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“How did it feel the first time?” Tenleigh whispered, her head on my lap, those gentle green eyes staring up at me. With the light shining down on her, I could see the blue and gold around the outer rim, her eyelashes a dark frame.

“What?” I asked, my mind calm as I appreciated the texture of my girl’s skin under my fingertips, the glossiness of her hair spread out on my thighs as she gazed up at me.

“The mine,” she said, as if she’d been reading my thoughts from a few moments before. “How did you do it, Ky? How did you go down there?” She reached up and cupped my cheek in her palm. I turned to it and kissed the warm skin of her hand.

I closed my eyes briefly, moving my mind from all things open and filled with happiness back to the small, dark spaces I moved through every day. “It was truly like taking a trip down to hell the first time,” I said. “I put a few sprigs of lavender in my pocket and when I thought I couldn’t do it, when I felt like I’d lose my mind, I took them out and smelled them. I closed my eyes and felt you with me; I pictured those lavender fields blowing in the breeze. It got me through those moments.” I shrugged. “I did it because I had to. I did it because me going down there meant your freedom. And eventually, like most things, even terrible things, you learn to live with it.”

Her eyes were filled with love, but also a touch of sadness. “What’s it like?” she asked with a small hitch in her voice.

“It’s dark. So pitch-dark, there should be a different word to describe that kind of dark. And it’s hot—at first I could hardly catch my breath.”

She turned slightly toward me and wrapped her arms around me in comfort. I leaned down and kissed her temple.

“And you’d think it’d be quiet, you know, so far beneath the earth, but it’s not. You hear it shift and groan, like it’s unhappy with our invasion. Like humans have no place down there and it’s reminding us that it wants to fill the spaces we’ve carved out. Those noises sound like some kind of warning most days.”

“But you’ve managed it,” she said, almost in disbelief.

I paused. “Yeah…mostly. I hate the dark and I hate the hot, thick air. I hate working hunched over all day. I hate feeling enclosed and at the mercy of something that’s a million times more powerful than me. But…there are the guys—the other miners who go down there every day to do a job most people have no clue about. They do it with pride and with honor. They come out with blackened faces and dust in their lungs, and they do it because they have families and because their fathers before them did it. They do it because it’s an honest day’s work. They do it despite the fact that most people have no idea that coal is how they get their electricity.”

“Each time you flip a switch, thank a coal miner.” She smiled. “I’m so proud of you.”

I smiled back down at her. “I do the same thing thousands of other men do too. But being down there, it’s brought me a pride in my father and my brother that I didn’t have before. It’s given me some peace about the way they died. In some ways, it’s a hell for me, but in others, it’s been a gift.”

“I love you,” she whispered. It was in her expression. She understood me. She understood the anguish I had felt. She understood the sacrifice, and she understood the pride too. I hadn’t thought it was possible to love her more, but I did.

This girl.

My girl.

“I love you too.”

On Sunday, we went to breakfast at a small diner up the highway. She told me all about San Diego, about the ocean, about classes, about applying for the grants, about the coffee shop she’d hung out in almost every day. I soaked her in, her enthusiasm, her beauty, her pride, her intelligence. And I was so proud she was mine.

“I worried all the time,” I said, not making eye contact.

She grabbed my hand and I focused my eyes on our linked fingers. “About my safety?” she asked.

“That, a little bit, but more so I worried…I worried that you’d meet someone else. Fall in love.” I raised my eyes to hers and I could feel the vulnerability that must have been in them.

But she shook her head. “It’s always been you. No one else. I didn’t want to admit to myself that building the school…well, as much as it’s for the kids here, a way to give back to my hometown”—she looked down and then back up into my eyes—“I wanted to be close to you again. Even though I knew it’d hurt. I couldn’t let go of you. I never did—all that time, I never did. Even when I thought you’d betrayed me. Or maybe somewhere inside, I knew you couldn’t have.”