Last Holiday on Terra

38

I had to see her, if only for a minute. I needed to apologize for leaving her. If I hadn't left her, then...she might not...Then, at that particular moment in time, a particular memory popped into my brain...

We had planned a picnic on one of the beaches located on the southern continent immediately upon my return home from the training exercises. I'd been chomping at the bit to get home to her.

I was only mildly alarmed when we wasn't in space dock waiting for me...she was always among the family members awaiting the return of loved ones. "Maybe she's just making sure everything is just so, Rowan," said the kid who'd grow up to be my Sargent. "You said that she is very detail-oriented—"

I clearly remember shaking my head as the crowd of people thinned; she was nowhere in sight. "Something's not right," I told him.

And while I didn't see her, I did see Azreal waiting on the stairs nearing the terminal. "Prince Rowan! Welcome home! They're having a lunch—"

I didn't mince words as I felt my heart drop to the pit of my stomach and with no precursor, I asked those four words that I didn't want to hear the answers to...but I was aware I'm some level that I needed to: "where is she, Az?"

The normally very adept wordsmith was for one at a loss for words. He sighed finally and placed his hand on my shoulder. "The truth is Rowan, we don't know."

"There's got to be some kind of surveillance—witnesses—something! Somebody knows."

I shoved my way past him.

"Rowan, I went over all of the footage myself. It's as if she has been plucked off of the planet."

I turned to face him. "People don't just disappear, Az!"

I then ran up the stairs and turned to face him...to scream at him or something. "Sometimes they do, Rowan," he replied quietly.

I remembered that she had long disappeared prior to my borrowing the ship. And I can now say with the utmost certainty that it was her disappearance that had forever changed me. I became reckless and careless; mostly because I didn't much care...about anything, except my brother and Allie. And because I still needed a wife, Allie was to be it...but she was Cee's. She'd always been Cee's; I dreaded the entire idea of it.

And that was how my last holiday was to begin, although I had no inkling of the events as I was playing them out, nor how they would shape my "incarceration" or the rest of my life.

I turned on my heel and headed for Cee's quarters again; I needed to apologize...to atone some kind of way. I pushed on the panel and heard the door chime. I raised my hand to touch my communication device and remembered that I had left it on the small table beside the sofa where I had been sitting with Allie.

I decided to take a chance and ring the chime anyway.

"Yes," he asked.

"It's me. May I come in?"

"Are you going to hit me again?"

"No. I'm sorry about that."

He opened the door and looked at me with an array of mixed emotions all over his face, and in his eyes, understanding. He finally stepped aside to reveal Allie and Kia sitting at the table with a first aid kit.

A very angry Allie stood from her chair. "What possessed you!"

"You know where my headspace was," I replied quietly.

"I do, yes—and you're too god damned too old to swing first and ask questions later!"

"Rowan is a fiery, passionate soul. We all know that," Cee joked. But it wasn't a joke; only a fact that was no secret.