What did he say? The storm gusts moving over the Atlantic must have garbled his words.

“I can’t marry you”?

Susanna stopped, flip-flops swinging from her fingertips. She’d misunderstood, right? Sand washed out from under her feet as the afternoon tide pulled the waves back into their ocean boundaries.

Adam walked on, failing to notice she wasn’t with him. “Hey, wait . . .”
On the northern horizon, spikes of gold broke through mustang-blue storm clouds and ignited the dark afternoon with light. “Adam, what did you say?” Her feet slapped the wet sand where his footprints were already fading.

“This isn’t easy, Suz,” he said, taking one last step, a low breeze nipping at the hem of his cargo shorts.

“What’s not easy?” The man had fought battles in Afghanistan; how could anything on a St. Simons Island beach be difficult? Her hair blew around her face as she stared toward the dis- persing rain clouds. This wouldn’t be the first time a storm had brewed in Adam Peters after he’d returned from a Middle East tour, jammed up and bothered. She’d weather it with him. Again.

Susanna dipped her head to see his averted gaze. “Come on, what’s bothering you? Being stateside? Leaving your men? You’ve done four tours in six years, Adam. It’s okay to do something for yourself.” She wiggled his arm, teasing him, drawing him out. “You’re an amazing marine. Stateside or fighting the front lines.”

“Suz?” His tone and the way he collapsed his marine-mus- cled shoulders made her heart seize. “It’s this?” He motioned to her, then to himself, exposing the tip of his red-and-blue semper fi tattoo hidden beneath the sleeve of his white T-shirt.

“This?” She glanced around. “Walking on the beach?”

He made a face. “No, Suz. Why would I not like walking on the beach?”

“I don’t know. You started this.” Impatience. A sign of a brew- ing argument. “Excuse me if I can’t read your mind . . . What’s bothering you? Did something happen on the tour? Before you came home?” She tossed softballs, trying to get him to swing, to hint at the emotion he was struggling to articulate.

She had twelve years of history to back her up. Twelve years of friendship. Of an ebbing and flowing romance. Of drives up to Quantico when he was in officer candidate school. Of weekends in Atlanta, where she had launched her landscape-architect career. Of four shipping-outs to the Middle East. Of four homecomings.

Susanna had twelve years of letters, emails, phone calls. Twelve years of walks on the beach, of laughing on the Rib Shack’s deck while eating ribs under the swinging strings of light, barbecue sauce slipping down their chins.

Of ups and downs, disappointments, postponements, fights and arguments, and tears.

All melded into her heart by memories, all a part of the big- ger picture. The promise of something more. Commitment. Marriage. Growing old in a St. Simons cottage.