Page 1 of A SEAL's Heart
1
ED
My jaw throbs and my stomach aches with hunger. I haven’t eaten since the sloppy muck from the feeding tube that passes for food at the clinic this morning. But fucked if I’m going to draw more attention than I already have by attempting to stuff a sausage roll or mini sandwich into my wired shut mouth.
“Anyone for another drink?” Marcus raises his empty glass. “May as well make use of the free bar. It’s what Jake would have wanted.”
Jake would have wanted to be here, having a beer at The Landing and talking shit with his buddies.
I shake my head and grunt, which is all the sound I’m able to make.
“Eloquent as ever,” Marcus quips.
I scowl at him. It cost me to grunt, and I’m not going to give him a second one. I’ve never been one for words, and my former teammates think it’s hilarious that my mouth is wired shut.
The Landing was the perfect choice for Jake’s wake. It’s run by an ex-Marine, and the entire bar is an homage to the Navy. Navy blue vinyl covers the booths; thick ropes separate the dining area from the bar; and pictures of local service members decorate the walls.
I came here with Jake the two times I came back to his hometown in the mountains of North Carolina on leave with him.
“Did you ever come here when this place was JayJays?” Hudson rolls his broad shoulders and cricks his neck. His short dark hair is as wild as he ever lets it get. He’s the only Navy SEAL who never took advantage of the fact that we could be as hairy as we wanted.
I shake my head.
“It was a dive,” Hudson says. “Sticky floors and reeked like stale beer.” A ghost of a smile appears on his face. “Jake loved it. We snuck in when we were underage. Jake used his brother’s ID.”
Amos frowns. “That little shit.” He shakes his head and smiles, making him appear so much like his brother that I have to turn away.
“How long you home for?” Marcus asks.
“They gave me a month, but I’m heading back in a few days.”
No one needs to ask him why. Amos is the only one of us in any shape to re-deploy. He wants payback for his brother’s death.
I wonder what he’d think if he knew what happened in those final few moments of Jake’s life.
But I can’t tell him, even if I wanted to. The officer investigating what went wrong with the mission came to interview me in the hospital. I wrote my statement as best I could with my fingers swollen like sausages from the impact injury. The guy got frustrated that I couldn’t talk. He left me alone, but there will be a reckoning. The truth will come out at some point. But that’s not what I’m thinking of today.
A swish of blue has my head snapping around so hard I almost tear the wiring in my jaw. In a sea of military uniforms and funeral black, Jake’s little sister wore bright blue.
I watched her through the funeral. Who wouldn’t? Avery stood with her back straight as the blue dress caressed her ankles. Her lips trembled as she held her mother’s hand, their father tall and unmoving behind them in his Rear Admiral uniform. Her brother, Amos, stood on the other side of their mom, ready to prop her up if needed.
Avery held it together until the lowering of the coffin. Then the trembling of her lip erupted into a full-blown sob.
The ache in my jaw I can handle, but watching Jake’s little sister cry her way through her brother’s funeral is enough to make my chest implode.
The last time I saw Jake’s little sister, she was just a girl. But there’s nothing girlish about the woman making the rounds of grieving relatives, old friends, and military personal.
My gaze follows her as she carries a plate of sausage rolls to a group of elderly folk in the booth near the bar.
“How are you doing?” I tear my gaze away from Avery to find Joel staring at me.
His intense gaze misses nothing, as intense at home as he was when he was my commander on the battlefield.
I shrug, because the fucker knows I can’t talk.
“I got you this.” He pulls a notepad out of his pocket with a pen attached to it by a string. “So you can still talk to us.”
I glare at the notepad and back at Joel. He looks expectant, probably waiting for me to write him a thank you note.
