Find A Way Or Make One

by Kelley, E. C.

  I quickly packed up and left. I moved in temporarily with Toby until I could find my own place, so Toby knew how hard I was taking it. I had cried nonstop all week, when Toby had made me realize that I couldn’t be upset with him when I hadn’t been completely upfront and honest myself, and that for once I needed to forget my rules. Toby had also gone with me to Wyatt’s apartment offering me encouragement. We ran into the girl from the nightclub walking down the steps. She appeared to buttoning up her shirt. She smirked and told me that Wyatt had had to leave on assignment. But she would be sure to tell him that I had dropped by.

  Toby was my best friend, and had been since the day he saved me from my doped up ex-boyfriend. That was the first time he saved me. The next time he saved me he saved me from myself. It wasn’t that I was suicidal or anything, but dangerous situations did help me forget, so the dangerous situations started becoming more and more frequent.

  When his girlfriend died giving birth, Toby asked me to help him with raising Seamus and my life had finally felt like it had meaning beyond trying to forget. I had a family to love and protect. I may have failed Toby by not being able to love him as well as he deserved, but even when he was dying, he made sure that I had enough love in my life that I didn’t have to go out and dodge bullets in order to forget. And after seven years Wyatt Masters just thinks he can just walk back in my life and fuck me over again? Hell no, that was not going to happen.

  2

  “My mind keeps recreating a life with you alone. And I’m tired of pretending I don’t love you anymore.”

  Travis Tritt, Anymore

  Wyatt

  I couldn’t believe it when I found out some of the guys from my old SEAL team platoon were here in Morocco on some joint training exercise with the European Union’s newly established version of the DEA. And to think I had not wanted to come when Uncle Trip had all but ordered me to represent the family’s shipping company at the Moroccan export convention. I certainly didn’t want to have to take a trip with Sable, but Uncle Trip had become suspicious of her and wanted me to figure out what she was up to. After spending a week in Sable’s company, I am fairly certain that Uncle Trip has it all wrong. The only thing that Sable is up to is finding someone to satisfy her sexual needs and worship her.

  She has been trying to get in my pants since the day her mother spoke to mine, and I was forced to give her a job in the marketing department. It wasn’t that she wasn’t pretty, she was gorgeous. However, her overly seductive attitude, combined with the fact that everything about her, from her obviously chemically altered honey blond hair, to her lips that collagen had formed into a perpetual pout, to her surgically enhanced breasts that screamed FAKE, was a complete turn off. To top it off she absolutely sucked at her job, and would have been fired long ago if her mother had not used the fact that she had never seemed to get it back together after some prince in Eastern Europe dumped her about eight years ago. I mean I had destroyed the best thing in my life seven years ago, and I was still a fully functioning and productive member of society wasn’t I? Yes, there are days that make that statement a bit of a stretch, but for the most part I think I pulled it off rather well.

  But damn, to this day it still hurt to think about Kylee and the unspoken love in her eyes that my cruel words and thoughtless actions had replaced with hurt and devastation. I had realized too late that she was the love of my life.

  We met while I was on a training assignment at Quantico, learning how to defuse the newest IUDs. Me and some of the other guys that were at Quantico for the same training had been sitting on the patio outside of Starbucks talking about something, for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what, when the wind and rain had set in. We all got up and turned to go inside and out of the corner I caught a glimpse of her.

  Even to this day I can still remember the way she looked and can feel how bowled over I had been. Her long brown hair had become drenched in the down pour that had begun, and looked almost black. Her white V-neck tee started to cling to her lush figure. I could tell she was petite, maybe only 5’3 or 5’4, and while I had usually gone for taller women who fitted my build better, I soon became entranced. In fact, her lack of height led to our first private joke. She had been at my apartment one night and had decided to make dinner. I told her the pots were in the shelf above the fridge, and didn’t think of it again until I heard her jumping up and down and asked what she was doing. She laughed and said she was trying to reach the shelf. I was laughing as I walked into the kitchen and said that would have to midget proof my apartment. Kylee crossed her arms over her chest and stomped her foot. She narrowed her eyes and while still smiling, started walking toward me. She then took her finger and poked me in the chest as she said, “Hey Goliath, I AM NOT SHORT. I am fun sized”.

  The first time I saw her, I stood mesmerized, waiting in the rain, seeing where she would go. Once she had reached the door, I became captivated by her face as well as her body. She has possessed a round face with high cheekbones (later I found out that her great-great grandmother had been Cherokee, while mine had been Apache), and dark brown eyes that seemed to stare into the deepest recesses of one’s soul. I pulled some really lame dumbass line about her not getting sick for our date on Friday night like it was a statement of fact. While some might have thought I was cocky, I really had simply been too afraid to let her have the opportunity to turn me down. At the time I had been twenty-two, and like most twenty-two year old males I had had my share of girlfriends, friendly hookups, and one-night-stands, but I had never been as drawn to a girl as I had been her. As our relationship had progressed over the next six months, I had fallen more and more under her spell. Kylee was unlike any girl that I had ever met before. Not only was she the most beautiful girl that I had ever met, but she didn’t seem to know it, or at least she didn’t care. While most girls would spend hours upon hours getting ready to go out on a date, Kylee would take ten minutes to change clothes, brush her hair, and put on her cinnamon flavored lip gloss. To this day, the taste of cinnamon will bring a sad nostalgic smile to my lips.

  Sex with Kylee was so much better than anything else I had ever experienced. While some girls were only out for their own pleasure, or used sex a way to get and keep a guy’s interest, with Kylee it had been so much more. With Kylee it was an expression of love, and while neither of us had ever said I love you, I had always known what had been in Kylee’s heart. That was probably because it mirrored my own.

  But the sex, as great as it was, wasn’t the only thing that made her different from any other female I had ever met. At the risk of sounding overly nostalgic, it was Kylee’s heart that made me fall. Kylee never met a stranger, and would always do anything she could to help someone, even if they didn’t deserve it. One night when we had gone out to eat, the waitress did everything she could to get my attention. When she realized that all my attention was directed at Kylee and that wasn’t going to change, she became so irate that she actually spilled a plate of food on Kylee. When the manager came over to see what was wrong and caught the girl smirking, he fired her on the spot. Once the girl pulled herself from her shock, she started pleading with the manager, saying that she needed this job to take care of her brother and sister while their mom was in rehab, but the manager wasn’t going to budge. It was only when Kylee came to the girl’s defense stating that she had been stretching out a cramp in her leg and had accidently tripped the waitress that the manager relented and let the girl keep her job. After the manager brought Kylee a clean shirt, we enjoyed the rest of our dinner. As we made our way to the door, the waitress walked up to us and asked to speak to Kylee in private a moment. Kylee never told me what was said, but before Kylee turned to walk out the door, the girl was crying and quickly grabbed Kylee in a fierce hug.

  Kylee had been twenty at the time, and had left her home in Georgia about six months before I met her because she needed a change. The sadness that had overtaken her eyes when she had quietly stated she had just needed a change
always caused me to pull up short of pressing her for more information. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been able to survive hearing about her suffering at someone’s hands. Later I realized I had been right. Knowing that she had been hurt nearly killed me. Knowing that I had hurt her had completely and totally eviscerated me.

  We had been seeing each other for about five months when General Mathers, the commanding officer at Quantico, called me into his office. The adopted daughter of a Middle Eastern informant in Yemen had gone AWOL, and the informant had asked the United States for help in finding her after he had traced her to the U.S., but refused to give a picture of the girl. The unrest in the Middle East at that time was even more violent than usual, and if it became common knowledge in some circles that he had actually been helping the United States, he and his family were dead. So I understood the reasons that he didn’t want to give us any pictures to work with, but it made identifying the girl virtuously impossible without her actually stating her identity or getting “close enough" to her to see her scar. Most of the higher ranking officials knew that this was a nearly impossible task to complete. The only reason the U. S. was taking this request seriously was that this informant had been a very reliable asset in the fight against Al-Qaida, and they wanted to be able to rely on his assistance in the future.

  Based on the information that the informant would let us have (twenty years old, short, physically fit, brown eyes, highly intelligent, well versed in seven languages, and a scar on her lower left back), Naval Intelligence had traced her to Virginia, and reports had placed her in Quantico. Her identity had now been narrowed down to one possibility. An obvious unnatural blond, twenty years old, who was hesitant to give information about her past, but obviously came from money, was short and acted as if money had never been a real concern to her. The belief that she was the girl was further intensified when no background information on her could be found.

  Mathers needed me to get “close” to the girl to confirm her identity, either by seeing the scar or by lover’s confession. I tried and tried to get out of it, but Mathers had been insistent. When I told him that I was seeing someone, he had told me that it was a fairly new relationship, and then asked me if my family had met her. When I told him no he had laughed and said that I obviously wasn’t serious about the girl so this would just give me an easy out. Reluctantly, I complied like a good little soldier. I didn’t know what to do. I knew that if Kylee knew about the order from Mathers, she would leave me, and I had no plans of letting Kylee go. So in a flash of blinding stupidity, I decided to keep the mission on the DL. I began seeing Catherine, while still seeing Kylee. I reasoned with myself that as soon as I had required information I would be done. I even justified that as long as I didn’t actually have sex with Catherine, it would be ok. Funny, how even when you know something is wrong you can always justify it by stipulations such as, “as long as” or, “it will be ok if I”.

  After a week of searching I located Catherine and another doing recon, I was confident on how best to approach her. This was followed by a month of flirting and texting. Believe me, this was no easy task; even if I had been single it would have still been beyond frustrating. Catherine was completely self-absorbed. Everything had to be about her and everyone had to bow down and worship at her feet. This had to be the informants adopted daughter I told myself. I based this on the informant being from an extremely wealthy Middle Eastern family that sounded like the perfect breeding ground for the ever conceited and self-absorbed Catherine. When I finally got her to agree to go out on a date, I was so relieved that this would soon be over and done. I knew that I had been neglecting Kylee and I needed to make it up to her.

  I was completely unprepared for Kylee to call me and ask me to meet some of her friends that were in town for the night. I was overly harsh when I had told her that I had night maneuvers that night and that I wouldn’t be able to meet any of her hick friends from Georgia. When Kylee had gotten really quiet and said, “ok” and softly hung up the phone, I knew that I had majorly FUBARed. I just didn’t know that I had fucked up beyond all recognition in a permanent way.

  I took Catherine out to dinner that night, and while I wined and dined her like a real champ, she still wouldn’t tell me what I needed to know, no matter how I asked. Hoping to get her to spill the goods and not have to get any closer to her, I took her to a bar in hopes that alcohol would get her to slip up and tell me something. We headed to Aces N Eights, a bar in Quantico that saw almost no customers that were military. I didn’t want this shit getting back to Kylee before I could talk to her about it, and even though she was only twenty and couldn’t go to a bar, if others saw me with Catherine they would make it their personal mission in life to let her know about it.

  But wouldn’t you know Kylee would be at Aces N Eights that night. I guess she had been with her friends, but there was no one there that I would have thought that she would have as friends. That night, Jagged Pill, a rock band from England that had just hit the big time was there and any other girls that were there without dates were obviously groupies.

  I had my arm around Catherine’s back, and she was snuggling up to me when Kylee had suddenly appeared in front of us.

  “Night maneuvers. Really, if you wanted to end this, you should have just said something.”

  I panicked. I had to shut Kylee up, so that I could get the information I needed and be done with this. Assuming that I would be able to go see Kylee the next day and explain things, I decided to play it off like she was a disgruntled ex. To this day I can still see the look of emotional devastation in her eyes as I delivered the last words I would ever say to her. “Look Babe, did you really think that we were going last? I mean, you’re a good lay, but you wouldn’t really fit in with my family and friends back home.” I had never mentioned my family’s wealth or connections. Actually, I had been trying to make it on my own, without the Masters name to fall back on. I don’t know why I used my family that night, but I had. The next morning when I had showed up at Kylee’s small apartment I began to realize that throwing my family’s wealth in Kylee’s face and telling her she wasn’t good enough might not have been the best move I could have made. After fifteen minutes of knocking on the door, I looked in the window my world immediately turned gray. It was completely empty. When I went to the book store she worked at, they told me that she called early that morning that she cited a family emergency for the abrupt reason she had to quit. The community college that I assumed she had been attending when she had talked about the classes she was taking had never heard of Kylee Everson. I looked everywhere but she had vanished. It was then that I realized that I was in love with her, and that she had disappeared, taking my only chance at happiness with her

  Full of despair and regret, I threw myself into getting the information that I needed. It was tricky, because lord knew Catherine had turned out to be a sexual deviant, but I never could force myself to actually have sex with Catherine. I couldn’t even force myself to get close enough or drunk enough to confirm her scar. A month later, I found out that everything I had lost had been in vain.

  Feeling sure that Catherine was indeed the informant’s daughter, I set up a meeting with the informant, two of his sons, and General Mathers. As I entered the restaurant with Catherine, the older man of obvious Middle Eastern decent that I assumed was the informant became agitated. “I thought you had found my daughter, where is she?”

  I felt my heart plummet. “Is this not her?”

  “No, it is not. I should have known that if my little girl wanted to hide, she would remain lost. Now all I can hope is that she decides to return to those that love her.” He motioned for his sons and they all left the restaurant.

  Realizing that our relationship, such as it was, was a sham, Catherine had attempted to snuggle into my side. “I don’t know what is going on, but whatever it is it will be ok. It brought us together so we could fall in love.” Catherine said as she reached up to kiss me.

 
I just stood there for a long minute, processing everything, including what I had lost. Suddenly I couldn’t take being even remotely near Catherine, let alone having her hands or lips on me. I jerked away from Catherine’s cloying hold. “Hell no we didn’t! The only thing I have found is peace knowing I never have to listen to your self-absorbed ass again! And to think what I lost, because of you!”

  “What, that dark haired skank? You said that she was nothing more than a good lay!” Catherine’s eye’s narrowed as she crossed her arms over her chest and began tapping her feet. It was at that moment that I fully realized what I had lost. When Kylee had gotten angry and done the same thing when I called her a midget, she had been funny and had touched my heart. Now, looking at Catherine, all I could see was a petulant child who caused me to lose the one thing no man should ever lose. His heart, his soul, his reason for being, and I had lost it all for nothing..

  To say that I lost my cool would be like saying the Titanic was a pretty little boat. “She is NOT a skank and she was NOT just a good lay, she was EVERYTHING! Kylee is the best thing that has ever happened to me! And I lost her, because of you!” I slammed my hands down on the table so hard I spilled the Sheikh’s water, and walked out the door.

  I missed going to work with people that actually wanted you to do well, and were not just waiting for you to fuck up, so they could get higher on the corporate ladder. I fell out of touch with the guys in my platoon and squad mostly because it was hard to see their closeness and know I wasn’t a part of that close-knit group anymore. Recently I found Cale on Twitter and had started keeping up with some of what the guys had been up to. I had been checking his Twitter account in an attempt to ignore Sable when I had seen the post that he was going to the warehouse to train, and then going to hang at La Rassa, a famous club in Morocco, later tonight. I jumped up and rushed out of the suite, leaving Sable completely disgruntled, with her shirt almost all the way unbuttoned. Damn, I’m going to have to find a way to get rid of her. Only last night she came into my room in an itty bitty nightie, asking me if I had anything to get rid of a headache. I barked out a laugh, and told her that if I did have something I would have already taken it to get rid of the continuous headache she caused. She had tried to get all pouty and flirty, but I just told her to get the hell out of my suite. Yeah, she didn’t take that too well judging by the slam of the door!