“Tennessee’s down! Get the kid out of here, Elaine.”
My fault. My fault. My fault. Jake struggled to find his gun but he was tied up. When had that happened? Jerking against his restraints with all his strength, he came free and fought his way up, but his feet were entangled in something and he fell on his face.
Gasping for air as he lay with his cheek pressed against the nylon floor of his tent, awareness filtered into his brain. Every damn night since he’d returned, the nightmare had come, causing him to relive the operation in minute-by-minute detail. Some nights, the dream stopped at the sound of gunfire, and other times, it continued on to the end, forcing him to stare into Tennessee’s dying eyes as he held his teammate in his arms.
It didn’t matter. Asleep or awake, he could see the accusation in Bayne’s eyes as the life faded from them. “You should’ve called it off, Tiger,” they said.
He rolled onto his back and kicked his feet clear of the sheet. Within an hour of returning to his condo after the funeral, the walls had closed in on him and he’d known he couldn’t stay. Unsure where to go, only that wherever he ended up there could be no suffocating walls, he’d thrown a tent and a few supplies into his car and somehow found himself at the state park.
Through the open flap of his tent, a single ray of the rising sun fell on the unopened bottles of scotch. He’d resisted drinking even though on his aimless drive before ending up at the park, he’d stopped and bought three bottles, choosing scotch because he hated the stuff and figured he’d be less likely to drink them than cases of beer.
The throbbing in his leg where the bullet went through made itself known and, to hell with it, he reached for one of the bottles. Finding it impossible to drink while flat on his back, he sat up and poured the burning liquor down his throat straight from the bottle.
“Go away,” he said to Tennessee’s eyes, and drank some more. The edges of his vision blurred and he held up the scotch to see almost half of it was gone. If he could get blind drunk—was there such a thing?—then he wouldn’t be able to see anything, especially dying eyes. He drank some more.
The last time he’d gotten drunk, Maria had come for him. Would she come this time? Nah. “She wouldn’t want a man who gets people killed,” Tennessee whispered in his ear. That certainly called for another drink. This stuff wasn’t so bad once you got used to it, he thought as he pushed his pillow behind him, stilling at the hard press of cold metal under his palm.
He lifted his gun and turned the barrel toward himself, staring down into the black hole. All his mistakes in judgment and what he’d lost because of them stared back at him. The loss of a teammate headed the list, Maria a close second. Then there was his self-respect and his job, the respect of the boss and the rest of the team. With no job, he’d lose his condo—and on and on it went.
Why bother living?
His finger lightly stroked the trigger as Tennessee’s eyes danced in his blurred vision, delighted with this turn of events. “Jesus,” he swore and threw the gun across the tent. It bounced against the soft wall and landed halfway back to him.
“Lucky the damn thing didn’t go off.” That he’d even carelessly thrown a loaded weapon scared him. He pulled on a pair of board shorts, then grabbed the Glock. Hurriedly dismantling it before he got stupid again, he walked down to the beach and into the Gulf. Swimming out as far as he dared, he dropped the pieces to the ocean floor in scattered bits. As drunk as he was, he figured it was only because of his SEAL training that he didn’t drown.
That night, Jake strode along the edge of the water, the moon bright enough to allow him to avoid stepping on the jellyfish stranded and dried up from the day’s hot sun. The sand under his feet was hard packed, and he could walk miles and miles over it—something he’d done every night in an effort to stay ahead of the nightmares chasing him.
The air was balmy and a nice breeze cooled his face. It was a perfect night for a lovers’ stroll. Yet, he was alone.
By choice.
The temptation to call Maria, to ask her to come to him, had teased him since he’d pitched his tent under the stand of scrub oaks. He’d resisted, not wanting to see the pity in her eyes, possibly even disgust. At the funeral, he’d not dared to look at her, so he didn’t know what was in them. If he could tell her one last thing, it would be how much it meant to him when she’d slid her hand into his at Rick’s service. He wasn’t sure he’d have gotten through it without her beside him. That was Maria, though, just being there as a friend, no more to it than that.