Beyond Love Bonus Scene

Kara 

“WYATT!” Hand to heart, I tried to wait patiently. Tried to pretend to keep my cool. Somewhere between my foot’s machinegun tapping against the floor, the nonstop pounding in my chest, and feeling like I was moments from passing out, in retrospect I may not have given my husband adequate time to respond before calling again. Louder. “WYY-ATTT!”  

The sound of the screen door snapping shut was followed by several heavy ‘clunks’ along the hardwood floor. Then—at last—Wyatt appeared in our son’s doorway. His eyes darted from Nicholas to me. “What happened!? Is everyone okay? What happened?” He gasped for breath as he searched his people for injury.  

Relieved to have backup in my corner before round two started, I exhaled a deep breath as I pointed at our not yet fifteen-year-old son. I studied Wyatt carefully. Equal parts nervous that he might react as badly as I just had, and relieved to hand off the hard part of shutting down our only child’s dream for his future. “You need to hear the absolute nonsense coming out of your son’s mouth.”  

Wyatt rubbed at his low back. “So no one’s dying? Because I may have strained something trying to get in here under the assumption that someone was definitely dying.” 

I grimaced. Yeah. I may have overreacted just a tad.  “No. No one is dying. No yet, anyway,” I said with a glance in Nicholas’ direction, trying to laugh away my initial reaction. 

“Mommm.” Nick’s back stiffened as he defended himself from his seat at the desk. He had his father’s eyes, his father’s smile, and his father’s good nature. Sometimes it felt like the only thing he got from me was my dark hair. “That’s a low blow.” 

Brows furrowed, Wyatt leaned on the doorframe, still rubbing his back as he unleashed his patented smile our way. “First of all, I have no idea what anyone’s talking about. And second, I feel like—in the case where no one is in fact dying—we skipped over the ‘I hurt my back trying to get in here, what the hell is going on’ thing with no clarification whatsoever.” He shook his head, laughing lightly. “I get no respect around here.” 

Hands on my hips, eyebrows riding my hairline, and heart in my throat I turned to Nicholas. “If you’re brave enough to make the choice, you’re brave enough to tell your father.”  

There.  

Seeing his dad’s honest reaction—the cloud of concern and disapproval that was sure to overwhelm Wyatt after hearing what Nicholas had to say—would be enough to push that crazy talk out of his head.  

Or so I thought.  

Things didn’t unfold at all the way I’d expected. Nicholas took in a deep breath, looked his confused father in the eye and repeated, essentially word for word, what he’d said to me. “I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I’m sure you think I’m too young to know what I want, but I’ve decided, after high school, I’m going to enlist in the Marine Corp. Like Uncle Lucas.” 

Wyatt didn’t speak up immediately. Or even shake his head as he searched for the polite way to tell him no way. There was precisely zero huffing—or puffing—of any kind. The hand that had been rubbing his back made its way to his neck as he ostensibly tried to make heads or tails of the bomb our son had just dropped. I still remembered the day Wyatt appeared at my doorstep, drunk, destroyed, because his older brother was in the hospital, fighting for his life after a bombing in Afghanistan. I couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind, hearing his only son suggest he wanted to head in the same direction. 

When his father didn’t step in with the authoritative “no” I was expecting, Nicholas’s eyes lit up with hope and he hurried on. “Before you say anything, just hear me out. Okay?”  

The eagerness blossoming in his voice had my stomach in knots. “Wyatt? Honey, you aren’t actually entertaining this…are you?”  

At last, he spoke. My teammate. My partner-in-crime. The one person I knew I could always count on. He nodded as he motioned toward our little boy. “I’m just hearing him out.” 

Judas!  

“You can’t be serious. That you would even allow him to fantasize about something, so, so…terrible.” 

Confused, Wyatt turned to me with as much patience in his voice as I’d ever heard. “I’m not sure I follow, sweet girl. Terrible seems like kind of a strange word.” He forced a cough. “You remember my brother Lucas—that he served in the Marines?” 

As the sole castaway on Common-Sense Island, I wrapped my arms around my waist to brace against the headwind I hadn’t expected then nodded my acknowledgement. “Exactly! Your brother served—and look what happened to him. Think about how close you came to losing him! And still, you would allow our son to think that’s even an option?” At that point my hands were everywhere but on my hips. Flinging and flailing around as I spoke, trying desperately to make them both understand. “Well, I’m sorry, but no. Not for him it isn’t.” 

Wyatt paced from the doorway to the bed and back, chewing his lip as he tried to work out his position. “I hear you, sweet girl. I do, but I feel the boy’s earned the right to at least explain himself.” 

Exasperated by my husband’s reaction, I threw my hands in the air and dropped onto the bed. How could I explain that I remembered the way my husband looked when his brother almost died, that I remembered the pain radiating out of him, and that I couldn’t imagine going through that with our son? 

Wyatt sat beside me and draped an arm around my shoulder. “Just hear him out,” he whispered. “I know you don’t want to leave him feeling shut down and unheard. We’ll see where things go from there, okay?” 

I sat quietly as the two most important men in my life calmly discussed a future I was loathe to even imagine. Somehow, by the end, Wyatt convinced Nicholas to agree to college after high school. The compromise being that he could ask his uncle Lucas to help him research and understand the best college path with the Marine Corps in mind. Maybe a Corps friendly college where he could sign up to be a reservist, or possibly do whatever the Marine version of ROTC was while in school. Once he understood how that could give him a better shot at leadership opportunities if, after graduating, he still wanted to join full time, he relented. I didn’t pretend to love it, but I couldn’t argue with the fairness of the détente. It bought us time. Time for a new interest—or with luck a pretty girl—to help change his mind for us.  

***  

Wyatt 

Several years later 

With Kara at my side, we stood on the porch of The Hutton Hotel, staring eagerly into the gray afternoon for a hint or sign of headlights. Late June or not, you’d never have known it. The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees as a wicked storm came off the water. The wind was steady, strong enough to drive the rain at an angle, but the gusts could be fierce. Lucas and Cat waited with our mother inside, like any sane people would. After a hard gust of wind pushed me off balance and sent Kara’s hair into a twisting dance of insanity, I questioned if we wouldn’t be better off joining them. But I wouldn’t say as much to her. I knew how much this meant to my wife.  

In Kara’s mind, this entire circumstance was my fault. Com-plete-ly. And I couldn’t really argue. If God had it in mind to punish me with rain, then so be it. No way was I going to let a little water stop me from being the first to greet the Hutton family’s freshly commissioned Second Lieutenant. Lightning flashed in the distance, and it seemed Kara’s worry for our son was keeping pace with the growing intensity of the storm. The harder the wind blew, the louder the thunder clapped, the more her worry shone.  

“He should’ve been here by now,” she whimpered as she tucked herself under my arm. Practically vibrating with shivers, she didn’t say a word about her discomfort, keeping her eyes focused on the road while her body searched the warmth I’d gratefully supply. My love and respect for this woman had only grown with the years. I’d do anything for her, and knew, without a doubt, she’d do anything for me. 

“According to the radar, this was only one part of a larger system. I’m sure he’s just taking his time to get here safely.” I kissed the top of her head for reassurance as my own worries quietly attacked from every direction. My stomach turned. My throat constricted. My head ached. The longer we stood there, the more I questioned if she hadn’t been right all along.  

Why had I ever entertained the idea of Nicholas signing up for the Marines? At fourteen I might have had enough influence to change his mind. I should’ve refocused his attention on something else. Something…safer. 

It had all seemed so vague and undefined at the time. What red-blooded, compassionate, teenage boy didn’t think about serving his country at one point or another? I figured he’d seen a cool movie or played a new video game that had him feeling all “Ooorah!” Who could’ve imagined he was already so intentional at that age? There lay the problem.  

His father should have.  

I could have imagined it. I should have seen it coming from ten miles away. At times, as he grew, I knew how his mind worked better than he did. Sure, Nicholas had always enjoyed spending time with his aunts, uncles, and cousins—but I knew damn good and well no one ever held his interest the way his Uncle Lucas did. Why had I brushed it away as simple intrigue born of curiosity? Why had I been so quick to always call him Skywalker? Had that somehow placed Lucas on a pedestal of unequal proportions to everyone else? I assumed that for all the cool experiences Lucas may ever have shared about the Marines, the glaringly obvious set of scars running up and down his body would be an adequate reminder why he no longer served.  

I should’ve known. 

What boy, who ten times out of ten would prefer to spend the day running, swimming, or working with his hands over watching a movie or playing a board game, wouldn’t be attracted to a career that called for rugged, self-motivated individuals who lived for physical activity and wanted to be part of something bigger than themselves?  

Now it was real. My only son faced the possibility of one day being sent to some faraway place and having to fight for his life. This was too real. My stomach turned again. And so went my worry, until two beams of light finally emerged from the dim, dreary storm pushing its way north along the coast. I knew it was Nicholas—who else would drive this far into The Keys in the middle of a storm like that? 

Kara gave me an exuberant squeeze before dashing into the rain as his car pulled to a stop at the foot of the steps. I held back for a moment, watching in amazement at the transformation she’d undergone. The woman who’d been too afraid to let our child speak about such a dangerous career, was proud as a peacock to look him over in his dress uniform—blissfully unconcerned with the rain pelting her hair to her head. When she pulled him in, joyously hugging the child who’d been away too long, I jogged my way down the steps to join them.  

Whether I was ready or not, he’d become a man in his own right. And now wasn’t the time for worry, but celebration. My son wanted to be a hero. It was time to show him how proud I was of the choice.