Set In Stone

by Rachel Robinson

  Copyright © 2015 Rachel Robinson

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Kari at Cover to Cover Designs

  http://covertocoverdesigns.com/

  Cover photography by Michael Meadows Studios

  https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMeadowsStudios

  Edited by Wendy Callahan

  http://www.wendylcallahan.com

  Formatted by Allusion Graphics, LLC - Elaine York

  http://www.allusiongraphics.com

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the above author of this book. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Acknoweledgements

  Other Books

  Morganna

  I was always aware some things are more permanent than others. I grew up in the south, so I know how easily things perish in the dry heat. Don’t leave dogs or babies in hot cars, always drink plenty of water, and if that tomato plant doesn’t get the hose turned on it every night? It will wilt away in ten seconds flat. I’m also acutely aware that almost all marriages end. My job as a divorce attorney gives me a front row view of that non-permanent state of bliss. One thing is true: they all end differently.

  The permanence of objects and people fluctuates daily. Granddaddies die and tiny baby bundles are born at the exact same time. I think I always knew Thomas Stone Sterns wasn’t permanent. His otherworldly beauty and wisdom were destined for me, that much I know for certain. But I remember falling for him and realizing the volatility of his permanence at the exact same time.

  “Damn baby, you’re so beautiful like that,” Stone hollers over the whipping wind. We’re bumping down a half-paved, half-rocky road in my hometown. The hot, torn leather seats of the beater truck stick to the backs of my thighs and my bare feet are propped out the window, my porn star pink toenails glistening. As I turn my head toward Stone, I grin. Yes, the mere sight of him makes me giddy. His biceps and forearms are tanned, muscular perfection as they clutch the oversized steering wheel. Here in the south we like to call it good ol’ boy appeal.

  Sensing my gaze and probably my thoughts, he laughs, his sugar sweet smile flashing at the road in front of him. I ask, “What? In my redneck certified uniform, sitting in my daddy’s truck? You know he’s probably as good with his shotgun as you are with your menagerie of weapons?”

  Stone wanted to meet my parents so I brought him, without a single warning might I add, to the slice of backwoods I grew up in. You can’t trip up a man like Stone though. I think it’s because he’s a Navy SEAL that he blends in any environment you toss him in. It’s not fair, really. I try to mask my country. It works most of the time. No one wants an attorney who sounds like she could sing a dog dying, best friend crying, country song. Which I can do, by the way, but that’s not an advertised service. It’s complimentary.

  He turns down the warbling radio which is screaming just one of those songs. “Just you. You belong here. I can sense it,” he says, not taking his eyes from the road.

  “I belong where?”

  “With me,” he admits, no hesitation in his voice. He never hesitates with anything. It’s part of his charm—a gift and his ultimate curse.

  I cross my ankles and adjust them by the side mirror, completely blocking his view. “That’s still up for debate. I mean, you’ve hardly convinced me,” I challenge, eyebrows raised.

  We’ve been exclusive for quite some time, but we like to play a proverbial game of cat and mouse. We’ve both already been caught—by each other. Stone and I have balance—my divorce attorney cynic versus his optimistic, philosophizing killer position. It wasn’t love or lust at first sight, no. I dated one of his friends first, another one of The Guys before he convinced me to give him a good college try. He’s almost as persuasive as I am. Which is a feat because I’ll be willing to stake my momma’s life on the fact that I can convince you of anything I want. Fact? Yep. Fiction. Heck yes. In fact, that’s my specialty. I call it my intuitive gift.

  Stone pauses, tilting his head to one side and then the other. Something he does when he’s calculating his thoughts, tailoring his words just so. “I’m still trying to figure something out,” he finally says. He glances at me. I motion with my hand for him to elaborate.

  Without breaking eye contact he says, “I’m trying to figure out how to be something you need.”

  That’s when the huge, Morganna intuitive lump forms in the back of my throat. I knew I couldn’t stop us. I didn’t want to stop us. Perfection can’t last forever, though. It’s Murphy’s Law, it’s the way of the universe. It’s one of those things I just know. Come to find out, there was no stopping our future. He’d already asked my daddy for my hand in marriage the day before. Regardless of my underlying uneasy feelings our fate was already sealed. Literally and figuratively.

  “You know I don’t need much of anything, Stone.”

  He quirks an eyebrow. “I know of one thing you need. The S word.”

  I clear my throat and explain, “I’ll always need the S word. You’re right.” He nods, happy with my explanation. “I need you,” I confess. His presence does comfort me in a way I’ve never had before. Up to now, my lone wolf status rank was ten. It never occurred to me that some people require someone else to function. Stone makes me undeniably happy. That’s good enough for me.

  “Don’t be afraid of me,” he demands. “Don’t say that you’re not, because I know that you are. It’s okay to need someone, Morg.” He knows exactly what to say.

  “I’m not afraid.” I scoot closer to him on the bench until our legs are touching. He drops his hand to my knee and sighs.

  “Always remember fists and mace will fuck up your face…”

  I groan, cutting him off. “But Stone will never hurt me,” I finish his idiotic rhyme, turning my eyes to the ceiling.

  Stone laughs and the baritone sound drowns out the load roar of the engine. “I love you so hard,” he cackles.

  “I love you hard right back,” I tell him, still smiling.

  “You’re going to stay with me then?”

  “I’ll stay,” I promise.

  He squeezes my knee. “Forever?”

  The lie. The truth. The volatility of permanence. “Forever.”

  His warm, brown eyes flick back to the road, and with one hand on the steering wheel he keeps the other on me, continuing his fast pace down a road to nowhere. I lean my head back against the seat and watch the huge trees fly by, only interrupted by flashes of pool blue sky. I think this might be one
of the most peaceful moments of our relationship—just existing outside of everything else.

  He’s magnetic. The positive to my negative. The sun shines on his hair and I’m reminded of fire. Stone Sterns is like a lit match between my fingers. I’ll hold it until it burns all the way down, but I’ll have to eventually drop it. The risk of getting burnt is worth it because for those few burning moments those flames belong to me. Nothing can take them away. Nothing except the fact that the flame dies and that cheap piece of wood will never ignite again. If there’s one thing I know, it’s endings. This is a story about how I ended a man’s life. The man I love.

  Sometimes there isn’t a new beginning after the end.

  Sometimes it’s just the end.

  Steve

  “And you jumped off the boat with your dick in your hand singing, ‘Hey motherfucker, Steve is superman!’” I bust a hot beat before dropping into the black water, flippers first. I know Maverick will appreciate my sick rhyme. Splashes behind me let me know my teammates are sliding off the side of our matte, dark speedboat into the murky Virginia Beach water.

  There’s only a slight change in temperature when I submerge completely because of my thick wetsuit, which will more than likely cause me to sweat my fucking balls off in a minute flat. Hot is better than cold—always. Hot food, hot weather, hot chicks, hot weapons…all good things. If you can’t turn cold into hot, you’re fucked. Go ahead and apply that to all areas of life.

  My teammates form a line underwater, grabbing onto a swimmer pole so we know where the fuck we’re swimming in the dark, and so we stay together as we approach our practice target, an old training submarine. Cody is lead so he holds the tac-board with a compass, timer, and depth gauge. The rest of us are just along for the ride. Like fucking water ballerinas…covered in black, wielding limpet mines.

  I smile around my mouthpiece, cracking myself up. Actually, the only thing that lets me know how close I am to the target is by keeping track of my kicks. I know exactly how far one will propel me through the water. It’s down to an exact science.

  You have to be down with the quickness to be a Navy SEAL, but I’ve been quick my whole life. Maybe even too quick that one time in high school when Lily Kline took off her panties and finally let me use my fine motor skills on something I hadn’t conquered yet. From then on out it was just a matter of finding a new task and dominating it. I’m not sure where the drive came from—it was always there. As an only child my parents always encouraged and supported anything I showed interest in. Martial arts, every single sport under the sun…you name it and I’ve probably tried it. When I was seventeen years old and I saw online propaganda about the high fail rate of the candidates that go through the SEAL selection program, I knew exactly what I wanted to master next. With single-minded focus I made it my sole purpose in life and I did it.

  Love it or fuck you, but my sick humor is how I keep things light. Because sometimes shit gets hard. Co-workers that are more like brothers die. They die because even though they have their craft mastered, you can’t predict circumstances. It’s also hard because I’m away from the real world for such long periods that I forget how regular people live. All the fucking rats treading water in a nine to five trying to make ends meet, being miserable assholes, to what end? To live a pseudo life without any extreme life experiences breaking up the monotony. The regular people deserve more credit than I do. I live. Most exist. The risks I take are worth my sanity.

  Looking straight ahead I see our target, or just a black blob that’s darker than the water, and I break away from the pole with Cody and Dax. The practice mine is placed on the hard, slimy metal a few moments later, and we high tail it out of the area as quick as possible. When we surface thirty minutes later, our boat is waiting to whisk us away. We’re as close to invisible men as physically possible. Our specialized diving equipment doesn’t release air, so no bubbles ever reach the surface. This particular mission, which took a few hours to perform, probably took a week of meticulous planning and coordinating. There’s something to be said of prep-work, for being as prepared as possible for any given scenario. Even the ones that you can’t control. Be ready for anything. It’s my motto.

  “I think you need to add a new verse to your song. It’s weak sauce,” Mav says as we walk toward our building to drop our gear off for the night. You can’t talk on the boats, unless it’s by radio, because of the high speeds and whipping wind. He’s just now commenting on my superb superman lyrics. “Maybe I can help you work on it.” He grins like a fucking panther—Maverick and his famous fucking dimples. They’ll go down in history, you know, after all of his naval accolades. Maverick Hart is a survivor—a warrior in every sense of the word. It wasn’t long ago that he almost lost his life during a mission that claimed his best friend, our teammate, Stone Sterns.

  “Let’s do it. My rapping prowess knows no bounds, though. I don’t sing that boy band bullshit like you do. You can handle that, right?” I yawn for longer than I want. I also can’t really rap, but he knows that. Him on the other hand? He can sing his ass off. “I have to get home now, though. I’m fucking beat.” Maverick tosses my bag to me and slings his over his shoulder as we exit to the parking lot.

  “Please, we both know that boy bands make the panties drop.” Maverick cackles as he opens the door to his jacked-up, gray Jeep.

  I laugh. “You only drop one set of panties. Don’t be delusional, Mavvy.”

  Proudly, he nods and hauls himself into the cab. “You’re right. I need to get home and make that happen right now, as a matter of fact.”

  He’s relentless. I think his new favorite goal in life is impregnating his wife, Windsor. I can’t say I blame him. She’s hot on a good day and a M.I.L.F on any other day. Plus, she deals with our lifestyle, which makes her a precious commodity in our community.

  Women don’t deal well with our schedule, nor our frequent training trips, and definitely not the deployments. Eighty percent of marriages fail in the SEAL community. Some of the guys who prefer the committed lifestyle keep trying to find a wife that can deal. It usually ends badly, with a wife of the week, or a cheating scandal that would make Bill Clinton look like a fucking saint.

  Personally, I don’t do the wife thing. There’s no sense, really. I have a few girlfriends. Before you get all “cheating bastard,” you should know they all know about each other and it’s a mighty fine arrangement. No strings attached. I’m not lonely and the women are free to do as they please. I’m not a controlling misogynist who wants to have his cake and eat it, too. I get it. I understand why they don’t want to be committed, because I don’t either. It’s a stipulation of dating Steven Warner. Non-exclusivity.

  I look at normal people and normal marriages like my parents, and it’s almost an oddity. Like their definition of marriage is different than what I’m accustomed to. My parents have been married for thirty-five years and still look at each other like they want to hump like rabbits on the breakfast table. Insert puking noises right fucking here. With such a mighty fine example, I’m unsure why I avoid true relationships. I figure I’ll just know, in that cliché sort of way that everyone drones on about. In the meantime, I’m as happy as can be. My life, time, and decisions belong to only me.

  Maverick waves from his high perch before he starts his roaring engine. I jerk up my chin in acknowledgement and drive the dark, familiar roads all the way home. I walk into my dark house, flicking on all of the lights at once, illuminating my obvious type A bachelor pad. White walls, contemporary furnishings, everything clean and in order—nothing showy, or ostentatious. My career has allowed me a great deal of financial freedom, but my house was never something that I wanted to spend my hard earned money on. Like most of the guys, I have expensive hobbies that cost me a pretty penny. Anything adrenaline based, anything considered fuck yeah. My modest sized house is a few notches above functional as it’s still way too big for one person, but not anything like the large houses that sit directly on Virginia Beach’s
bay. It’s comfortable. It’s home. I sigh when the familiar scents of home hit my nostrils.

  “Hey, you!” a female voice calls from the hallway. “You’re finally home. I got off early so I wanted to stop by,” Cassidy says.

  I look at my black, digital watch, which also serves as an altimeter to measure height while skydiving. It’s one thirty in the morning. Granted, Cass is a bartender so she is always up late, but I’m really fucking tired tonight. I wanted to call M and then pass out. She has Gunner, my Doberman, by her side.

  “How was work?” I ask. “Did you take him out for me? Thanks for that. Big man hates when I have night dives. Don’t you, Gunner man?” I raise my voice at the end, and the dog’s butt starts wiggling as he trots over to sit, and then back himself into me, like a marble statue.

  She pulls her dirty blonde hair back into a ponytail. It’s obvious where this is headed. We’ve been together for long enough for me to work out her tells. “Don’t mention it. I love hanging with Gunner. Work was fine. Lots of tips. I just left my tits out all night, you know?” I smile. At the word “tits” I can’t help it. I let my gaze wander down to her black tank top stretched across her huge, fake titties. Maybe I’m not as tired as I first thought. “I missed you. You didn’t call for a few days,” she croons, stalking toward me, her eyes zeroed in on my crotch.

  Running a hand through my damp, dark hair, I avert my gaze. “I had a lot going on this week, baby. Lots of night work.” Gunner moves out of her way as she flings herself into my arms tits first and firmly plants her lips on my neck. Yanking the neck of my shirt down, she licks a straight trail from my ear down to the top of my collarbone.

  She peels away to look into my eyes. “I thought you were with her this week. You don’t want to make me jealous, do you? I mean a girl can only take so much. I’m number one, right?” I swallow hard. I hate when it comes to this. Attachments. I can’t have them. They are too hard to sever. They’re a liability. I like Cass. She’s really fucking easy on the eyes and she always goes above and beyond to help me out when I need someone to watch Gunner, but when we started our arrangement she wanted nothing more than sex. It’s developed over the months and now she’s waiting at my house when I get home from work in the middle of the night. Fuck.