The buildings were nearly identical. The only things differentiating one from the other were the numbers painted on the sides. The one we were passing was either 33 or 88; the black paint was faded so I couldn’t tell.

“Yeah, they’re all the same big brown buildings here at the Great Place.”

I swear I heard the tiniest hint of a laugh, just a small puff of smoke, enough to show that he was at least mildly amused by my comment. Sure enough, when I looked over, there it was—a sliver of a smile spread across his lips.

“It’s here.” He pointed to a massive parking lot. Kael kept his finger pointed at a navy-blue truck parked in the back of the mostly empty lot. I pulled up next to it, about a car’s length away.

“Thanks . . .” He looked at me like he was searching for something.

“Karina,” I told him, and he nodded.

“Thanks, Karina.”

I tried to calm the swarm of bees in my stomach as he climbed out of my car without another word.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I don’t know what I expected Kael to drive, but this beast of a truck wasn’t it. When I sized him up—literally and figuratively—I came to the conclusion that he’d drive something practical, like a black sedan or a medium-sized white pickup truck. But it wasn’t this massive dilapidated blue thing with rust circling the wheel well and covering most of the passenger side. The truck-jeep-car thing said bronco in bold letters and had two big circle headlights. The tires were so oversized that the truck somehow made Kael look small. His truck-jeep thing was actually really cool, but it needed some work. The more I noticed about the car, the more I realized it suited him perfectly. Like the saying that dogs and owners start to look alike after a while. Or is it husbands and wives? Either way, his truck simply fit him. He had the standard Georgia plates, peaches with the corny slogan, and Clayton County printed across the bottom. I had no idea where that was.

I wondered if he actually was from Georgia or if he bought the car here. You never knew with soldiers. Cars seemed to drop from the sky above. If his hometown was really in Georgia, I wondered how he felt being here with home not far away. Or did it feel far away? The perspective depends on your situation. I would feel distant even if I was in the same county as my dad and his wife, but maybe Kael had a good relationship with his family and felt close and content and okay with that. I didn’t know this about him, but now I wanted to find out.