“Come on, Frankie. Lighten up.” T.J. slapped his cheeks to redden them up. “You need to stop looking like a dead man if you’re really gonna do this.”
“Yup. I’m doing this,” Frankie said to the auditorium full of people, the organ music now swelling up to the rafters. “I’m fuckin’ doing this.”
T.J. had a hunch he was looking for his courage and had come up short. He glanced down the hallway. Cindy was leaning against the wall right outside the bride’s dressing room, keeping sentry, but also giving him the long vacant look he knew only too well. He unabashedly scanned her entire body and let her see he couldn’t wait to get her naked.
She abruptly turned after blushing.
Perfect.
Several minutes later T.J. thought he might have to prop Frankie up he was so pale. “You okay?”
“Fuck you,” Frankie whispered a little too loudly. Mrs. Moore in the front pew frowned. Her eyes swept over the row of SEALs, but zeroed back in on T.J.’s face with an admonition he couldn’t mistake. Merely the little tilt of her chin down and the knotted brow told him he was on probation. Didn’t help he’d given Frankie more Tequila than he usually drank in a whole month. Right now Frankie was spacing out and losing track of where they were and what they had to do next. T.J. had never seen him so fuckin’ scared. Even in firefights overseas.
So he’d screwed up, been a bad influence on the groom. So what else is new? With a past of foster care home rejections and “repositioning” he was used to being on probation. It felt normal. Not until he got into BUD/S did he feel like he’d found home. A real home. Guys who finally shared his intensity for life and irreverence for batshit rules that everyone else thought applied to him. The SEALs ethos were the only rules he wanted to live by. And the beginning pretty much said it all:
In times of war or uncertainty there is a special breed of warrior ready to answer our Nation’s call. A common man with uncommon desire to succeed.
…I am that man.
He thought about it while he watched Shannon’s white dress fill the aisle as she began her stately walk along the burgundy carpet to her willing but completely shitfaced groom. Her father was proud, as any father would be, to have such a radiant daughter, pink and soft in all the right places, and strong in the way she walked, her steady gait of a fearless warrior, full of a plan she was going to fully execute, just like any SEAL, her eyes fixed on Frankie, who didn’t have a clue what he was getting himself into.
That made T.J. smile and check out his shoes. She was the kind of woman who would call the shots, run the household, run Frankie, manage the hell out of his schedule and get her future soccer players up on time and off to everything moms did with a house full of hellions. He saw lots of them in their future for some reason. Kids with snotty noses and hair a bit too long. Band-Aids and skinned knees. All the things he never had as a child.
But he’d watched those kids play through chain-link fences. Watched their parents cheer. Watched the juice breaks and the encouragement he never got from a single coach or foster mom. He was never noticed. Never special.
And that was just fine.
Chapter Two
‡
Shannon felt the pressure of everyone’s eyes on her back. She tried not to think about her maid of honor, Cindy, who had pummeled her with questions about the mysterious, bad-boy best man she hated, T.J. Talbot.
The man had done his best to break them up, Shannon thought, and now was working hard to ruin her wedding. He’d exposed Frankie to the seedier side of life. Nothing they experimented with in the bedroom had ever been Frankie’s idea, it was always something T.J. had described to him.
Fuck T.J.
Yet, she knew that by marrying Frankie she was marrying all the SEALs on Team 3, and thank God she’d never have to sleep with any of the rest of them. Knowing they were so possessive about each other made her a little bit jealous.
Frankie was listing to one side. T.J.’s strong arm propped him up, which was the biggest fuckbomb of all time.
Stoppit, Shannon. She’d picked up their language, their mannerisms, as if they’d been wet paint and she was rolling through them naked. Now she not only thought in swear words, she was starting to say them. They rolled off her tongue as though she’d always talked and thought that way.
Yeah, and that was T.J.’s fault, too.
She could see the little Cheshire Cat smile he was giving her, not that she would give him the satisfaction of knowing he was even a piece of cat litter stuck on the bottom of her shoe. Frankie was going to be all hers. She’d extricate him from his Brotherhood and give him back to them when she was good and ready. Screw the wives who told her she would always come second when it came to the Brotherhood. They didn’t know their men. She didn’t want a normal plain vanilla relationship with Frankie. He was fuckin’ addicted to her, and that was exactly the way she liked it.
There you go again. On your wedding day, and before you get to the altar and kiss your betrothed, you’ve sworn—what? Maybe three or four times? And had unclean thoughts?
Yeah, even ladies in white wedding dresses had dirty thoughts.
She knew that was normal.
Come on, Frankie. Stand up straight. She saw the glassy eyes and knew T.J. had caused it. Her Frankie was drunker than he had a right to be. From the unearthly glow in his blue eyes it was probably Tequila, which he couldn’t hold well at all.
Not like she could. Oh yes, there was that song about dropping your clothes for margaritas. That was her. But Frankie was having a hard enough time standing up right now, let alone being conscious for the wedding. And it wasn’t because all the blood had rushed to his groin, either. That would have been funny. She’d have been happy about that one.
She shot a quick fuck-why-did-you-do-that?-look at T.J., and his smile broadened, and she saw him move his arm when she stood about a foot away from the man she’d chosen for the rest of her life.
The moment T.J. released his hold on Frankie, the groom fell, almost toppling her as well. Her veil was ripped from her hair, her bodice pulled down—maybe too far down for a second or two—and accompanied by the screams of everyone, especially Frankie’s parents in the front pew of the church, Frankie did a face-plant onto what was luckily well-padded carpeting.
She adjusted the detachable beaded bodice to make sure she was decent first, and then had difficulty turning in Frankie’s direction, thanks to her long dress of chiffon and layers of voile. Like her feet were stuck in mud, she turned slowly. T.J. was leaning down to get Frankie, and she caught a hint of his aftershave, nearly brushing her lips across his cheekbone as he stood.
Three big SEALs helped Frankie up. His face bright red, sweat pouring down his forehead, and his shame preceded what Shannon knew would be a huge bender, perhaps one which would eclipse their wedding night. He’d messed up her wedding. He’d tried so hard not to. He’d told her every day he hoped everything came off the way she wanted. Perfect. Like she was perfect, he’d said. Did he suffer from premonitions?
Fuck perfect.
So…there was her fifth swear word and unclean thought. She had another one as she grabbed his arm and hoisted him to her side, which made a few people in the audience titter. T.J. was chucking just loud enough for her to hear that, too.
This is not happening. She knew she would wake up any minute. This must be the nightmare wedding from a bad movie. This wasn’t her wedding day. The day she’d dreamt about her whole life. The one where she’d be the star of the show.
After the vows were said and the rings exchanged, the two of them walked down the aisle, both relieved to have survived the ceremony without further bloodshed. Frankie led her straight to the bar, which she thought was a great idea.
He’d stopped to tell someone in the last row he wasn’t even drunk, which was such an obvious lie. It was a classless further slight to her not-so-perfect wedding. Like maybe God was responsible for all this.
It couldn’t have been Shannon’s fault, scaring
the shit out of him and making him so drink he passed out. It would be a cold day in Hell before she’d admit it publically, but in her heart of hearts she knew she was fully responsible. But no one would ever know.
No one. Ever.
Except the guy who stood behind her. She could smell him before he put his palm on her shoulder, matching the other palm on Frankie’s shoulder while they stood waiting to get poison into their systems quick. The bartender had dropped the first glass he’d filled with ice for her Tom Collins, so the jitters were spreading. But not to T.J. He was rock-solid, and she hated every muscle and sinew of his body. Every drop of his blood. Every cell. She hated all of him for being so calm and light-hearted about her disaster of a wedding.
Not that he’d ever know. She did her best to give him a triumphant, gushing smile. And then she took Frankie’s double Scotch and downed it before he could get his hands on it. With the liquor on her lips and a glow spreading down her chest, she didn’t care how they looked at her. She was a bride on a mission. Her day. Her time, and they better fucking play her game or she’d take them both on.
T.J. gave her an appreciative return glance. Frankie was still trying to figure out what had happened as he told the confused bartender to give him the Scotch he didn’t get the first time.
“Okay. I’m good. Good now. Time to face my audience,” she said and wafted off like she was wearing a dress of white potato chips. She’d deal with Frankie after he found his courage to look at her. Until then, she didn’t want to be anywhere near him, or his fuckin’ devil of a best friend.
Okay, so that was number six.
T.J. was enraptured. The bride was storming across the wooden floor of the fellowship hall, bloody entrails of his heart guts, if there was such a thing, caught in the hem of her dress. No woman had ever made him feel that way before. He was completely powerless to focus on anything else until she was out of sight.
“Glad that’s fuckin’ over,” Frankie said as he coughed.
That brought T.J. to life. But it was hard to talk.
“I’m never going through that again. Something happens to her, someone else wants to have a big wedding, the answer is no, and if that means I stay a bachelor my whole life, so be it,” Frankie said.
“You’re not a fuckin’ bachelor. Too late for that, man. You’d be a widower. Not a bachelor.”
“Whatever the fuck they call it.”
“You know, Frankie, I wonder if you realize what you’ve just done?”
“I don’t catch your drift.”
“You’ve committed yourself to one woman. You really sure this is a good thing?”
Now, why are you even talking about that? Oh yeah, to cover up the fact that the bride is the object of your fantasies. Right now that fantasy involves a number of very unholy images. And you’re standing next to the only man on the planet who has any right to have such fantasies. This is the guy you’d lay your life down for with less thought…Oh, thank God, there is Miss Fresh Face walking through the door and aiming for me, just in time.
“Hi, T.J. I thought I’d find you hanging around the bar,” Cindy said.
God, she was a welcome sight. She was the drink of water that wouldn’t save his life, but would definitely make the next few minutes possible. He was almost ready to ask her if she would suck his dick and be quick about it.
“Cindy, you’re lookin’ mighty fine,” Frankie said, eyeing her. “I was getting a lecture from my best man here about did I know what kind of shit I was getting myself into, and you walk back into the room, and now we can talk about something really important.”
Cindy giggled. She stood on tiptoes and gave Frankie a lip-lock. “And don’t you forget it. I’d have spent my life with you, Frankie, and you wouldn’t have had to walk down any aisle or dress up like a penguin.” She whispered soft things to Frankie, and T.J. could see he liked it.
Until Shannon showed up. Of course, Shannon would blame T.J. If she’d look at him, that is. She was shooting daggers at Cindy. Frankie had just removed his palm from Cindy’s ass and was, once again, red in the face.
This was not turning out to be one of Frankie’s better days.
Chapter Three
‡
Six months later T.J. was thinking about that day while he and the rest of SEAL Team 3 sat in a bombed-out building, waiting for nightfall so they could proceed to the rendezvous. The target hadn’t been where they were told he would be.
In fact, this was the third time in as many days that the intel had been inaccurate, which wasn’t a good sign. Each day they were sent further out into the rural parts of the city of Goan. There hadn’t been a shot fired, but the eyes of the people they’d seen were hard. T.J. would have to say they looked scared, more scared than they usually were, which was saying something.
“You remember that day when you passed out, Frankie? Your face is at least as as red as that day.”
“That’s because it’s fuckin’ hot, man. Can’t wait for midnight.”
“I think it was because of all the Tequila we drank. And everyone in their Sunday finest.”
“That was a fuckin’ nightmare of a day, except for the fact that I married the girl of my dreams.”
“That you did, my man.” T.J. leaned to the left to peer out the hole in the rubble. He had an uneasy feeling about this place. He didn’t like the howling wind, the way everyone avoided being anywhere close to them, like they were lepers. Plus the mess-up of the intel, and, on top of it all, sand was getting into everything. He was getting a huge blister where one of his socks had a hole. Those boots were unforgiving, and that was the most positive thing you could say about them.
From nowhere an RPG hit barely six feet from them, exploding out a cloud of rubble. While pebbles rained down on them, T.J. saw they’d lost two men—and Frankie was hit. He was lying on his back, blood pouring from his mouth.
“Shit, Frankie. You bite your tongue?”
“No, man. Got hit in the back. Can’t feel my legs, T.J. What the fuck?” He brought his hands out from behind him. He’d been sitting on them. His fingers were dripping with his own blood.
T.J. rolled his buddy to the side far enough to see a metal piece severed in Frankie’s lower spine, and was still lodged there. The blood was bubbling, watered down by what T.J. thought was probably spinal fluid. One of the guys was radioing for extraction. T.J. swung around so he could hold Frankie’s head up slightly while he checked for combatants.
“Got Marines on their way, gents,” Kyle yelled out over the cries of their CIA embed, who had been hit as well.
“Frankie, getting you home. Bird is coming now. Hang tight. I’m going to go see if I can help out.”
“No. Don’t go. I don’t want to die alone, man.”
“Frankie, you’re not going to die.”
“T.J., you’re a fuckin bad liar. Always have been.”
“Shut up, Frankie. I gotta stop the sound effects or they’ll know right where to send the next one and we’ll all buy it.”
“Trust me, they know. They’re looking to get themselves a turkey. Why mess with a sparrow?”
It was happening more and more, light injuries requiring evacuation, and then the combatants went after the helo and got everyone. Of course, that was if the SEALs or a sniper on the chopper didn’t pick them off first. But fifty percent of the time it worked, which was much worse than used to be.
“T.J., please hang here for a minute while I finish this mission.”
Frankie’s eyes were kind, tears running down his cheeks.
“If there was ever anyone in the whole world I would want to take care of my Shannon, could ever see her fucking besides me, it would be you.”
“Frankie, stop it. I’m not going to fuck Shannon.”
“Your loss, you dumb shit. She’s going to be a widow, and someone needs to watch over her and the baby. I want you to raise my little girl, T.J. I want you to beat up the first asshole who tries to get in her pants. I want you to hold Shannon�
�s hand while she’s in labor. And I’ll be right there with you, man. Just not in this body.”
“Frankie, stop it. This isn’t helping your situation.” T.J. could hear the chopper approaching. “Hear that? That’s the sound of home, and apple pie, and you getting well and telling her all those things yourself.”
“Love you, man. Do it, T.J.”
“Do what?”
“Promise me. Promise me you’ll take care of Shannon and the kid.”
“Fuck me.”
“Do it, goddamn you!”
T.J. nodded, gripping Frankie’s hand, which didn’t grip back. His blue eyes were as dazed as they had been on his wedding day. Except this time he wasn’t going to wake up. He was already on his way to his next mission—in Heaven.
Chapter Four
‡
Shannon wasn’t supposed to, but she was painting the baby’s room. They’d just found out the little one, due in three months, would be a girl. She chose the name Courtney, and hoped Frankie would like it as much as she did. He hadn’t called her last night at their scheduled time. But that wasn’t unusual.
The baby was getting very active, so she made a mental note not to be going up and down the ladder so much. Although she was steady on her feet, she didn’t want to risk a fall.
The doorbell rang and she put down her light pink roller of paint, wiped her hands on an old paint-smudged hand towel and barefooted it over to the front door. Standing with the backdrop of a sunny, blue-sky San Diego day were a man and a woman in white Naval uniforms. The officer removed his hat and tucked it under his arm.
With the lump in her throat she was given the news, delivered with unwavering eyes filled with compassion. It was a difficult job for them, she could see. It wasn’t a job she’d want, or be able to do as well as they did. But she was thankful they were so kind and respectful.
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