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“I’m fine, just very lean,” he said as he smiled down at Emily. “I didn’t work this hard to get back to you to not stay around. Heck, I did taekwondo every day to build strength.”

“Forty pounds isn’t enough, maybe fifty,” she countered. “I think between me and my mother, we can make sure you’re well-fed. Who were they, the people who kidnapped you?”

“From what the Marines told me and what I know, the people who kidnapped me were a local terrorist group that had apparently been taking over that little area. They had a tip-off that a big delivery was being made and shot us down. They wanted to loot the helicopters, but they thought they had lucked out when they found a rich British man still alive to kidnap. When they found out I was American, well, Christmas came early,” he replied, glancing up to meet her gaze.

“I want to know everything,” she said, sitting next to him, her hands reaching out to touch him, making sure that he was there. “Don’t withhold anything from me, even if it’s going to upset me. Do you understand?”

Stretching toward her as he cradled their baby, he quieted Rebecca with a soft kiss that was meant to reassure her.

“I’m back, and I’m never leaving again. But can we talk about what happened tomorrow?

I just want to be with you tonight. Those people controlled my life for a year.

I want tonight to just be about us. Okay? ”

***Mitch***

Mitch and Rebecca talked from the afternoon into the evening, filling in the last eleven months of their lives.

Rebecca cooked the lasagna, then picked at her dinner as the wind howled and the sun set just beyond the large picture windows to the west, turning the sky a pale pink.

Mitch’s stomach had shrunk enough he could barely get through his first serving of lasagna.

He’d never felt more thankful, more grateful to be where he was.

He watched Rebecca move nervously around the cottage.

At first, she’d looked at him like he had crawled his way out of a grave, but now she was starting to relax by slow, measured degrees, the initial shock beginning to wear off.

Every few minutes, she would look at him blankly and then reach out and touch him, needing reassurance.

“You know that I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

“You said that once before,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.”

“I will never let you do anything like that again, understood?”

“Yes, understood,” he said. “Now, come here and let me kiss you a bit more.”

He never thought he’d see her again. Knowing she might never realize how much she meant to him was the single driving force pushing him to find a way to escape his captors. They might be married, but they hadn’t been married long enough.

Never a patient man, he’d waited painstakingly for the perfect opportunity to present itself with his captures.

Then they opened his cell, and he was sure they had been given an order to end his life.

They weren’t prepared for him, and they lacked the training necessary to fight a man who was prepared to defend himself and hell-bent on survival.

Rebecca and Mitch kissed for a bit on the couch, but after a few minutes, the baby started to fuss, and Rebecca got up to comfort her. He could see that Rebecca was struggling, so he gave her a little space.

The fatigue of his ordeal was quickly catching up with him as he took in all that was familiar and new.

Rebecca wouldn’t allow him to help clear the dishes or do anything for that matter, except hold Emily.

She treated him as if he were a guest. He knew she was barely keeping it together, but he could take no more of her overt politeness.

It was time to recapture the happiness that had been stolen from both of them.

Once the baby was happy and content, Rebecca placed her in her bassinet and started cleaning up the kitchen.

He walked quietly into the kitchen. He watched as Rebecca clumsily loaded the dishwasher.

When he touched her arm, she dropped a plastic bowl, which clanked noisily to the floor, but she didn’t notice.

Without a word, she reached for him, and he kissed her the way he’d dreamed of for the last eleven months.

“It’s going to be alright,” he whispered minutes later.

“You know what terrifies me?” she asked, her eyes teary again.

“No, darling. Tell me.”

“I’m worried I’ll wake up, and you’ll be gone. We’ll be alone again. I’ll have to think of raising Emily without her father. What if this is only a dream?” she asked, her tears dampening his shirt.

“I could pinch you, maybe poke you with something,” he offered, adding a smile as he tried to lighten the mood.

She laughed softly. It was a timid sound, nothing like she’d once sounded when she laughed, but he felt her body relax just the same.

“If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up,” she murmured and kissed his neck.

“Me neither,” he said, then asked, “Could we stay like this for a few minutes?”

“Yes, at least until the baby needs me,” she murmured, leaning against him.

“I’ve known you as a teenager, a woman, a lover, a wife, and now you’re a mother,” he said. “It is amazing.”

“You made me a lot of those things, but I’m most proud of being a mother to our baby,” she said as tears leaked out her eyes.

“And hopefully I’ll do it again.”

He held her for a long time, and they watched the waves crashing on the beach below.

“I hope so, too. But at the moment, you must be exhausted,” she murmured.

“I’ve never been happier or more content in my life than I am at this moment with you,” he said as she lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him, her face so delicate, yet still he could read the worry in her expression.

“Not for a hint of a moment?” she asked, her lower lip trembling.

“No. Never.”

“Me neither. You’re in my heart. You’re a part of me,” she explained, placing her hand on his chest and rubbing it in small circles.

“Mrs. Wilder, would you mind if we continue this conversation in bed?”

“Are you in pain?” she asked, her brow wrinkling with concern.

“My heart suffered much more than my stupid leg. I’m tired, but not that tired. I want to make love with my wife. That is, if you’d like to.”

Her eyes widened, and then she smiled. Shyly, she said, “I’m the one who has dark circles under my eyes, and I look haggard. I’m not the same. I still have baby weight. I haven’t had my hair styled in months. My body droops, my breasts aren’t as perky?—”

“You’ve never looked sexier,” he said, pleased with the resulting blush. “I, on the other hand, am the Halloween skeleton.”

“Not to me,” she said sternly.

“Wait until I’m naked,” he said, smiling. “Skeleton isn’t sexy.”

“Shut up,” she whispered, wincing, “and let me be the judge of that.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’ to my question,” he said, and she kissed him.

“Yes, I’ve missed you so much,” she said.

Sadness was overtaking her again. He had to get her to snap out of it. They had to find the playfulness that had always played a large role in the way they were with each other.

“When does the baby go down for the night?” he asked.

“You’re kidding, right? Emily is awake every three hours for a feeding.” As she spoke, the baby started to fuss in her bassinet. “And she is just about ready for her first three-hour nap of the night.”

Over the next half hour, Mitch watched Rebecca bathe and feed Emily with complete fascination.

This other side of Rebecca was as otherworldly as his life had been in Iraq.

He knew she was kind and loving but hadn’t seen this side of her.

Of everything that happened that day, it touched him the most deeply.

He felt the ever-present lump in his throat give a little squeeze.

Rebecca was a mother to his child who fed hungrily at the breast he had kissed and held.

He bent and kissed the baby’s head, then Rebecca’s bare breast, and then her lips.

“Would you like to burp her?” Rebecca asked, interrupting his thoughts.

He found he couldn’t speak but merely nodded as he sat in a large, whitewashed rocking chair as Rebecca placed Emily in his arms and showed him what to do.

When Emily finally shut her eyes and drifted off to sleep, Rebecca took her from him and gently placed her in her crib.

“Three hours starts now,” Rebecca announced. “Our daughter is consistent. Three hours, almost to the minute.”

Rubbing his knuckles along her cheek, he suggested, “Well then, let’s take a shower and see where it leads.”

After the briefest hesitation, she led him into the downstairs bathroom in Gary and Vic’s master bedroom. She took her time adjusting the water to the correct temperature.

“I took this master on the main so I wouldn’t have to walk the stairs with a baby.”

“I’m glad,” he said.

He pulled off his new navy cashmere sweater and the white t-shirt he wore underneath. By the time she’d turned around, he was naked from the waist up.

“I know you like to watch me shower. But this time, I’d like you to join me,” he said. “I’d like to scrub your back, or your front and you can keep me from slipping.”

For the first time in his life, he felt self-conscious about his body.

He’d never been obsessed with his looks.

Women seemed to like him the way he was, so it had never been an issue, but now, with Rebecca looking at his shrunken physique and battle scars, he was unsure.

He’d been gone almost a year. She was an attractive, healthy woman. New fears came to mind.

“You’re so thin,” she cried as she ran her warm hands along his ribcage, bone protruding against the skin where there had once been muscle.

Her fingers lingered over several of the fresh pink scars, which had once been open wounds, some inflicted by his captors, others from the helicopter crash itself.