My name is Annabel Lee. I was in love with a boy once named Shane. He was the love of my life, but he had… well… issues. He came from an abusive home. He loved me, but cheated on me and that was something I couldn’t forgive. Then tragedy struck. Shane’s little brother died and Shane blamed himself. Then he had to confront his father, the man who had beaten him every day of his life. It was no wonder Shane lost control and did what he did. I should have been there for him. I should have taken him in my arms and told him it was going to be all right. Instead, I helped drive him away.
Now, Shane is back and all grown up. All muscles and tattoos and smoldering heat… My head is telling me to stay away, but my heart—and other parts of me— are screaming to be back in his arms again. Can I trust him this time to not break my heart? Or will history repeat itself and leave me broken and alone again?
PROLOG
Captain Shane Mavic
Who the fuck am I?
That’s a good question. And one that I have asked myself hundreds—if not thousands—of times over the years.
Others have asked the question, too, mostly strange women in strange bars in strange lands who wondered what it would be like to fuck a strange guy like me.
Or dangerously-stupid men who saw fit to challenge me on and off the battlefield, only to regret it once my boot heel pushed their bloodied faces into the hard barroom floor or the gritty Iraqi desert sand or the soft Columbian mud, like I was some kind of old timey gunslinger they wanted to gun down to further their own silly reputations.
I could understand the attraction on both accounts. I stood out like a sore thumb in their dark, little worlds, this big American motherfucker with no tolerance for bullshit and no look of fear in his eyes.
Most women wanted to fuck me and most men wanted to kill me.
Hell, I’d even fucked women who wanted to kill me and killed men who wanted to fuck me up, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Anyway.
Welcome to my world.
I wasn’t afraid of anything other than the past.
And the past couldn’t hurt me anymore.
At least that’s what I kept telling myself here in the present.
And fuck the future.
I never think beyond one day at a time.
It would be insane to do so, given the life I lived.
I went out, did my duty, and tried to come back alive so I could go out and do it all over again tomorrow. That was as far ahead as I ever looked. My world could end now and that would be just fine by me. I’d pretty much done everything God put me here to do and then some.
So, to answer your question, brothers and sisters, who the fuck am I?
I have no fucking idea.
Feel free to let me know if you ever figure it out.
1
Shane
Fine. You want the rundown? Here it is.
My name is Shane Andrew Mavic. Captain Shane Mavic. I’m twenty-nine years old. I’ve been in the United States Navy for 11 years now, or to be more precise, 4,105 days, 15 hours, and 26 minutes, give or take a couple of minutes.
I’ve been a SEAL for 3, 875 of those days. Out of those 3,875 days I’ve spent less than 45 days in the United States and exactly zero days in my hometown of Gulf Breeze, Texas. And as you can probably tell, I’m a little hung up on numbers. I’m not math whiz by any stretch of the imagination. To the contrary, I barely graduated high school. I just like keeping track of things in my head. Counting helps keep me clear. Plus, I just like numbers. I find comfort in them. Numbers are safe, predictable, always logical: unlike most of the people I’ve dealt with in my life, where two plus two equaled any number but four.
During those 3,875 days, I’ve gone on missions in 24 different countries, most of that time having been spent in some of the world’s premiere shithole destinations like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Columbia, Turkey, Croatia, and Iran; places you could not pay me to go unless I was there in service to my country.
Still, I’ve loved every fucking minute of being a SEAL. The intense training, the constant adrenaline and exhaustion, the heat, the cold, the dirt, the mud, the swamps, the shit, the danger, the fighting, the knives, the bullets, the bombs, and yes, the pussy. Hell, I even loved that tingly feeling that inched its way up my spine, like a spider creepy-crawling under the skin, knowing that the motherfucker asking to bum a cigarette or wanting to know the time might be wearing a suicide vest or waiting for you to let your guard down so he could slit your throat. That shit gets my adrenaline pumping, man.