Page 61 of The Playboy SEAL
“How to say goodbye to you when you have this awesome hero hair going on,” I reply.
Smiling, he looks up and hands me my shirt and pants he picked up from the floor. He hikes his thumb at the bathroom connected to my bedroom. “I can go do it really quick if it helps? You’d be shocked what I can accomplish with a little water.” He turns away while I get dressed. “Watching you put on clothes only reminds me of taking them off, and we’ll be in the same place we were ten minutes ago,” he explains.
I wouldn’t mind that. I want that. “I’m fully dressed,”I say. “Albeit sticky.”
He has one hand on a small black duffel bag he brought inside. Crossing to him, I hold my breath. The TV anchor drones on downstairs. I hear the hysteria, the panic, the confusion. It fans my anxiety flames.
Macs swallows hard. “I need you to keep this bag for me. There’s another satellite phone in there, which you can use to reach me,” he says, chancing a glance down my way, but looks away quickly. “I only ask that you use it in case of an emergency. The number to mine is programmed in there.”
I nod, grateful for this lifeline even if I can’t use it every waking moment. He goes through the bag and shows me things that I can use if we lose power to help with life. It’s extra gear. Things he never in a million years thought he’d need to use or show me how to use. At the bottom is a handgun in a holster.
“This is only for emergencies, too,” he says. “It’s loaded.” His voice is taciturn, demanding I know he’s serious.
I pick the cool black weapon and turn it over in my hand. “I know how to use it, Macs,” I say. “My dad taught me when I was a kid.” I remember how important he thought the skill was. The older I got, the more I strayed from that logic. Guns kill people. I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. When he left and I realized what a whore he was, I vowed to never pick up a gun in my life because obviously lunatics and selfish assholes use them. When I tell Macs the quick story, I see the tension in his shoulders relax.
“You’d scare someone with it, to be sure, but youdon’t know how relieved it makes me to know you can do more than that, you can defend yourself,” Macs says. He’s trying to talk over the television, I can tell. The volume is so loud I can hear that it’s not normal news regardless. His efforts are misplaced.
“Here’s a phone, but don’t call me and here’s a gun, but try not to use it?” I ask, laying it down on the top of the bag.
There’s other stuff in there that lets me know he didn’t intend to leave this here. Like his clothes and a dopp kit with grooming products. He walks over and shrugs his jacket back on. The uniform is identical to the one Tahoe had on, and the sight makes me sad. I launch myself into his arms and bury my face in his neck.
He clutches me tightly, but when he releases me a touch, I know it’s time for me to put my grown-up panties back on. When my tiptoes hit the floor, I wipe underneath my eyes. “I lived without you once,” I announce proudly. “And I can do it again.”
My statement doesn’t make him happy. In fact, I think quite the opposite happens, because his eyebrows knit together in anger.
“What? Do you hope I’m miserable without you?”
He scratches the side of his head. You can tell having fluffy hair is a distraction. “I guess not, no. But I don’t want you to go back to being single either.”
“Does this feel like I’m single?” I ask, leaning up and pressing my lips against his.
I will him to feel the passion through my lips. The love. The disdain for this situation. Everything I never said for fear of frightening him off. Macs groans into mymouth but holds me at a distance.
Keeping my eyes closed, I will the clash of teeth and lips to drown out everything else, so nothing else exists in this moment except what I give permission to. His hands are tender, more so than they’ve ever been. I bite his lip as I pull away and let my gaze find his. We’re nose to nose, heart to heart, and it’s the moment I break.
I sob into his chest.
“I believe you. That wasn’t a single lady kiss,” Macs says. “Don’t get upset over it.”
I laugh through a hysterical sob, and I feel like such a failure. Like the little girl who can’t control her emotions. The more he sees me cry, the angrier I become. He tells me he’s sorry, and it’s not his fault, but I can’t form coherent sentences to tell him that, so I just shake my head and clutch his jacket and let every fear take over my body.
When he says he has to go a third time, I release him with the intent of watching him walk out the door. Time has stood still since we entered the house. We’ve been in my room for less than thirty minutes. With a thumb, he wipes a tear from my cheek and pops his thumb into his mouth. It would probably make me laugh if there wasn’t a constant stream of tears taking that one’s place. He throws me a lopsided grin, his thumb still tucked between his teeth. A one-sided dimple appears. I shiver.
“From the back to the middle and around again,” he sings, lifting and lowering his shoulders.
I do laugh now. “I’m gonna be there until the end,” I whisper, completing his ’90s song by Crystal Waters.
“One thousand percent. Pure,” Macs says, raising hiseyebrows in question.
“Love,” I finish.
Macs kisses my forehead and walks out the door. I remember slamming that door a million times when I was a teenager. I remember tilting a chair under the knob to keep my parents out when I had a boy in my room. But I don’t remember ever feeling such pain seeing a back disappear from it. He talks to my mother for a bit. I can hear that through the vents cut into the wooden floor. Macs walks out to his car in the same stride I’ve seen dozens of times before.
Slumping to the floor, I kneel, leaving my chin and arms on the windowsill.
Saying goodbye wouldn’t be this hard if I knew when I’d see him again. If I could cross off the days on my calendar like a normal military girlfriend, it would be manageable, the pain wouldn’t resonate so deeply, I’m sure. Macs doesn’t look up at my window, and I know it’s a purposeful move to regain some semblance of his other personality. He can be the SEAL. The man who will take care of a nation and serve his country well. He told me he loved me. He asked me to wait for him.
I want to know why the first man I’ve ever loved arrived during a skewed reality, twisted by enemies no one knew existed. It’s the world’s cruel joke. Give Teala what she’s secretly wanted and then snatch it away before she enjoys it too much. I place my hand against the glass and peek through my fingers at his car disappearing down the drive. Even as I dwell with this agony, I hate myself for succumbing to the dramatics of it all. I did the same thing when my father left. If I’m being honest, the hollow feeling inside my bones feels the same way.
