Page 83 of California Wild

He hadn’t reached out. Hadn’t expected her to. That was the deal. This life—his life—didn’t come with guarantees. The minute they stepped onto foreign soil, time froze. The world kept turning, but for guys like Jesse, it just… stopped.

And maybe that was the point.

Maybe he’d always known she wouldn’t wait.

Still—seeing that photo? It had hollowed him out. Left something sharp in its place. A bone-deep ache. An emptiness that no jungle, no mission, no distraction could touch.

He rolled onto his side, wincing as the motion pulled at his ribs, the cot creaking beneath him. The canvas was damp. Everything was damp. Sweat. Rain. The earth itself.

His hand curled into a fist, pressing against the stiff edge of his pillow.

He wasn’t built for her world.

He could admit that now. The tours. The cameras. The spotlight. People like Caiden fit there—charismatic, flashy, always saying the right things. Jesse didn’t have the words. He had hands. A body that knew how to fight. A heart that had never quite learned how to stop bleeding.

People back home thought SEAL life was all glory. Headlines and flag salutes.

They didn’t see this part.

The part where you slept next to your rifle. Where your uniform never dried. Where you watched a man bleed out because medevac was too far, and the comms were jammed. Where every connection back home grew thinner, frayed by silence and time until all you had left were ghosts.

He missed her.

God, he missed her.

Missed the way she used to talk to him like he wasn’t broken. Like she saw him. Like maybe he could be more than this—more than just another grunt in another warzone.

Footsteps crunched near the edge of camp.

Heath’s voice, low but close. “You good?”

Jesse didn’t look up. “Yeah.”

The medic didn’t press. Just stood there a second, then drifted off, metal tools clinking faintly behind him.

Jesse exhaled and stared into the dark.

Morning would come soon. Another op. Another radio silence. Another reason to keep moving. That’s what they did—moved forward. Didn’t matter what you left behind.

Still, he reached out for his pack, unzipped the side pocket, and pulled out the one thing he shouldn’t have brought—a creased Polaroid, the corners worn soft from handling.

Hayley. In his hoodie. No makeup. Eyes crinkled from laughing.

He stared at it, jaw tight.

Then folded it and tucked it back away.

His voice was nothing but a whisper.

“Goodnight, Hayley.”

Wherever the hell she was.

Chapter 12

Four weeks later

San Diego felt different. It wasn’t just that Hayley had been gone for a month. It wasn’t just the way the air smelled clean and salty, thick with sunshine, the Pacific stretching wide beyond the glass walls of the airport.

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