Afraid to Fly (Anchor Point #2)(26)

Sure enough, four sea lions were bobbing below us, heads poking through the surface as if waiting for the fishermen above to toss them something.

"Looks like there's a couple more." Clint pointed at the water a few feet away from them. Either it was a trick of the light, or there were others swimming underneath. A second later, another whiskered head popped up.

While Clint leaned over the railing and watched the sea lions, I surreptitiously adjusted the intensity on my TENS. The pain was mild today, but there was a hint of tension in the middle of my back that could turn into a vicious spasm if I didn't stay on top of it. Walking around on the slightly uneven pier probably wasn't helping, but I wasn't ready for this day to be over, so I prayed for the TENS to work its magic along with the ibuprofen I'd dry-swallowed earlier while Clint wasn't looking. Not that he'd have judged-I just hated people seeing how much I relied on pain control.

The sea lions kept on playing below us, and we watched for a while. After they lost interest and swam away, we kept walking out to the far end of the pier, which was completely deserted.

There, Clint folded his arms on the weathered railing, and took in a deep breath through his nose. "Man, I didn't even realize it until I came to Anchor Point, but I fucking missed being close to the ocean."

"Yeah, every time I've had to be away from it for any length of time, I started going crazy." 

Clint nodded. "Seriously. Told you before-I did not join the Navy so I could go live in the desert."

I laughed. "Well, I didn't join it so I could work behind a desk, but . . ."

"God, isn't that the truth." He turned toward me. "Could be worse, right? I mean, the whole Monday-through-Friday, nine-to-five stuff has its perks."

"Oh, no kidding. I do not miss duty weekends or night ops."

He grunted softly and nodded. "Double-digit shifts are the worst. And months-long deployments."

"Hear, hear." I paused. "But, hell, they can stick me on a ship if they have to. As long as they don't move me away from the water."

"Yep. I don't even know what it is." He shook his head, gaze fixed on the water. "I spent my first eighteen years in Colorado. Didn't even see the ocean until I was fifteen. Now I can't stand to be away from it."

I just nodded. The ocean was a funny thing. It had nearly killed me, and to this day, the thought of swimming in saltwater made my heart race, but after twenty-three years on ships and coasts, I didn't like being far from it. Being landlocked for any length of time was disconcerting for reasons I couldn't quite explain. It was . . . suffocating somehow. Lakes and rivers didn't cut it, either. I needed to be close to water that reached a horizon.

"You would think we'd be tired of the ocean," I said quietly. "After six months on a goddamned boat, I couldn't imagine wanting to see water again as long as I lived. But two weeks after we came home . . ."

"Yeah," Clint breathed. "After my first deployment, I went home to Denver for a while. Hadn't been on the ground three days, and I was already itching to get back."

"Amen to that. My ex-wife and I went to see her family in Oklahoma after I came home." Shaking my head, I muttered, "I couldn't tell if it was the dry land or my in-laws, but I was ready to go AWOL and haul ass back to Norfolk."

He laughed. "In-laws were that bad?"

"Eh, they were a mixed bag. Brother-in-law was a hard-core pacifist who liked to regale me with statistics about civilian casualties-"

Clint shuddered hard, humor vanishing.

"But for the most part they were all right," I said quickly. "Just . . . you spend six months on a boat with your squadron, and suddenly you're surrounded by a completely different crowd. Like the whole world's got a completely different rhythm, and nobody gets why you're not used to it. It's weird."

"It is, yeah." He shifted his weight and nodded, and slowly, he started to relax again. Tilting his head to one side, then the other, he said, "I guess I was lucky. My ex-wife was a Navy brat, so her family knew what it was like. They knew-and she knew-that it was an adjustment coming back to shore. They followed my lead with everything."

"Wow. I would've sold my soul for an adjustment period when I came back." I paused. "I mean, like I said, they were great people. My ex-wife too. But they had no idea. It took two deployments before she realized that when I came back, the last thing I wanted to do was go out and do everything I hadn't been able to do at sea. Mostly I wanted to sleep, be around people I'd missed, and have some downtime." I laughed softly. "Ironically, about the time we'd figured it out, and we knew how to handle me coming back from a deployment, we split up."

Clint grimaced. "Damn."

"Yeah. I kind of knew it was coming, though. We were going through a bad patch, and I had to go to sea again."



       
         
       
        

"Ah, yeah. Nothing like a deployment to make an actual separation seem like a better idea."

Nodding, I said, "Uh-huh. So I'd basically call home once a week, talk to my daughter, and fight with my wife. Halfway through the deployment, we decided we'd had enough. So . . ." I paused, then shook my head. "Anyway. That's a downer of a conversation, so forget I brought it up."

Clint shrugged, facing the water again. "I don't think it's possible to talk about the Navy life without divorces coming into it."

"No, but . . ." I glanced around, making sure we were absolutely alone. Then I turned toward him and slid a hand over the small of his back. "We came out here to enjoy an afternoon together. Not talk about all of that shit. Why wallow in our pasts when the present is pretty damn good?"

He straightened a little, muscles moving subtly under my hand and his jacket, and the corners of his mouth rose. He faced me, and as he moved, my hand wound up on his waist. He snaked his own hand under my jacket, and I inched closer to him.

"You're right." A grin played at his lips. "This is a much better topic."

And then, right there, out in the open in a public place, Clint kissed me.

Everything else disappeared. The pier, the past, the people who might or might not see us and notice there were two men getting close like this-they were just gone.

Wrapping my arms around him, I took in a deep breath through my nose. God. Clint's kiss and the smell of the ocean. What more could a man want?

Through my shirt, his fingers grazed the TENS wires and one of the pads, but if he noticed, he didn't let on. And I couldn't bring myself to care. The pain was bearable at the moment, and anyway, I was much more interested in how his lips felt against mine.

I loved this. I loved it so much. Maybe I'd just been on my own too long, but I was completely overwhelmed by the feeling of someone being so brazenly affectionate. He knew I could barely walk sometimes. He knew our sex life would always be limited.

He knew, and here we were-kissing in the sun with his fingers on my back and my arm around his waist.

One part of my mind wanted to slam shut and push him away. I'd never let myself get close to a man before because the inevitable end scared the hell out of me. Either he'd get tired of the reality of my situation-a reality where TENS units, ice packs, and pain pills were part of every-single-day life-or the universe would throw us some horrendous curve ball.

I was fucking terrified, but I also wanted to see where this thing went. Maybe the inevitable disastrous end wasn't as inevitable as I'd convinced myself it was. These things worked out for people all the time. Why not me? Why not us? 

I drew back and looked in his eyes, and when he smiled, I thought my knees and the pier were going to collapse right out from under me.

Yeah. Why not us?

He gulped. So did I. How long had we been standing here looking at each other like this?

Oh hell, I didn't care. I touched his face and kissed him softly. When our eyes met again, his smile seemed shy. He glanced back toward the shore, and some color bloomed in his cheeks. Or maybe that was from the nippy sea breeze, and I just hadn't noticed till he turned his head.

"We should, um . . ." He cleared his throat and looked at me through his lashes. "Should we head back?"

"Sure. Guess we can't stay out here all day, can we?"

He laughed. "Probably not. Unfortunately."

"Might start getting weird looks."

"Might?" He leaned in and kissed me again. "We stay out here like this, we'll end up doing something that'll get us nailed for public indecency."

Dear sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph . . . "That . . . that's not really going to convince me we should leave."

"Right?" He nodded toward the land end. "Come on. Let's go grab something to eat, and then maybe we can indulge in some private indecency later."

"Have I mentioned how much I love the way you think?"

"A time or two, yes."

"Seemed like a good time to remind you, I guess."

We both laughed, and as we started back, he said, "So since you know your way around Anchor Point better than I do, I assume you know a few decent places to eat?"

"Absolutely. Kimber and I have grazed our way through every inch of this town."