Page 56 of My Fiancé's Brother 2

The waitress dropped our plates off. We ate in silence for a while. The food was simple but delicious.

I hesitated over my question. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Why the Navy?”

“It was something to do.”

I lifted my shoulder, not buying it. “Something to do?”

“I came out of high school, and I couldn’t exactly stay bunked up with Matt’s parents. College was expensive. It seemed like a challenge.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

He took another sip of his beer. “Boot camp sucked.”

“So why a Navy SEAL?”

“I wanted to see if I could make it through the training.”

“What was the training?”

“First they put you through a physical prep school which is eight weeks. If you pass that, you move onto 24 weeks of basic underwater demolition/SEAL training. Three weeks of jump school, and then 26 weeks of SEAL qualification training.”

“What does that involve?”

“Why do you want to know this?”

“Just curious.”

“In SQT, you learn weapons, close-quarter combat, demolitions, medical skills, cold weather training, survival, evasion, resistant and escape training.”

It all sounded scary and bad. “And then you are a SEAL?”

“Then we do another 18 months of individual training, unit training and then task group training.”

My stupid heart was pounding. “And then they send you to fight?”

“Emily,” he gave me a mild look.

“What does Harper do?”

There was a small flinch near his eye. “She’s part of logistics. The command center feeds us intel.”

“Does she go into the field with you?”

“Sometimes she’s part of the mobile base command center.”

Unable to stop myself, I blurted out. “She’s beautiful.”

He just looked back at me. His expression blank.

“Maybe you rushed into all of this, and you want to be with her?” I swallowed hard. “I want you to be happy. I think Alien would too.”

He crossed his arms. “I committed to you. I told you I would make this marriage work.”

I knew that he had committed to me out of obligation. I never knew how bad that would make me feel. Yet, here I was, unable to walk away from what he was offering, even though I knew that somewhere down the line, he would break my heart completely.

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