show me where to go from here.

 

The song was beautiful and haunting, a love song and a song of grief. It was everything he’d never been able to put into words, or into thought. She’d read his heart and written it down in a song.

She saw him. That both excited and terrified him.

“She’s amazing,” Lesley leaned into him to whisper near his ear. Tears were rolling down her cheeks without impediment. “It’s like she read my mind.”

Jason slipped his arm around her. He knew exactly what she meant.

 

***

 

There was a reception after the concert. Kat stopped to talk to all the widows and children who’d been invited to the concert, spending a good five minutes with each family despite the exhaustion that soaked clear to her bones after a concert like that. He watched her, admiring her more and more with every passing second. She was truly amazing.

He carried her into the bedroom afterwards. They were finally alone, the concert over, the press back at their hotels, furiously writing their articles. The band had gone home to their families, and Camille was back in the guest house, probably watching the late night shows, claiming that she was often too wound up after one of Kat’s concerts to sleep.

It was all done now, and she was just Kathleen, his beautiful girl. He carried her to the bed and laid her down, smoothing his hand over her face as she snuggled into the pillows. He leaned close to kiss her temple. She wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Don’t leave me.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

She sighed, her grip on his neck loosening. Jason stepped back and undressed, carefully folding his clothes and setting them on a low chair before crawling into the bed beside her. He couldn’t stop thinking about the happy faces at the reception, all those kids who thought Kat was some kind of hero or something. He had to admit, she’d seemed a little like a superhero to him tonight, too. It’d take a lot of getting used to, the two sides of this woman he was falling quickly and completely in love with.

He’d faced down terrorists in Afghanistan. Surely, he could handle a beautiful, strong, independent, highly talented, brilliant woman.

Maybe.

He wrapped his arms around her and tried to settle his thoughts. He was still thinking about the health insurance thing he’d been working on, thinking through new ways to make it work. He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t realize she’d shifted against him.

“We should move in together.”

He looked down at her. “What?”

“We should move in together.”

“You think so?”

“I practically live with you when I’m in Los Angeles, and you stay here whenever you’re here. We live together already.”

He kissed the top of her head. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“We should talk about it soon, or else the press will be talking about it before we make a choice.”

“Why would the press talk about it?”

“Because it’ll be visible in a few more weeks.”

“What will be visible?”

She took his hand and pressed it against her lower abdomen. He didn’t feel anything but her tight abs at first, but then realized there was a slight bulge there, just above her pubic bone.

“What is that?”

She shrugged, rolling onto her back, her eyes still half closed as she drifted between consciousness and sleep. “Don’t know yet. Could be Kathleen junior, or Jason junior. We won’t know for another couple of weeks.”

It took a second. And when the reality of what she was trying to say finally sank in, he jumped out of the bed like someone had lit a fire under his ass.

“You’re pregnant?”

She rolled onto her side, propping her head up on her hand as she watched him through half-open eyes. “Technically, I am. But I prefer to think of it as we. We’re having a baby.”

“How long have you known?”

She shrugged. “A couple of weeks.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I wanted to tell you in person, but we’ve been so busy getting ready for this concert.”

“You’re sure?”

She laughed. “The proof is in the pudding, babe.”

He stared at her a moment, his mind still struggling to wrap itself around this news. But then the idea of having a boy of his own, a little kid like Mitch to raise and shape into a whole human being, popped into his head. And it was a pleasant thought.

They’d only known each other a few months, but…they’d been through hell since the moment they met, and they were still together. If that didn’t say something, he didn’t know what did.

“Marry me.”

She lay flat on her back and stared at the ceiling. “I wasn’t fishing for a proposal.”

“I know.”

He climbed back into the bed and curled up beside her, his hands lapping over that little bulge low on her belly.

“Let’s be a family.”

“You don’t think it’s too soon for that?”

“The baby’s coming whether we think it’s too fast or not.”

She sighed. “My mother raised a child on her own and did all right.”

“She raised Kat Carlisle. I don’t think we’ll be quite that lucky.”

She laughed, slapping his arm lightly.

“Marry me,” he said again, drawing her close to him. “I would have asked someday, anyway, because you’re stuck with me. This man isn’t going anywhere.”

“I hope not.”

They kissed for a long moment, their bodies moving together almost automatically. They’d created a new life in the middle of a threat of death. How ironic was that? But, somehow, it seemed almost perfect to him.

This was the way it was meant to be. This was the way it would always be.