The Cornerstone (37 page)

There were only
a handful of people who knew I wasn’t leading my platoon right now. It wasn’t a secret but I wasn’t publicizing it either.

Lieutenant General McGardil paid me a visit shortly after a pound of shrapnel was extracted from my arm, back, and shoulder. He notified me I’d received the Medal of Honor as well as the rank of Captain—neither of which felt deserved—and informed me I’d be taking command of a black ops team unofficially housed at a NATO base in Germany. The missions would be classified above top secret. The unit would be composed of the smartest, toughest motherfuckers in the teams. The tactical support would be unlimited but highly covert. The American government would not acknowledge our existence or rescue us if captured, so there was no room for error unless we liked the idea of a televised beheading or Third World labor camp.

But there was one condition: unit commanders had to be mission-ready, and my half-numb arm didn’t qualify.

These opportunities didn’t come around often. Considering the tragic end to my last mission, it was a shock to find this offer in my lap.

The only thing missing—aside from the fully functional arm—was the interest. I didn’t want to load out for another mission. I didn’t want to lose another buddy to an endless, bloodthirsty war. I wasn’t interested in pounding my trident into another coffin or watching another family accept a crisply folded flag. I didn’t want to spend another day staring down evil. I didn’t want to live my life on one side of the globe while the woman I needed more than anything else was on the other.

Instead of me deciding where the road would end, the end found me.

I suggested as much to McGardil, and he made it clear he only wanted guys who jumped at the chance to sweat their sac off in his warzone. He sent me to the unit’s shrink for a battery of tests. I knew none of this came from post-traumatic stress or survivor’s guilt, and the shrink concurred, but McGardil wasn’t interested in hearing ‘no.’

The plan was simple: get home for some rest and relaxation, give my unreliable trigger finger some time to heal up, and put some hard thought into my future. In the meantime, the Lieutenant General was getting the team in place, and checking in on my ass almost daily.

Aside from McGardil, only Wes and Shannon knew I was hanging out in Boston.

I didn’t have the words to explain to either of them why I was here. I only knew that I had to sort through all of this. Was I really walking away from nearly fifteen years of service? From commanding an ultra-classified strike force? What would I even do with myself if I left the military?

For the first time since who knew when—high school? childhood? infancy?—I didn’t have a clear path ahead of me. Duty and service were sewn into my genes, and there was never a question about whether I’d enlist after college. I couldn’t remember a time when I wasn’t counting the minutes until I could be a frogman, and it was more than following my father’s footsteps. It was a pure sense of responsibility.

My father—the man who donned the honorary title of commodore in retirement and didn’t let a day go by without reading all the military community news and contributing his opinion on several special operations blogs—would find out about this soon enough. He always did. In most situations, he offered sharp insights and valuable perspectives, but I wasn’t ready to talk it over with him. He believed in career military men, and while his satisfaction didn’t drive my choices, I knew he wouldn’t be an objective sounding board on this issue.

Wes was out of the question. Aside from the fact he was probably busy infiltrating the Kremlin, he would love a gig like the one I was being offered. He lived for that shit, and he’d insist I find a new shrink for a second opinion. He’d never let me hear the end of it if he learned I was spending my days washing Shannon’s socks and vacuuming her apartment, and not back on base where I could get in the right head-space and train until I bled stars and stripes again. Regardless of how much spin class kicked my ass, it wasn’t doing shit to fix my injury.

And Shannon…I suspected she’d spring into action if I told her about the nerve damage in my arm and the crossroads in my career. She was a fixer. She was Harvey Keitel in
Pulp Fiction
. She’d go into her “I’m calm but this is a fucking crisis” mode, and it wouldn’t take her more than a couple of calls to get me appointments with the best doctors in town. And it wouldn’t end there. She’d designate herself my chief health advocate, and park herself by my side, taking verbatim notes and firing off questions. Then she’d thumb through her contact list and find someone who owed her a favor, and I’d have a job, or—heaven help me—she’d invent a job at Walsh Associates and put me on her payroll.

But I didn’t want to get in line behind Shannon’s brothers as one more person who required her to take care of him. I didn’t want to rely on her to solve my problems, and not because I took issue with relying on a woman. The issue was with
this
woman. If anything, I wanted her relying on
me
. She already gave enough of herself to her family and their business, and I wasn’t going to become one of the things she had to manage.

Someone had to make things easier on her, to lighten her load.

Not that she let that—or anything else—happen without a debate.

We were sleeping together (as in
sleeping
) but every night started with a negotiation of the demilitarized zone in the middle of the bed. I fought it hard at first, but quickly realized it was an unenforceable border. She wasn’t accustomed to sleeping on one side of the bed, and always worked her way closer to the middle. I let her have her space, and more often than not woke up with her tucked right into my side.

I wasn’t doing well with the post-deployment horny. Getting rid of the Douchelord and reclaiming my space in Shannon’s bed were the first victories, but the game was essentially unchanged: she still needed to warm up to me, and she still deserved to be won.

It was good being close to her again. Even if it was jogging through the city or talking over dinner or arguing about a
Game of Thrones
episode, I liked the way she felt in my life.

Now I needed the rest of my world to fall in line with the one I was rebuilding with Shannon.

There was an email waiting in my inbox from Jordan Kaisall. From the subject heading, I knew he was looking for my opinion on hidden gem golf courses near Southern California. I’d take the ocean over greens any day, but he knew my parents were big fans of the game in their retirement.

Kaisall was good when it came to looking at issues from sides I’d never consider. I sent off a few courses to impress his prospective clients, and asked if he’d heard anything about the unit McGardil was assembling. I knew his response would come with another offer to run operation logistics for his private security team, Redtop, and though I wasn’t convinced it interested me, I was curious about my options.

That’s what I needed:
options
. Being thirty-six and not knowing what I was going to be when I grew up was fucking ridiculous.

Behind Kaisall’s email was a message from Gustavo Granovsky. We’d started out in BUD/S together, and he quickly earned the distinction of funniest motherfucker to walk the earth. He found humor in everything, even the dive exercises where the instructors would swim up, put you in a strangle hold, and then tie knots in the oxygen tubing. It left you drowning while fighting off an attacker.

I’ll never forget Gus crawling out of the pool wearing full gear, coughing and gagging on the hardtop, and then—with all the seriousness in the world—turning to the instructor and saying, “Sir, if you’d like to grab my dick again, please take me to dinner first. My mother didn’t raise me to give it away.”

We did two tours together before he was assigned to a different platoon. We never managed to be on the same continent at the same time anymore, but that didn’t stop him from sending regular (hilarious) emails to our entire BUD/S class. He was big on staying in touch with people, and that was a quality worth having.

Gus was getting married later this month, finally making it legal with his long-time girlfriend, Aviva. They’d bought a ranch near Poway about seven or eight years ago, where they kept a couple of horses and dogs. A kid, too.

I didn’t feel like typing any more emails with one hand, and scrolled through my contacts to find his number.

“How’s it hangin’, Captain?” Gus asked, his voice loud and tinged with laughter.

“Low and to the left,” I said.

“As God intended,” he said. “Where the hell are you? And when are you dragging your ass back to San Diego?”

I glanced around Shannon’s dining room. It looked like the scene of a swanky dinner party. Light gray wallpaper with a raised velvet pattern covered the walls. There were heavy candelabras running down the middle of the table, and a glass bowl filled with cranberries and limes.
Fucking limes
. The table was long—easily fitting her entire family—and functioned nicely as a staging area for getting my life in line.

“Boston,” I said, quickly continuing, “but I’m not advertising that. Just…dealing with some issues.”

“Is that why you haven’t responded to our goddamn wedding invitation yet? The nuptial event is only two weeks away and my bride is freaking the fuck out over these RSVPs, man.”

“I’m monitoring a situation,” I said. “I’ll have to report back.”

“Yeah, my bride’s gonna love that,” Gus said. “Do you have a timeframe for this situation report? Knowing that the long-term well-being of my testicles hangs in the balance? Literally
hanging
.”

Flying to San Diego in two weeks meant leaving Shannon, and I didn’t like that idea. “Not really.”

Then it dawned on me: I wouldn’t have to leave Shannon if she came to California with me. We could spend Thanksgiving together, just like we did last year. Maybe that was what we needed.

Gus sighed. “Do me a favor, man. Figure it out. I don’t want to tell Viv that we can’t give the caterer a final count yet. She’ll make me sleep in the barn, and I won’t get—”

“I’ll be there,” I said. “And I’m bringing someone.”

Even if I have to kidnap her
. Actually…that might make it more fun.

“Wes got his own invitation,” Gus said. “That fucker hasn’t responded either.”

“Not Wes. A friend. A girlfriend,” I said, and I hated the taste of that word immediately. She’d rip my spleen out of my belly button if she heard me stammer through that comment, but that was what I loved about her. She was completely unafraid of reaching into me, tearing out my bleeding organs, and making me look at them.

Women like Shannon weren’t girlfriends. I didn’t know what the right term was, but
girlfriend
did not fit the bill. She was too bold and sophisticated and independent to be anyone’s girlfriend.

“Uh-huh,” he murmured. “Should we celebrate you popping your cherry before hitting forty? And this lady isn’t in Boston by chance, is she?”

“Yes, she is, but I’m not here because…okay, yeah I’m here for her,” I said. “My last mission went to shit, my arm is fucked up, and I’m thinking hard about retirement. On top of that, I left things in shambles with my girlf—err, my Shannon, when I saw her before this deployment. Come back and she’s dating a douchebag.”

Gus was silent for a moment. “Is your arm okay?”

“Shrapnel. Nerve damage. Trigger finger.”

“Shit,” he murmured. “Didn’t anyone tell you that you’re supposed to be good to your lady before going down range?”

I yanked my baseball cap off my head and rubbed my palm against my forehead. “I didn’t get that briefing, no,” I said.

Another long pause filled only with the rustle of wind and trees on Gus’s end. “You serious about retiring? What would you do?”

“Fuck if I know,” I said. “On both counts.”

“You could probably sell t-shirts at Quiksilver,” he said. “And those cute puka shell necklaces? You’d be good at that. You know, being a surfer boy yourself.”

“Thanks for the advice, Gus,” I muttered.

“Yeah, it’s my calling. Career advice for ex-special ops. I’ll give you this consultation on the house, but I’ll charge a retainer going forward. Before you ask, no, I don’t accept sexual favors.” He chuckled to himself, and then continued, “The night before the wedding, a few of us are getting together at The Pub for drinks. Bring your Shannon.”

I disconnected and stared at my hands. Aside from old scars and freckles, they looked like mirror images of each other but they couldn’t have felt more dissimilar. I never thought numbness would hurt this much. It was like I slept in a strange position and my arm didn’t wake up with the rest of me. I kept rubbing and stretching to shake off the prickly chill but it never stopped. There were moments when an avalanche of sensation hit me, and with it came dull throbbing or sharp, fiery pulses. It was awful, but I preferred it to the numbness.

I heard Shannon’s key slide into the lock, and when she stepped into the apartment, she was a whirlwind. Spitting fire and five different kinds of furious. She was yelling at someone through her earpiece, and she looked like the most beautiful tactical commander I’d ever seen. Her eyes darted to me without reaction.

“Well I’m sorry, Patrick, but shit happens,” she said. “Keep in mind that we’re not talking about highly experienced or highly paid personnel. People with years of executive assistant experience do not want to work for a guy who goes through support staff on a seasonal basis.”

She marched into the kitchen with her laptop tucked under her arm and started riffling through the refrigerator. It was full, a departure from her usual menu of yogurt and white wine. I took a strange amount of pleasure from engaging in domestic tasks like grocery shopping and fixing squeaky hinges. I even had dinner on the stove.

If all else failed, I was content being Shannon’s personal chef and sex slave. That was a life well lived.

“I cannot oversee every single thing your admin does,” she said, grabbing a bottle of Riesling. She held it against her body while she opened the laptop and started typing. “And as I’ve said before, if you can’t find a way to communicate without screaming or glaring or otherwise implying she’s dumber than stones, we’re not going to stop this cycle.”