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“You wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“That’s what you think.”
Juliet was well aware that Thomas had a habit of smiling when he kissed her. She often felt his lips curve, his cheeks lift, his whole face light up. She found it endearing, heartening, that he seemed so delighted to be in her company, so pleased to finally be able to touch her.
His enchantment had never before impeded any of their activities, but today was different. His face kept splitting into the widest grin she’d ever seen on him, his lips unable to fulfill their duties.
“What? What is it?” she finally asked. She liked his smile, of course. Scratch that—she loved it, and was never unhappy to see it. So often it reminded her of a sunburst after the rain. An apt metaphor, she supposed, though sitting and staring at one another’s goofy grins wasn’t exactly how she envisioned this evening going, even if his was one of her preferred views.
“You love me,” he replied. No one could have missed the astonishment in his voice. Is it really such a surprise to him? I’m not that good an actress. Higgins nodded.
“Yes. As I said.” She kissed him again, and managed to clock hardly any time at one of her new favorite pastimes before his apparent joy again derailed what was ordinarily not a complicated procedure for them. She smiled back against his mouth.
“What?” she asked again. Magnum grinned. His eyes rested on hers intently; she thought he might never look away no matter what was careening down on them.
“You love me,” he repeated.
“Yes. As I said,” she echoed. He shook his head.
“It’s just not a thing I ever thought would be true in this world.”
“Nor I,” Higgy scoffed.
“Oh, I’m sure you didn’t. Took every ounce of my spec ops cunning to—”
“No, the other way ‘round,” she interrupted, then almost laughed at the comical confusion on his face. “I…you…Thomas, I told you a long time ago you’re a good man. Honest and true, generous of spirit, and you never give up on people. Even when we do our best to make you. You’ve the biggest heart of anyone I know. Far more patient with everyone than I am with anyone. The time came that I appreciated your regard even though I knew, with the things I’d done, I didn’t deserve it. I wanted to deserve it. I wanted to be what you deserved.” She felt small in his arms, still wounded but resolute as ever, and he could see not just the years of her grief and recovery, but dogged growth as well.
“Hey, hey, hey, no,” he said. “Don’t. I love you, not some version of you you think you need to be. I mean, I love that you try to be a better you today than you were yesterday. I didn’t always do that. People give the trident more leeway than it deserves sometimes and felt sorry for me because of what happened, and I was fine drafting off that for a long time.” He left unsaid what they were both well aware of: his looks and charisma got him out of a lot too. “But you knew I could be more than that, and I wanted to be more than that. For me, and eventually…for you. Even if I don’t think I’ll ever quite get there.” She was shaking her head, fighting hard to not let the droplets in her eyes spill onto her cheeks. “Juliet, listen. Listen to me. I loved you yesterday, I love you today, and I’ll love you tomorrow.” He laid his hand on her sternum. “Lionheart,” he whispered, and was rewarded with a small smile.
She touched his nose with hers before she kissed him, and once again his grin seemingly lacked territorial limitation.
“Thomas, you can’t even kiss me properly.” Her voice was fond, but overridden by exasperation.
“Mistake.” His eyes blazed, and he glared in mock anger. “Wanna bet, woman?” She was in the air before she knew it. He covered the short expanse to the waterline in a few steps with her in his arms, and made like he might throw her in. “You’re gonna need to cool off when I’m done with you.” Then he set her down and took his time proving his point, which of course had been her goal in goading him all along. When he decided he’d demonstrated sufficient competence, he lightly held her face in his hands and arched an eyebrow.
“Proper?” he inquired. Higgins looked up at him, backlit by the sunset, holding onto his biceps, hair aglow and blowing in the trades. He thought it the most beautiful view he’d ever seen in his life.
“Ahem…satisfactory. For now,” she allowed. He smiled and dropped back into the lounge chair, pulling her back into his lap.
“Juliet, can I ask you a question?” His face was cautiously pleading. She didn’t know if he was afraid of her reaction or afraid of her answer, but thought that certainly the time for fear between them must be past.
“Of course. You can ask me anything, Thomas. If I can’t tell you, I’ll tell you why.” He shifted underneath her, uncomfortably she thought, and averted his gaze. The water, the sea, had long been his safe and happy place. She knew he always sought it out for solace.
“You…you didn’t seem freaked out.” Higgins smiled lightly and brushed her hand across his hair before gently palming his chin to nudge his gaze back to her.
“That’s not a question.”
“Well, I mean, it woulda been a big deal. Could’ve…changed our lives. If you wanted it to,” he hastened to add. “And I thought…I mean I didn’t think…you just didn’t seem freaked out at all.” It still wasn’t a question, but it was as closely as he could skirt what he really wanted to ask, she knew.
“Would it have helped?” she responded. Magnum frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“If I had been pregnant, and I’d freaked out, would it have helped?” Juliet couldn’t say whether it was training or temperament that had kicked in. It was the first time she’d ever looked at a calendar and thought ‘wait, that can’t be right,’ the first time she’d ever gone to a drugstore for a pregnancy test, and certainly the first time she’d ever sat on a toilet and watched colors change and lines form with the detached fascination of a chemist. Huh. Like M8 paper. She’d been filled with neither terror nor joy, simply a rational acceptance: Well, I guess this is what we’re doing now. Whether she was or wasn’t, she saw no reason panic would be a productive addition to the situation.
“No, I suppose not,” he mulled. His hand twitched and it seemed to her he was restraining himself from touching her midsection. “What…what would you have wanted to do?” he asked stiffly, voice low. His face was carefully set, but she was more than familiar with what someone protecting themselves from disappointment looked like. Higgy shrugged, and laid her hand over his for a moment before interlacing their fingers.
“Been a family.” Thomas’s jaw loosened, and the returning smile reached his eyes before his mouth.
“You’re already my family. Have been for a long time. And it’s enough.”
For most of Juliet’s life, people had either hurt her or taken advantage of her skills. It had made her neither arrogant nor insecure, but rather slow to trust and a walking billboard for intentional self-sufficiency. She didn’t require a great deal of external validation, but one of the many things she loved about Thomas Magnum was that he’d always found ways to make clear he appreciated her for her, and not just what she could do for him. That he’d managed to do this even in the early days when he was wheedling her for favors or forgiveness she still found annoyingly charming.
“Been parents, then,” she said immediately. “With you.” She could see, feel it almost, as hope bloomed again where he’d hardly dared allow it for years. But he still clung to one last bit of self-preserving reticence.
“I thought you didn’t want…I thought you said not everyone’s built for it.”
She had said that, in a bar booth, what seemed like a long time ago. What seemed like…not a different Juliet, but one whose head was always standing guard over her battered heart. She’d wanted Richard’s children, and after he died everything about it became unimaginable to her. She’d heard Ethan when he told her he wanted kids, but she changed the subject whenever it came up. If he’d noticed, he never said anything. She’d given the matter no thought for some time, but had had no choice the last couple of days.
“It’s perhaps…not as difficult to envision when you haven’t any questions about whether you’ve the right partner for it.”
Higgins was cognizant of all the times over the years Magnum had puffed, or peacocked, or paraded for her benefit. He did none of those things now, but she could sense the change in his countenance, his body softly inflating and face illuminating in a paradoxically humble satisfaction. It was as pleased as she’d ever seen him; quietly proud, even, to be the man she found worthy.
After a minute he spoke again. “You know,” he said, as though pondering the great mysteries of the universe, “I’m actually not so sure I want mini-me’s anymore.” She nearly headbutted him, her head snapped down with such force.
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah. I think I want a whole football team of mini-Juliets.” He was grinning, fingers lightly running along her spine, and she could hear the teasing in his voice. There were times she never was quite sure how seriously to take him.
“Well, that’s…that’s a lot of carpooling to football, Magnum.”
“What’s a whole herd of little Higgys called, do you think? A flock? A flamboyance?”
“A murder,” she said sternly, but the corners of her mouth were curving into a smile. “You really are the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah, but…?” he prompted. Another day, she might have withheld, or substituted sarcasm. But not today. Today she was too elated that she could speak her feelings out loud, that she could share them with fearless happiness instead of cautious vulnerability.
“But I love you anyway.” She kissed him again, and he smiled, but was able to function as a more than adequate counterparty this time. Leisurely minutes passed before she pulled away. Her face was pinched and clouded, and his arms tightened around her in concern.
“Thomas, I’m not ready.” It was a fretful confession, and her obvious distress at not immediately being what she thought he needed hurt his heart. “We’re not ready; we need more time…I don’t know if it’s possible and even if it worked out—” here she made an extremely sour face, “—I’m reliably informed I’m already at a geriatric maternal age.”
“Hey, don’t talk about my old lady like that!” Magnum interjected, trying to comfort her. “Well, look, I don’t know if I can either.” Higgy rolled her eyes.
“Don’t be absurd; it’s not the same. Mick Jagger’s a thousand years old and just fathered another child. Besides, you’re you.” Gladdened by her faith though he was, Magnum leaned his head against the back of the lounge chair and exhaled a long breath through his nose. He didn’t really want to revisit any of this, but if the anguish of his past could assuage hers of today, he would.
“The only other time I was with someone I thought I could see it with…we had to be careful. Not supposed to be any monkey business downrange. And I never bothered to investigate after my injuries. They weren’t questions I was ready to hear the answers to.” She made a pained noise, and he could feel it rattle in her chest where he’d leaned forward and rested his cheek.
Higgins hesitated, aimlessly running her fingers through his hair. “Perhaps if there’d been…an accident, you’d’ve both been sent home and none of the rest of it would have happened,” she said quietly. She didn’t want him anywhere other than here, with her, but if she could ease the pain she knew he’d carry to his dying day and give him what he so badly wanted, she would.
“I had that thought a time or two, in the prison,” he admitted ruefully. “But it would’ve ended our careers and something else would have happened anyway. She was always going to go to the ends of the Earth to find her father.” Higgy could feel him fidgeting with his father’s watch behind her back. “I can’t even blame her for that. I’d be tied forever to someone I didn’t really know, someone who never loved me the way you do.” Thomas looked up at her, and she was flooded with relief at the certainty she saw in his gaze. She’d never given him reason, whether friend or romantic partner, to doubt her fidelity. But she had to admit she’d given him plenty of reason to doubt she would ever be capable of opening herself up fully to anyone again, of loving the way he wanted and deserved. She doubted it herself for a long time. No longer. He saw. “The way you have,” he corrected with a wink, “for however long ‘a really long time’ is.” Magnum was quiet for a moment, looking back out at the ocean. One of the tourist catamarans sailed languidly across the horizon, its’ rigging silhouetted against the setting sun. Finally he sighed and said, in a much softer voice, “The only good thing is maybe Nuzo would still be alive. But maybe not. I wish most of it hadn’t happened. But I’d never trade anything that brought me to you.” The last part was delivered with the fierceness she’d long recognized as Thomas Magnum at his most determined, brow furrowed and dark eyes glinting like hematite.
Juliet didn’t answer right away. She loved him, saw and wanted no path forward for herself other than with him at her side, she knew that beyond any doubt. Her heart felt as though it was crying out in gratitude for his obvious effort to both make his devotion clear, and to leave her space. She had everything she wanted now; felt secure and tranquil for the first time in a long time. But unlike him, if she had the power to change then, she’d have no choice but to forestall the events that had brought her here. She let out a deep breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
“I wish Richard hadn’t died. I could never wish otherwise, Thomas, you understand,” Higgins implored, the words pouring out of her. He nodded and held her tighter. Of course he understood; who couldn’t understand that? “But if it couldn’t be stopped, I have had the thought,” she nodded slowly and ran her hand up his collar and along his face, then kissed him again, “everything that’s transpired since brought me right where I was supposed to be.” He leaned into her and she could feel the relief in his smile against her shoulder.
They sat in silence for some time, watching the last rays of sunset reflect on the clouds and water, listening to the waves gently lap against the shore.
“I don’t know when I’ll be ready, or how I’ll know,” she told him eventually. “It’s a closing window; if you wait around for me you might miss your shot. You’re sure you want to take that chance?” It wasn’t the first time she’d offered him an out, and he thought it probably wouldn’t be the last time he’d have to make clear she wouldn’t be rid of him so easily.
“Higgy, first of all, we both know my shots don’t miss.” He smirked for all he was worth. “Second, I’d take any chance with you.” Higgins snorted and shook her head, but couldn’t help smiling.
“Good Lord, Magnum, the sheer dross that comes out of your mouth sometimes. Maybe you’re Robin’s fiction ghostwriter and that’s why the White Knight books are so deranged.”
“Jin’s already demonstrated they’re great for kids!”
“Yes, yes, a captive six-month old, that’s definitely the maturity level you can handle.” She was laughing, and he reveled in the sound of it.
“Listen, you know that saying, man plans and God laughs?” he asked. Juliet chuckled.
“Yes. My grandmother said it all the time. I don’t think her life turned out exactly how she planned.” Thomas shifted again and laughed lightly to himself, but it was mirthless.
“Yeah. Me too. I had plans I was so sure of. I was going to be a naval aviator like my dad and grandfather. When that didn’t work out I was just gonna do a five-and-dive and move to Todos Santos and be a scuba guide. Then I felt like I was making a difference as a SEAL so I was going to stay to twenty and marry—” he cut himself off. The hand on her hip swept back and forth over the fabric of her dress. He watched the ocean again for a time before looking back at her. “Every time I had a big plan, the universe found a pretty stark way to say, ‘aw, that’s cute.’ So for a while I didn’t want any plans. But the best things in my life, the most important things,” his hands stopped moving and squeezed her closer, “came out of nowhere.”
He might have been talking about them both, she thought. She’d had plans, and they’d never involved Hawaii, or pursuing U.S. citizenship, or living with a man she’d once found as immature as playground ponytail pullers. They’d never even involved dogs.
“Ditto,” she replied.
“We don’t have to have a timeline or a plan, Higgy,” Magnum said with a shrug, almost plaintively. “We can just take life as it comes. We’ll figure it out. Only—” his eyes bored into hers now, “—together.”
Juliet Higgins almost always had a plan. Quick thinking and flexibility had been crucial skillsets for a field operative, so truthfully, she didn’t actually mind that much when some plans fell apart. It was to be expected; after all, as both her and Magnum’s previous careers had taught them, no plan survives first contact with reality. She could adjust to nearly anything on the fly, it just comforted her to have thought things through and be as prepared as possible for any outcome. And yet…
“That may be your best plan yet, Thomas.” She stood and held out a hand to him. “Come along then.” His eyes dazzled and intrigue drove his smirk as he rose and clutched her hand.
“Where are we going?” He asked this question as if it mattered, though they both knew it didn’t. If the years of their friendship and now relationship had demonstrated anything, it was that wherever one went, the other would never be far behind. She pulled him toward the guest house.
“Your fruit plate was delightful, but I have an evening engagement with the man I love.”