His Christmas Wish Read Online Free

made him tell the truth. Almost made him reveal that he was the one writing to her, not a fictional man he named after a wounded dog his unit had adopted and nursed back to health.
    One way or another he was going to convince her to spend Christmas with him. He tucked the letter away and smiled. There was no need to read it. He knew the words by heart. Hell, he knew every word of every letter she’d written and the ones he’d written, too.
    Sage and Gage.
    He rolled his eyes. That should have been her first clue. It sounded like a couple on one of those soaps his abuela faithfully watched on Univision.
    Dear Sage,
    Please call me Gage. Mr. Huntstone makes me sound old and you’re not one of my ‘men’, so no 1 st Lt. anything in our letters.
    It’s not too bad here. When the sun sets just right, the country looks peaceful and for a little while, a man can forget what he’s been sent here to do. Sometimes, when I’m going to sleep, I pretend I’m at the ocean, drinking a Corona while listening to Sublime on my iPod. It’s easier than you’d think. My ‘bed’ is a hole dug in the ground since the only structures we have around here are a chow hall and command center.
    I know it would probably be easier for us to chat on Skype or Facebook, but our internet connection is sketchy at best, and non-existent at worst. Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t have a Facebook page, and I don’t use my army email for personal correspondence.
    Please keep writing me. I won’t be able to respond right away the next few weeks or so, because I’ll be heading up more missions into certain regions. Can’t say when I’ll be back, or even where I’m going exactly—mostly because I’ll get in trouble (just kidding…sorta).
    Keep me in your prayers; you’re in mine.
    Your friend,
    Gage
     
    Dear Gage,
    I guess it’s official—we’re pen-pals! Dare we identify our relationship to the world? It has been two months since we first ‘found’ each other.
    Although I appreciate your police description of yourself, I wish you would send me a real picture (your hand on the unit’s adopted dog doesn’t count and neither did the one with the gas mask covering your entire head). I’d like a face to picture when I’m writing to you…or thinking about you.
    However, it’s easy to imagine your brown eyes when I close mine. They’re my favorite color eyes.
    I’m so sorry your dad and mom haven’t written back, but at least you tried. If you’d like I could write to them, or even drive to their house to talk to them in person. North Carolina isn’t that big of a state, and you said you were from Alleghany County. I’m sure I could find their house.
    Anyway, I’ve been thinking more and more about your missions and how dangerous they are. It led me to do some research on the Army and I found out it has a patron saint. So, in the care package I sent you, I included a Saint Christopher’s medal. You don’t have to wear it, of course.
    Missing and thinking of you,
    Sage
    Sweet Sage. That was one of the things he loved the most about her—her soft heart. There would be no Sunday announcement. He would have to do things the old fashioned way, with some old-fashioned courting. By Christmas Day, he would have her in his life again. Permanently this time.
    But first he had to deal with his parents.
    ***
    “ What the hell?” Joaquin slowed his truck down, raising his brows at all the fanfare.
    Balloons, cotton candy machine, jugglers— jugglers? —a stainless steel pig cooker where his dad stood serving up hotdogs and hamburgers, but overshadowing it all was a giant banner with the words, Welcome Home Our Hero, Joaquin !, strung from one end of the car lot to the other.
    Now he was a hero?
    After four years and not one damn letter or phone call, they were proud of him? Exhaling, he focused on what he’d come here for. Besides, things could have changed. His parents really could be proud of him. Hell, knowing he was coming home