Free For Him Read Free

and she was so…not. His short hair was dark and his eyes were brown. They were deep. Girls in books always talked about eyes you could drown in, and those were the type of eyes Chris had.
    Perfect eyes.
    “Go set the table, will you, Sarah?” Rita asked, not unkindly. Sarah nodded, quickly brought back to the present, and realized she could hear her father’s voice from the dining room. She grabbed a handful of silverware and headed into the adjoining room where Chris and her father were both seated at the table.
    “There’s my beautiful girl,” her dad said, and Sarah smiled. She looked at Chris, but quickly looked away when his eyes met hers. Dammit. She was behaving like a teenager. She set the table while they talked about the Vikings and how heartbreaking it was to have them as your favorite team. When Sarah placed the silverware by Chris’ spot, her arm brushed up against his.
    “Sorry,” she murmured.
    “It’s okay,” Chris said with a smile, and she believed him.
    “Why don’t you have a seat, Sarah?” Her father asked. “I’ll go help your mother bring out the food.”
    “Is there anything I can do?” Chris asked, rising to his feet.
    Her father just waved for him to sit back down. As soon as Jim was in the kitchen, Chris turned back to Sarah.
    “Alone at last,” he said with a wink. She blushed.
    “Is that what you wanted? To get me all by myself?”
    “Of course that’s what I wanted. That’s what I’ve always wanted, ever since the first time we talked.”
    “And why’s that, Staff Sergeant Awesome?”
    Chris laughed.
    “You’re the best, Sarah, and if it’s not too forward, you’re even more beautiful in person.” She smiled and was trying to come up with a reasonable response when her parents reentered the room with the food. They sat down and her father said a quick prayer, then everyone dug in.
    “This was my brother’s favorite dinner,” Sarah commented. Chris looked up at her quickly. His eyes suddenly looked haunted.
    “He told me,” he said finally. “Whenever we’d be eating our MREs, trying to convince ourselves that they weren’t really that bad, Garrett would tell me all about his mom’s great cooking and how fantastic her sweet potatoes were.”
    “Oh,” Rita waved her hand. “They aren’t that great.”
    “They are, ma’am,” Chris said, and held up a sweet potato on the end of his fork. “They’re just as good as he promised.”
    His eyes met Sarah’s again and for a quick second, she wondered what he meant by that. Chris had always been a sweet guy from what she could tell. A badass, to be sure, but also sweet. In some ways, he was very like her brother. In others, he was the exact opposite.
    They ate dinner quietly and quickly, then Sarah and Chris went into the kitchen to do the dishes.
    “Did you move back home?” He asked her.
    “No, I live downtown,” she said. “I still work at the legal firm. My apartment is close to work.”
    “Ah. I just assumed since you were here, that maybe you were living at home again.”
    “Nope. I came over just to see you.”
    “Well, don’t I feel special.”
    “You are special.” She said quickly, but wished she could take the words back. She hadn’t meant to be weird, but she worried maybe she had made things a little awkward between them.
    Chris was an airman: a decorated war veteran. She was just…her. Sarah spent her days filing paperwork and filling out paperwork and copying paperwork and preparing paperwork. Chris spent his days saving the world. He was a real life superhero.
    “I’m nobody,” he said, and she looked up at him quickly.
    “Don’t say things like that. You’re important, you know.”
    “No,” he shook his head, scrubbing at a pan with the brush. “I’m no hero. Your brother…he was the hero, hon.”
    “I miss him,” she said, almost in a whisper, but Chris heard her. He dropped the brush and the pan in the soapy water and turned to her. In silent invitation, he