Once and For All: An American Valor Novel (22 page)

They cried for the husbands they would miss. They cried out of anger at their leaving. But most of all, they cried in fear they might never return.

W
ITHIN
NINETY MINUTES
of his arrival at Hunter Army Airfield, the transport planes were loaded and Charlie Company went wheels up. Early in the flight, Lucky made his way around the C–17, handing out sleeping pills so the guys could manipulate their sleep cycles and hit the ground running the moment they landed.

On his previous deployments, Danny found it fairly easy to quiet his thoughts and fall asleep without the use of meds. He’d just pop in some earplugs and visualize the tide coming in while watching the sun rise over Myrtle Beach. But that wasn’t going to work this time since he’d been gutted by the woman he loved just before boarding.

Everything about the weekend had been going according to plan. Right until his cell phone went off. Instead of being on a godforsaken plane headed to Africa, he should be enjoying the day with his wife.

Their evening was to include a candlelit dinner with champagne and birthday cake, followed by a late-night ghost tour by horse-drawn carriage. Somewhere along the way, when the mood was just right, he’d tell her he loved her and that he didn’t want their marriage to ever end. And of course, in his head, she always agreed. Maybe even say she’d hoped from the very beginning he’d change his mind. Then she’d laugh a little, and cry a little, but only because she was so, so happy. And then they would return to their room and make love for hours on an antique brass bed covered in rose petals.

What a fucking idiot he was.

He’d spent weeks planning what he hoped would be a romantic birthday weekend she’d never forget only to find out Bree had spent that same time applying and interviewing for jobs hundreds of miles away.

Karma, he supposed.

It was for the better he hadn’t proclaimed his love. That he didn’t tell her how over the past few months she’d become as important as air to him. How after a long week of training he couldn’t wait to get home, wrap his arms around her and hold her tight. How he couldn’t believe he was so damned lucky to get a second chance at happiness with her. How he looked forward to spending the rest of their lives together.

And now? Well, he didn’t want to think about that.

Danny popped the two little pills into his mouth and finished off his bottle of water. He screwed the plastic cap back on and stowed the empty in his ruck. His stomach rumbled with hunger, but he ignored it, knowing the meds would kick in faster on an empty stomach. After all, the sooner he fell asleep, the sooner he’d forget he no longer had a wife to come back home to.

He squirmed for a bit, trying to find a comfortable position. He propped his feet up then put them back on the floor. He tried leaning all the way over, nearly resting his head on his knees. Then he shifted sideways in his seat, hoping he didn’t wake up eight hours later with a massive crick in his neck.

Finally settled, Danny closed his eyes. And, much like he did almost ten years earlier on his first deployment, he thought of Bree.

Her beautiful smile. Her contagious laugh.

Those big brown eyes. The little crinkle between her brows when she was mad.

Her ice-cold feet. The warm flush of her skin.

The arch of her back. The scrape of her nails.

Soft moans. Breathless gasps.

Warm mouth. Full lips.

Tender kisses.

Wedding kisses.

Wedding rings.

I do.

Forever.

Always.

A
FT
ER THEIR TEARS
had dried, Bree and Marie decided to commemorate her birthday as best they could, starting with the cake and champagne Danny had ordered. Each armed with a fork, they ate straight from the box. And with each bite, they felt a little bit better.

Hours later the late-afternoon sun broke through the rain clouds and the silence disappeared as each child returned home. The neighbor keeping Hannah brought her home after her nap. Leah returned home after the movie, no longer in the mood to spend the night with friends. The boys burst through the front door in a ruckus with noisemakers and goodies and loud stories of how one boy smacked another in the head while taking a whack at the piñata. Within a matter of minutes the Wojciechowski house had returned to its normal chaotic routine with siblings fighting and children laughing and dogs racing wildly through the house.

As darkness fell and the house eased into nighttime routines, Bree said good-night.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay the night?” Marie asked at the door. “I know sleeping on the twin bed in the nursery doesn’t hold the same appeal as my soon-to-be guest room would, but it still beats going home alone to an empty apartment.”

Bree shrugged her shoulders. “I have to go home sometime.”

Marie nodded in understanding. “Just so you know, you are always welcome here.”

“I know,” she called out as she headed down the front steps. “I’ll see you Monday.”

For the short drive home, she pulled one of Danny’s favorite CDs from the holder strapped to the sun visor and slid it into the player. The heavy metal rock blasting from the speakers wasn’t her preference, but she found herself sitting in the parking lot of their apartment complex, listening until the very end. Of course she was just delaying the inevitable.

Instead of loading in another disc, she chose to face the quiet dark of their apartment. Although she’d spent many nights here alone, it felt different this time. Knowing if there was an emergency, if she really needed him, he couldn’t come rushing home to her rescue.

On the floor of their closet she found the shirt he’d run in the day before. She kicked off her shoes and stripped down to her panties then pulled the soft gray cotton over her head. Holes dotted the seams in the armpits and collar, and the hem was split and frayed from age. Holding the fabric up to her nose, she breathed in Danny’s scent, a combination of sport deodorant and sweat.

After double-checking the locks and turning out the lights, she checked her phone one last time for any messages. Then she crawled into his side of the bed, buried herself deep within the covers and cried herself to sleep.

Chapter Twenty-Three

T
HE
A
FRICAN SUN
blazed down as Danny hurried across the tarmac to C-Co’s makeshift living quarters in an airport hangar. Since landing in Niamey ten days earlier, they had been running round-the-clock missions along with French Special Forces. Their targets, Al-Qaeda-linked militants in northern Mali, were responsible for everything from tourist kidnappings to embassy bombings across northern Africa.

Ben waited for him within the shade of the hangar, offering him a bottled water. “Hot enough for you? Only forty-four today.”

Gratefully, Danny took the bottle of water, unscrewed the cap and drank it down all at once. While catching his breath, he did the temperature conversion in his head. “Fuck, man. That means it’s actually 111 out there.” Which wasn’t hard to believe. It had felt as if the soles of his boots were melting beneath him as he crossed the asphalt. “Why do you insist on using Celsius anyway?”

“It sounds cooler.” Ben chuckled. “Literally.”

Danny shook his head and headed for his cot.

“Did you talk to Bree?”

It hadn’t taken long for Ben to figure out Danny’s head wasn’t in the right place and like the good friend he was, kept pushing and pushing until Danny told him everything. How Bree had been offered a new job. How she had asked him if she should take it. How he wished her luck and instead of telling her how he felt, he took the pussy way out. Again.

“Went to voice mail.” Never before had he requested to call home. Of course, he’d always deployed as a single guy. Never had to fear the love of his life leaving him while he was gone. Although this had been their plan from the very beginning, Danny now hated it was coming to pass.

“Did you leave her a message at least?”

Danny scrubbed a hand over his face and fell back onto his cot. “No. Probably pointless to call her anyway.” Bree wasn’t expecting his call and likely wouldn’t answer without an identifying caller number. “I’d bet she’s on the way to Greensboro if she’s not already there.”

Fuck. He was an idiot for letting her go.

“So that’s it? You’re just gonna let her go?”

Danny shrugged his shoulders. “What am I supposed to do?”

Ben shot to his feet and began pacing the same ten feet of concrete floor. Then just as quickly as he started, he stopped. “Get up,” Ben said, throwing his hands in the air. “Come on. Get your ass up.”

Danny moved to sit on his cot, but nothing more, wary of Ben’s sudden change in demeanor. “What the hell for?”

Ben cracked his knuckles. “Because I’m going to single-handedly knock some fucking sense into that goddamn thick-headed, dumb-ass skull of yours.”

Danny’s jaw dropped. “The heat is making you fucking crazy.”

“I’m crazy? I’m crazy?” Veins he didn’t know existed popped out on Ben’s forehead as his face went beet-red. “I’d rather be crazy than a fucking idiot!”

Danny made no move to get up. “This is what she wants.”

“Are you sure about that? She’s making a decision based on bad intel. If you’d had the balls to tell her how you really feel, I bet money she would have stayed.”

“You don’t know Bree like I do. She’s so very smart. Bad luck combined with rotten timing is the only reason she hasn’t been a huge success so far. This job is a huge opportunity. I couldn’t ask her to give it up.”

Having calmed down a bit, Ben dropped onto the cot next to Danny. “Then go with her. You’ve only got a few months left on your contract. You could leave the military and follow her.”

“Really? And do what? This is all I know. It’s all I’m good at.”

“That’s not true.”

Danny pointed at him. “It absolutely is fucking true. If leaving the military is such a damn good idea, why aren’t you considering it? Why aren’t you putting that good ol’ GI Bill to use and living off your wife’s business, huh?”

Ben remained silent.

“You and I, we’re not cut out for boring office jobs. And we sure as hell aren’t cut out to teach Crossfit to middle-aged soccer moms. This—” he said, waving a finger at the hangar full of men and equipment around them “—is what we do. We like the adrenaline. The camaraderie. But most of all we’ve got each other’s backs. We equally support each other. If I were to leave the military, I’d have nothing.”

“But you’d have Bree. If ever the day came that Marie said it was her or the army, I’d choose her. Every. Single. Time. I’d choose her. And I’d never spend a day regretting it. Because she is the single most important person in my life.”

Exhausted, Danny rested his elbows on his knees, his head hanging from his shoulders. “It’s my job as a man to take care of her and support her and keep her safe. If I can’t do that, then what’s the point?”

Ben rose to his feet, all the while shaking his head in disbelief. “I don’t get your thinking, Danny. I don’t get it at all. We’re Rangers. We don’t know the meaning of quit. And yet, that’s exactly what you just did.”

Before Danny could respond, Ben turned his back on him and walked away.

B
Y THE
TIME
Bree reached the second-floor landing she was an exhausted, sweaty mess. If she was having issues hauling the flattened cardboard boxes she purchased across the parking lot and up the stairs while they were empty, she sure as hell wouldn’t be able to move them once they were full.

Thankfully, Marie knew a couple of college guys with a truck and nothing but free time who were willing to help her out with the move. It wasn’t as if she had much, so all she had to do was pay for their food, gas, and a day’s work.

Within a matter of days she’d be more than 300 miles away, starting her new job, her new life. Although she didn’t really want to go, she also knew she couldn’t stay. Ring or no ring. Vows or no vows.

For ten days she’d held out hope Danny would change his mind and ask her to stay. That time and distance would somehow bring them closer. Instead, there had only been silence. Which, of course, played right into her insecurities, letting her imagination run wild with reasons as to why he let her go so easily.

Like the thought that Danny had changed more in the past ten years than she’d realized and he had no desire to marry, ever. That their temporary arrangement was nothing more than a chance to play house, to try the idea on for size to see if marriage was or wasn’t for him. In which case, so be it.

Or maybe he did like being married, but what she felt in her heart was completely one-sided and his love for her wasn’t more than as a friend. With or without benefits. Which completely sucked.

Or even worse, he liked being married to her and loved her, but now that he’d had a taste of family life he wanted to have it all, including children. Or at the very least he didn’t want to rule out the possibility. In which case, she was completely shit out of luck. And that hurt like hell.

Her phone chimed, alerting her to a new voice mail. A phone call she’d obviously missed while getting more boxes from the car. The call came from a number she didn’t recognize, but instantly her stomach twisted in knots.

She followed the prompts and waited for someone to speak but there was only deafening silence and instantly she knew who had called.

She held her breath, hoping, wishing he would say something. Anything.

I love you.

I hate you.

She could make out the sound of his breathing in the receiver. Voices in the background, but nothing distinguishable.

All too soon, the message ended.

Instead of choosing to delete ten seconds of dead air, she saved it and listened all over again just to hear his breath. And maybe if she listened hard enough, the beat of his heart.

R
ISKY MISSIONS
WEREN’T
just part of the job. They were the job. But on the pushing-your-luck scale, some missions were far worse than others, and this one in particular didn’t sit well in his gut. Danny returned to C-Co’s makeshift quarters where he quickly briefed his squad. When he was done, instead of preparing his weapons and ruck, he went in search of pen and paper.

His mind had been with her for much of this deployment. When he was kicking in doors and leading his men, his focus was one hundred percent on the mission at hand. But those other times, before he drifted off to sleep after being awake for thirty-six hours straight, his thoughts were of her. Of what he wished he had said to her before he left.

There was so much he had to say to her and no fucking idea where to start.

He did what he could, scribbled down what came to mind, unsure if what made its way onto the paper made any sense at all. It was a far cry from poetry, wasn’t a decent love letter, either. But he got the important stuff down. That he loved her, would always—underlined twice for emphasis—love her. And that he hoped someday they might figure out a way to be together forever.

He folded the page, sealed the envelope tight, and shoved it in his pocket.

From there he went to find Mike, who was helping Lucky and the other medics stockpile their kits for the upcoming mission. He waited patiently out of the way, not wanting to interrupt. But his face must have revealed the uncertainty he felt inside, because Mike took one look at him and came marching over.

“What’s wrong?”

Danny pulled the once-white envelope, now smudged with dirt, from his pocket. Using his fingers he attempted to lessen the stain, but only succeeded in making things worse. “I need to give you this.”

“What the fuck is this?” Mike asked, refusing to take the letter addressed to Bree from his brother’s outstretched hand. “I’m not taking a death letter.”

“It’s not—”

There was no point in arguing. Mike called it what it was. And for the very first time in ten years, Danny was scared to death. Not even as a snot-nosed kid fresh out of RIP, dropping into Iraq under the cover of darkness and into the middle of a war zone had he been this scared.

But it wasn’t the mission at hand that frightened him as much as never having the chance to tell Bree face-to-face how much he loved her. Had always loved her. Even when he left her.

“—I just need her to know.”

Reluctantly, Mike took the envelope from his hand. “What is it about this mission?”

“I don’t know.” That was the honest truth. The feeling hadn’t been there two nights before or the mission before that. But he could no longer pretend that everything was as it should be. “Just got a bad feeling about it, Mikey. They’re dropping us on a compound in broad daylight, which is bullshit for one and fucked up for another. We spend most of our lives training in the dark and then they go and do this. But whatcha gonna do?”

He turned to walk away, but then stopped himself, remembering one final thing.

“Just so you know, I bought her a ring. It’s in the left pocket of my dress blues.”

Anger crossed Michael’s face. “Why the hell didn’t you give it to her?”

“I had a whole thing planned because I wanted to do it right this time, not like in Myrtle Beach. And I sure as hell wasn’t gonna hand her a velvet box before I boarded a plane. Then she told me about the job offer and . . .” He still couldn’t believe it. How in a matter of hours every one of his plans had taken a deep dive into a steaming pile of shit. “Anyway, if something happens—”

“
Nothing
is going to happen to you.”

“—I’m just saying, if it does, then you can give it to her or return it or maybe you can use it someday. So . . . I’ve got to go.”

Before he reached the open hangar door, Michael chased him down and grabbed him up in a fierce embrace.

“Do me a favor. Remember that you have a lot to live for. Don’t go out there putting yourself in harm’s way unnecessarily.” Still clutching his shoulders, Michael stepped back so he could stare Danny in the eyes. “You may not have kids at home like a lot of these guys, and at this point you may or may not have a wife, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t loved. That you wouldn’t be missed. Do you hear me?” Michael shook him hard for good measure. “Dad loves you and it would kill him to lose you. Same goes for me.”

“I hear ya.”

Danny affectionately slapped his brother’s shoulders with both hands then pulled himself from Michael’s grasp. “Gotta go.”

He was halfway across the tarmac when Michael called out to him. “I’ll see you on the other side, Danny!”

Without turning around, Danny waved his hand in the air. There was no point in drawing out their goodbye.

In the past ten years he’d seen it happen more than once. A guy got a bad feeling in his gut, a sixth sense about something going wrong, and it always came to pass. Maybe they died because they were scared and lost their edge. Or maybe they died simply because it was their time to go.

No one would ever know for sure. He could only hope that in this case, he was fucking wrong.

B
REE STR
ETCHED THE
tape across the cardboard flaps, sealing the last box shut. Being filled with only candle holders and throw pillows and towels, it was far lighter than the others and she carried it into the living room.

Danny’s space was his own again, having returned to the dull, monochromatic style it was before. The photos she’d found that first week and put into frames remained untouched. And beside them, a large framed print of the two of them, the same photo taken during the parade that appeared in the paper.

She wanted to take it. Even had it wrapped and packed in a box at one point. But it didn’t feel right. That picture belonged here, in this place. If Danny wanted to take it down after she was gone and bury it in the bottom of a box along with the other photo he kept of the two of them, then so be it.

Bree looked around the apartment one last time to be certain nothing had been missed. Her clothes and shoes and everyday things she’d wait to pack, saving them until the morning she moved, just three days from now. That meant there was only one more thing.

She stared at the ring on her finger. It definitely wasn’t right for her to keep it.

As much as she loved Danny, as much as she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, being in a one-sided relationship could only last so long. Sooner or later it would only bring both of them misery. He didn’t intend to marry, but he’d done so out of some sense of duty and misplaced guilt. She would forever be grateful for what he did, helping her get her life back. But she would always feel they threw away another chance at happiness.