Page 10 of Better Late Than Never

His eyebrow arched. Maybe we didn’t share a language—his English and my Spanish were equally limited—but body language was hard to misinterpret. Then he sighed and let go of me. I had a second to worry I’d pissed him off and he was about to get up and boot me out, but then he grabbed his phone off his nightstand and came back.

The screen added a cool glow to his face and lit up his eyes and his furrowed brow as he typed something. I didn’t mind; this was the only way we could communicate beyond the most basic phrases we both understood. Most of the conversations we’d had went like this.

After a moment, he showed me the screen. Beneath where he’d typed out something in Spanish, the app had translated it to:

You are distracted. Have I done something wrong?

Guilt twisted beneath my ribs. I felt bad enough about not being completely here; that he was blaming himself hit hard.

I gently took his phone, tapped out a message in English, then handed it back so he could read the translation.

Work is distracting. I’m sorry. It’s not you.

He frowned as he read. When he flicked his eyes up to meet mine, I honestly couldn’t tell if he believed the lie or not. I hoped he did; I didn’t feel good about lying to him, but I was too ashamed of the truth. Too embarrassed that I was wrapped up in someone like a teenager with a crush on a rock star who didn’t know he was alive. And honestly, it would’ve been cruel, telling him that this whole time we’d been in his bed, I’d been thinking about Lieutenant Commander Marks. Sometimes lying really was the kindest approach, and this was one of those times.

Isidoro took the phone back and typed again. When he showed me the screen:

Is it only work?

Was I wearing my guilt on my face or something? Fuck.

I typed back:

Problems with someone else at the hospital. It will be fine. Just frustrating.

That was technically the truth, though I still hated being this cagey.

Fortunately, it seemed to be enough, and Isidoro put the phone aside. Pulling me back into his arms, he murmured something that I thought roughly translated to,“I can make you forget.”

And for the most part, he did. I was too close to forty for three orgasms in a night, but Isidoro was barely thirty, and he definitely had a third one left in him. A third one that I made sure to wring out of him slowly and decadently untilheforgot that my mind had ever been anywhere but here.

When I finally left for the night around 0200, I was satisfied that he thought he’d distracted me from everything.

But the whole way back to my apartment in Chipiona, all I could think about was Lieutenant Commander Marks.

CHAPTER5

CONNOR

The air in my cabana was thick with the lingering heat of the afternoon. The sweetness of the flowers in my yard and the smell of my freshly cut grass mingled with the sharpness of the weed my neighbors were smoking on the other side of the high wall.

It was almost 2200 and the sun was still up, though it was easing toward the horizon and turning the sky warm shades of red and purple. I still wasn’t used to that—the sun setting so late in the evening. That was harder to adapt to than things like siesta and when restaurants were and weren’t open. They didn’t affect how things ran on-base, but it had been eye-opening the first time I’d tried to go to a Spanish supermarket during siesta or find something to eat at what I normally thought of as dinnertime. Culture shock was a strange thing, that was for sure.

I’d get used to it all. Every place had its own rhythm and its own sounds, and I’d adapt to Spain just like I had all my other duty stations. Probably just in time to move, but better late than never, I guess. And definitely better than trying to adapt to a combat zone again.

I sat back in the cabana chair and enjoyed the warmth, though I tempered it with a cold beer. I gazed out at the gorgeous yard surrounding the pool. It was perfectly manicured, and the only credit I could take for that was paying for it; my rent included pool maintenance and garden service. Both workers had been here earlier today, and they did amazing work. Everything was beautiful.

Beautiful, and… empty.

Outside the walls of the villa, the world was alive with the soft sounds of people enjoying their evenings. My neighbors talking and—from the sound of it—playing some of kind of game. The café half a block away was hitting its dinner rush, and the scrape of chairs on pavement, the clatter of silverware, and the chatter of people filtered through the peaceful night to me.

Inside these walls, though, everything was silent. Even the pool was glass smooth, not sloshing against the sides like it sometimes did. All the gentle noise outside emphasized how utterly quiet and still everything was in here.

It made me fantasize for a hot minute about what it would’ve been like to be stationed here when the boys had been younger. They’d no doubt be splashing in the pool, loving that there was still daylight—even if it was fading—this late at night. It was a Saturday night in July, so it wasn’t like they’d need to go to school the next morning. They could enjoy the pool without burning to a crisp like they would in the afternoon; their mother and I had cursed them both with the fair skin of my Irish and her Swedish ancestry.

The thought of them swimming here right now made me smile, but then it tugged at my heart. They weren’t little boys anymore. Quinn was twenty-two and living with his girlfriend. Landon had turned twenty just before I’d left for Spain. He was living with his mom while he went to a community college, and then he’d probably transfer to a university. Quinn would be graduating from college next year, and I doubted he’d wait that long before proposing to Savannah.

I took a deep pull from my beer. I was proud of my sons, and I was close to both of them, but I still regretted how much of their lives I’d missed, especially early on. I’d been in Iraq when Landon was born. In Afghanistan when Quinn had spent a week in the hospital with a respiratory bug. After that, I’d shifted gears and gone to medical school, so at least I wouldn’t be deploying for a while, least of all to combat zones. Didn’t mean I was the most present father, though, especially when I started my rotations.

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