Page 35 of The Captain
“You have ears everywhere,” I said, not accusing.
“Only where it matters.” His thumb found my jaw, traced it like he was memorizing topography. “Let me help you find what’s actually wrong. If it’s a uniform, fine. If it’s something else, we break that, too.”
“You sound very sure.”
“I’m sure about the part where I’m useful.” A faint smile. “Less sure about the part where I leave you alone.”
Heat lit behind my breastbone. “You don’t have to be sure,” I said. “You just have to breathe.”
“Yes, Dr. Allard,” he murmured, kissing the corner of my mouth. “You sound very official when you make that a rule.”
My body answered with a lazy throb that promised trouble in ten minutes, if I let it.
We dozed in fits—the kind where your muscles uncurl one at a time and the tide outside keeps time for you. When I slid off him, the loss made me hiss. He swore under his breath and kissed the curve of my hip like apology. The tent felt smaller after. I pulled my tank over sticky skin, shimmied into shorts, shoved bare feet into my boots without socks because the night didn’t require manners. He found jeans, shirt, his dog tags ghosting a soft clink I hadn’t noticed before.
At the flap he paused, caught my chin in two fingers, and tilted my face up. The kiss he gave me wasn’t like the ones inside—it was slower, almost chaste, a thing you could carry into fluorescent light and not want to wash off.
“Give me your phone,” he said.
I hesitated, then handed it over. He keyed a number, called his own, saved mine. When he passed it back, he didn’t make it sticky with words. Just: “Now you can.”
The weight of the phone in my palm shifted by a gram I felt everywhere. “And your last name?” I asked lightly, one brow up. “Or should I call you ‘the hot Marine with the tent’ in my head?”
His grin flashed, wicked and fond. “You can call me Jacob,” he said, voice a low tease. “For now.”
“Infuriating,” I muttered, zipping the flap.
“You like me that way,” he said, shouldering the duffel.
He wasn’t wrong.
14
JACOB
Marcus had offered me a room at a place they owned, the Palmetto Rose, some upscale spot that probably smelled of money and starched linen. I’d turned it down, my voice flat, not wanting to owe him and his people a damn thing more than I already did.
A cheap motel suited me better—grit over gloss, no debts to collect. So I’d driven there after leaving Camille, the duffel heavy on my shoulder, her scent still clinging to me like salt.
We’d parted on the beach, her hand lingering in mine, her eyes promising something words couldn’t hold.
“Tomorrow,” she’d said, her French accent curling the edges, low and warm. “Where we first saw each other. After your swim. Nine?”
“Nine,” I’d agreed, my throat tight.
I’d wanted to pull her back, keep her under the stars, but she’d slipped away, her SUV vanishing into the night.
The motel room greeted me with the stale reek of coffee and cheap air freshener, the kind that tried to mask cigarette smokebut only made it worse. I collapsed onto the lumpy mattress, boots still on, staring at the water-stained ceiling.
My body was spent—raw from the fight at Salty Mike’s, the yacht, the tent where Camille had claimed me as much as I’d claimed her. But for once, the ghosts stayed quiet. No faces, no voices, no weight crushing my chest. Just darkness, warm and enveloping, cradling me like the ocean until my phone alarm buzzed fifteen minutes before sunrise.
I rolled out of bed, my head clear, the hangover gone. I didn’t need the hour-out-and-back swim today. My mind was right where it needed to be—sharp, grounded, tethered to the thought of Camille at nine.
I pulled on my black Speedo jammer, grabbed my goggles and fins, and headed to Folly Beach. The sky was a bruise of pink and gray, the air thick with salt and the promise of heat. The beach was empty except for a few retirees shuffling along the shore, their morning walk slow and deliberate, like a ritual older than me.
One old man, his faded Marine Corps ballcap tilted against the sun, raised a hand as I passed. I waved back, respect automatic. I wondered what he’d seen—Vietnam, probably, jungles and blood and a country that spit on him when he came home.
I’d walked through my own hells, in the Corps and before, but those old-timers carried a weight I’d never fully grasp. They’d fought when the world didn’t just question the war but the men who bled for it. My respect for them was bone-deep, unyielding.
