When he nodded, waiting as if the answer really mattered, she slipped.
“I want to.” Then fell. “Desperately.”
“Because it eases your guilt?”
And crash-landed, gravely injured, but alive. “Yes.”
“You made a choice. You should have to live with it.”
“I was seventeen,” she whispered, offering her second-best defense.
He shrugged, not buying it. “Responsible enough to make promises. Callous enough to break them.”
Her skin went hot.
“I live with my choice, Jameson. Every waking minute and during all those minutes when I should be sleeping but can’t.” She wanted to look away. Run and hide. Turn back time. Instead, she maintained eye contact. “You should have to as well.”
“I do live with it, Chloe.” His hard voice cracked, but he cleared his throat to cover it up. “Trust me.”
“Funny thing,” she said. “I don’t trust you. But tell me, do you really hate me?”
“Yes.” Then he mocked her by adding, “Desperately.”
Her heart sank. The heart he once held in his hands, then crushed.
“I did what I thought was best.” Her tortured words were at complete odds with the birds chirping happily in a nearby maple tree.
“For yourself.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “For all of us.”
“That’s why I hate you.” He grabbed the can of putty. “You took my choice away.”
“You chose to leave,” she hissed. “And let me give you a history lesson. You ran away without me. Without telling me. Breaking promises left and right.”
His back to her, he used his finger to fill the cracks.
If only her heart was so easily repaired.
“Good talk, Jameson. But the next time you feel like passing judgment, look inward.”
She calmly descended the porch steps instead of grabbing up her skirt and leaping, walking to her car before he saw her break down.
“Chloe?”
He was on the bottom step when she looked back. The boy she vowed to love forever. His features so familiar, so precious. A face she would love for all time.
“Hate isn’t the only emotion I feel when it comes to you.”
When he said no more, her seventeen-year-old self filled in the blanks. Absurdly hopeful, to this day.
I hate you so. I love you so.
But I miss you the most.
“And that emotion I don’t want to feel? The one that won’t go away despite the choice you made? It only makes me hate you more.”
“I understand.” She swallowed around a lump in her throat. “I hate myself, too.” Every time she saw Wyatt.
Every time she went to Riverhead.
“Good. We still have something in common.”
They had more in common than mutual hate, but that knockdown would come another day.
She opened her car door, pausing before getting in. “Have a nice day, Jameson.”
“Have a nice day, Chloe.”
“Thank you. I was expecting something more along the lines of Have a terrible day, Chloe. Get food poisoning, Chloe. Slam your fingers in the car door, Chloe. I hope you get mugged and beaten in a dark alley, Chloe.”
He grinned. “Have the worst day ever, cupcake.”
And her breath caught.
For the first time in ten years, he called her cupcake without sarcasm. Not angrily. Not cruelly.
Affectionately. Lovingly.
The way he used to.
As she drove down the long driveway, she watched him in her rearview mirror. A lonely man standing in front of a lonely house, watching her tail lights.
The man, she couldn’t fix. Didn’t want to, given the damage he caused a decade ago. The house, she could.
It needed to stay in the family.
The combination of qualities a man must possess to become a Navy SEAL was extremely rare.
Topping the list? An elite level of physical strength, stamina, and endurance. No slackers allowed.
Your mile better be under seven minutes and your five-hundred-yard swim finished in less time than it took to nuke a baked potato.
But muscle alone wouldn’t carry you through when up against the many challenges SEALs faced on a daily basis. Mental toughness was mandatory. Be smart. Have your wits. Lunkheads need not apply.
But something else too.
On day one of BUD/S, his instructor told him he also needed—and this shocked the shit out of him—heart.
Yep. Heart.
Fresh off a broken one, Jameson had smirked and replied, “Fuck that. Watch me get through this and graduate without one.”
Not a great first impression.
Not only did that smartass comment result in a thunderous, nose-to-nose comeback from the hardened Frog Man with twenty years’ worth of missions under his tactical belt, but a dozen more miles added to Jameson’s already lofty required run that day. A run that hadn’t ended until he averaged seven minutes per.
Puking was encouraged—and brought joyous laughter from the instructor when it happened. Evidence he was doing his job. Jameson didn’t care.
Self-torture was a distraction from his betrayed heart and the events leading to it. So, he ran. And puked. For hours. Until he was stumbling and dry heaving in the dead of night.
Once the instructor—who went by the nickname Easy Lee, irony intended—felt he’d sufficiently punished him for disagreeing, he circled back to those qualities.
“If you don’t have heart, Maine, you wanna tell me what you do have?” His volume had lowered considerably, now quietly disconcerting.
Not a good thing, he’d come to find out. The barking instructor was meant to spark your temper. But the eerily calm instructor was the one who really fucked you up.
“And don’t say swagger ’cause those pretty boy looks won’t earn you squat for respect around here.”
Beyond the point of physical exhaustion, he propped his hands on his locked knees, the only thing keeping him off the dirt.
“Grit. And another mile,” he replied. Smugly, too. That mile he’d have to dig deep for, but this ass-kicking felt sadistically pleasurable. “Not much else, sir. That’s why this shit can’t hurt me.”
Not after Chloe. She’d taken everything from him.
Being a SEAL was all he had left.
“You here because a girl broke your heart?” he assumed. “Well, welcome to the club, son. The Navy is full of pussy-whipped pansies who signed up because a woman did them wrong. Suckers, all of ’em. You wanna be a SEAL? Or a sucker?”
Not expecting an answer, Easy Lee continued.
“Because this isn’t the place for pansies waiting on a girl back home to notice them. So take your grit—which is, in other words, mother-fuckin’ heart, you dumbass—and thank her for cutting you free. Your life is your team now. Your focus isn’t on pussy. It’s on the mission. Supporting other SEALs like yourself should you have the goddamn heart”—he spat—“to become one.”
His confidence in Jameson was shaky. Jameson’s confidence in himself was solid.
There were over two-hundred students at the start of BUD/S. At the end, twenty-three men graduated. He was one.
And his first-day instructor? A maniac who found pleasure in producing pain? He stood on that stage and pinned the trident on Jameson himself, and damn near bawled doing it. Easy Lee went from teacher and torturer to mentor and friend.