Page 62 of What I Should Have Done

Shit. I had never really thought about that. Yeah, maybe once, very briefly, but she was right. I had no idea how something like this would affect her because I wasn’t her.

We were impossible. She’d known that from the start.

And a part of me had known it too.

“I won’t say I’m sorry,” I finally mumbled, ready to make my appearance with the team.

She stared at me, and a pained smile briefly flashed on her lips before she slipped her mask over her nose. But not a word left her mouth.

We’d tasted freedom and absolute blissful passion so briefly that it almost seemed crueler than had it never happened. A craving for her weighed like a heavy blanket on my soul. In a single decision, she’d become an addiction I knew I’d never be able to shake.

Maybe not just something I wouldn’t be able to shake, but one I was going to actively choose to not shake. A calm resolution settled over my soul as we crawled to the mouth of the cavern. I was okay with it.

Whatever forbidden path we had to take, I would travel down for a simple chance at the impossible with her.

I shot her one last glance and then laid down on my back, dragging myself out from the hollow den that held what was now one of my most treasured memories.

The burning ends of daylight stretched its tendrils over the ridges of the dune, briefly blinding me as I stood upright.

“DOM!” Bernie shouted, his once again recognizable voice drawing my focus. Sprinting away from two newly intact buggies came in our direction five men—four of them I knew by name, the other happened to be our bogey.

Wait, I knew those eyes on our bogey. I knew him.

Scottie quickly walked by me, leaving a cold chill in her wake. Whatever brief serenity shared between us would forever be a memory and secret. One shared between two people destined for destruction.

Chapter 22

SCOTTIE

Icouldn’t look at him. Not without fear of simultaneous heartbreak, guilt, and shame. I’d let myself get carried away. Yet everything in me begged for more of him. My own heart screamed at my head to let it happen again, to give in to the most insane, soul-binding pleasure that was at his fingertips.

Emotionally, he felt…safe. Something I’d never experienced before. He saw me as more than just whatever mask I put on for everyone else. He saw me as more than the girl whose life had been forever entangled in the boys’ club. Growing up with seven foster brothers led me to a world of military brothers. More men, but not in the way that deep down, I knew I craved.

For a brief second, I’d felt like a creature worthy of protection. Desired by someone who would risk the jaws of hell itself to defend—not because I was incapable of that myself, but because he simply wanted to.

And for a brief second, I considered letting him.

I couldn’t understand why it was so difficult to casually walk away from him like it had been with every other man in my past. I couldn’t wrap my head around why, even now, the thought of his fingertips brushing against me set my entire body on fire.

Now, the team talked in a jumbled set of voices around me, explaining how the rest of the squad headed back to the outpost once the storm broke and they set off to come find us. Mikey explained at one point that we tried to radio but found out they broke during the fight somehow and then the world turned silent, absolutely still as his ocean eyes locked onto our bogey.

A tall man, with thinning hair and wiry but powerful muscling beneath his ragged clothing. He looked extremely capable when the situation called for it, yet much calmer than he had the moment we rescued him. His skin was tanned and a little gaunt; beady brown eyes darted across the group as he finally stepped into the semi-circle.

Momentary distraction clawed at the cords binding me so tightly to Mikey. A distraction caused by the still-nameless man.

But as my eyes finally chanced a glance at Mikey, I found recognition in his gaze. A gaze that was locked onto our bogey.

A grin slid across the very lips that had just a moment ago made mine so swollen and then he crashed forward in step with the nameless man.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” the man spoke. His voice was hoarse, as if sand coated his windpipes, and it sounded like it hadn’t been used in a long time.

“Jacob!” Mikey exclaimed in glee and wrapped his arms around the man. Any sort of need to put on some masculine show flew out the window. He was a young boy in the bogey’s arms, despite being broader than this “Jacob.”

“It’s good to see you, kid.” His thin fingers tightened around Mikey’s broad back.

“So, this is where you disappeared to and grew a fucking beard. Shit all makes sense now,” Mikey mumbled against his chest.

A soft chuckle left Jacob, and he pried Mikey away, giving him more of a fatherly grin than I’d experienced myself. “I heard rumors during one of my leaves that you’d gone and joined up yourself. Though no one mentioned that you were a fucking SEAL. I’m not surprised, considering you could best even me by the time you were seventeen.”

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