Once Burned by L. A. Witt

Author:L. A. Witt [Witt, L. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2018-02-04T05:00:00+00:00

The conversation didn’t help me sleep. Not that I’d expected to sleep, but now I had a different excuse for lying there staring at his ceiling.

Knowing how much the Navy had affected Mark’s life, I felt like a dick for ever making the Navy a deal breaker. Yeah, the Navy had burned me, but it wasn’t like anyone made it through a career or even a four-year enlistment without paying some kind of price. Divorces. Injuries. Alcoholism. PTSD. Suicide.

A buddy of mine had been one of those Marines with the Semper Fi tattoo and matching bumper sticker on his pickup. Married, kids, two combat tours under his belt. He’d loved the Marines, but they didn’t need him anymore after a sniper in Afghanistan cost him the use of his right arm. Now he was divorced, depressed, and unemployed. Last I’d heard, the only thing keeping him from drinking himself to death was that he couldn’t afford to buy food, never mind booze.

Then there was the senior chief at my last command who’d sailed through the ranks and had one of those careers every enlisted guy hoped for—as long as you ignored the two divorces and forgot that he dropped dead of a heart attack a month before the end of our Afghanistan tour.

So it wasn’t like I was the only one who’d been damaged by the military. And the damage could have been a lot worse. Mark’s ex-wife could have been a widow.

I shuddered.

I hated what the military did to people. I’d watched it happen to other people, and it had happened to me. It had happened to Mark. Okay, Mark had lucked into an XO job after getting promoted by surprise, but he’d also lost his marriage and missed his brother-in-law’s funeral and his sister’s wedding. Nobody came off active duty unscathed.

So how the fuck was I supposed to deal with Mark? He and the Navy were as tied together as I was to my scars. Like it or not, they weren’t going anywhere.

But I didn’t want to go anywhere either. I’d already decided I liked him—a lot—even before he’d seen this side of me without flinching.

I gazed at his profile in the darkness. Maybe giving military men a second chance hadn’t been a bad idea.

So why couldn’t I shake the feeling this was eventually going to blow up in my face?

Because everything eventually did.

I sighed. No, I was not going to be a grouchy pessimist about this. Mark was a good guy. I barely even thought about the military when we were together, and I wasn’t going to let the military fuck this up. I wasn’t going to let myself fuck it up.

I want this to work, I decided, and ran my hand up his shoulder. He murmured in his sleep but didn’t wake up. We can do this.

My heart sank a little, and I couldn’t resist giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze.

Yeah. We can do this.

As long as my ghosts don’t scare you away.

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