Page 56 of The Playboy SEAL
“Macs,” I whisper.
He glances over his shoulder, and his face looks pained. “I’m sorry I have to go. I keep a spare key under the doormat. Take it. Okay?” He approaches quickly, his pants still unbuttoned. His hands embrace my cheeks. “I’ll call you.”
“Is everything all right?” I ask.
His face closes down. “I’m sure it is. I’ll call you,” he says again. “I missed a bunch of calls this morning.” Macs shakes his head, irritated.
I frown.
“It’s my fault. For being so into you.” He tries on a smile, but it fails. No dimples or happiness. He kisses me slowly, lips and tongue and the desire that always simmers when our lips are joined is there, but he’s not. He’s already the other person. He releases me. “Stay put for a second.”
I sit down in the middle of the bed. I hear him talking to Tahoe in hushed whispers, and when he comes back to collect his bags, he’s a different person.
“Will you be gone for a long time?” I ask quickly.
He shakes his head. “I have no idea. I need to get in to work and figure this out. Bye, Teala.” He leans over, putting his palms flat on the bed to reach me for another kiss.
I lean up on my knees to wrap my arms around his neck.
“Be safe,” he whispers.
“Text me.”
A small grin starts to appear on his lips but disappears just as quickly. He tells me the same thing Tahoe did about staying home, and then he’s gone. Trusting insomeone other than myself might be the hardest thing I’ll ever do. I don’t know what the hell is happening, and I’ve never had to accept half-truths before. I grab another cup of coffee and open the sliding glass doors in his living room. The sun is a burning ball in the sky now. Somewhere in between him holding me and Tahoe banging down the door, I know something huge changed.
I won’t heed their instructions to stay home. I shower and dress quickly and pull my wet hair into a bun on the top of my head. On a whim I take a photo of the messy bed before I make it and send it to Macs. He doesn’t reply right away, and I know he won’t. I grab the key from under his welcome mat, lock the door, return the key to its hiding spot, and head for the yoga studio. I call my mom on the way, but it goes straight to voicemail. I narrow my eyes at my phone and try it a dozen more times. My Bluetooth must be glitching, so I turn it off completely. The radio automatically picks up where my morning playlist left off. It’s not Adele blasting through my speakers anymore. It’s a frantic radio host screaming about a terror attack.
“Tone it down, buddy,” I say, grimacing.
I mute the mayhem with a shake of my head and try my mom again by doing it the ancient way, with my phone pressed to my ear. It’s still going straight to voicemail. “Where are you?” I ask the air. “Call me back, Mom. Where are you? Why is your phone going straight to voicemail? I have news I need to talk to you about ASAP. Call me back. Your phone never goes straight to voicemail. What is going on?” I hang up the call, and my fingers twitch on my steering wheel, tapping out afurious rhythm of annoyance. I park my car in the empty parking lot and check my watch to find it’s ten minutes before nine. I unlock the mirrored door to the studio.
The business phone is ringing off the hook. I run over and answer it by leaning over the counter. I answer with the standard greeting.
“I’m going to the mall,” Carina rushes. “What was the name of that tea you made the other day? I want to grab some while I’m there.”
We talk for a few more minutes, and she’s happy, and I’m happy. I forget I can’t reach my mom, and I’m worried about tea and everything being right in the world.
And then it’s not.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Macs
Here’s the thing:when you have something you care about, you want to keep that thing next to you at all moments. You want to protect it. You want to shrink it and put it in your pocket encased in a steel bubble. And any time you want, you can put your hand in your pocket and feel it there. It’s reassuring. When the thing you care about is a person, you can’t keep them in your pocket. You can’t keep them at home either. The key is under my doormat, but Teala’s car is gone. I curse at the top of my fucking lungs.
A woman is the very last thing I need to worry about right now, but wouldn’t you know, she’s the fucking first—the only thing I can think of after the fucking terrorist attacks erupted. It’s war. We’re going to war. Not the kind of war you see on the news in far-off deserts with a definitive line between good and bad, either.
When we got to work, we were introduced to intel that warned of terror attacks that would span the whole fucking planet. By the time the intel reached us, the firstattacks were already happening. Widespread. Death. Destruction. Life-altering, world-changing attacks on humanity. They aren’t concepts that are unfamiliar to me. IED explosives, car bombs, suicide vests, M4-wielding bad guys spraying metal into crowds of innocents, but the spotty footage of the terror was something I will carry with me until the day I die. I watched it happen on US soil. I heard the screams of civilians crying for help. They were confused, and rightly so.
There were multiple bombs in San Diego alone. Two at shopping malls affected so many of the guys that after the reports came in, everyone dispersed. It’s fucking melee. Cell towers are down, and traffic is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I wanted to take a motherfucking chopper to my house, but those were all being used, go figure. They sent us to check on our loved ones, because even in my line of work, family comes first, but I know we’ll be shipping out to spots around the United States to protect our citizens from the monster that lurks within.
That’s the worst part. The terrorists weren’t obvious. They were neighbors, friends, unsuspecting men and women who planned this for God knows how long and by what means. For them to skirt our intel and pull off a feat at this scale means there were some big financiers behind this. People who pose as our friends. The death toll was in the hundreds of thousands when I left our compound to find Teala. Tahoe and a few of the other single guys stayed back to formulate plans and get everything ready. The confusion isn’t something I’m used to. No one ever thought it would happen here. In the land of the free and the home of the brave. Tacticswill have to change. Everything we knew about being SEALs will be turned on its head.
I listen to the scratchy radio in my car as I speed toward her yoga studio using back roads. I dial her at least five times as I go. Her cell is going straight to voicemail, and the studio line beeps back at me in a busy signal. The news anchor has replaced the radio DJs, and they’re reporting on the attacks. They list the US cities first, and I match them to the corresponding states and realize I don’t think any states were left untouched. They move on to the international attacks, and I find myself gritting my teeth and surrendering to the pure rage coursing through my veins.
Some get scared. Hell, I saw fucking terror on several of my brothers’ faces. Others process things of this magnitude in a more ambiguous manner. They’re methodical. Tell them what to do, and they’ll do it.
The news anchor does a recap that’s meant to be swift, but it’s anything but.“Sixteen elementary schools, fifty-five shopping malls, four theme parks, one hundred multi-level parking garages, three cruise ships, eight beaches, two hundred and still counting restaurants, commuter trains, airports, and tourist destinations.”
