SEAL Camp

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “I will never live that down,” Jake came up from his place at the grill and reached over to take and kiss Zoe’s hand as the entire group erupted in laughter. “When we celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary, Zoe’s gonna tell that story.”

  “You know it,” she said, smiling back at him.

  A loud clatter from the kitchen made the conversation stop. “Everyone all right in there?” Syd called.

  “Guess what, Syd,” Luke called back. “Great news! When the party’s over, Space and I are gonna clean the interior of the fridge and wash the kitchen floor. Hoo-yah!”

  “Hoo-yah, indeed!” she called back as she rolled her eyes. “There’s a shelf on the door that’s broken. It’s rigged with duct tape, but it’s got a weight limit, and someone always fails to read the memo. This year, apparently, it’s Spaceman.”

  As everyone again laughed, Colleen took the opportunity to lean in and quietly ask, “You okay?”

  “Yeah, do I not look okay?” Ashley whispered back.

  “You poured yourself a very large glass of wine.”

  Oh, crap, she had. “I didn’t even really want any.”

  Colleen held out her own plastic “glass,” and Ashley gratefully poured half into it, realizing that Col was still whispering to her. “…look great.”

  Oh, God. “Yeah, he really does, doesn’t he?”

  “You either didn’t or can’t hear me,” Colleen said. “I said you look great.”

  “Oh,” Ashley said. “Thanks. Oh, God. Maybe I should leave. I mean, I had an entire plan figured out, but…”

  “Don’t you dare,” Colleen said.

  “So I’ve been banished from the kitchen,” Jim Slade announced.

  Ashley looked up to see him coming out onto the deck. His words were aimed at Sydney. “Anything out here you want me to break…?”

  There was more laughter, but Colleen stood up since there were no empty chairs. “Here, Space, you can sit here.”

  Jim looked from her to Ashley. “Oh. Don’t I… need to hold a baby to sit out here?”

  “I’ll go find you one,” Colleen said.

  “Oh, good,” Jim said. “Can you bring me an owner’s manual first, because I’ve never held one and I’m the guy who just broke the freaking refrigerator, so…”

  “You’ve seriously never held a baby?” Brittany asked Jim.

  “Don’t look at me,” Dave said. “I’m not giving up mine. He can find his own baby.”

  “Mine,” Dunk announced, “has just filled his diaper, but even I am not cruel enough to hand him to a newbie like Spaceman Slade. I could use a little assistance, however, both in standing up and getting this monster, I mean sweet angel to the nearest toxic waste removal area, because oh my Jesus God…”

  “I got this,” Jake said, taking the still sleeping baby from Dunk’s arms. “Dear God, you weren’t kidding… Come on, Senior. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  “Is it okay if I, um…” Jim was still standing and he pointed to the seat that Colleen had vacated as Ashley realized he was asking her if he could sit.

  “Of course,” she said. “Yes.” As he stepped closer, she realized… “Your toenails are very pink.”

  “Yes,” he said. “They are. Neon, I believe it’s called. Joe and Veronica’s daughter was offering mani-pedis, and the twins wanted their nails done, but they got into an argument, because some kid at school told one of them that boys couldn’t or shouldn’t, so I said Boys, get in line behind me. And then I said, Yo, Veronica’s Mini-Me, I’ll take the neon pink, please. I feel it will work best with both my outfit and skin tone.”

  Ashley laughed as her heart lurched. He was still so… Jim. Which made sense. Just because she’d kept her distance for the past few months didn’t mean that he’d stopped being funny and smart. “You were very right.”

  “Damn straight. I recently watched the new season of Queer Eye,” he admitted. “I’ve been spending a lot of time resting my knees.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve been studying for the LSATs, and getting ready to apply to law school—my top choice is here in San Diego, of course and… I’ve also been talking to the team over at JAG. Nobody’s made any promises, but we all know I want to stay in the Navy.” He smiled wryly. “And not just because I already have the uniforms.”

  “That’s great that you figured that out,” Ashley told him, and her heart lurched again as their gazes caught and held and his smile faded.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I’m getting there, you know. I just keep telling myself progress, not perfection.” He cleared his throat. “Hey, how’re Kenneth and Clark?”

  “Kenneth’s great. Completely recovered. Back to eating donuts and drinking beer,” she said. “The big twist is that Clark’s so completely in love with Kenneth’s sister Louise, that he’s gone gluten-free. She has celiac, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jim said. “Wow. Clark still wanna be a SEAL?”

  “More than ever,” Ashley said. “He’s been impressing me a lot lately. I think he might actually do it. I connected him with Kathy Gordon, the chief—my recruiter friend…? After he graduates, I think he’s going to join the Navy—as an officer, if you can believe that.”

  “I can,” Jim said. “Absolutely.”

  “Oh,” Ashley said, “this is funny. I finally had lunch with Brad. My ex?”

  “Oh, I remember Brad. Yes.”

  “I called him a few days after I got back from camp,” Ash said. “I was done hiding… I called my father, too. I just… pretended I was in command, and I was.” She’d told her dad, pretty much pointblank, that she loved him, but she didn’t want to live in his cutthroat corporate world. I know my world is imperfect, but at least here, I have hope for something better…

  “So, how’s Brad, um, doing?” Jim asked.

  “He’s… great,” she told him. “He was out of the country when I first called and… anyway, he eventually called me back and he wanted to meet, so I figured why not and… Turns out he’s engaged. He’s getting married. That’s why he showed up, you know, knocking on my door, freaking me out…? He wanted to tell me that, face-to-face.”

  Jim looked at her. “And… give you a chance to say, Oh, Brad, please don’t…?”

  “Maybe there was a bit of that in there, too,” she said. “There was a certain stench of creepiness to that lunch, but I was like, Congratulations!” She did jazz hands and Jim laughed. “And I do hope that he’s happy…” She looked at him. “I hope you’re happy, too. You seem… well.”

  Jim nodded. “I’m not sure I’d call it happy, but I’m… doing okay. Yeah. You also look… well.”

  “I am,” she said. “Thanks.”

  But now he was shaking his head. “Yeah, I’m sorry, the word that came out of my mouth was well, when what I really meant was amazing. You look amazing, and seeing you, and talking to you again is… fucking amazing. I’m sorry if that’s too, um, much, or, God, I don’t know…”

  Ashley interrupted him. “That was also my definition, when I said you looked well. I meant fucking amazing, too.”

  She’d stunned him. Whatever he was expecting her to say, it wasn’t that. And now when he met and held her gaze, he was that same man who’d bared his soul to her in Florida. But right now, he couldn’t do more than whisper, “Ash…?” It was a question, as if he couldn’t quite believe what she’d just said.

  So she cleared her throat and clarified. It was, after all, her plan. “I was wondering if you’d maybe want to go out and get… coffee… with me… sometime.”

  “Oh, thank God!” he said, and for a half a second, she was convinced he was going to cry. But he ran both hands down his face and took a deep breath, and said, “Yes. Please. How about dinner instead? Tonight? Or you know, drive to Vegas, marry me…?”

  She laughed.

  “Too soon?”

  “Yes,” Ashley said. “How about coffee, tomorrow?”

  Jim nodded. “Co
ffee tomorrow works.”

  “I need to take this slowly,” she told him.

  “I get it,” he said. “I do. What I did was… really shitty. It was inexcusable. And I’m so grateful to have a second chance to show you that… I’m not that guy, that… frightened boy. I’m better than that—or at least I know that I can be. And I… I’m looking forward to letting you have a chance to… get to know me.”

  Ashley’s heart was in her throat. “I really want you… to get to know me, too.”

  “I would like that very much,” he said. “Although I’m pretty sure I knew enough the very first time we talked. I was just too scared and… stupid to know it. I’ve been working on that, while I was, you know, giving you some space. I’m still working on a lot of things, trying to carve out another option for myself besides manipulative asshole, lying asshole, or idiotic asshole. I think I’m finally getting somewhere with desperate-for-enlightenment-and-desperately-in-love-with-you bonehead.”

  She laughed her surprise. Desperately in love…

  But Jim wasn’t done. “I’m so freaking imperfect, Ashley,” he told her quietly. “But over the past few months, I’ve learned that I can do this. I can live with the loss of this thing that I love—being a SEAL. Letting it go and moving on. It’s still hard, and some days really suck, but… I’ve been having glimpses of… new purpose and… pride. And I know that I can even… keep going… without you. If I have to. I hope I don’t have to. God knows, I don’t deserve a second chance, and I’ll do my best not to screw it up. But I’m pretty sure I’ll make mistakes. More mistakes. I mean, that’s kinda how I roll. But here’s something I know for sure: my life will be so much better with you in it. And I’ll work harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, to learn how to be the partner you deserve.”

  He sat back in his seat. “And… that was probably too much. Too heavy. I mean, coffee. That’s more, How’s Clark, although we did that. Or maybe, Hey, what’s new with you? I’ve been trying, but I still can’t pull a baseball cap out of my ass.”

  Ashley laughed. And she couldn’t resist. It wasn’t exactly taking it slowly, but she leaned in and kissed him, and she could taste his surprise. But, as if he knew just how badly and impetuously she was blowing up her own clearly set boundaries, he didn’t push it. He didn’t pull her in close, or deepen the kiss in any way. He just softly and sweetly kissed her back.

  “Oh, thank God,” she heard Colleen say.

  Ash felt herself blushing as she finally sat back, but then she saw that Jim had tears in his eyes—and he didn’t try to hide it. He just looked at her with such hope and yes, love.

  “Marry me,” he whispered.

  “Still too soon,” she whispered back, but she couldn’t hide her smile.

  And then Brittany was there, baby in her arms. “This one’s mine. His name is Rob—he was named after his favorite uncle, Bobby, and he’s five months old. So even you probably can’t break him, Space, but I’m gonna hang close just in case. You need to support his head—not as much as if he were a newborn, but you can kind of pretend…”

  Jim held out his arms and Britt gently nestled her sleepy-eyed son against his chest and he looked down at the baby, who yawned and then smiled as he reached for Jim’s nose.

  Jim laughed with delight. “He likes me! Holy—”

  “No,” Britt said flatly.

  “Moly,” Jim adapted, looking from Britt to Ashley and smiling. “Look at me, capable of learning all kinds of new things.”

  Ashley smiled. And as she sat back and listened as the SEALs and their spouses gave Jim a lively and laughter-filled crash course in Baby 101, she realized that, for the first time in a long time, she felt grounded. And when Jim turned to her and smiled, when she gazed back into his eyes, she felt as if she’d finally come home.

  Coffee, she reminded herself, but she knew that love wasn’t possible without taking a risk, without trusting and hoping and sometimes being wrong and getting hurt. And she wanted love, she wanted home—she wanted Jim.

  But she wanted the real Jim—all of him, not the Jim she thought she’d figured out and knew. And it was going to take a lifetime of learning to truly get to know him.

  As Britt finally took Rob back from Jim, as the party rolled on around them, Ashley turned to find him smiling at her. Again.

  “So,” Ash said. “Everyone here calls you Space…?”

  Jim laughed. “I seriously haven’t told you about my ridiculous nickname…?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay. Wow. Space is short for Spaceman, and I’m going to tell you the real story—the embarrassing one. Cause, you know, the fake story is that I was into NASA as a kid, and I figured I’d enter the space program, become an astronaut by being a SEAL first. Because some guys do that. But that’s not why they call me Spaceman.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Nope. I had a oxygen tank malfunction during one of my first HAHO jumps. That’s when we jump out of an airplane at a high altitude—so high that we need oxygen masks to breathe, or we’ll die. My main tank failed and I got hypoxia, which is, you know, lack of oxygen, and it made me hallucinate. And I started talking to Houston and Ground Control because I thought I was in outer space. And the senior chief—it was Randy Duncan, by the way—he’s shouting at me to switch to my backup tank. And it wasn’t until he, well, he joined me in my little fantasy and he called me Spaceman Slade, that I somehow managed to switch tanks. But he couldn’t be sure that I’d really done it, because I was, you know, orbiting whatever Class-M planet I thought I was orbiting, so he kept me talking, all the way to the ground. Because hypoxia basically goes hallucination, unconsciousness, death. And if I could talk, I was still conscious. And apparently Spaceman Slade had some things to say about boldly going, before the oxygen started working and reality kicked back in.”

  Ashley had to laugh. “How is that an embarrassing story? You almost died, but you managed to save yourself. With Dunk’s help, thank you so much, Dunk.”

  “Yeah, well, I could’ve done it more quietly. Saved myself the ridiculous nickname.”

  “I think, as far as nicknames go, Spaceman’s… pretty sexy.”

  Jim looked at her and didn’t say anything although it was very clear that he wanted to. Ashley just waited, and when he finally did speak, he said, “Coffee.”

  “Coffee,” she agreed. “And maybe dinner… next week?”

  “I would love that.” He nodded. “Okay, Ashley DeWitt. Embarrassing stories. I want to hear ’em all. It’s your turn. Go.”

  Ashley laughed. “I’ve got way too many.”

  Jim’s smile took her breath away. “I’ve got plenty of time.”

  Dear Reader,

  SEAL Camp is the twelfth book in my Tall, Dark & Dangerous series about Navy SEAL Team Ten. Like all TDD installments, even though SEAL Camp features characters who have appeared earlier in the series, the book stands alone. (Navy SEAL Lieutenant Jim “Spaceman” Slade and Colleen Skelly Taylor’s former roommate, Ashley DeWitt, both appeared in Taylor’s Temptation (TDD #10), but didn’t manage to meet until now!)

  But… because Night Watch, the last book in my TDD series, was published way back in 2003 (a variety of issues made me put the series on hold), when I finally wrote SEAL Camp, I was faced with a choice. Should I maintain the old timeline and set this book in the early 2000s…? (Pagers! Dial-up internet! Ugh! No!!) Or… should I maintain the old timeline, acknowledge the passage of time, and set the story in the current day…? (By which point even the youngest SEALs in the series would probably be retired, so all of the familiar faces would be gone. Ugh! No!!)

  Or…

  Should I do one of those funky, weird, kinda cheat-y, soap-opera-esque thangs, and warp time so that we (me-the-writer and you-the-reader) could have it all…? (Smart phones! Text messages! Wi-fi! And familiar names and faces! Yes!!)

  So yeah. As I mentioned in that little note right at the top of Chapter One, SEAL Camp is set both in the present day, and a
bout a year and a half after the end of Night Watch (TDD #11, Wes and Brittany’s book). Team CO Captain Joe Catalanotto, and Senior Chief Harvard Becker, and Lieutenant Jim Slade, and Lucky and Bobby and Wes and most of the rest of the SEALs have been in their early-to-mid-to-late-thirties for more than a dozen years. (Gee, I wish I could say the same!) Thomas King and Rio Rosetti and Mike Lee are still the young “tadpoles” of the Team. Although there’s even a newer new-guy, a SEAL named Dave. (Yeah, you’ll be seeing more of Dave.)

  And for those readers out there who have helped make “Will you ever write Thomas and Tasha’s story?” my all-time most frequently asked FAQ, my answer is an all-caps YES. In case you didn’t notice, LT (jg) Thomas King is on deck as a hero. He may not be next (I’ve got my eye on Dunk, too…) but it’s definitely time to write his book.

  If you enjoyed SEAL Camp, I’d appreciate it greatly if you’d post a review or toss it some shiny stars and/or digital buckets o’ love at your favorite on-line bookseller. You might’ve noticed that I’ve become an indie author, and I’m my own publisher now. (Ah, the freedom! OMG, the typos are now all mine!)

  But authors, particularly indie authors, depend on reader reviews more than ever in this crazy, noisy, option-filled digital world. I’m very grateful, too, when you post, share, tweet, text, and talk about my books, particularly new ones like SEAL Camp! (Thank you so very, very much!)

  I’m also producing—and writing—movies these days, with a focus on LGBTQ rom-coms. I just finished writing a screenplay for a romantic comedy called Out of Body that we’re going to be filming in summer 2018. (Watch for our Kickstarter!! How? Sign up for my e-newsletter!!)