So sorry for the huge wait, it has been a combination of mountains of school work and slight writer's block when it came to this chapter. The updates over the next few weeks may be lacking, but that's only because coming to the end of the semester I am hit with tests and exams so keep that in mind, but I will try to update as often as possible. Thanks so much for the awesome reviews, keep them coming cause they keep encouraging me to continue :) And let me know what you think of this chapter cause I am not sure how it turned out. Enjoy :D

Chapter 20

The next few months passed without too much drama. Brennan had a solid friend in Jack and had managed to string up friendships with his friends who made her time at school bearable and for the most part enjoyable. Her relationship with Booth was going strong and despite further away than before they managed to see each other as much as possible. Her foster parents were still just like they were at first, caring and the total opposite to her first ones.

But, Booth on the other hand was dealing with something different. While, yes he could say his relationship with Brennan was going perfectly, he was trying to figure out a way to tell her that he would be leaving her, temporarily. He was going to join the army, the rangers to be more specific, he hadn't exactly gotten the best grades to go to college and since he was injured the previous year; a sports scholarship was out of the question, basically Uncle Sam was his last ticket to get any sort of respectable job, preferably law enforcement.

Booth wasn't scared about what he may have to face in the army, going off to war and facing it head on, what worried him the most was telling that to the most important person in the world to him. He had made up his mind four months ago that this was what he was going to do when he left school, he had spoken to the careers adviser, his teachers, his grandfather, even Jack knew of his plan, but he had put off telling her mainly because he had no idea how to approach it.

Now he was closer to graduating high school so the time to tell her of his decision was looming and he knew the longer he left it, the worse it was going to be. He had organised to stay over at Jack's house on the weekend he graduated, and hoped to see Brennan during that day and tell her then, the only thing he was unsure of now was how she was going to take his impending news.

It was now the weekend before he was to graduate and the weekend he was staying across the road from her house. He had spoken to Jack and after he had spent most of the day with her new friends the two of them split away from the group, where he hoped he would be able to tell her about his career choice. He managed to find a quiet park, one similar to the one they used to meet up in when she lived close to him and he convinced her to stop there so he could talk to her.

"Why have we stopped here Booth?" she asked him, she could sense he was anxious about something because he had been behaving out of the ordinary all day.

"I need to talk to you about something important Bones," he said to begin with, he still had no idea how to exactly break the news to her, so he thought if he just got the words out he would deal with the rest later.

"What Booth?"

"You know how I am graduating in a week; well I didn't end up finishing with the best scores in the world, which means my options for college are limited. And after the sports scholarship was kind of quashed last year, I have decided my last option is to join the army, the rangers," he said. It wasn't until he finished that he looked at her to gage her reaction.

"Umm…so what would that mean would you have to go and do some special training soon, or what?" she asked after a few minutes. He could tell she was going to hold off her emotions until necessary and focus on the details, and if that's what she wanted for now that's what he was going to give her.

"Well, after I have graduated I will have to register and six weeks into the summer they have a training course which lasts about a month, which I will have to go to. Depending on my skills I may be deployed for combat or not and well we will see from there," he told her. She nodded in response trying to take this new information in. Booth moved closer to her and put his arms around her shoulders and pulled her into his chest and held her tight. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pushed her head into his shoulder, and he kissed her forehead, knowing that this was comfort enough for now until she was ready to talk about it more.