Until last night he hadn’t known what he’d been missing in his thirty years on this planet, but now he did. In the twelve years he’d served he’d grown used to leaving people and places. It hadn’t been a hardship for him. Up until now, wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he was in the moment and the moment had his full attention. His mind rarely wandered. It was part of what had made him good at his job. When he’d seen other Marines suffer from being homesick or missing loved ones he’d never fully understood what they’d gone through. Now, he had just a small taste and he didn’t like it.
He missed Stephanie so much it was starting to make him crazy and it had only been a few hours. This morning he’d even sent her a lame text before he’d gotten on the flight at O’Hare. Never before had he been one of those people that wrote a text, obsessed over every word only to rewrite it. But this morning that’s exactly what he’d done. There had been about a dozen drafts before he’d finally pressed send and as soon as he did he’d wished that he could take it back to edit it again.
Apparently Stephanie turned him into a high school girl.
Point of fact, when the flight attendant made the announcement that they’d arrived in Washington, D.C. the first thing he’d done—even before he’d unbuckled his seatbelt—was check to see if she’d messaged him back. She hadn’t.
There had been two voicemails waiting for him. One from his father and one from his mother, both asking him to call them back. This time, instead of ignoring the calls, he’d messaged them back. He’d explained that he’d be out of the country for a while but he would get in contact with them when he returned.
Hearing everything Stephanie had been through had put things in perspective for him. His family wasn’t perfect. He’d never felt like he fit in. His brother’s recent betrayal and the way they’d handled it had only complicated matters. But they were trying. He knew they loved him, in their own way. That was more than a lot of people had. More than Stephanie had.
As much as he tried to put her out of his mind, he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried to concentrate on the task at hand, it was impossible. His thoughts drifted to her gorgeous smile, her large, doe eyes, the strawberry and mint smell of her hair and the way she gasped silently when he’d driven himself into her.
Thankfully, during the briefing and risk assessment meeting he’d managed to focus. But now, as he flew to an undisclosed location to extract an asset who’d gone dark, getting back to her was all he could think about. He was counting the seconds.
This mission could take one week or ten. There was no way to predict until they got on the ground. No communication had been received from the asset in over seventy-two hours. All that his team had were the asset’s last known coordinates. He read through the theories and best guesses of where he might be being held and what the team might face in opposition. But those were all hypotheses. Real time intel was the only thing that mattered.
Real time. That’s what he’d wasted these past five weeks. He wanted to kick his own ass for living next door to Stephanie for all that time and not doing anything about it until yesterday. The entire time he’d been trying to talk himself out of the interest that he’d felt the day he moved in.
He’d never forget the first time he saw her. The image was branded into his memory. He’d been unpacking his dishes in the kitchen when he’d seen her get out of her car through the atrium window that sat above the sink. The first thing that caught his attention was her hair. The mid-day sun highlighted the shimmering, golden-red strands. Then, as she’d made her way up the walkway, he’d noticed she was wearing Looney Tunes scrubs and it made him smile. But the showstopper had been when she’d stepped up onto their shared porch. She’d taken off her sunglasses and revealed the face of an angel. Her large brown eyes and full pink lips reminded him of the porcelain dolls that his Grandma Lulu had collected. Like them she looked perfect and fragile. He was mesmerized by her.
He’d wanted to go next door. Introduce himself. Ask her out. But he’d ignored and even suppressed those feelings. He’d convinced himself that he didn’t want any entanglements. He’d been a fool.
Ace wasn’t a passive or indecisive man. When he wanted something he didn’t apologize for it or sit back and wait for it to be handed to him. He took action. Deep down he’d known he wanted Stephanie but he’d acted counterintuitively. He’d talked himself out of the fact that what he’d felt was real, and he’d kept his distance.
Frustration coiled inside of him as he sped down ‘If Highway.’ If he’d gotten to know her sooner he wouldn’t be leaving with things being as up in the air as this plane was. If he’d sacked up five weeks ago they wouldn’t have only shared the equivalent of a one-night stand. If he’d trusted his own instincts the first day he saw her they would be together, officially, and he would have the security of her knowing how he felt about her.
Dwelling on ifs isn’t going to get you home to her any sooner, his inner voice reasoned.
In an effort to shake off his anger and regret, he pulled up the risk assessment report on his iPad and re-read it. He would try anything he could to stop obsessing about Stephanie.
“Hey, you want to play?” Tyson Cruise, aka “Tank” asked as he pulled out a deck of cards.
He’d served with Tank for years before he’d left the Corps and gone into the private sector. They’d always gotten along and he trusted the man beside him with his life. When he’d arrived this morning he’d been happy to see a familiar face on the team.
Ace figured he’d have a better chance of distracting himself playing cards with his friend than going over the same information he’d been staring at for hours. He stowed the device away. “Sure.”
As Tank dealt the cards, Ace noticed that his friend had gotten new ink in the form of a band tattoo on his ring finger.
“When did you get that?”
“A year ago.” Tank beamed. “I got married in Vegas.”
Ace would’ve been less shocked if Tank had told him he was an alien from Mars and that tattoo was how he communicated with his home planet. Tank wasn’t the beaming or the marrying-in-Vegas type. He enjoyed women. He liked variety. In the years that Ace had known him, he’d never seen him go out with the same woman twice.
Ace didn’t even try to disguise the shock in his voice as he asked, “You got married?”
Tank’s face lit up brighter. “Yeah, bro. Best decision I ever made.”
“Do I know her?”
“No. We didn’t date that long. Her name is Colleen.” Tank pulled out his phone and showed him pictures of himself and his wife with the same pride Ace had only seen new parents display when they showed off baby pictures.
“Congratulations, man,” Ace managed to get out through his shock. “She’s beautiful.”
“Yeah, she’s amazing.” Tank stared down at the pictures with unapologetic devotion. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I don’t know what the hell I did to deserve her. I feel like I won the lotto.”
“That’s great. I’m happy for you.”
“What about you.” Tank looked up at him. “Last I heard you were headed down the aisle with Kendra or—”
“Kendall.” Ace nodded. “Yeah, that didn’t work out.”
“Good,” Tank said flatly.
“Good?” Ace would’ve expected that reaction from the old Tank who’d referred to marriage as a “life sentence,” but hearing his friend’s reaction after he’d just waxed poetic about his newlywed status was surprising and took him off guard.
“I never liked that girl,” Tank clarified as he put his phone away and finished dealing.
“Really?” Tank had been with Ace when he’d run into Kendall in Vegas, but he didn’t really know her.
“Something about her just didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t say anything because you told me you knew her from back home, but I didn’t trust her as far as I could throw her.”
Now that didn’t surprise him.
“So what hap
pened with you two?”
“She cheated on me.”
Tank sucked in a hissing breath. “Damn.”
Ace felt like he was on Jerry Springer as he disclosed, “With my brother.”
“Oh shit!” Tank flinched as if he’d just been hit. “I’m sorry I asked, man.”
“No, it’s all good,” Ace assured him. “Honestly, it was for the best. I think we were both in it for the wrong reasons.”
Ace picked up his cards, ready to move on from the subject. It wasn’t that he cared, he didn’t. It just wasn’t something he really wanted to talk about, especially since he hadn’t even spoken to his brother about it yet.
After assessing his hand Ace set a card on the small table that divided the seat between them and waited for Tank to do the same. He hoped his friend would take the hint and drop it. When he didn’t play his hand, Ace looked up to find his friend staring at him in stunned disbelief.
People cheated, ended engagements all the time. It’s not like Tank was sheltered. He wasn’t sure why he was reacting the way he was.
“What?”
“Your brother? Damn, dude.”
Okay, so not dropping it.
“Yeah.”
“Did you kick his ass?”
Ace shook his head. He hadn’t. He hadn’t done anything. But that was going to change. When he got home, he was going to deal with Grant, talk to his parents and quit hiding from his life. After he had dinner with Stephanie, of course. He had his priorities in order and she was at the top of them.
Chapter 13
A yawn claimed Stephanie as she stood in front of the vending machine in the breakroom debating which form of nourishment she would purchase. Chips or candy. Salt or sweet. She sipped the soda pop she’d already procured and decided that chocolate was the way to go. Pushing the button she watched the metal rings turn and her chosen snack drop down.
Caffeine and sugar. That was what her diet consisted of now. Were they the healthiest choices? Nope. But, she didn’t care. All she cared about was getting through the next few hours of her shift and giving her patients the best care she could provide. Snickers and Pepsi were necessary evils for her to accomplish that.
She was currently working her thirteenth day in a row. There was a nasty virus going around and it’d taken out half of the hospital staff. Every one of her days off had been interrupted with a phone call asking her to come in to work. Which she had done. As much as she would love to say that she’d done it out of the goodness of her heart or even that she was doing it for the money to ensure Scott stayed at Brookside, her intentions weren’t that pure. The truth was she didn’t want to be home. At home she was alone with her thoughts and these days that wasn’t a pleasant place to be.
As much as she tried, she just couldn’t manage to get back into her zone. Her emotion-free, numb zone. She just couldn’t lock into her default of numb on the inside happy on the outside. Feelings weren’t her cup of tea and these past few weeks it seemed that’s all her mind was serving. Instead of sipping chamomile, green, or Earl Grey she was gulping sadness, loneliness, and heartbreak.
In the eighteen days since Ace had left and she’d gotten the call that her father passed, she’d felt like she was walking in an emotional mine field. She’d be fine, navigating her way through her day, and then she’d hear a song, an innocuous conversation or an ad on television and boom, an explosion of melodrama would burst in her. One second she’d be fine and then the next there were tears, sadness and anxiety.
Since she’d found out that her father was gone, she’d tried to go on with her life and return to business as usual. Realistically, nothing had changed so that shouldn’t have been difficult. She hadn’t seen the man in twenty years and he stopped sending checks when the twins had turned eighteen, so it wasn’t like she had any financial or emotional dependence on him. Apparently, her subconscious saw things differently. A dark cloud had settled over her and no matter what she tried to do she couldn’t shake it. Thankfully, the twins weren’t suffering from the same melancholy that she was. As far as she knew, Simone was back at school and doing fine. Scott had taken the news in stride.
She supposed it made sense that they weren’t affected. They had no memory of him. He was an abstract concept to them. Not the man he was to Stephanie. The man that had tucked her in at night when she was scared and had a bad dream. Or had stayed in the hospital with her when she was four and had to have her tonsils removed. He wasn’t the man that when a snowstorm had knocked out the electricity had made blanket forts and slept in the living room with her because he knew she was afraid of the dark.
In the two decades since he’d left, Stephanie hadn’t thought about those things, but now she couldn’t stop thinking about them.
As she bent down to retrieve her Snickers from the vending machine her pocket vibrated with an incoming message. She set down her soda and pulled her phone out. When she saw that the text was from Mason, her heart sank. He’d been on a campaign to see her since she’d run into him at The Plate reopening. He’d sent flowers last week after he’d found out about her father. He’d stopped by her condo and the hospital several times wanting to talk to her. So far she’d been able to dodge him.
Either because she was a glutton for punishment or she was still holding out a small glimmer of hope she checked her missed calls. When she saw that there was one and that it was from the attorney of her father’s estate, her heart sank further. She’d been in contact with Ms. Lancing because there was a will that she and the twins were named in. Everything had been going smoothly, but a couple of days ago there’d been a snag; it was being contested. Stephanie didn’t know by whom, and honestly didn’t care. If it were up to her, she would tell the lawyer that she wanted no part of any of it. But it wasn’t just up to her. She had the twins to think about. So, instead of being able to treat this situation like a Band-Aid that she needed to rip off quickly, it was going excruciatingly slow.
Pushing the phone back into her pocket she also tried to stuff down the disappointment over the messages not being from the only person she actually wanted to talk to. Ace hadn’t been in touch since he left. Not once. The last communication from him had been the text he sent the morning after their night together. Since then it had been radio silence.
She’d been telling herself she didn’t care. He wasn’t her boyfriend. He was her neighbor. One night, one perfect night, didn’t change that fact. She’d gone into this thing with her eyes wide open and had gotten exactly what she wanted, a night of fun. Her mind was fully prepared to return to her regularly scheduled programming. The snag with that was…her heart and hormones were not. They were playing Ace montages twenty-four seven. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. She missed him. Not like, “Oh I wonder how he’s doing” missed him. No, this was a soul deep, ache that she felt in her bones.
She missed his smile, his eyes, his voice, his arms, his chest, his…everything. She missed knowing that he was just next door. She missed hearing him working in his garage on his bike. She missed wondering if he was shirtless while doing so and finding some excuse to go outside to find out. She missed the possibility of seeing him at any moment. She missed the knowledge that if there was a knock on the door, it could be him.
An audible sigh escaped from her as she slid into a chair at an empty table in the breakroom. Her teeth sank into the candy bar and she closed her eyes to enjoy one of the only pure indulgences she had. Chocolate. As she chewed the sweet treat, hoping to lose herself in its goodness, she did her best to ignore the voice in the back of her head. It was the one that kept telling her that her only option at this point was to move.
She knew that living next door to Ace while he was gone was miserable. She feared that living next door to Ace once he returned and things went back to normal would make her go crazy. Like, certifiably insane. Her prediction that she would be mature enough to handle just being neighbors with him after the night they’d spent together was a naïve one at best. As much as s
he wished things were different, that she hadn’t developed the feelings that she had, it was time for her to face the truth. She needed to find a new place to live. It was her only shot at surviving this, whatever this was.
She was smack dab in the middle of her pity party when two nurses came in. One was talking about a guy that she was thinking about giving a screen test to, which Stephanie knew was code for the third time she would be having sex with him. The other said that her date the night before would not be receiving a call back.
After grabbing snacks the two continued chatting as they left and Stephanie sat in silent envy. She wished that she could be that cavalier about sex and relationships. She wished she could look at the night that she’d spent with Ace as what it was, a one and done, and move on with her life. But, the past two and half weeks were evidence that that was something she wasn’t capable of.
She may have decided not to participate in the study because her life was too complicated, but honestly, even if it wasn’t, she didn’t think she was cut out for it. Just like she didn’t have the “rude” gene, apparently she didn’t have the “hook up” gene either.
Stephanie closed her eyes, wanting to take a moment to shut out the world. Her feet hurt. Her back hurt. Her head hurt. All she wanted to do was go home, get in a bath and have a glass of wine. The only problem with that was then she would be alone and her mind would start wandering to one of the two men she absolutely didn’t want to think about. Her father or Ace. It was like a broken record playing over and over.
“Well, hello there young lady.” A voice boomed.
Stephanie opened her eyes to see one of the only men that had been a constant in her life, Colonel James Hunter, or “Grandpa J.” Grandpa J was Sophie Hunter-Sloan’s biological grandfather, but he’d basically adopted the entire town as “his kids.” He volunteered here at the hospital and treated everyone that worked there like family.
All He Needs – Ace & Stephanie (Crossroads Book 10) Page 11