Page 2 of Operator
A fact that’s driven home as she walks down the aisle toward me—toward my brother.
She’s not marrying you, shithead.
All the convincing in the world doesn’t make me forget how it had felt to be inside her. How she’d sounded when she whispered my name.And how much she’d cried when I told her I wasn’t coming back for her.
The guys on my team had asked what the hell I was thinking, going to the wedding, and I told them what I kept telling myself, that seeing her irrevocably taken would erase those memories from my mind.
Sometimes, you needed to make it hurt.
Seeing the woman I love smiling at my brother hurts like a sonofabitch.
You wouldn’t know it from the outside. I’ve had a lot of practice keeping it all wrapped up tight. That’s one of the things she used to say drove her crazy, that she could never tell what I was thinking or feeling. I wonder if that’s why she’s marrying him—something he has that I’m lacking. I never really asked her.
Then again, I didn’t really give her a chance.
My mother’s frantic hissing from the front pew catches my attention. Hard not to when the Sunday church hat she’s wearing is flapping like a bird caught in an alligator’s maw. She thought she was slick wearing a soft dove gray dress, but she only made herself look ridiculous. Who wore anything close to white at a wedding? Even a grunt like me knew better. Besides, nothing could compare to the beauty of the woman gliding up to the front of the church.
Nothing at all.
Gaze sliding to my mother, I shift from foot to foot and pray the ceremony will be over soon. I don’t pray for much, not even when I think it’s my life on the line. But getting out of here, going home, I pray for that shit like it’ll be my savior.
Mom makes a gesture with her hands, one I’ve seen my whole childhood. Telling me to cut it out, calm down. Of the two of us, I’ve always been the wild one. Ian? Not so much.
Hell, he followed me into the military, but as an M.P. A cop. Something our three generations of police officers would understand. Meanwhile, I’m a member of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, a killer. The black sheep.
Not worthy of the woman marrying my brother.
I give my mother a dead stare and she squints her eyes back at me. The only reason I’m putting up with the intense scrutiny and sneering derision is for Ian, otherwise I would have stayed back at my shitty apartment near base and drank myself into a stupor until my next assignment. The circle of life.
A cheerful voice draws my gaze back to the front of the church, where the pastor has started his spiel. To be honest, I don’t hear a word of it. All my attention is on the woman marrying my brother.
The woman whose virginity I had taken, then discarded like it—likeshe—meant nothing.
“Gwen Winston, do you take Ian Reece to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
Her name will be Gwen Reece, but she won’t be mine. She’ll never be mine.
After today, that couldn’t be more true.
Her lavender eyes light with tears as she smiles at my brother. Ian takes her hand in his and from my vantage point beside him, I can see how his trembles. Her thumb sweeps over his knuckles and they share a heart-rending look as they share, “I do’s.”
Ian can’t keep his eyes off her, and neither can I.
Her red hair is caught up in a half-do, the rest tumbling around her shoulders, a halo of flame. I can’t help but remember that hair spread over the blanket under the stars. The top of her wedding dress is a confection of champagne lace, revealing the creamy skin underneath.
If she’s an angel, I’m the devil.
I’m surprised lightning hasn’t struck me where I stand.
What kind of man fantasizes about the woman his brother is marrying?
The kind who should go straight to hell.
Which is exactly where I plan to be in less than a week. My next deployment with my team ships out with enough time for me to wish the couple well. After that, I plan to spend as many rotations as far away from this place as possible. Maybe I’ll even get lucky and will earn a ticket to Valhalla. Going down in a blaze of glory would be preferable to rotting at the V.A. from whatever inevitable injury will take me out of commission.
I make it through the rest of the ceremony without fuss. But only because I spend the remainder mentally stripping, cleaning, and rebuilding my cache of guns over and over and over.
Gwen doesn’t look at me once.
