SEAL's Honor

by Megan Crane

  “Careful. Be very careful.”

  “—was a good man,” Ron said, ignoring Blue’s interruption. “A great man. Your mother misses him every day, as she should, and the only link she has to him on this earth is you. You, Blue. And you’ve stayed away for twenty years. All I ask is that you think about that. Think about her.”

  “She—”

  “She loved your father,” Ron said softly. “And I know it hurt you that when he was gone, she found a way to love me. But she never, ever, stopped loving you, Blue. Or him. Never. Maybe it’s time to stop punishing her. All she did was live.”

  And Ron didn’t wait for Blue to respond to him. He simply walked off down the stairs, leaving Blue to stand there in the wreckage he’d made.

  And, worse, to face it.

  He didn’t want to face anything. He wanted to disappear—but that was what he always did, wasn’t it?

  It was what he was still doing.

  It’s what you’re good at, he growled at himself.

  He hadn’t followed his instincts and left Everly to handle her situation on her own, and look what had happened. He was embroiled in twenty-year-old family drama that made him want to shoot himself up with an actual chemical numbing agent so he could stop feeling a damned thing.

  Blue made his way back down the stairs, his heart seeming to beat double time, as if he were doing a few rounds of PT instead of calmly leaving a house he hadn’t wanted to come back to in the first place.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he had a choice. He could hear the television on in the den, and he knew without having to look that his mother and Ron would be in there, sitting together on the couch, a perfect picture of domesticity. He’d hated that when he was younger. More than hated it, he’d seen every instance of the two of them enjoying their life as a personal insult and a betrayal of his father.

  He didn’t feel that way now. He didn’t know what he felt, was the trouble—except mixed-up and battered and something that crept too close to powerless.

  All she did was live, Ron had said.

  He could go into the den. He could try to act like the son his mother deserved. Or he could do what he wanted to do and GTFO. Now.

  Blue hated this. He hated all of this.

  And he was mostly afraid that what he really hated was himself.

  He wasn’t his father. He wasn’t that kind of hero. He didn’t know how many more times he needed to tell people that before they’d stop holding him up to standards he would never, ever meet.

  So he didn’t go find his mother. He headed straight through that kitchen and walked out of the house, the way he’d done twenty years ago.

  He didn’t look back. He flipped the SUV around and headed back down the driveway, where he stopped, because there was another issue glaring at him.

  Literally, right there in his face. Or across the street, anyway.

  Everly’s parents’ house was lit up as if they were home, when Blue knew they weren’t. They were on their way back from Europe, but they weren’t here yet. Which meant the lights on the second floor were Everly’s.

  After hours in police custody, Everly had been released before Blue. Templeton had driven her out to her parents’ house because it was the only place she had to go. The police had told her that there had been some salvageable items in her apartment, but that was a whole project. And tonight wasn’t the time to face it.

  Blue itched to slam his foot down on the gas pedal and put as much space between him and this street as he could, and fast—

  But she’d told him she loved him.

  Blue figured the least he could do was tell her good-bye.

  He could handle this better than he had with his family. He could let Everly down easy. Maybe even let her hate him if she wanted, so she could get over this crisis crush of hers quicker.

  She might have changed him forever. He could feel it, deep inside him, like one more fault line about to crack. But she hadn’t changed him enough.

  Blue didn’t think anything could.

  He pulled over across the street and left the SUV there at the curb. Then he jogged around to the back of the house and the door that led straight into the kitchen, because that was how kids had always entered each other’s houses back when they were growing up here. It hadn’t even occurred to him to use the front door.

  As if you have more memories of life here than you want to admit.

  He told that voice inside him where it could go, then let himself in through the unlocked back door. Once inside, he stood still.

  Because it was much too quiet.

  A moment later, Griffin melted out of the shadows from what Blue assumed was the pantry, lowering his weapon as he stepped into the light.

  “I thought Templeton was doing the last watch here.”

  “He had to jump a plane for Atlanta. Clean up a mess or two on that corporate job from back in April.” Griffin smirked. “Am I not pretty enough for you?”

  “You’re gorgeous.” Blue moved farther into the kitchen, hoping he’d managed to school his expression into something appropriately blank. Because Griffin saw entirely too much, like all the rest of his overly trained brothers-in-arms. “Where’s the client?”

  “At the moment, the client is in the shower.”

  Blue assured himself that he was imagining Griffin’s emphasis on those two particular words.

  Griffin lifted a finger and pointed it toward the ceiling. It took Blue a minute to understand that they could hear the water in the pipes of the old house, if they listened.

  “She’s been in there a while. I’m guessing the shock hit her.”

  “Okay,” Blue muttered. “Thanks.”

  He didn’t explain himself any further. Better still, Griffin—possibly the most resolutely glacial of all the men in Alaska Force—didn’t ask. Blue walked out of the kitchen and found the stairs, then headed up to the second floor. He followed the sound of the running water down the hallway to his left, and sure enough, Griffin was right. The shock had finally hit her.

  He could hear Everly in there, sobbing in time with the pounding water.

  It was like someone reached out, plunged a fist into his chest, and mangled whatever was left in there.

  Blue knew he should leave her to it. He should go now, and not make this any worse. Let her cry about whatever she needed to cry about and disappear. He could be a part of the memories she had of these awful weeks when her normal life had gotten strange. As time passed, who knew? Maybe he’d fade away entirely.

  All he had to do was leave. Now.

  But instead he found his hand on the doorknob. Then he was pushing open the door and stepping inside. Steam enveloped him, shrouding him in thick heat. He found his way to the stand-alone shower stall next to the wide tub, and opened the door.

  Everly was crouched down in the corner of the shower, pillowing her head in her arms.

  He couldn’t bear it.

  Blue reached in and turned off the water. He grabbed the towel hanging on the hook outside the shower, then leaned in to wrap it around her. Then he lifted her up and into his arms.

  She was a sodden mess, and she nestled her face into the crook of his neck. And he couldn’t tell the difference anymore between the fault lines inside him and Everly. They were all wrapped in and around him, and now she was, too, and he didn’t understand what he was supposed to do with this. With her.

  With all those things he didn’t want to feel, but did.

  “I thought you were dead,” she said, her mouth against the side of his neck.

  “You keep saying that.”

  “I don’t think you get it, Blue. I had to live with it. However long that was, fifteen minutes? Five? You were dead.”

  That clawed at him.

  He followed the light into a bedroom down the hall, figuring it was her childhoo
d bedroom. There were pretty lamps on matching bedside tables. There was a frothy pink comforter stretched across a full bed piled high with unnecessary pillows.

  It was exactly the kind of bedroom he would have imagined for her, if he’d imagined it.

  But she’s not the girl who lived here.

  Blue didn’t want to have that argument, even if it was only with himself. He didn’t want to think about the fact that he’d seen the bedroom she’d put together in her apartment, and while it had been feminine and suited her, it hadn’t been pink. It had been comfortable and pretty, sure. It hadn’t been a little girl’s room.

  But that uncomfortable truth wasn’t going to help him walk away from her, so he shoved it aside.

  He carried her over to the bed and set her down on the edge of the mattress.

  “I’m alive,” he told her, his voice dark.

  It came out sounding a lot like a promise. Worse, a declaration.

  “Blue,” she whispered. “Blue, I—”

  He had come here only to leave her. To say his good-byes and make sure that this thing between them was cut straight through. No ties. No entanglements. That was the way he liked his life. He barely spoke to his own mother, for God’s sake. He didn’t want or need anyone else out there in the world hoping that he might show up again one day, when he knew that would never happen.

  This was supposed to be a good-bye.

  So he had no idea why he moved closer to the bed so he could fit himself between her legs where they dangled over the side of the mattress. And then gently, carefully, fit his hands to her face.

  Everly opened her mouth as if she meant to speak.

  Blue bent and captured it with his own.

  And inside him, a storm raged.

  He couldn’t make her promises. He couldn’t stay. He didn’t know how to be the man she saw when she looked at him, and he hated that there was a jagged, yearning part of him that thought he should try anyway.

  He thought it would stop at a kiss, a sweet taste of the things he couldn’t have and needed to leave here, but Everly had other ideas.

  She surged against him. She wrapped her arms around him, gripping his T-shirt in her fists, and then tugged him over her until they both tumbled back onto the mattress.

  Blue knew he should stop it. He knew he could have kept her from pulling him anywhere he didn’t want to go. He should set boundaries, not break them—he knew that.

  But all the things he should have done got lost somewhere in the delirious slickness of her mouth on his. He tugged on her towel, revealing her breasts, tilted and tipped with those rose-colored nipples that tasted better than anyone should. He started there.

  He tasted her, he worshipped her, and while he indulged himself, Everly was exploring him. Her mouth was everywhere. Tasting, teasing. It was almost as if they were fighting each other to get to the same fire, rolling this way and that.

  Panting, raw.

  Perfect.

  Until finally, Blue stripped out of his clothes and stretched out beside her, rolling on protection while she settled herself astride him.

  And then he lay back, gripped her hips, and let her ride.

  He would remember this—her—forever. The way she arched back as she moved against him, breathing hard. Her soft body, freckled and pale and made to fit him like the finest, sweetest glove.

  She was burning herself into him. She was making herself a part of him with every delicious roll of her hips.

  He had to fight to hold himself back when she started to shudder, that red flush working its way down her whole body. She lit up like a firecracker, bright and hot, and she called out his name when she ignited.

  And as she shook and sobbed all around him, Blue flipped her over. He rolled her beneath him and pulled her knees up higher, so he could go deeper. Harder.

  So he could make this last even longer.

  He tossed her from one peak straight into another climb, and waited for her to break apart all over again.

  He loved when she flushed, hot and unmistakable. He loved the way she writhed beneath him, as if every deep thrust might well be the end of her. He loved her, he realized.

  He loved her. He was in love with her.

  And Blue told her the only way he could.

  The only way he’d allow it.

  His hands, desperate to touch more of her, all of her. His mouth against her skin.

  He threw her into the fire again, then again.

  And it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

  But it was the only thing Blue had to give.

  And when he finally let himself go, the only word in his mouth was her name.

  Everly.

  He didn’t know how long he lay there with her when it was over. He knew only that he left part of himself behind when he rolled out of the bed and left her there, curled up and fast asleep.

  And he wasn’t the man he’d been when he’d walked into this house. He wasn’t the man he’d always believed he was, period. This place had taken that from him—or, worse, shown him hard truths in a mirror he’d very much like to shatter with his fists.

  Blue felt . . . diminished.

  Lucky for him, he’d spent years in the navy learning how to suck it up and work with what he had.

  He just had to hope it was enough.

  It would have to be enough.

  Twenty-two

  A month later, Everly flew to Alaska.

  It took quite a few hours more than when she’d taken the direct Alaska Force jet with Blue, but a lot less time than it had taken to drive. Plus, she’d had a layover in Seattle, which allowed her to drink good coffee while asking herself if she was really, truly doing this.

  The answer was yes, she really was.

  She landed in Juneau on a crisp evening that felt much further into fall than the date suggested, and stayed the night in a comfortable hotel nearby. In the morning, she looked out on a world that appeared to be half in the clouds, which lingered, puffy and low, over the green hills that flirted with the gleaming water in all directions.

  There was time for coffee and a shower to wake herself up, and then she boarded the ferry for Grizzly Harbor.

  And for a long time she lost herself in the simplicity of the big boat cutting through the water. Seals and whales made appearances, some close and some in the distance, while glaciers beckoned from afar and islands stretched across the horizon, bulky with mountains and evergreens. She bundled herself up and sat outside, letting the cold, clear Alaskan air and the salt from the sea scrub her clean as the ferry made its way through the many islands of the famed Inside Passage toward Grizzly Harbor.

  She stood on the bow as the ferry docked, surprised that the rugged little fishing village looked as good to her now as she remembered it.

  Just like the postcard she’d been carrying around in her head.

  Because she’d spent a lot of time this past month telling herself that it had all been an exaggeration. That Alaska and Blue and everything in between had all been crisis and panic, fear and terror. She’d tried to convince herself that Blue had been right and she’d had on blinders to get her through her ordeal. That no matter what she might have felt in the thick of it, it had been impossible for her to see things around her as they really were.

  She’d tried to believe it. She really had.

  When she’d woken up that morning in her parents’ house, she’d known Blue was gone. Before she’d come fully awake, she’d known he wasn’t there in the pink bedroom her parents used for guests these days.

  But she’d still looked for him. Or . . . a note, maybe. A voice mail message she could access through one of her parents’ computers, since she didn’t have a phone. Even a text.

  There was nothing. He was just . . . gone.

  She’d walked over to his parents’ house
and snuck around the side like a crazy person on her way to boil a bunny, but the only thing left to show he’d been there was the marks his tires had made in the grass out back.

  Everly didn’t need to knock on the door or talk to his mother to know the truth.

  Blue was gone. Just as he’d said he would go, way back when.

  That time, Everly didn’t cry. She’d felt sick. Hurt, she could admit it. But she didn’t cry. She’d gotten it all out in the shower, she told herself fiercely. Or all she planned to let out, anyway.

  And besides, there was too much to do. Her parents had come back on the next flight from Europe, horrified at what had happened to their daughter and deeply upset that she hadn’t told them about it sooner.

  “I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me,” she confessed to her mother the night they’d arrived. They’d all been sitting around the kitchen table together, her parents growing more and more agitated with every part of the story Everly had shared. “I thought I could solve it and you’d never have to know that I’d somehow gotten myself into this situation. . . .”

  “I don’t know where you get this idea that you’re a great disappointment,” her mother said fiercely, and then had reached over to grab Everly’s hands. “It was as if the minute you decided following in my footsteps wasn’t what you wanted, you stopped trying to push yourself to do anything.”

  “But Jason . . .”

  “Your brother knew what he wanted to be since he was three years old,” her father had said brusquely, his eyes suspiciously glassy. “That has its own pitfalls, I assure you.”

  “If I’ve ever been disappointed in you, Everly, it’s not because you didn’t live up to some fantasy daughter you imagine I have in my head,” her mother had said, holding her gaze so there could be no escape. “I don’t need you to be a doctor. I need you to be happy. Whatever that looks like for you, that’s what I want.”

  “And maybe,” her father had added gruffly, “no more roommates.”

  Everly had spent the rest of the month thinking about what happiness was. Real happiness. Not occasional bursts of joy here and there, but the kind of happiness that was sustainable. The kind of happiness that mattered.