Stronger By Your Side (Great Love Book 2) by A. Hart Read Free Book Online

light breeze that blew through my hair and kissed my face. It felt like more than just the wind, and I decided I would let myself believe that it was. I closed my eyes and embraced the feeling on my face. As I walked down the dirt path to Charles’s grave, I felt like I traveled back in time to the first and last time I was here. Back to when we brought Charles’s body here almost three years previous. Travis walked behind me a couple of feet and let me walk in silence. I appreciated that, because I was seconds away from spilling my tears.
    The cemetery was scattered with crosses and family plots. Large oak trees shaded the graves with their massive branches. I spotted the small, gray stone that I had seen once three years ago and a couple of times on my phone from pictures Travis would send me when he was here. The first time, I had only glanced at it. The other times, I stared at them on my phone for hours until I deleted them. The first time I was still in shock and unable to fully process anything, and after that a picture of it was all I could handle. Now I was face to face with the reality, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.
    Of course it had always been real. I knew my husband was dead. It had been three years. I had carried and delivered our baby girl alone. I had lived alone, and I had come to his hometown to find that he wasn’t here. I had been at his memorial service. They had handed me the folded up flag. I had listened to the rifles go off. Trust me, I knew he was dead. It was real, I knew that, and yet it wasn’t completely real until this moment. Something shifted in my chest, and that pain I had been trying to keep away pulsed through my body. I dropped onto my knees on the bright green grass that covered his grave. Travis stood behind me, and I could feel his body tense. I’m sure he thought I had lost my mind, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but the fact that my love, my husband, the father of my daughter, my best friend, the man who changed me forever . . . was lying below me.
    Just like that, I felt all of it crash over me. Three years of pain, three years of tears and three years of hoping that somehow I was wrong, that somehow everyone was wrong, came down on me. There was no more denying it, there was no more hiding from it. Charles was never coming home. This wasn’t just a long deployment. He was gone. He was gone, and I was alone. The pain shot through my body, and for the first time since the day the two men in uniform knocked on my door, I screamed though my teeth. I laid flat against the grass and put both hands flat on his stone. As waves of tears pulsed through me, I felt a heavy weight on my back and remembered where I was and that Travis was with me. I stopped for only a second to hear him whisper, “It’s okay, Meg, I’m here. Just let it all go.” I nodded into the grass below me and then did just that. Right there on my husband’s grave, I let it all go.
    After what seemed like forever, but was probably an hour, I slowly sat up and wiped my face. I reached into my pocket and grabbed the last letter I wrote to my husband. I had written him thousands of these during deployments over the years. I wiped the tear that fell on it and stared at it for only a second before placing it on his gravestone. Travis stood up and then put his hand out for me to take. I stood up and looked into his eyes that seemed to glisten. He smiled lightly at me and took a long pull of a beer.
    I quirked my head and then looked back at Charles’s stone to see an open beer on the top. Travis shrugged. “We always had a beer on birthdays . . . since we were eleven.”
    I laughed. “Mr. Do-Good did not drink at eleven.”
    Travis’s smile turned into a grin. “He did, too. In fact, he stole it from my Uncle.”
    I took a deep breath. “I don’t believe that.”
    Travis shrugged again. “It’s true.”
    It felt good to talk about Charles like this. Like he was important, because he