Eternal Hope

Chapter 1

Carter

It had been two years, six months, seven days, and fifteen hours since she disappeared. 

Emmersyn. 

The second girl he had ever allowed himself to love. All of the others were fillers. Playacting at being in a relationship. Things got hard after they graduated from college, causing plenty of fights. She wasn’t ready to move in with him, especially while he was living in a house that technically belonged to his sister and was falling apart around his ears. But that would have been easy to get past and make work if not for the damn job offer in Washington state. Emmersyn was a hell of a writer and had landed a gig with an amazing publisher in Seattle. The issue was that they wanted to move her there for a year while they got her books series up and running. Carter refused to move. He was a country boy at heart and the idea of moving across the country, and into a city was terrifying. 

Ok, he was also man enough to admit that his pride was hurt as well. By the end of college Emmersyn had two books written, proofread, and ready to be sent to publishers. She had a goal and a plan set in place to achieve her dreams. Carter was the exact opposite. 

He had never worked for anything before in his life. Everything had come easy to him, grades, sports, girls. He knew that eventually he would have to try to impress people, but he never expected it to be so hard. He barely graduated college with a degree in computer engineering and a minor in programming. Karma had finally caught up to him right after graduation. The plan was, Emmersyn would publish her book, he would get a great paying job in the city and move to join her, everything was set, and he was ready to think about rings and marriage. But all that came to a screaming halt when he couldn’t find a job that he actually liked. He hated being behind a desk in a cubicle but couldn’t get any work done at home. The jobs that actually seemed interesting, required years of experience and a high security clearance. Who knew that getting a security clearance would take so long and cost so much? Six months to a year before he would know if he had passed all of the checks and by then Emmersyn would be ready to start traveling for her book tour. 

Carter had felt impotent. He hesitated to say that he had felt emasculated. He was supposed to have the secure well-paying job while Emmersyn struggled to realize her dreams. How could she have found a publisher with such a good offer that easily? Carter was baffled. Failure was a new feeling for him and losing his house was not helpful in an already strained and stressful situation. His parents had decided to declare bankruptcy and that meant getting rid of all the dead weight, including the house that he was living in at the time. He was barely making the mortgage payments with his job at the AC Company, let alone having enough to pay the utilities and feed himself. If it wasn’t for Emmersyn he probably would have starved trying to keep up with the payments. 

Once he turned down the third good offer from a prestigious company in Seattle, Emmersyn had had enough. He could admit that all of the offers were amazing and would have given him the chance to do EXACTLY what he had gone to school for, but every time something had held him back. He had made up excuse after excuse as to why the jobs just weren’t the right fit: they didn’t pay enough, not enough benefits, they required a security clearance but wouldn’t pay for it. The list had gone on and on. 

Emmersyn was ready to move on with the plan and take that next step, Carter just wanted things to slow down. Actually, he wanted everything to stop and just let him enjoy those nights spent on the roof of his house, laughing with Emmersyn while eating fast food chicken nuggets with fries and arguing about Dungeons & Dragons character upgrades.

Emmersyn was perfect. 

And he blew it.

He pulled up at the local Stop ‘N’ Go fuel stop, a mom-and-pop gas station that doubled as a restaurant. Carter fell in love with the food which was always fresh and also within delivery distance of his rental home. Carter did not cook. He burned everything including water, his rice was always crunchy, and he had yet to make noodles that didn’t turn into soup when he stirred them. Needless to say; he was a regular and on a first name basis with the couple who owned the place.

Carter shut off the engine of his beat-up Ford pickup and grabbed the trash bag he carried with him from behind the passenger seat. He’d had the truck since he was in high school and didn’t see the need to upgrade when it drove perfectly fine. Yes, sometimes it only wanted to go in reverse, had a massive leak in the transmission fluid lines which he had yet to find, and consistently needed a new motor every two years, but it was his and it was free.

Carter shoveled the pile of take-out bags, boxes and cups from the passenger side of his car into the trash bag and hopped out to dump his trash before filling his tank. He was on his way to work. He was actually on time for once, though his hours were the furthest thing from set. His current project had him writing code that protected some of the nation’s darkest secrets. He was currently trying to patch a hole in his firewall that could be exploited. He thought that he could maybe use it as a trap that would allow the military to trace hackers that attempted access, while rerouting them to bogus information that would seem legit but would in fact cause zero harm to national security. It was all a matter of making the trap look authentically like a mistake and not like an obvious trap. Carter could feel himself getting excited just thinking about his Supervisor’s face when he pitched the idea. 

As he practiced his pitch to his supervisor in his head he leaned back against the old blue truck and took a careful look around the bustling gas station. Though he was noncombatant, technically not part of any military branch, he was also required to go through rigorous training. He had failed his last field exercise, so he was attempting to use the teaching outside of the practice field. Practice makes perfect or so they say.

Then he caught a flash of wild curls and a brown leather jacket. Carter stood up straight and stared at what was either a mirage, a doppelganger, or a twin of the only woman whom he would ever marry. As she turned from her Acura to face the pump two aisles over from him Carter knew he was being silly. 

Emmersyn was back.