The General nodded.
“I agree with you,” he said. “I know that you have the best for your men in mind, and that means a lot to me. Obviously, as you know, and as we've talked about, there have been problems with losing SEALs. I don't want to lose anymore, and God knows we can't afford to replace any more of you guys. The attrition rate is crippling the operation.”
“Well, sir, not if you don't allow it,” Bradley said. “And the best way to do that is let me handle the training schedule. That, I think would be a big step in the right direction.”
“I already put you in charge of that,” the General said with a smile. “No way to talk your way out of it now!”
They both watched the sunset. It was beautiful, and threw rays of red and gold up into the sky, staining the western horizon a rust color that was only seen in the most spectacular sunsets. Bradley hoped that the General was being sincere about letting him handle things from now on. What he didn't want to have happen, and what had happened to him in the past during similar situations, was that he found out the promises were all hollow, with no real substance behind them.
The General seemed like he was content with his decision, as he pulled out his pipe and started smoking. There wasn't a lot else to talk about, except for Jasmine, and Bradley didn't want to speak about Jasmine with her father at the moment. But the more that the General sat there puffing on his pipe, the more Bradley realized that the General was going to force a conversation about his daughter.
“You know,” the General began. “I really do approve you seeing Jasmine. And I know that things right now are a little early on, and you two might not want to put a lot of pressure on it right from the get go.”
Bradley wanted nothing more than to get up and leave. The sun was still setting, birds were still circling around them, some of them diving down the length of the waterfall to dart their beaks into the water and spear a fish. It was still a nice moment, and he didn't want it to end with a jilted conversation about something the General had no business talking to him about.
But it wasn't that simple, and Bradley knew it. He remembered the words of James, how he'd told Bradley how Jasmine had cost some of his friend’s rank. Now Bradley was starting to think that maybe he would get bit as well.
“I'm not trying to pressure anything,” the General said. “But I do want to let you know that, if you break my little girl's heart, I'll break you.”
With that the General got up and headed back down the stairway to his car. That was exactly what Bradley had been afraid of. He didn't mind if the General spoke to him respectfully about what was going on between him and his daughter, but he sure as hell didn't need threats to reinforce the idea that fucking over Jasmine would be a really great way to turn an easy duty station into a really terrible one. As Bradley watched the light disappear in the west he wasn't so sure about the General anymore. And he knew that he needed to speak with Jasmine.
Chapter 5
“I hate it when he does this.”
Jasmine was sitting across from him at a small coffee shop that one of her friends ran. The shop had closed about an hour ago, but they were still hanging out and talking. The place often stayed open for customers who were regulars if one of the employees didn't have anything going on. That was the good part about working at a coffee shop that treated you well, Bradley and Jasmine were told, sometimes the employees liked it at work more than they did at home.
“Does he usually do this sort of thing?” Bradley asked.
“He seems to,” Jasmine said. “Even though I keep telling him to lay off. He thinks that what he says is right all of the time because of the military. I mean, I literally told him this week that I didn't want him to do anything like the conversation you just had. But he doesn't listen because in his world he can do something wrong and just get out of it. He isn't of the mind where something he does can be so wrong there isn't really a way to repair the damage.”
Bradley shifted in his seat, uncomfortable again, but this time sitting on cushions instead of a wooden bench.
“Do you think that he means well?” Bradley asked, although he had the suspicion that she had already answered that question, and not just with him, but with the other guys who had lost rank as well.
“Bradley,” Jasmine said. “I know that it seems a little crazy, but yes, I think my father does have my best interest in mind. At times it can be a little bit much, and I end up getting pushed away by him more than anything else, but I know that deep down he isn't trying to be an asshole. He really does think that what he's doing is the right thing to do. But it just isn't. And we both know that. There isn't any way that he should be talking to you about our relationship as if it's something for him to check in on.”
Bradley was listening, but he was also being real that this was changing how he felt about Jasmine. Before, she'd been something sweet, although forbidden. Bradley found his past shortsightedness alarming, now. He should have known better, should have seen it coming. And there had been James at first, too, telling him to stay away.
“So I heard a rumor about you and James?” Bradley asked.
“What?” Jasmine said.
Bradley hadn't heard anything, but was playing a hunch. He knew that there had been more to what James had said, but it hadn't been what he'd thought at the time. But now he was starting to realize that the “friends” James had been talking about had really been him.
“We saw each other for a few months,” Jasmine said. “But it was nothing serious. Who told you about this, anyway?”
“Your father brought it up,” Bradley said without hesitation—it was time for him to see what Jasmine was really about.
“My father,” she said.
Bradley nodded. Jasmine turned crimson and shook her head.
“It wasn't enough that he busted James down for it, but now he has to tell people who I'm actually interested in,” Jasmine said. “Listen, I'm not OK with what he did. I'm not trying to make excuses for him. My father that is, and I mean to you. What happened with James was a little different. Me and James were fuck buddies and my father found out. So we tried to make up some kind of story that would throw him off that line of thought.”
Bradley was listening, but at the same time he was feeling like he really needed some distance. He just wanted to be away, by himself for a little bit. There wasn't much else that was going to stand in for solitude in this particular circumstance. If the General brought it up Bradley would just say that he felt a little too much pressure from the relationship and decided to slow it down so, he could focus more of his energy on his role as a trainer of SEALs.
“We figured,” it was Jasmine continuing, even though she looked peeved that Bradley wasn't hanging on to her every word. “Well, it's probably more accurate to say that we will ourselves to believe. We believed that my dad would be all right with a story where James broke my heart and we could never see each other again. We were both over it, so it seemed like the best thing to do. But it turned out that my father is kind of a control freak. He'd liked that me and James were 'serious' as I'd once mentioned in an offhand, how do I get off this subject kind of way.”
Bradley's head was spinning. He wasn't sure what to think anymore. Jasmine's story added up, and it was good to have the air cleared, but it was still a lot to process. Bradley didn't care that Jasmine had slept with James; Bradley wasn't the kind of guy who cared about such things. It was just that his hunch had turned out to be founded, there was merit in thinking that something had gone on in the not too distant past, and he should be at least passingly aware of it. And that scared him a little bit. Because Bradley realized it was foolish to move quickly. He needed to get to know Jasmine much better before they even put a label on what they were doing.
“I just need some time,” Bradley answered without looking at Jasmine. “I'm not saying anything but that—and it means just how it sounds. I just need some time to think, to process what is happening.”
Bradley d
idn't know what to make of Jasmine's dismayed face. He couldn't tell if it was something between being let down and lied to, or if he was just numb. He got up to leave without saying anything else, wishing that it had all gone another way from the start. He wanted to go back to when he was speaking with James in the car, ask James exactly how it had all happened. And it wasn't some weird, territorial bullshit that he was thinking about doing; the hypothetical in his head was purely from the place of wanting it to go right from the start. That was why he regretted the conversation that had just happened so much, and with an immediacy that matched the pitch of his emotions. There just wasn't enough trust in the relationship for the seriousness to be there. The General had thrust a great weight upon it, and the flimsy structure just wasn't able to hold it up—so there had been a kind of collapse.
Even as Bradley settled into sleep for the night he knew that he wasn't over it, or through with it. He just needed some space. Anyone would need some space after what had just happened. Bradley didn't feel bad, although there was certainly the regret. He knew that he was in the right. He knew that he wouldn’t have done it another way. What he didn't know what Jasmine was thinking at the moment.
Bradley wasn't assuming that she was just some sheltered brat who always got what she wanted. He did think, however, that she didn't have nearly the real world experience that she let on. He knew that she'd probably had plenty of fun with guys, but he was also willing to wager that, when it came to real adult relationships, she most likely didn't have any stories that were positive.
Bradley didn't have very many serious relationship experiences to fall back on, but he had enough where he knew that something was amiss. If it wasn't Jasmine, then it was his feelings about the whole ordeal. As he drifted off to sleep Bradley knew that he was going to have some interesting time in the land of nod. Whenever real life stressed him out, that's what happened.
Chapter 6
Bradley was on an oil rig. He thought it was the next level of the training he'd been doing—taking the entire operation to a live rig was the logical next step, but he couldn't be sure—but for some reason he was having a hard time recalling how he ended up at the very bottom rung of this rig. He wondered if the General hadn't gone to the next level and had him knocked out somehow, put something in his food or drink, and set it up so that he'd been drugged and taken away. This would be the very bleeding edge of training simulations, and Bradley hadn't ever heard of anything like it before. He knew that sometimes the SEALs did things that made them pass out underwater, but he'd never heard of anything that was this much of a mind-fuck. Bradley was impressed to the point where he wasn't angry about it, and started looking around for his team.
It was a dark night, with no stars. Bradley looked for them to try and figure out where in the world he was at. Because that was a real question now. He could potentially be anywhere, and he wasn't going to kid himself otherwise. The General was the kind of guy who would really fuck with him because of the thing he was having with Jasmine.
As he moved around the catwalks Bradley thought about how fucked he was if he didn't find his team. Without them he was just some dude with a gun. With them he was a SEAL. That was something that young SEALs didn't understand. All of them had this attitude that they were the terminator. The guys on his team were solid, though, and that was minimized in them because Bradley had taken the time to really break down how much they needed each other.
As he moved up a ladder, Bradley wished now more than ever that he knew what the fuck was really going on. When he reached the next platform and was on his feet again he tried to check his magazine to see if there were real rounds, or simulation rounds, but it wouldn't detach from the receiver. There was something wrong with his weapon, but Bradley knew he didn't have time to deal with it. That also meant that he couldn't trust the weapon, though. With no way to test it that didn't involve pulling the trigger and potentially alerting hostile forces to his presence, Bradley had no choice but to carry it around as if it were a live weapon. He guessed he would have to switch quickly to his pistol if something went wrong, but when his hand moved to place a reassuring caress on the back of his pistol butt, it wasn't there.
Alarm bells were going off like crazy in Bradley's head. This had to be some set up by the General. The old man must have completely lost it when Jasmine told him how the talk they'd had had gone south, with Bradley saying that he needed time to himself. Bradley couldn't believe it had gone this far though.
Or was this a training exercise? That was something that was a very real possibility. But Bradley didn't have the luxury of assuming such things. He had to be sharp, and he had to find his men. Where were they?
The oil rig's catwalks seemed to form a labyrinthine forever twisting in on itself. For a while, Bradley did his best to maneuver his way through series of corridors suspended between iron girders. It wasn't long before he realized it was a dream. There was no other way for so many twists and turns, ladders up and down, to lead absolutely nowhere. There had to be something else going on, and that something was a dream.
Just when Bradley realized it was a dream, something changed. In the lower levels of the catwalks there were pirates storming their way up. Bradley wasn't sure what they were there for, or if they were technically the enemy, but he did know that he had more or less no choice but to climb. So climb he did, up and up, from ladder to ladder, racing down corridors in an effort to find the next ladder that would take him up.
There was something in the back of his mind that told him he was wasting his time, though. Something that seemed to know how all of this would turn out, no matter how fast Bradley ran and climbed. Bradley tried to push the negative thoughts out of his head, tried to remain focused on the goal of making it out of there alive. That was all that mattered to him now. But at the same time, Bradley knew that it was a dream. But in the same way that dreams tend to overtake what reality would have been, Bradley never thought of just letting the opposition forces overtake him to see what would happen. In his mind he had to keep going, and going, and going. It was like training, except real, while at the same time being a dream.
Bradley looked for the rest of his team as he ran, but instead of seeing them, he heard them. A cold, damp fog had enveloped the rig and Bradley couldn't see anything through it. But he didn't need to. What he heard was bad enough. Somewhere in the mists his team was being tortured. One by one, the pirates were really tearing them apart—literally. The old school, on the spot training methods employed by pirates at sea weren't pretty at all, and always ended with the person being interrogated dying.
Bradley wanted to scream, wanted to do something, but instead, he woke up.
Chapter 7
The next morning, he was up early, not being able to get back to sleep. Normally he wouldn't have caught Jasmine trying to be sneaky and taping a note to his door.
“Well, hello there,” Bradley said, swinging his door wide open with a pleased look on his face.
Jasmine gave him a look of defiance that quickly deflated.
“Listen,” Jasmine said. “Can you please just listen? I know that things are fucked up between us, but I just want to talk is all. That's all I was doing, taping an invitation to conversation on your door.”
Bradley nodded, having no doubt that she was telling the truth. It was always nice to see her, he realized. There was something about Jasmine that made him drop his guard, made him think that everything would be all right with the world.
“Do you want to come in?” Bradley said, gesturing back into his room. “I know it isn't much, but at the same time, it's all I got.”
Jasmine blushed as she walked into his small living quarters. Bradley was used to the way people reacted to on base housing. Everyone thought that the small rooms they'd see on television, or in newspapers, somehow weren't the real things. So when people came into his room, knowing that Bradley was a SEAL, and knowing what that actually meant, they always seemed embarrassed that he had so little worl
dly possessions.
Bradley didn't look at it as a negative thing, though. There were plenty of people around the world who had way more than he did and weren't as happy; and just as many people who had less who were happier. Life wasn't measured by the material goods one built up for themselves, life was measured in strange ways that Bradley was still trying to figure out.
“You'd think they'd give you a bigger room?” Jasmine said, looking around.
“Yeah,” Bradley said. “I don't know if having better digs will ever really be in the cards for any military personnel. I mean, at this rate, they're just trying to keep SEAL teams alive long enough to get them in the field so they can do their jobs.”
Jasmine looked like she wasn't sure what else to say or do, and it was obvious what was going on. Bradley grabbed her and kissed her, pulling her close. Jasmine let her head tilt back, exposing her neck and the hollow of her throat. They both melted into each other’s arms, loving every second. The smell of sex filled the room as they pawed at each other—the AC didn't work so well in Bradley's room, which usually didn't affect his life because he slept with the windows open. But, now, the room felt like a sauna.
Bradley tried to focus on what he was doing, but it was hard. Jasmine was a hell of a girl, and she loved holding him down and pushing her bust in his face. There was something she loved about how he reacted to her. He completely got that she was turned on by turning him on, but Bradley wished he could think clearly. He needed to really fuck her well this time, as he was likely to ship out any day—it wasn't that he knew something the average Joe didn't, it was just that he'd been idle too long already. Jasmine's hands moved up and down Bradley's body, he loved how she explored every muscle he had. It felt like someone touching a man for the first time, although Bradley knew that wasn't the case.
Romance: The Bad Boy Affair: A Second Chance Romance Page 114
