by Linda Barlow
My gut wrenched. There, my Achilles heel. I was proud of who I was, what I had accomplished. But Cassie was out of my league. I may be a cocky SEAL, but she was a Ph.D. student. I’d been a fuckup in school. She may enjoy me for now, but when she became bored, she’d trade up and I’d be forced to see her a few Christmases from now, newly engaged to her preppy asshat boyfriend. My dad had been a professor and left my mom, Cassie would do the same to me one day. One thing I learned in the SEALs is history will repeat itself, unless you change course.
Daylight would break soon. Fuck my promise to Cassie—I absolutely refused to go to our parents’ wedding. I would be unable to hold back my anger. Their relationship was destroying what I could’ve had with Cassie.
I leaned over to Cassie, gave her a final kiss goodbye. I savored the softness of her lips, inhaled her scent for one last time. We knew all along this day would come. Even after this trip, no matter what happened between us, for the rest of her life, if she ever needed something, anything, and I was stateside, I’d drop anything to race to her side to protect her. But for now—I had to escape.
I snuck out of our hotel room and never looked back.
Chapter 51—Shane
I sat in the lobby, waiting for my mom to come down after I’d texted her. I had to at least say goodbye to her before leaving.
A young couple kissed by the lobby counter. Maybe they were here on their honeymoon. For a second, I imagined that Cassie and I were here, not on a honeymoon, but on a romantic vacation.
My mom limped toward me, dressed in a long sundress. “Shane, what is it? We’re planning to go to the church to help with the clean up.”
“I’ve got to go. This trip was already extended by the earthquake; my leave is up. A taxi is coming for me now. I wanted to say goodbye.”
My mom’s brow furrowed. “This is about Cassie, isn’t it? I see the way you look at each other. What’s going on, Shane? The truth, please.”
I sighed. My mom and I were close, it had been only us for so long. “Cassie and I had met in La Jolla a year ago, the night before I deployed. We hooked up, and I left the country without telling her. Next time I saw her was when you introduced us in Coronado. She didn’t even know I was a SEAL.”
My mom’s lips parted and she held up her hand to her mouth. “Wow. What a small world. I’m sorry we put you both in such an awkward position. We had no idea. I had my suspicions, but Henry kept saying he knew his daughter and she wasn’t interested in dating anyone.”
I cringed remembering my words to Cassie. “I don’t have lovers, I fuck.” God, was I really that much of an asshole? Maybe last night was a fluke, she’d only said she’d loved me in the heat of the moment. How could she ever love a man who had been such a prick to her?
My mom’s voice was a pleasant break from my guilty thoughts about Cassie. “Do you love her?”
Did I love her? I’d never been in love so I couldn’t even begin to answer that question. I loved having sex with her; I loved the way she’d never said no to me, in or out of the bedroom. She was adventurous. She’d caught lobsters with me. I’m sure she’d be up for rappelling, spear fishing, or cave diving. She was everything I could ever want in a woman.
I looked at the ground. “Maybe.”
My mom gasped her hands. “Have you told her that?”
“What’s the point, Mom? She’s about to be my stepsister? If not today, then next week. We’re young; if it doesn’t work out, I’m going to have to see her for the rest of my life. This was all a big fucking mistake.”
There was an awkward silence between us. I’d said too much—I was already bailing on my mom’s wedding day, I didn’t want to make her even more upset.
I glanced at my watch. “I have to go. Can you arrange to ship my bike back? I’ll pay for it.”
My mom hugged me goodbye. “Of course, Shane. Don’t worry about it. I love you. As for my marriage, nothing is decided yet. I know you have to go back to work.”
“Love you, too.” I grabbed my seabag, and loaded it into the taxi in front of the hotel.
As the taxi drove away from Cabo, from Cassie, there was heaviness in my chest. As a SEAL, I’d been taught to work through the pain, focus on the goal, ignore any distractions. But most importantly to never quit. Yet I had just rung that bell three times when I’d said goodbye to Cassie.
Chapter 52—Cassie
He had left while I’d been asleep.
Again.
This time he didn’t just leave me in the bed or in the tent. He left Cabo. Left Mexico. He’d even abandoned his Harley. As Molly told me at breakfast the next morning, looking embarrassed and perhaps a little thoughtful as she watched my reaction, “I promised I’d arrange to have his bike shipped back to San Diego.”
I don’t think I was capable of doing more than gaping at her for a moment. Long enough for her to add,
“You didn’t know?’ she asked gently.
I made a supreme effort to control myself. If he had left to make sure our parents never found out about our illicit relationship, I’d better not screw that up, no matter how angry and bewildered I was feeling. “Um, no. Why should he tell me? We’re not that close.”
She looked flustered. “His leave was up. He had to get back immediately or he’d have been in a lot of trouble.”
“Gotcha. That makes sense.” I had to turn away and escape back to my room, because there was no way I could keep up the front. Not until I beat my emotions back into submission somehow.
“Cassie?” she called after me as I walked quickly toward the elevator.
I pretended not to hear. Fortunately, an elevator car was just about to go up. I darted inside and sank back against the wall of the car as the doors slid shut.
I spent the morning in my room, curled up in the bed where we had made love, still smelling his scent on the sheets. I couldn’t believe it had been the last time for us. How can it be that you can find someone, and feel so good with him, so happy, so sexy, and then just when everything is coming together and you truly feel you fit with that man—that he’s, like, your other half or something—it just ends? You can look your whole life for that person. Many people never find their soulmate.
Shane and I were different in certain ways and we’d started out a bit rocky, but at some point along our journey everything had changed. I’d seen him as he truly was, not just as the badass SEAL persona he’d cultivated over the years.
And then he was the one. For me, at least. I saw his heart and I gave him mine.
But falling in love didn’t give me any right to expect anything back. Just because he fit me, it didn’t mean I fit him. He didn’t want me. Or he didn’t want love. It happened all the time.
And even if he did—I don’t know why I kept forgetting this—there were our parents to think about. Loving Shane was a dead end and always had been.
He had left some of his sketches for me, though. I paged through them in wonder. He was so talented. Did he even know how smart and talented he was? He was good at so many things.
He had drawn several pictures of me sleeping. I tried to get my wits around it—did this mean that he’d waited until after I was asleep to draw me? Apparently so. He’d left me alone in my tent, but not before sketching me in what must have been very dim light. Was it my imagination or was the last one, the one done last night in this room, even more lovely than all the others? There was something soft and dreamy about it. Something tender.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the drawings, but they did boost my spirits a bit. Surely a man who could draw me so lovingly must have feelings for me? What was he trying to tell me with his sketches?
I puzzled over this all morning. I didn’t shake myself out of it until the maids knocked on the door, wanting to clean the room.
I had agreed last night to go with my Dad and Molly to the church again and help out some more. That would be good for me. It had distracted me yesterday when I’d still been so frantic about whether they had been drow
ned at sea. Their lives had been spared and I needed to set aside my gloom over my doomed love affair and focus on how thankful I was that my father was safe and alive.
Dad and I did most of the work at the church. Molly wanted to do more, but being on crutches made it difficult. She laughed and said, “Okay, I’ll supervise. There’s some more rubble over here. Think you two can move it or shall I rope in some of the other volunteers?”
She was a great organizer and she made both Dad and me laugh as we worked. Again, I thought how much I liked Shane’s mother. Whatever resentment I might have had at the beginning about her taking my own mother’s place had faded away.
At one point, when I had gone to wash the sweat off my face and the stone dust off my hands with the hose that was bringing us water outside the church, I passed near where Molly was talking to my dad. They were up near the altar, where there hadn't been much damage. She hadn’t seen me, not because I was trying to be elusive, but because that part of the church was dimly lit.
“Wait. Are you telling me that my daughter and your son are—“his voice faltered for a moment “—involved?”
“Yes.” Her voice contained a small chuckle. “Intimately involved.”
Oh no! How did she know? Had I totally given us both away last night at dinner, or had she seen something? Heard something? Had we been too noisy last night, in my hotel room right next to Dad’s?
I looked a little desperately toward the old-fashioned confession booth that this ancient little church still maintained. I wasn't even particularly religious, but I had this crazy thought maybe I should go to the priest and beg forgiveness.
But didn't you have to be sorry if you sought forgiveness? I wasn't sorry about anything except possibly getting caught!
“I knew it,” my father said angrily. I could hear him clearly because his voice was very loud. I ducked behind a marble pillar and scurried away down the side aisle. But I could still hear them. Their voices carried in the quiet nave.
“I knew there was something odd about the way Cassie was blushing and stammering at dinner last night. Damn it. Ever since I caught them kissing under the mistletoe, I’ve been afraid this might happen.” He paused for breath and added, “How could they do such a thing? And on the way to our wedding? If your son—”
I waited in dread for him to blame Shane. If he did, I was going to go back there and defend him. Nothing had happened between us that I hadn't wanted. But Dad must have thought better of accusing Molly’s son of seducing me or leading me astray or whatever he secretly thought had happened.
To my relief, Dad didn’t complete the sentence and Molly took no offense at his implication. “It’s not surprising,” she said in her usual no-nonsense voice. “They’re both young and attractive, and they have just spent several days alone together in dire circumstances. What would you expect to happen? Two people, their lives in danger, with no one to depend on but each other—”
“Stop. I get it,” my father said.
“What’s more, I think it might be serious. I know my son. He's been casual about these things in the past, the way young men often are. But with Cassie, it’s different. Do you remember the first time we got them together? The day we told them that we were planning on getting married? I had the strangest feeling, even back then, that something was going to happen between them.”
“Shit,” snarled my father.
“The atmosphere was charged. There was something brewing already, Henry. And in a lot of ways, Cassie is perfect for Shane. She’s her own woman and she won’t put up with his shit.”
By now I had fled to the other end of the nave. They couldn’t see me and I couldn’t see them—but the acoustics of the little church were so good that I could still hear their voices. No wonder—they were standing at the front near the pulpit. Clearly this was a building where the priest’s sermons could be heard all the way to the back row.
“I adore Cassie,” Molly said. “I would love to have her as a daughter-in-law.”
“You can’t have her as a daughter-in-law. She’s going to be your stepdaughter, remember? She and Shane can’t have a relationship. That would be, I don’t know, incestuous or something. Wouldn’t it?”
“Of course not. They aren’t related. They didn’t grow up together, either. And we’ve already decided to postpone the wedding, so where’s the harm?”
“We’re only postponing it because of the damage to this church! Weren’t you going to talk to your friend the priest about marrying us on the beach or somewhere?”
“I was going to yes, but honestly Henry, the poor man is so overwhelmed at the moment that I feel it’s really not the time. Besides, wouldn't it be insensitive to hold a celebration in a town that has taken so much damage?” Molly sounded matter-of-fact about this. As in, of course we’re postponing the wedding. “Now I’m thinking maybe it is a good thing.”
“What’s so good about it?” my father growled.
“What I mean is, do we really need to get married at all?”
“Molly, what are you saying? Don’t you love me? Don’t you want to be with me?”
“Of course I do, you dear man. I love you very much. But you know how agonized I’ve been for the past few days. Worrying about Shane and about Cassie. It’s bad enough that I have to stress over him when he’s deployed, but an earthquake? And it never stops. The worry, I mean. Not just that I might lose him because of his military duty, but my fears that he’ll never have a normal relationship. That he’ll always be alone. I don’t want him to copy his old Ma and be solitary for most of his life. He needs a wife, a family.”
“I want my daughter to be happy, too. But she’s only known Shane for a brief time and—”
“Sometimes it happens like that.”
“So what are you saying? I don’t understand, Molly.”
“I’m saying that if our kids are in love, we should give them a chance. I’m willing to make that sacrifice for their sake, aren’t you?”
“What sacrifice?” My father’s voice sounded anguished and confused.
I was utterly confused myself. She thought we were in love? My legs were shaking and my heart wouldn’t stop hammering. Not only did Molly know, but she approved. She seemed to think, in fact, that Shane and I had a future together. Why did she think that? Did she know something I didn’t know? Had Shane told her about us?
“Well, the whole marriage thing. I mean, do we really care? It’s not as if we’re going to have more children. We’re both too old for that. If they want to be together, let them. I don’t need a formal marriage to know you’re my man.”
“But, the wedding. It was all planned. I thought you wanted to get married.”
“What I really want is to sail the seas with you on your boat and fish the rivers and lakes with you in Montana. Yes, I want us to be together. But I’ve never been married and the only thing I’ve missed about my situation is the regular sex. If we were young, it would be a different story. But the world has changed since we were their age, Henry. Marriage is no longer required for a couple like us. For the younger generation, though, who have children to raise, marriage is still important.”
“I’m dumbfounded,” my father said.
He wasn’t the only one.
“You’re already marrying our kids off and giving them children, just because you suspect them of having sex on the road to Cabo?”
Molly must have shrugged or something because I didn't hear her speak. But I had to slam my hand over my mouth to stop myself from laughing out loud. This was insane.
“This isn’t a crazy way of breaking up with me, is it?”
“Henry, really. You have the oddest notions at times. Of course not!” There was a pause and then the distinct sound of a kiss. Damn, they were kissing in public, right up near the altar where they were supposed to have been married today.
I had to talk to Shane. Right now. I had to find out what, if anything, he had said to his mother. I had to tell him that our parents were actua
lly considering not getting married. Or at least, Molly was.
I called him. It felt strange because I had never called him before. I wouldn't have even known his number if I hadn't tried so many times after the earthquake to get both of our cell phones working.
The call went through. I waited, my heart fluttering. But he neither picked up nor called me back.
Chapter 53—Cassie
The next morning my dad presented me with a plane ticket home. He didn't say a single word about what Molly had told him about Shane and me. “I know you have to get back, Cassie. Your classes will be starting. Molly and I are going to sail back, and we’ve decided to leave immediately because the weather’s good now.”
My heart was beating erratically as I asked, “But, Dad, what about the wedding?”
“We’re going to postpone it for a while.” He said this tightly, as if he hated the idea.
“Is everything all right?” I was torn between guilt and hope. But every time hope soared, I had to beat it down. I had to remind myself that I was the one with the lovesick heart. Not Shane. His heart was still free.
He still hadn’t returned my call.
“The earthquake messed with everyone’s schedules. You and I both have to get back to the university. And her son, as you know, had to return to duty. We’ll figure out what to do about the wedding later. There’s no rush.”
I could tell by the way he almost sneered the words, “her son,” that he was angry at Shane, no doubt because of what Molly had told him in the church. And suddenly I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had never been good with secrets, and Dad and I had always been close.
