Will:You want me to get you off? get your ass on the bed and consider it done.
Shannon:I’m dealing with a probate issue today but thanks anyway
Will:No problem
Will:Kick the asses. Bust the balls.
Will:And when you’re done, I’ll rip the skirt off and get you out of your mind
*
There were onlya handful of people who knew I wasn’t leading my platoon right now. It wasn’t a secret but I wasn’t publicizing it either.
Lieutenant General McGardil paid me a visit shortly after a pound of shrapnel was extracted from my arm, back, and shoulder. He notified me I’d received the Medal of Honor as well as the rank of Captain—neither of which felt deserved—and informed me I’d be taking command of a black ops team unofficially housed at a NATO base in Germany. The missions would be classified above top secret. The unit would be composed of the smartest, toughest motherfuckers in the teams. The tactical support would be unlimited but highly covert. The American government would not acknowledge our existence or rescue us if captured, so there was no room for error unless we liked the idea of a televised beheading or Third World labor camp.
But there was one condition: unit commanders had to be mission-ready, and my half-numb arm didn’t qualify.
These opportunities didn’t come around often. Considering the tragic end to my last mission, it was a shock to find this offer in my lap.
The only thing missing—aside from the fully functional arm—was the interest. I didn’t want to load out for another mission. I didn’t want to lose another buddy to an endless, bloodthirsty war. I wasn’t interested in pounding my trident into another coffin or watching another family accept a crisply folded flag. I didn’t want to spend another day staring down evil. I didn’t want to live my life on one side of the globe while the woman I needed more than anything else was on the other.
Instead of me deciding where the road would end, the end found me.
I suggested as much to McGardil, and he made it clear he only wanted guys who jumped at the chance to sweat their sac off in his warzone. He sent me to the unit’s shrink for a battery of tests. I knew none of this came from post-traumatic stress or survivor’s guilt, and the shrink concurred, but McGardil wasn’t interested in hearing ‘no.’
The plan was simple: get home for some rest and relaxation, give my unreliable trigger finger some time to heal up, and put some hard thought into my future. In the meantime, the Lieutenant General was getting the team in place, and checking in on my ass almost daily.
Aside from McGardil, only Wes and Shannon knew I was hanging out in Boston.
I didn’t have the words to explain to either of them why I was here. I only knew that I had to sort through all of this. Was I really walking away from nearly fifteen years of service? From commanding an ultra-classified strike force? What would I even do with myself if I left the military?
For the first time since who knew when—high school? childhood? infancy?—I didn’t have a clear path ahead of me. Duty and service were sewn into my genes, and there was never a question about whether I’d enlist after college. I couldn’t remember a time when I wasn’t counting the minutes until I could be a frogman, and it was more than following my father’s footsteps. It was a pure sense of responsibility.
My father—the man who donned the honorary title of commodore in retirement and didn’t let a day go by without reading all the military community news and contributing his opinion on several special operations blogs—would find out about this soon enough. He always did. In most situations, he offered sharp insights and valuable perspectives, but I wasn’t ready to talk it over with him. He believed in career military men, and while his satisfaction didn’t drive my choices, I knew he wouldn’t be an objective sounding board on this issue.
Wes was out of the question. Aside from the fact he was probably busy infiltrating the Kremlin, he would love a gig like the one I was being offered. He lived for that shit, and he’d insist I find a new shrink for a second opinion. He’d never let me hear the end of it if he learned I was spending my days washing Shannon’s socks and vacuuming her apartment, and not back on base where I could get in the right head-space and train until I bled stars and stripes again. Regardless of how much spin class kicked my ass, it wasn’t doing shit to fix my injury.
And Shannon…I suspected she’d spring into action if I told her about the nerve damage in my arm and the crossroads in my career. She was a fixer. She was Harvey Keitel inPulp Fiction. She’d go into her “I’m calm but this is a fucking crisis” mode, and it wouldn’t take her more than a couple of calls to get me appointments with the best doctors in town. And it wouldn’t end there. She’d designate herself my chief health advocate, and park herself by my side, taking verbatim notes and firing off questions. Then she’d thumb through her contact list and find someone who owed her a favor, and I’d have a job, or—heaven help me—she’d invent a job at Walsh Associates and put me on her payroll.
But I didn’t want to get in line behind Shannon’s brothers as one more person who required her to take care of him. I didn’t want to rely on her to solve my problems, and not because I took issue with relying on a woman. The issue was withthiswoman. If anything, I wanted her relying onme. She already gave enough of herself to her family and their business, and I wasn’t going to become one of the things she had to manage.
Someone had to make things easier on her, to lighten her load.
Not that she let that—or anything else—happen without a debate.
We were sleeping together (as insleeping) but every night started with a negotiation of the demilitarized zone in the middle of the bed. I fought it hard at first, but quickly realized it was an unenforceable border. She wasn’t accustomed to sleeping on one side of the bed, and always worked her way closer to the middle. I let her have her space, and more often than not woke up with her tucked right into my side.
I wasn’t doing well with the post-deployment horny. Getting rid of the Douchelord and reclaiming my space in Shannon’s bed were the first victories, but the game was essentially unchanged: she still needed to warm up to me, and she still deserved to be won.
It was good being close to her again. Even if it was jogging through the city or talking over dinner or arguing about aGame of Thronesepisode, I liked the way she felt in my life.
Now I needed the rest of my world to fall in line with the one I was rebuilding with Shannon.
There was an email waiting in my inbox from Jordan Kaisall. From the subject heading, I knew he was looking for my opinion on hidden gem golf courses near Southern California. I’d take the ocean over greens any day, but he knew my parents were big fans of the game in their retirement.
Kaisall was good when it came to looking at issues from sides I’d never consider. I sent off a few courses to impress his prospective clients, and asked if he’d heard anything about the unit McGardil was assembling. I knew his response would come with another offer to run operation logistics for his private security team, Redtop, and though I wasn’t convinced it interested me, I was curious about my options.
That’s what I needed:options. Being thirty-six and not knowing what I was going to be when I grew up was fucking ridiculous.
