I’m not sure what he’s apologizing for, but it’s a blanket apology, and I know all about those. My father tried them on me for the first several years after the divorce. It came to a point where an apology from anyone meant very little without action. Macs doesn’t have anything to apologize for, and maybe that’s why it means more than those in my past. I force him to look at me, leaning over his body. My breasts graze his chest and that stirs him to life. His gaze flicks up to meet mine.
“You’re going to leave and you will be honorable and patriotic and do the hard things others can’t. You’re a good man.”
He scoffs. “I don’t know about that. I mean, I’m awesome, sure. The adjective you used is a little loose,” he explains, a grin gliding over his face. “Unlike you,” he says, his hand winding its way in between my legs. He plays with the wetness for a moment or two, just long enough for my eyes to flutter closed in expectation. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.” What he means to say is, this isn’t normal. “I don’t know what happens next and I have no clue how long something like this could keep me away. There aren’t rules anymore, Teala. This is war.”
I probably look like a deer caught in headlights. He’s giving it to me straight, which is all I could hope from him. This is a little much to take in, but I nod.
He goes on, “And I don’t want to ask you to wait for me, but I’m going to do it anyways.”
I swallow down the terrifying words and brush the side of his face with my hand. “You don’t have to ask.”
He nods. “I do. You just called me a good guy.” He smiles widely.
I laugh, in spite of the tears forming in my eyes and my pounding pulse. “It was a loose adjective. Remember?”
He sits up, his pants still around his ankles. It looks ridiculous now that I’m not riding him, and he’s talking about his feelings. He pulls his pants up in one, goddamn hot swoop and eyes me down so fiercely now I’m scared for another reason. He wills my attention by looking at me, a feat I never would have known was possible.
Taking my hands in his, he says, “No one is going to fuck you like me. Make you wet like me.”
He’s right. I’m sitting here sopping wet and ready even though it’s been less than five minutes since he filled me. I smile at his statement. He doesn’t return the gesture.
“No one is going to love you while doing it. Not like I will.”
I choke on spit and cough—a most ungodly noise. He told me he loves me. Sure, it was in the same sentence as fucking, but that’s been our way from the second we laid eyes on each other.
“You don’t have a lot of confidence in me, do you?” I ask, finally relenting to the laughter that bubbles its way from the depths of my stomach. Which I think resides in my feet, at the moment.
Sighing, he puts his hands on his hips. “It came out wrong.”
I shake my head. “No, it came out perfect. I love you, too, Macs. Even if it means we’re labeling it. Even if we said we wouldn’t call it anything. When it feels like this,” I say, laying a hand over my heart, “then you label that shit, put it in a jar, and keep it close. I love you. I’ll wait for you. I promise.”
If he knew how much my promises meant, he’d feel more exclusive, but as it stands his reaction to my admission is enough to make me weak in the knees. He moves my hand and puts his on top of my chest, right over my heart, instead. It chills against my warm skin, still flushed in arousal.
He steps closer, and I lean up on my knees. “I never thought I’d like the sound of that,” he says, leaning over to kiss me. Macs’ hand slides down to caress my side and glides over my stomach as his lips work against mine. Sad eyes greet me when he pulls away. His lips turn down in the corner. “I have to go now, Tay.” His neck works as he swallows.
“I’m not sure how to do this.”
He steps backward and turns his eyes to the floor. “How to do what?” he whispers, rubbing both of his hands through his hair.
It’s odd to see him without product coifing in his hair. It’s not tousled, or slicked back. It’s sort of fluffy and perfect. Even though I want to cry some more, I smile instead. It confuses him enough to garner a grin back.
“How to say goodbye to you when you have this awesome hero hair going on,” I reply.
Smiling, he looks up and hands me my shirt and pants he picked up from the floor. He hikes his thumb at the bathroom connected to my bedroom. “I can go do it really quick if it helps? You’d be shocked what I can accomplish with a little water.” He turns away while I get dressed. “Watching you put on clothes only reminds me of taking them off and we’ll be in the same place we were ten minutes ago,” he explains.
I wouldn’t mind that. I want that. “I’m fully dressed,” I say. “Albeit sticky.”
He has one hand on a small black duffle bag he brought inside. Crossing to him, I hold my breath. The TV anchor drones on downstairs. I hear the hysteria, the panic, the confusion. It fans my anxiety flames.
Macs swallows hard. “I need you to keep this bag for me. There’s another satellite phone in there, which you can use to reach me,” he says, chancing a glance down my way, but looks away quickly. “I only ask that you use it in case of emergency. The number to mine is programmed in there.”
I nod, grateful for this lifeline even if I can’t use it every waking moment. He goes through the bag and shows me things that I can use if we lose power to help with life. It’s extra gear. Things he never in a million years thought he’d need to use or show me how to use. At the bottom is a handgun in a holster.
“This is only for emergencies, too,” he says. “It’s loaded.” His voice is taciturn, demanding I know he’s serious.
I pick the cool black weapon and turn it over in my hand. “I know how to use it, Macs,” I say. “My dad taught me when I was a kid.” I remember how important he thought the skill was. The older I got the more I strayed from that logic. Guns kill people. I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. When he left and I realized what a whore he was, I vowed to never pick up a gun in my life because obviously lunatics and selfish assholes use them. When I tell Macs the quick story, I see the tension in his shoulders relax.
“You’d scare someone with it to be sure, but you don’t know how relieved it makes me to know you can do more than that, you can defend yourself,” Macs says. He’s trying to talk over the television, I can tell. The volume is so loud I can hear that it’s not normal news regardless. His efforts are misplaced.
“Here’s a phone, but don’t call me and here’s a gun, but try not to use it?” I ask, laying it down on the top of the bag.
There’s other stuff in there that lets me know he didn’t intend to leave this here. Like his clothes and a dopp kit with grooming products. He walks over and shrugs his jacket back on. The uniform is identical to the one Tahoe had on, and the sight makes me sad. I launch myself into his arms and bury my face in his neck.
He clutches me tightly, but when he releases me a touch, I know it’s time for me to put my grown up panties back on. When my tiptoes hit the floor, I wipe underneath my eyes. “I lived without you once,” I announce proudly. “And I can do it again.”
My statement doesn’t make him happy. In fact, I think quite the opposite happens, because his eyebrows knit together in anger.
“What? Do you hope I’m miserable without you?”
He scratches the side of his head. You can tell having fluffy hair is a distraction. “I guess not, no. But I don’t want you to go back to being single either.”
“Does this feel like I’m single?” I ask, leaning up and pressing my lips against his.
I will him to feel the passion through my lips. The love. The disdain for this situation. Everything I never said for fear of frightening him off. Macs groans into my mouth, but holds me at a distance.
Keeping my eyes closed, I will the clash of teeth and lips to drown out everything else, so nothing else exists in this moment except what I give permission to. His hands are tender,
more so than they’ve ever been. I bite his lip as I pull away and let my gaze find his. We’re nose to nose, heart to heart, and it’s the moment I break.
I sob into his chest.
“I believe you. That wasn’t a single lady kiss,” Macs says. “Don’t get upset over it.”
I laugh through a hysterical sob and I feel like such a failure. Like the little girl who can’t control her emotions. The more he sees me cry, the angrier I become. He tells me he’s sorry, and it’s not his fault, but I can’t form coherent sentences to tell him that, so I just shake my head and clutch his jacket and let every fear take over my body.
When he says he has to go a third time, I release him with the intent of watching him walk out the door. Time has stood still since we entered the house. We’ve been in my room for less than thirty minutes. With a thumb he wipes a tear from my cheek and pops his thumb into his mouth. It would probably make me laugh if there wasn’t a constant stream of tears taking that one’s place. He throws me a lopsided grin, his thumb still tucked between his teeth. A one-sided dimple appears. I shiver.
“From the back to the middle and around again,” he sings, lifting and lowering his shoulders.
I do laugh now. “I’m gonna be there until the end,” I whisper, completing his ’90s song by Crystal Waters.
“One thousand percent. Pure,” Macs says, raising his eyebrows in question.
“Love,” I finish.
Macs kisses my forehead and walks out the door. I remember slamming that door a million times when I was a teenager. I remember tilting a chair under the knob to keep my parents out when I had a boy in my room. But I don’t remember ever feeling such pain seeing a back disappear from it. He talks to my mother for a bit. I can hear that through the vents cut into the wooden floor. Macs walks out to his car in the same stride I’ve seen dozens of times before. Slumping to the floor, I kneel, leaving my chin and arms on the windowsill.
Saying goodbye wouldn’t be this hard if I knew when I’d see him again. If I could cross off the days on my calendar like a normal military girlfriend it would be manageable, the pain wouldn’t resonate so deeply, I’m sure. Macs doesn’t look up at my window, and I know it’s a purposeful move to regain some semblance of his other personality. He can be the SEAL. The man who will take care of a nation and serve his country well. He told me he loved me. He asked me to wait for him.
I want to know why the first man I’ve ever loved arrived during a skewed reality, twisted by enemies no one knew existed. It’s the world’s cruel joke. Give Teala what she’s secretly wanted and then snatch it away before she enjoys it too much. I place my hand against the glass and peek through my fingers at his car disappearing down the drive. Even as I dwell with this agony, I hate myself for succumbing to the dramatics of it all. I did the same thing when my father left. If I’m being honest, the hollow feeling inside my bones feels the same way.
I turn on the clock radio on my nightstand and scroll through the stations until I find a clear news station broadcasting the attacks. I turn the volume down and slide under my covers. I want to fall asleep hearing the atrocities that stole him away. The irony of where I’m at and what has happened isn’t lost. I resolve to stay in this bed until I can put on a strong front for my mom.
For myself.
But mostly for him. And it’s not the him you think.
Chapter Twenty
Macs
The destruction is fantastic in the most lowly, seedy way possible. The attacks were far-reaching and all-encompassing. Everyone I know was affected in some way. Martial law is being enforced by our military, the dystopian feel of it all being almost too much for even a seasoned government employee. Most days it’s complete melee anytime you turn around. There are checkpoints set up on the back roads and highways, which means traveling anywhere takes forever and it’s rarely worth it. The news is broadcast twenty-four hours a day, and the President of the United States gives weekly teleconferences from the Oval Office. It’s meant to reassure a country streaked by destruction and tainted by fear.
The SEALs are now being sent on missions unlike anything we’ve ever been assigned. We’ve been tasked to find the financiers and anyone connected to the attacks. It’s hard because we aren’t dealing with men overseas with an open agenda with guns pointed at our faces. We’re trying to skunk out our neighbors with hidden agendas, ones we would never be able to surmise. The attacks hadn’t been planned for long. Which is obvious to me, in a spot where intelligence is handed down, but America refuses to believe this wasn’t planned—or worse a conspiracy theory. When citizens are finished reveling in fear, they move on to anger. I get it.
I am a step above angry. I’m fucking rage-tastic. I want to kill and nothing is moving fast enough for my liking. My brothers have been spread out across the larger cities in the states.
“We’re headed back to San Diego, bro. You gonna call her?” Tahoe asks, grinning scarily. His face is streaked with black paint and he has a cut above his eye that was stitched by a medic with an obviously unsteady hand.
I wince. “That fucker had one job. One. That’s gonna scar,” I tell him, nodding at his gnarly gash. Our feet are dangling over the side of a chopper.
He laughs, a menacing sound. I’d hate to be on the receiving end of Tahoe’s anger. He got the gash from cocking his fist back too far before knocking someone out. He lunged forward and his head met the edge of a counter. I shake my head at the memory. Poor fucker didn’t even have the information we wanted. That’s our life these days. There aren’t rules of war anymore. Not when our nation is bleeding uncontrollably.
“Not everyone cares about being pretty,” he says. “There are those of us who care about doing our fucking job and not stinking.”
I cut him off with a hand sliced through the air. “And there are those of us who appear after the frag smoke clears like a vision of fucking perfection,” I tell him.
I give him some more imagery, mostly referencing with my guns, both types, and when he’s scoffing good and well, I stop with my daydream cocktail. He stops smiling when I do.
“I want to go see her,” I admit, looking over his shoulder at the rest of the guys boarding different aircrafts in preparation to leave. My hands shake a little on my lap and it’s why I’m so unsure about visiting Teala. “I can’t think of anything else.”
It took weeks to get my head straight after I left her. My focus should be on my job, but she’s there in every waking moment. She taunts me. She tells me I was wrong about myself all of this time. She tells me she loves me. My visions are vivid and heart punching. Teala doesn’t call me. Not even once. I suspected she would abuse the phone I gave her. I wanted her to. I merely gave the warning so I could sound like I wasn’t a complete lunatic. I mean, I was giving her government property to borrow for a spell.
“Regardless if it’s her or someone else you have to get laid when we get back home. You’re spun up like a fucking top. It’s been nothing but work…frustrating work at that for a month now. Bars aren’t open. Nothing is open. The only activity we’ll have is fucking,” Tahoe says, stretching out his legs.
Somehow I feel like he’s going to have a hard time finding a booty call during these times.
“I’ll have to leave her again,” I say. Even now, my fucking chest aches with need. With desire. With fucking love. “I don’t like it.”
Longing. I’d never had to define that word before in my life. If I wanted something I took it. Instant gratification. I didn’t know what it would feel like to have another person inside you that was thousands of miles away. The desire was crippling. I miss her scent. The feel of her bare curves on my fingertips. I miss sex. What surprised me the most was that I missed her laugh. I missed talking to her and watching her face when she didn’t know I was watching. I missed the way she could turn a conversation around regardless of what we were talking about. Her jokes. How sweat would bead along her hairline after she taught a class. The way her hair brushes her exposed should
er blades when she wears her workout tanks. Everything about Teala Smart is what I long for.
“Who would enjoy leaving? You’re fucking crazy to get hung up on one woman.”
I’m not. I know that now. Tahoe will understand one day if he’s lucky. I smile and shake my head. “I’m fucking crazy. Yep, that’s me,” I say, reaching behind me to dig through the small backpack I keep with me at all times. I drink the rest of the water in my canteen and roll the cell phone around in my hand. I check the screen. No missed calls or messages. I grind my teeth together and punch the satellite phone number into my phone quickly, glad I memorized it before I left it in her care.
I type out several messages and delete them. What is the proper greeting after so much time has passed without interaction? I’m in more new territory. The chopper blades start up, cutting the air like razors. I hook myself in with one hand and slide my sunglasses down and over my eyes. The sun isn’t as hazy here in the mountains. I think because we’re closer to it. Some days and in some cities it looks hazy. That’s what scares me. The smoke masks its true splendor and I don’t care who you are, that’s fucking eerie.
Tahoe is playing Candy Crush on his cell phone, completely distracted by the colorful screen. I look back at the blank text box and think of Teala. Now that we’re headed back I’ve let myself think about her. I type out a rap song, then delete it again. I look out over the horizon and this is commonplace for me. It’s not for her, though. I swipe to open the camera and point it down at my ash covered boots. You can see the world underneath me, small and insignificant. I snap the photo and send it before I change my mind.
Sighing, I try to enjoy the ride. I haven’t been back to my house since I left Teala. I have no idea what I’m going back to. The neighbor was supposed to check in from time to time, but everyone is self-involved right now. Grocery stores are just now beginning to get shipments again. The economy is in the shitter. Some semblance of normal life is beginning just by proxy of time passing and fear diminishing. The hospitals are overcrowded and any place that can hold large capacities of people will be closed for an undetermined amount of time. I don’t look at the phone. There’s no way she’ll respond right away. I bet the phone is still at the bottom of the bag I left in her bedroom. It pings a message seconds later.
Hero Hair (The Real SEAL Series Book 2) Page 20
