Better Late Than Never

1. Connor

CHAPTER 1

CONNOR

Judgment of Absolute Divorce.

A Decree of Divorce is hereby granted to Aimee Lynn Marks and Connor Daniel Marks. The marriage existing between the parties is hereby terminated, effective the date signed below.

T he document on my screen went on for a few more paragraphs of dense legalese, but I didn’t need to read the whole thing. The important part was… it was over. Our marriage. All the legal steps. Everything. We’d been separated for almost three years, and as of today, our divorce was final.

My lawyer had sent me a PDF to read and submit to Navy Legal and personnel since the hard copy would take a week or so to reach me here in Spain. I’d forwarded it to those departments, and really, I hadn’t even needed to read the document itself; my lawyer’s email had said it all:

Connor,

The divorce decree is attached. Congratulations—you’re a free man!

Jennifer

I was a free man.

In my silent office, I sat back in my chair, closing my eyes as I released a long breath. Relief settled over me as profoundly as it had when I’d received word that I was heading home from each of my two boots-on-the-ground combat deployments a lifetime ago. It was a different kind of relief, though—as volatile as my marriage had been at times, there’d never been the fear or the threat of IEDs and rocket attacks. No blood. No violence.

Still, this relief brought with it a deep calm. A sense that life was going back to something like normal. No more fighting. No more worrying what the next day would bring.

Aimee and I wouldn’t be staying in regular contact after this. She had her own career, and we’d split the money from the sale of our house last year. She was fine financially and hadn’t wanted alimony even after I’d offered. What she wanted more than anything was a clean break. Apart from things like the kids’ college tuition or eventual weddings, we had no reason to continue communicating. Both boys were adults, and while she and I were reasonably civil, there was too much animosity for us to stay friends. Honestly, that was fine with me. I also wanted a clean break.

Still, I hoped she’d be happy going forward; she was a good person and a great mom to our sons, and even if we’d been a mismatch, we’d had good times together. I genuinely wished her the best.

I wished myself the best, too. My life was mine again. I was single. I’d jumped on these overseas orders to kick off the solo life, and now, three months after arriving in Spain… I was free .

I opened my eyes and stared up at my office ceiling. I’d been married since I was nineteen. A father since I was eighteen.

Now I was forty. Single. Living on another continent for at least four years.

So… now what?

I let my gaze drift down to my desk where my phone lay dormant beside my keyboard. I’d perused a few hookup apps since I’d arrived in Rota, but I hadn’t made a profile. I was admittedly nervous about using them for a few reasons, not the least of which was that the people on said apps were either locals or part of the military community.

It was risky, casting a line within the military community, especially in places like this where that community was quite small. Far too many opportunities to create an awkward and potentially rank-threatening situation with the wrong person. I’d worked too damn hard to get where I was only to derail my career by inadvertently swiping right on someone in my chain of command, someone who was married, or someone who was enlisted. Or all three.

So… yeah. Getting involved with people in the military on a base like this was risky at best.

The locals presented a different challenge. I’d swiftly discovered after arriving here that this area’s population generally spoke limited English if they spoke it at all, which many didn’t. A few did, but it wasn’t as common as I’d naively expected. And why should they? This was Spain, not England. The problem was that my limited Spanish—which I was working on!—didn’t really lend itself to the kinds of conversations I’d want to have with a potential hookup.

See, I wasn’t just looking to get laid. I wanted to meet a man . After all these years, I finally had the freedom to explore the side of myself I hadn’t noticed until long after I’d had a ring on my hand. It was going to be awkward enough getting physical with another guy for the first time in my life; a language barrier would only make that worse.

I scratched my neck and sighed into the silence of my office. Maybe coming here had been a bad idea after all. Maybe I should’ve taken orders in the States.

A knock at my door startled me, but I recovered. “Come in.”

The door opened and one of my corpsman, HM3 McCoy, poked her head in. “Sir, your 1100 appointment is here.”

Right. Right, I still had patients to see.

“I’ll be right there. Thank you, HM3.”

She nodded, slipped out, and shut the door.

I gave the divorce decree on my screen another glance. Then I closed the document, pocketed my phone, and headed out to see my next patient.

The single life could wait a little longer.

* * *

An hour after I left work, I was more optimistic that I had, in fact, made the right choice in taking orders to Spain. The dating/hookup pool was still discouraging, but the pool I was sitting beside? The one in the walled villa I was renting for a song out by the ocean in Sanlúcar de Barrameda? It was perfect.

I’d enjoyed a quick swim to unwind from a long day, and now I was relaxing in the shaded cabana with an ice-cold beer in my hand. The beautiful house, manicured garden, and turquoise swimming pool didn’t solve the issue of how to put myself out there in this country, but I really couldn’t complain.

Thumbing through one of the dating apps I’d found, I hemmed and hawed about how to do this. The only non-military profiles I’d found so far that indicated they spoke English were students at the nearby university in Cádiz. Way too young. Once I filtered out anyone under thirty, the well dried up substantially.

I sighed and put my phone down beside me on the table. Gazing out at the sparkling cerulean water, I took a pull from my beer. Maybe I needed to work a little harder on learning Spanish. The base had a few classes. The one I’d taken had been helpful for day-to-day life, but it hadn’t taught me much about connecting with men for sex or dating.

?Cómo se dice, I want to try sucking dick?

The thought made me snort.

But then my gaze drifted back to my phone. Maybe I was going about this the wrong way. Maybe instead of figuring out how to approach guys, I should put myself out there and see if anyone came to me. Then I could follow their lead. Hell, I could come right out and say I was new to this, had never been with a man, and really wanted to find out what it was like.

In my job—both the military and as a physician—I’d always had the attitude of “take charge and get it done,” but maybe in this situation, I needed to fall back into the mindset I’d had as a medical student: when in doubt, defer to someone with more experience.

Fuck it. Why not?

I put my beer down and snatched up the phone again. I pulled up the app that had seemed the most promising. Or, well, the one that had seemed most intuitive to navigate, anyway. After a couple more second thoughts, I finally bit the bullet and made an account.

I was a free man.

And now, for the first time in my adult life, I was putting myself out there.

Please don’t let this blow up in my stupid face…