Wheels Up

by Annabeth Albert

  The message was from the base. He had five hours to report. They did this sometimes, a test of readiness. He had no way of predicting whether it was training or the real deal, no way of knowing whether he’d be kept at the base or gone days or weeks or months. It was just the way it was, but for the first time in a long time, he groaned at the message.

  He wanted just another few hours with Dustin. Wanted to wake up with him. Didn’t even want morning sex as much as just more time. Sharing breakfast. Talking. Making sure Dustin wasn’t too freaked out by what had happened. But it wasn’t to be.

  He scrambled around, gathering his things, flipping on a low light. He was zipping up his jeans when Dustin finally stirred. “What...where you going?”

  Hating the vulnerability in Dustin’s sleepy eyes, Wes went to crouch next to the bed. “I’ve been called back. Nothing about you, I promise. It’s the job.”

  “I understand.” Dustin nodded sharply, but his eyes stayed wary.

  Fuck. Wes hated this. “I’m going to try to be on chat later, but if I’m not, it’s because I was...called away. The job. Not you. This was amazing.”

  “No regrets?” Dustin’s head tilted to the side. His hair was all messed up, adorable bedhead, and Wes wanted nothing more than to crawl back in next to him, mess him up further.

  “Absolutely none.” Acting on instinct, Wes pressed a fast kiss to Dustin’s forehead. “You?”

  Taking a moment, Dustin finally shook his head. His eyes were shuttered, the distance back between them, instead of the coziness they’d enjoyed post-sex. And it was Wes’s fault, and nothing he could do to fix it. “No regrets. Drive safe.”

  “I will.” It was hard to swallow around the lump in his throat. “Message me?”

  Dustin nodded, and Wes couldn’t tell whether or not to believe him. Hell, he couldn’t even guarantee he’d be around to get the message anyway. Fuck, this sucked. He gave Dustin another fast forehead kiss, still not trusting himself with more. He was already going to miss Dustin like crazy, so there was no sense in making it worse. The call was just another reminder of what he couldn’t have in his life right now, no matter how much Dustin made him wish otherwise.

  No regrets, he reminded himself as he hurried to his jeep, eyes stinging with more than just the chilly early morning air dogging his steps. No regrets.

  Chapter Five

  “Big day ahead of us.” The LT, Dustin’s commanding officer, was a short man with a huge presence, and he seemed to take up more than his fair share of the small office where the team’s leadership was having their morning briefing.

  The senior chief took a long sip of his steaming coffee. “Yup. We’re expecting Lowe any moment, right?”

  “Lowe?” Dustin hated that he already felt behind the eight ball that morning. The LT was notorious for not keeping him in the loop on important shit. As XO, Dustin might be second-in-command, but the LT had a way of making him feel like a green ensign again.

  “They finally got us a replacement for Tomlin. He’s scheduled to report shortly.” The LT looked at Dustin like he should know this already, when Dustin was one-hundred-percent sure this was the first he’d heard of it. Tomlin had processed out last month due to an injury on a recent mission, along with the retirement of another teammate, and the higher-ups had been taking their sweet time getting them new SEALs for the team.

  “New recruit?” Dustin asked. The latest BUD/S class had just received their tridents. Much as he loved their enthusiasm, he wasn’t looking forward to integrating someone green to the team.

  “Nope, although they’re sending us one of those in the next few days as well.” The senior chief laughed. “But no new recruit is going to be able to duplicate Tomlin’s skills with explosives. The higher-ups are sending us a man out of Little Creek—Wesley Lowe. Absolute savant with explosives.”

  “He better be,” the LT said darkly.

  Dustin tried to follow along with what the two of them said next, but his breath had caught at the name Wesley. Wes. It wasn’t his Wes, of course, but just the sound of that name took him back a month earlier to DC, and that night that would be burned in his memories forever.

  Wes had been busy, as he’d predicted, and hadn’t been around much online. They’d chatted here and there, but something was missing. The easy camaraderie they’d had before DC was gone, replaced with a tentativeness that Dustin hadn’t anticipated and didn’t know what to do about. All he knew was that he missed Wes with a ferocity that made his nerves jangle and his chest ache whenever he thought about him. And when they did talk, that missing him was worse, not better.

  The phone on the LT’s desk buzzed and he picked up. “Lowe’s here. You want to bring him in?” he asked Dustin. “Might as well meet him here, then we can introduce him to the rest of the team.”

  Dustin suppressed a sigh. He was used to the LT treating him as a glorified personal assistant. He headed out of the LT’s office to the lobby. The team spent most of its time in various training exercises, but the different SEAL teams had space in the office buildings on base too, mainly for the stacks of paperwork that fell to leadership.

  The lobby was about as inviting as a county health office—a couple of metal chairs near the doors, a sterile desk with high walls where their beleaguered receptionist sat, a few cubicles behind him for the office support staff, with the offices and conference rooms down a hall beyond him.

  A lone figure sat on the chair closest to Dustin, sea bag at his feet. Dark hair. Long nose. Full mouth. Slim but strong shoulders.

  Oh fuck no. No. No. Dustin drew up short. It couldn’t be. It fucking couldn’t be. His Wes? Here?

  “Lowe?” he squeaked. Fucking squeaked like a newbie recruit back in basic training.

  Wes whirled around, eyes going dinner-plate wide and skin paler than those hotel room sheets back in DC. “Dustin?” he whispered, barely audible.

  Dustin was intensely aware of the receptionist nearby. God, he wanted to run to Wes, hold him close, bury his face in his hair, see if he smelled as good as Dustin remembered. But of course he couldn’t do any of that. Could only school his expression to remain blank and his lips to lie. “Lowe? I’m Lieutenant Dustin Strauss, the team’s XO. Follow me.”

  Do it, he told Wes with his eyes, jerking his head in the direction of the hall. Swallowing hard, Wes nodded and stood, hefting his bag over one shoulder.

  “What the fuck?” Dustin whispered the second they were out of earshot. “What the fuck is this? You orchestrate this?”

  “Me?” Both Wes’s eyes went skyward. “Corporal Oorah? You’re the one who said he was Marines. You think I arranged this?”

  Dustin scrubbed at his head. He knew Wes hadn’t been feigning surprise back in the lobby, but this was one hell of a coincidence. “I never said I was Marines. You assumed. You, however, said you were in security. Always figured you were MP on some army base—”

  “I am in security. National Security. And I knew better than to admit I was a SEAL on...there.” Wes kept shaking his head and blinking like that might clear up this fucking nightmare.

  “Likewise.” Dustin took some deep breaths, which helped exactly not at all. “And I tried to only talk to non-navy personnel. For obvious reasons.”

  “Obvious.” Wes’s breath came in little pants as if he too were having a hard time getting his lungs to cooperate. Dustin tried hard to banish the memory of Wes’s breath coming hard for entirely different reasons. “This is a fucking disaster.”

  “What are we going to do?” Dustin sure as hell hoped Wes had a good idea.

  “Do?” Wes gaped at him. Okay, then. Maybe not.

  You’re the freaking lieutenant. Act like it.

  “We don’t know each other. Obviously.” Dustin scrambled to try to quiet his racing mind.

  “Obviously,” Wes echoed, but he
didn’t sound certain.

  “Listen. We go in there, act like we’re...buddies, and questions are gonna get asked. And I’m not going to make myself a target of fraternization regs. Not when I really don’t know you.”

  “Fair enough.” Wes’s expression went unreadable, eyes dark and stormy, jaw firm enough to chisel marble. “Lead the way?”

  “Just like that?” Dustin had expected more pushback. This fast compliance had little in common with the mouthy, assertive man online who didn’t take any of Dustin’s BS.

  “They’re waiting, right? Let’s not give them reason to get impatient. Or suspicious. God knows we can’t risk tarnishing your stellar reputation, Lieutenant.”

  “Wes—” Dustin tried to stop him, hating the bitterness in Wes’s voice, but Wes was already striding down the hall, forcing Dustin to catch up.

  “We’re in here,” Dustin said once he reached Wes’s side. He led Wes—Lowe into the small office, which felt twice as claustrophobic as usual. To the LT and the senior chief, he said, “This is Petty Officer Lowe.”

  Wes’s uniform displayed his E-5 rate of Petty Officer Second Class. That he was enlisted was a kick in the nads, and Dustin wasn’t joking about the fraternization rules—he was an officer and senior team leadership to boot. There would be hell to pay, even for a close friendship, and he absolutely couldn’t risk that with any of his enlisted men. Not that he’d ever once been tempted before Wes. Fuck. This fucking sucked, and even as his mind raced, he forced his expression to remain neutral.

  The senior chief, who did a lot of the managing of the enlisted men, went over a bunch of mundane things like Wes checking into the barracks—Lowe, Lowe, Lowe. He can’t be Wes. Not anymore. The senior chief’s words faded away, replaced by an awful buzzing in Dustin’s ears and a crushing weight on his chest.

  When Dustin was fifteen, the family dog had been hit by a car, and his father had given him a stoic “real men don’t cry” lecture about handling his grief. Dustin felt similarly adrift right now, the loss of his friend slamming into him, knowing that he had to stay strong, that he couldn’t afford to fall apart. But this wasn’t just an inconvenience. It meant never again could he be anything more than Wes’s superior officer. No more late-night chats. No more...anything. From this moment forward, whatever he’d had with Wes in the past was dead.

  * * *

  Wes wanted off this carnival ride and a redo on the entire past month. They were walking from the office building to meet the team—the one he absolutely did not want to be on—before a scheduled beach run and he’d managed to hang back next to Dustin, letting the senior chief and the LT get in front of them.

  It was still early—Wes had been on a red-eye from Virginia and then straight to the base. No time for food even, and apparently same as his old team—the one he missed like crazy already—the LT liked getting administrative stuff out of the way before the sun even came up. This LT looked to be right around Dustin’s age and a serious hard-charger. Wes had met his type before—straight As in school and at the Academy, BUD/S a piece of cake, sailing up the ranks and wondering why the hell it wasn’t so easy for everyone else. He was shorter than Wes, but stocky with an assertive voice that carried even as they walked, and he bantered about coffee with the senior chief.

  “We need to talk.” Wes kept his voice pitched low but firm, no room for arguments as he spoke to Dustin for the first time since the hallway.

  “Not here.” Dustin’s tone was all officious indifference, and Wes wanted to shake him, remind him who he really was. But who knew? Maybe the guy Wes had thought he’d known was all an act, and this was the real Dustin. Which was exactly why they needed to talk.

  “Fine. But soon. Today.” Wes kept his head straight ahead, didn’t allow himself the luxury of looking at Dustin. If anyone observed them, they needed to be seen making bland small talk, and Wes wasn’t sure that his eyes could keep up the ruse if he looked into Dustin’s face. Every time he saw him, he kept flashing back to DC. Dustin laughing. Dustin nervous. Dustin’s head thrown back in passion. Dustin sleeping. All sorts of faces that seemed at total odds with this tough-guy lieutenant who was making it very clear he wanted nothing to do with Wes.

  Well, fuck that noise. Wes wasn’t done with him. He had a shitload of anger to work through here, anger that had only increased every moment they’d been in the LT’s office together.

  “Message me when we’re off duty. And you’re alone,” Dustin lectured him in a low voice like Wes was seriously going to call him in the middle of the chow hall or something. Wes was not an idiot here, although apparently he’d been a fool, thinking he could trust Dustin, even a little.

  “Fine.” He couldn’t say more since they were about to enter the locker room area where they’d get changed for the run.

  “This will be your locker.” The senior chief gestured at one without a lock on it. He was a few years older than Dustin—probably mid-to-late thirties with a big barrel chest and ruddy red cheeks. “Used to be Tomlin’s. A first-rate SEAL and a hell of an explosives technician. Don’t mind telling you, you’ve got big shoes to fill.”

  Great. For the millionth time, Wes wanted to know why in the hell he was here, filling the hole this Tomlin had left. He’d been...well, happy wasn’t entirely accurate, but settled at Little Creek after almost five years there. He’d been out west here for BUD/S training and hated it. Hated the dry weather. Hated the tan people and the particular shade of sunlight out here. He knew the East Coast, liked it better, and needed to be near his family. He’d been damn relieved to get orders to the team at Little Creek after his SEAL training was complete. The possibility of a transfer hadn’t even been on his radar, even though maybe it should have been.

  But the navy said jump, and he said how high, and that was just the way of it. The brass hadn’t given him a choice about the transfer, nor the speed at which they’d pushed it through. They’d said that this team needed someone like him, while his old team had a younger guy coming up who was also good with explosives. Not quite to Wes’s level, but few were, and his teammate was still damned good. But why couldn’t the navy have sent him to California? Why did it have to be Wes?

  The same questions that had batted around his brain for weeks made it hard to focus as the senior chief made the introductions. Most of the sixteen-member team were enlisted men like Wes, then the LT and the XO as officers along with a young ensign whose name Wes promptly forgot. Like at Little Creek, this platoon was part of a larger team made of many platoons with a complicated command structure, but most of his day-to-day work would be with these sixteen men, like it or not.

  So, he tried to be friendly even if he felt like dog crap—he hadn’t slept well at all on the plane, wanted his old team back, hated making small talk, and didn’t like how reverently everyone talked about this Tomlin whom he was replacing.

  “You’ll be right down the hall from me in the barracks,” said a burly guy who everyone seemed to call Curly but whose real name was Carl or Kurt or something like that. “I’ll keep a lookout for you at the chow hall, okay?”

  Wes nodded, hoping he seemed encouraging enough even if the faces were starting to blur together.

  “And you let me know if I can help out with anything until your stuff arrives. I’ve got an Xbox and things that you’re welcome to come use.”

  “Thanks.” The bulk of Wes’s belongings were being shipped by the navy’s moving company and would arrive sometime in the next few weeks. He’d stored some stuff with his parents too, not that he had a ton of crap to start with. Barracks rooms were small, but thank God they were singles and he wouldn’t be sharing, and he wasn’t a guy who needed a lot of possessions. Hell, he didn’t even have a car at the moment—that too was being shipped by the navy.

  “Have you eaten?” The senior chief looked him over with a critical eye, like he was already expecting Wes to fail at th
e run.

  “On the plane, sir.” Wes knew better than to lie, but he added. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Here.” He stuck a protein bar in Wes’s hand. “Curly? You make sure Lowe here has extra portions after we’re done, and you get him and his stuff into the barracks.” To Wes he added, “No heroics, kid. Just run, but you don’t gotta impress anyone.”

  Ha. Wes knew they were all sizing him up against this mythical Tomlin, waiting for him to fall short. They set out on the run along the Coronado beach—heavy boots pounding the sand, passing other teams as they went. Slowly, Wes let his shock at seeing Dustin wear off, let the run chase away some of his anger. Fuck, what would he even say to Dustin when they talked later? How were they supposed to deal?

  He’d missed Dustin something awful since DC, and while he hadn’t had a ton of time to chat, he’d been working up to telling him that he was going to be on the same coast as him now...and wasn’t that plan all shot to hell now? Fucking lieutenant. Fucking lying lieutenant. And okay, maybe his anger wasn’t quite gone. He kicked it up another notch, moving ahead to the middle of the pack. Forget food. He was fueled by all the regrets in the world, the SNAFU that was his life currently, and the bitter reality that nothing was as he thought.

  Chapter Six

  Dustin poured himself two fingers of scotch before he even took off his uniform back at his condo. He really wasn’t much of a drinker anymore, but some days just required it. Such as learning that his super-secret online jerk-off buddy was his newest subordinate? Yeah, make his a double. Still not looking at his phone, he stripped off the uniform and put on a pair of black athletic shorts. It was nice night. Any other night with a breeze like this, he might think about taking the boat out for a spin, clear his head before settling in for the night. But his cell reception was crap out on the channel, and he’d told Wes they’d talk.