One More Time

I woke up before the sun and felt the ship dock at the port in Miami. And after the conversation I had with Tommy last night, all I wanted to do was get the hell off this ship. Tommy had come back to the room last night in a heated daze, rattling on about how he had run into Chanel. I pulled out of him the conversation he had with her last night. About how she was through with me and how she had seen me at the casino bar cozied up to Evelyn. I wasn’t fucking cozied up to her, but I knew that would happen. I knew if Chanel saw me there with her, she would automatically think the worst.

I fought every urge to bang down her door last night. As I sat on the balcony and watched the sun rise over Miami, I resisted the dire need to see her, feel her, explain myself once and for all. I knew it wouldn’t matter if she didn’t love me though. So why put myself through it. I needed to let her go and live her life the way she wanted to.

As much as it shattered my heart, I had to be okay with that.

I needed to get off this ship before I ran into Chanel. Her proclaiming to Tommy that things were over with us and that she didn’t love me was all I needed. I had come on too strong and too many puzzle pieces fell at the wrong time for us to be doing this anymore. We came, we cruised, we tried, and now we had to leave.

Maybe that was how this was all supposed to turn out.

I didn’t wa

nt Chanel hurting because of me any longer. As much as I wanted one last moment with her, I knew seeing me would kill her. With the anxiety of Luke being hauled off the ship and the hustle and bustle of getting home, I knew it would be too much for her. Chanel was almost at her limit, and I wasn’t sure how much more she could take. It broke my heart to run from her, but if that was what she needed from me, then I would give it to her.

She deserved at least that.

As I packed my things and jostled Tommy, I saw how distraught he was. It was shocking, how much Chanel’s words about Ana had hurt him. He said something about Ana just thinking he was a good piece of meat or something, and in most realms, that would’ve inflated Tommy’s ego, but he had been beaten down last night and disappointed in a way I’d never seen before. As the sun came streaming over the horizon of the ocean, he rolled out of bed without saying a word. No snarky comment. No derogatory statement about the pussy we got on the ship. Nothing.

Just silence from a man who couldn’t understand why he hurt so much.

The two of us packed up silently and headed off the ship. I was done with women for good. The only woman I ever wanted didn’t want me. The easiest woman in the world to please had been displeased with me. I couldn’t keep her smiling, and I couldn’t earn her trust back, so there was no point. I had held onto a fantasy for ten years hoping I could fix it, hoping I could repair it with my own two hands and bring it back to life like I had so many others during my tenure as a SEAL. But none of my training and none of my missions and none of my senior officer’s words of wisdom had prepared me for something like this.

The emptiness I felt inside was draining, and I was better off alone.

Tommy and I walked out of the room, pulling our bags behind us. Neither of us said a word as we found our way to the front of the ship. The halls were still dimly lit, and everyone around us was still sleeping, but not us. We stopped on the grand staircase and watched as several police officers embarked onto the boat. I held out my arm, stopping a dazed Tommy in his tracks. We watched as the security guards from the boat escorted Luke from the elevator, transferring him into Miami P.D. custody. I felt anger boiling in my system. I felt the need to drop down onto this motherfucker’s face and rip his heart out through his asshole. Just seeing him after I’d pried him off Chanel that day was enough for my vision to drip red.

Tommy and I stayed and listened to the Miami police officers read him his rights before dragging him off the ship.

Once the coast was clear, Tommy and I made our way to the front door. We walked down off the ship toward the area where all the cabs were, ready to carry us to wherever we wanted to go. I stood at the edge of the street, the anger slowly fading from my body as it was replaced with darkness.

Without Chanel’s light in my life, there was simply nothing.

“You heard from Chanel?” Tommy asked.

I shrugged my shoulders as a cab pulled up to us.

“You heard from Ana?” I asked.

“Eh, what’s the point?”

I looked over at Tommy and saw how brokenhearted he was. It confirmed all my worst fears about everything that was happening. Tommy, for the first time in his fucking life, had gotten attached to someone, a woman who, by all accounts, was just like him. She had fun and fucked well and made him laugh with his soul instead of his lungs. I could see him staring off into the distance, fantasizing about her as I turned his answer around in my head.

He wasn’t done with her. Not emotionally.

“Come on. Let’s catch a ride back to the hotel,” I said.

We slid into the cab, and I rattled off the address for the hotel. Tommy and I had a few more days’ worth of a stay in the hotel we had booked for this trip. Even though we only lived a couple of hours outside of Miami, something in my gut told me we would need the extra days.

As we rode silently back to the hotel, my mind was elsewhere, wondering how Chanel was doing and if she was ready to get home. In all our conversations, I didn’t even bother to ask her where home was for her. Had she stayed in the area? Or was New York her permanent home now? Growing up just outside of Miami had been a hell of a lot of fun, but Chanel always talked about getting out and going somewhere that felt more like home to her. It was why I wasn’t shocked when Cornell had been her college of choice.

The state of New York suited her in some ways.

Either way, it didn’t matter. The cruise was over, Chanel was done with me, and I finally had answers as to what had happened on prom night. It wasn’t the clean slate I had originally wanted, and I sure as fuck didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with my life, but it was better than nothing. It was better than wasting away as a Navy SEAL, surrounded by death, blood, and danger for the rest of my life.

Now all I needed to do was erase my memories of this past week because while Chanel was buried within my mind, I would see her whenever I closed my eyes.

Just like I had last night and every night for the past ten goddamn years.

CHAPTER 33