Page 54 of The Bosun

“Because you taught me that I should always help people in need, and my country needs me. Whether that be overseas fighting for our freedom or saving people and their homes from fire.”

Placing his tanned hand on my knee, my dad gave me a shaky smile. “I guess I did something right raising you on my own.”

Wrapping my arm around his shoulders, I rested my head on his. “You did, and I wouldn’t change one thing about my childhood.”

“When are you leaving?”

“In a couple of hours. One of the guys is going to pick me up and take me to the airport in Fort Lauderdale along with another guy from a different station.”

“Why do these fires keep happening?”

“California has all the right components to make a fire start, and with the winds they’ve been having, they’re hard to contain.”

“And that woman you told me about, she lives out there where the fire’s headed?”

“I think so. I don’t know exactly where she lives, but it’s consuming a large portion of where I think she was supposed to live.”

He nodded as if it all made sense to him. I didn’t think I’d magically find Stella or come in and sweep her off her feet, away from the fire. That wasn’t why I was going to help. I wanted to help, and California just happened to be where there was a fire raging out of control.

Standing, my dad looked down at me. “All I ask is that you be safe and come back to me.”

“I promise I’ll always be as safe as I can and that I’ll come back to you. You can’t get rid of me that easily. Although I might get my own apartment when I get back.”

“You know you can stay here for as long as you want, but I understand you might want your privacy as well.” He waggled his brows at me.

Bringing home a girl was the last thing on my mind. But I wanted something more than four walls that surrounded me. I wanted my own space for once in my life and not just a small room and bathroom that I had to share with someone.

Clapping me on the shoulder, my dad only nodded for a moment. Maybe he finally understood why I had to go to California. “I’ll let you finish packing.”

“It shouldn’t take me too much longer.”

I had very few possessions—something I had done purposely over the years. First being in the military and then living in a room the size of a bathroom while on different boats, it was sad almost everything I owned could fit inside one duffle. Slowly, I’d started to accumulate more things over the last few months, but not much. I’d been too busy with my training, seeing a therapist that was recommended to me from one of the guys in my unit who’d been home for the last year, and spending some much-needed quality time with my dad.

I’d been more engaged in life and happier since I arrived in my hometown than I had been in the last two years, even as I worked through my crippling guilt.

Seeing my dad for the first time had been bittersweet. My parents weren’t young when they had me. My mom was thirty-five, and my dad forty. He’d aged a lot since I’d last seen him almost four years ago, making him look older than his sixty-seven years, and I knew a great deal of it was because of me. He’d been worried sick about me when I didn’t come home for Damon’s funeral and then when I didn’t try to contact him. I’d been the worst son in the world, and I’d been trying to make it up to him any way I could. I knew it would kill him if something happened to me and I didn’t come back to him. It nearly killed him when my mom left and never came back while I was at school. As far as I know, he’d never heard from her after her initial phone call saying she wasn’t ever coming home.

Once packed, I took my gear and my bag and set them by the front door before I went to join my dad in the living room. He was watching a baseball game with a bottle of beer in his hand. I wished I could have had a beer with him before I left, but that wouldn’t have been smart with the anti-anxiety medicine I was taking.

Sitting down in the recliner next to his, I reclined and tried to watch the game, but my mind was racing with everything I’d learned in the last few months. It helped I’d had training while overseas. I wasn’t a newbie, but it would still be my first time being in front of a fire of this magnitude.

“You know I’m proud of you, right?” My dad continued to stare at the TV as he spoke. “Even if I don’t fully understand why you do it, it’s honorable. Something I never had the courage to do.”

It meant much more than he’d ever know to hear those words from my dad. Growing up, we’d always been close. That is until I vanished out of his life, but now we were closer than ever.

My eyes teared up. I wasn’t as courageous as he thought. It was hard to leave him again. Life was uncertain, but I’d do everything in my power not to hurt him again. “I know, Dad,” I choked out.

My phone pinged with an incoming text.

Jason:Picked up Eric and should be there in twenty.

Remy: See you then.

Dad glanced at me as I slid my phone back into my pocket. “Is that your buddy?”

“Yeah, he’ll be here soon. He was leaving from picking up the other guy.”

He eyed my bags by the door. “Are you sure you got everything you need?”

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