Page 17 of A Spark of Luck
Unwavering commitment to this job and the Navy still lay at the core of his resolve.
He offered value to every part of his life, value to add to his command, skill to add to his team,intelligence to add to his country with minimal distractions from a non-existent personal life. He liked it that way. Kept it that way.
His apartment could be dropped at the slightest notice. His master’s degree in mathematics was finally finished, so there were no ties to school classes, instructors, or mentors. The Navy was his anchor. He’d painstakingly set it up to be that way.
He’d gotten too personal with Cait. Trust didn’t happen overnight. How could it? Even though she’d taken great care of him in the moment, even the most intimate part of him, she didn’t know that.
He stared at his cup of coffee, having shoved his food away. Usually, he ate when food was available. Old lesson. Instead, he was brooding. Brooding! Every thought process, no matter how fleeting or how in depth, ended back with her.
Confusion agitated his brain. What did he do with that? A relationship with a woman could not exist within the parameters of his life. He’d watched it happen with others and knew firsthand. He had no positive examples of family connections until Doogie and his mama. He had no good examples of friendships until the Navy. He had no good examples of marriage except for the two married men on his team. Both contradictions. Hernandez. How he stayed married to Rachel was as obvious as one plus one. Devoted to each otherdefined right there. Thompson and his wife, on the other hand, barely talked let alone had a healthy marriage, and why the hell was he even thinking about marriage? Christ!
He hid parts of himself. He knew he did. That he sent Cait food, worried about her, kissed her – and he wasn’t even going to categorize those moments in bed. Fuck. Like taking a spear right down to his soul. Why her?
“If those thoughts get any deeper, you’ll drown.” Doogie pulled up a chair and sat down, a pile of food on two plates.
“SEALs are drown proof.” Pleased he’d found a dry comment that in no way exposed his inner turmoil, he pulled his tray closer.
“Maybe in water, but inside your own head? Doubt it.” The man shoveled in his first bite of macaroni and cheese and kept shoveling like there would be no food tomorrow.
Hunt took a sip of coffee and kept his silence. No way was he admitting to anything. He didn’t need extra eyes on him. “Think they’ve bounced us around enough?”
Doogie wiped his mouth, having cleared one plate. “Heard anything?”
“Nope.” They’d flown out of Afghanistan tracking a most-wanted terrorist and were now grounded in Sri Lanka, with permission of theirgovernment, waiting for new information. Sri Lanka sat near one of the world’s busiest shipping routes in the Indian Ocean, and rumor said the country was a target.
Theirs wasn’t the only team in a holding pattern waiting to converge on intelligence. Defense Department wanted this guy bad. He’d made three deadly strikes in Middle East and one against U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last six months killing hundreds. Each one intensifying the effort to find him before he killed again.
Hunt had been at this long enough to know that tracking terrorists took time, but waiting kept his brain on an incessant loop. What was Cait doing now? When did her deployment end? How would he find her when he was free to look? Did he want to find her?
“You’re spinning, man.” Doogie shoved his dessert away. The man always ate dessert between meat and salad.
“Thinking through things that’s all.”
“You did that in BUD/S too. All the thinking and not sharing.”
Hunt groaned inside. It had been the one thing that had come close to derailing SEAL training for him. Not a team player. So, he gave Doogie the partial truth. “You ever feel tired of doing all the violent, bloody, dirty work we do?”
“And do what else, bro? Oh wait, Professor. You have a side-gig waiting.” Doggie snickered.
Hunt shook his head at the familiar jab. “I never saw myself teaching math.”
“So why get a master’s degree, then?”
“To prove something to myself.” He kept the deeper reasons to himself, hoping to deflect Doogie to avoid confessing that he had been thinking about a life after SEALS. Most men did this job until their bodies gave out. But now, he’d developed a thing for the firecracker of a doctor who stitched him up, and his future thoughts were jumbled and yet laser sharp.
“Seems like you proved everything you needed to when you graduated high school and joined the Navy with no help from your family or the people around you.”
“Maybe I did it for me, then.”
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“Nothing to tell that I can articulate in any coherent way at the moment. Only a feeling.” He’d discovered longer answers sidetracked the man. He didn’t use it too often because Doogie was a suspicious son of a bitch.
“Okay. When you get ready to talk about the pretty doctor, let me know.” Doogie took a slow roll to standing and gathered his garbage.
Dammit. Shaking his head, Hunt looked him straight in the eyes. “No room in this job to keep relationships with people outside the loop.”
“I know you believe that, but you do fine with my mama.”
