by J. M. Madden
As a Navy SEAL, there had been dire times when teams had gone missing or radio silent. Sometimes those teams came back, other times they didn’t, at least not for a long time. Long enough to make you wonder if these were going to be the first SEALs ever unrecovered. But then, incredibly, heroically, they would make it back. Because they were Navy SEALs. They should be able to survive anything. Right?
But Julie knew that Gabe had been the one to find Butter’s body. Because she had called him to go looking.
Chapter Two
WHEN LACEY HAD called her, trying to identify a phone number with a Little Creek exchange, Butter’s number had immediately come up on the screen. Julie had tried to call him right away but there had been no answer. Panic had bitten at her and in spite of their issues, she’d called Gabe. If she’d been closer, she could have gone to check on him herself but she’d been hours away at the time, working her bi-weekly shift at Walter Reed and unable to leave work.
Gabe had called her an hour later. Julie had answered immediately. It seemed like she’d been waiting forever to hear back from him.
“He’s gone, Jules. He’s gone.” The utter devastation in his voice scared her.
“What?” she’d stuttered, panic racing through her blood. “Wait, he can’t be gone. You guys are home. What are you talking about?”
“He’s gone, Julie. I found him, I saw the body myself.”
Gabe’s voice was normally reserved, but now it was as cold as ice, as if the words themselves could freeze in the air.
“I have to go,” he whispered then, voice breaking. “I have to call somebody.”
And he’d hung up.
Even now she still couldn’t quite believe it. Any minute now, Butter would tackle the two of them from behind a tree or tug her into a bone-cracking hug.
With a final shudder, Gabe turned them away from the scene and began to walk again. He got to the paved road and looked around, as if just realizing where he was. Julie nudged him toward her car a little way down the drive. “Max and Lacey had to leave. I’ll drive you home.”
He started in that direction without comment. Julie dug in her purse and hit the remote start to un-fog the windows. Gabe held the umbrella as he walked her to the driver’s side door and opened it for her, then circled the hood to get in himself. Julie hated the mechanical way he moved, as if his limbs weren’t working correctly. Or, as if he didn’t care if they worked correctly.
He folded the umbrella and tossed it in the back as he collapsed into the seat and dragged the belt across himself. Then he turned his head to stare out the rainy window.
Julie started the car and pulled out, as reluctant to leave as Gabe. Fresh tears poured down her cheeks as they left their third behind.
It had been a fluke that she’d met them. Gabe with his dark coloring and thoughtful eyes, quietly watchful, had appealed to her as much as Butter’s bright, vivacious spirit. A girlfriend had taken her to a bar off base and the two men had been there, drinking beer and catching up with buddies after a long deployment. When the fresh drink had been delivered to her, she’d thought at first that it had been Butter that had sent it, but Gabe’s hypnotic eyes had caught hers and he’d given her a nod. And although a good thirty feet had separated them, it had been one of the most stimulating things that had ever happened to her. She still remembered the feeling of her heart racing in her chest and Leanne asking her what was wrong because she was so flushed.
That had been in the early days, when things had been exciting.
Gabe and Butter had been swim buddies, meaning they’d gone through the harrowing six-month BUD/S training together. During the grueling Hell Week, the men were required to do everything with their swim buddies, otherwise they were penalized, because the goal of the Teams was to make you a part of the dynamic unit.
The two had done everything together and been a striking pair doing it. They’d both been a little over six feet tall, but Gabe’s dark hair and eyes had been as striking as Butter’s beach boy good looks.
Gabe made a choked sound beside her, but his face was as stoic as ever. Only his eyes burned with emotion.
“Are you okay?” she asked quietly. “Can I stop and get you anything?”
He shook his head. “Can you just take me home? Or your hotel or something.”
Julie nodded, flipping on her blinker. Gabe’s apartment was close.
Within just a few minutes they were pulling into his apartment complex and she had a worrisome thought. The three of them had spent many hours in that space when the men had been home. Would being there bring up too many hurtful memories?
If it did, she would be here for Gabe. At some point he would have to go home anyway. If her presence could ease his sorrow in any way, she would do it.
Julie parked in his numbered parking space and turned off the car. She sat there with him until he made a move to get out. She met him at the front of the car and pressed the key fob to lock the doors, then headed toward his apartment.
Gabe had lived here for several years, ever since he’d been assigned to SEAL Team 10. Julie had met him after he’d been assigned here, of course, and Butter had been his constant companion.
Gabe didn’t seem to have anything on him so Julie brought up her own key. It had been a while since she’d used it but she’d always kept it handy, just in case. As far as she knew, she was still listed as Gabe’s emergency contact.
As the door swung open and she stepped in, she was assaulted by memories, both good and bad. When she and Gabriel had started their relationship, they had had magical times in this apartment. They’d made love in every spot imaginable, they’d whispered of hopes and dreams. Julie had actually felt a little guilty at first because Gabe and Butter had been together almost twenty-four seven. They worked together, hung out together, were deployed together. But once she’d come on the scene and had started to take Gabe’s time and attention, Butter seemed a little lost. The three of them had done a lot of things together, but Julie had seen a few glimmers of insecurity even then.
There had been enough times when Butter had dropped by the apartment and it had been a little awkward that he’d started to call or text before he came over. He’d let himself into the apartment once just as Gabe had forced her into a screaming climax, pounding into her on the couch. She’d looked up as a shaft of light had entered the room and seen Butter sanding there, a stunned look on his handsome face as he watched them. Blinking, he’d backed out of the apartment and closed the door, but not before she’d seen the flash of sensuality in his eyes. The entire incident had probably only taken about three seconds, but they hadn’t seen him for a couple days after that. When he had returned he’d walked in like nothing had happened, pounding Gabe on the back and giving Julie a bone-crushing hug.
As she looked around the apartment now, she realized several things had changed. “You got a new couch,” she observed.
Gabe glanced at the space. “Butter caught the old one on fire. I had to.”
In spite of the day, Julie laughed. “How on earth did he do that?”
Gabe’s lips twitched. “He thought he needed to try to drink two Flaming Dr. Peppers at once. He spilled them both, of course, and my couch took the brunt of it.”
Julie chuckled. “That sounds so like him. Crazy thing.”
She winced, realizing she’d said the same thing every time Gabe told her a Butter story, Julie tried to move on, but the look in his eyes told her he’d recognized the words as well. “I’m sorry, Gabe. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Lifting his broad shoulders in a shrug, he moved into the apartment and dropped down onto the new couch. “I guess we’ll slip up like that sometimes. I mean, he’s been a part of my life for so long that it will take us all a while to get used to him not being here.”
He looked around the apartment as if seeing all of the things Butter had touched. Julie knew that most of the things in here had some connection to Butter, or training for the Team. They’d been together f
or almost seven years so it was natural to have co-mingled their lives. They’d done everything together. Julie had been a little surprised that they’d not lived together. Butter would have done it in a heartbeat. He would have considered moving in to be a party, while the more reserved Gabe would have considered it an invasion of his space.
Gabe moved around, looking at things as if he’d never been in here before. There was a stack of gear in the corner of the living room. He moved over to it and started untangling straps. “I went looking for him as soon as you called me. Dumped my shit and just ran because I knew something had to be up. I hadn’t heard from him for a couple days. Why did you call, by the way? How did you know?”
Julie knelt down across from him. “Lacey called me. Max had received a text message on his phone but the number hadn’t come up as a contact. They both started calling around the area, here. Max talked to Rudnick in DEVGRU but he didn’t recognize the number either. Since you guys are different Teams there would be no reason why it would. It was just chance that Lacey contacted me. They knew it was a Little Creek number, but that was all.”
Looking down at the Velcro in his hands, Gabe shook his head. “After all that we’ve been through, why didn’t he call me? Why didn’t he just come over like he always did? I was here. I could have helped him. I just don’t understand. He did some truly ridiculous things in his life but he always had a reason behind everything. I just don’t understand.”
And finally Gabe’s tough shell began to crack. The desolation in his eyes wrecked her own control and the tears that she had almost gotten control of flooded her eyes. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “We may never know why he did what he did, or understand.”
A lone tear tracked down Gabe’s lean cheek and he scrubbed it away with his fist. And he kept scrubbing because the tears continued to fall. Julie reached out to comfort, almost afraid that he would rebuff her, but he pulled her into his arms.
For a year and a half she had prayed to be back in his arms again, but not this way. Honestly, she thought he’d be injured while deployed. Gabe was a Special Warfare Operator, 1st Class, in SEAL Team 10. He was deployed to some of the hottest spots in the world and she knew it was only a matter of time before tragedy visited their little group. She’d never expected it to happen this way.
Julie crawled across the pile of gear and into his arms. Gabe’s deep voice broke into a sob, as always, constrained. She cried more openly, giving release to the emotions she’d tried to control all day. His strong arms crushed her against him, his face buried in her neck. Julie wrapped her arms around his head and neck and held him as tightly as she could.
They stayed like that for a good while, giving vent to their grief. It was Gabe that drew back first, as she had known he would. He swiped at his lean cheeks, clearing away the evidence from his breakdown. “Sorry about that.” His voice was guttural in the aftermath. He pushed up from the floor. “I’ll be back. I need to go change.”
Julie watched him go, trying to rein in her emotions. It seemed like she’d cried gallons of tears, but there always managed to be more.
She glanced around the apartment but of course there were no tissues. She pushed to her feet and padded to the bathroom, retrieving a roll of toilet paper from under the cupboard. She blew her nose a couple of times then walked back out. She set the roll on the coffee table and moved to the kitchen. Same apartment, same decor, maybe he would still have tea tucked away in a cupboard for her. It took a few tries, but she found the glass lidded tea jar, and it was overflowing. Julie was a little shocked at how many tea bags were stuffed into the container. More than when she’d left, certainly. Julie held the container in her hand for a long time, just looking at it, wondering what it meant that he had continued to buy her tea in as many exotic locations as he could.
Maybe Gabe had taken up drinking tea.
Shrugging, she chose a bag at random and put a cup of water in the microwave to heat. She opened the refrigerator door. Yeah, exactly what she’d expected. There were a few yogurts, well past their prime, as well as some mustard and mayonnaise in the door. There were a few bottles of beer on the shelves and a whole case of water. She grabbed one of the waters for him, retrieved the steaming tea from the microwave, and went back into the living room.
Gabe was back, again sitting on the floor, his back now curled against the front of the couch, arms propped on his drawn up knees. The tears had dried and the skin around his eyes was puffy but less tense. He didn’t look like he was going to go off on someone anymore.
Julie pushed the table out of the way and sat down beside him, her knee not quite touching his leg. She set the bottle of water in front of him and curled her hands around the teacup. Though it had been a while, her clothes remained damp, and they would until she changed out of them. Her bag was in the car, waiting for her to decide where she was going to spend the night. If Gabe needed her here, she would stay right here.
They sat side by side for a long time, not talking. Julie sipped her tea, charmed by the spices in the exotic blend. Gabe reached forward and snagged the bottle of water, ripped off the cap and chugged the entire thing in a few heavy swallows. “I needed that. Thank you.”
She held up her cup. “And thank you for having tea on hand.”
He shrugged as if embarrassed. “It became habit to buy you tea when we were together and it stuck, even after you left. Even Butter bought you some.”
Julie smiled at the thought of those SEALs bristling with weapons and fishing out coins to buy little packets of tea for her. “Thank you very much. That was a nice surprise opening the cupboard and seeing my jar there, overflowing.”
Gabe’s wounded eyes cleared and he gave her a thoughtful look. “We missed you, Julie. Every time we came home we hoped that you would be here to greet us, even though we knew that you wouldn’t be.”
Her eyes filled with tears again, because those had been some of the hardest times for her, when she had known they were coming home but she was too uncomfortable to be there to meet them. “It just got to be too hard. After we broke up, I knew I needed to walk away completely. For all of our sakes.”
He shook his head slightly. “I’m not so sure anymore.”
Julie drew her head back, surprised. “What do you mean?”
Shrugging, he crumpled the empty bottle in his hands. “Looking back it just seems like we wasted a lot of everything—time, companionship, fun, love.”
His eyes flickered at the last word and he looked away. “We missed you, Julie. You were our best friend, here.”
“I missed you guys, too,” she whispered, “but I had to leave. You know that, right?”
Gabe shrugged his muscular shoulders and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “I guess.”
She could tell by the way he said it though that he didn’t really think so.
Julie had gone over the incident that had been the trigger in her head so many times trying to figure out where she’d gone wrong, but she couldn’t pinpoint any one thing. Yes, she’d greeted them when they’d come in, weary and dirty, and had showered attention on the both of them. If she had advance notification exactly when they were coming in, she tried to have dinner ready and the beer iced. Gabe and Butter had been the best of friends. Literally, they did everything together. She’d grown affectionate with them both, though her relationship with Gabe had intensified. She’d known going into the relationship that Butter was, and would be, a very big part of it.
One night after a return, they’d partied and talked and shared a meal. Butter had consumed too many beers to drive home, so he’d crashed on the couch, just like he always did. At some point during the night Julie had gotten up to go get a drink of water. When warm hands had glided around her stomach to cup her breasts, she’d thought that Gabe had gotten up with her, affectionate after their welcome-home lovemaking. She’d turned in his arms to kiss her lover, but he’d tasted wrong. Only then had she realized that it was Butter that held her in his strong
arms, not Gabe.
As Murphy’s Law demanded, Gabe had flipped on the kitchen light switch just then, catching them pulling out of a kiss.
Julie had jerked out of Butter’s arms, but she’d seen the betrayal in Gabe’s eyes.
Butter had laughed. “Oh, dude, you caught us. Sorry about that.”
With cavalier disregard, he’d patted Gabe on the back and gone back out to crash on the couch.
Julie could still remember shaking her head, trying to stutter out what had happened. “We didn’t, he just came up behind me and…”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Gabe had growled, stalking for the bedroom. Julie had followed him but he hadn’t wanted to listen to her. “I didn’t do anything,” she’d cried.
He had stopped and turned to face her. “But you would have if I hadn’t turned on that light.”
“No, I wouldn’t have! I figured out it wasn’t you and I tried to stop it.”
But the shock and pain of seeing his best friend kissing his lover had closed his heart. He’d gotten dressed and slammed out of the apartment.
Julie sat on the bed, shaken at what had gone down. Eventually, even though it was going on three in the morning, she’d gathered up her things in her bag and left.
But then it had gotten worse. Butter had met her at her apartment a few days later. Julie had paused on the walkway, unsure if she even wanted to talk to him.
“Hey,” he’d said, looking remorseful.
“Hey.”
“I fucked up, didn’t I? I don’t remember much of that night but I remember waking up and seeing you standing in the kitchen. Things got jumbled in my head and for a second I just thought you were mine, like I’d been dreaming of for so long.”
Wait, what had he said? Before she could have him back up in his thinking he’d moved on. “Then when you didn’t pull away immediately, I thought you were okay with me touching you.”
She’d thrown up her hands in frustration. “I didn’t know it was you!”