Epilogue
PORTER
Stateside.
Home .
I waited with impatience for the big back doors of our bomber plane to open.
“See you for beers this weekend?” Jackson asked as he lifted his canvas bag over his shoulders.
“Yeah, for sure.”
“Emily told me that Beth found a job.”
“Yeah, she got hired at the hospital doing PR for their fundraising team. She’s pretty excited.”
“Good for her.” A satisfied expression crossed his face.
I smiled in memory of exactly how we celebrated her good news. Involving FaceTime and my favorite rabbit.
“How are you and her parents?”
We were healing. We had a ways to go, but we all wanted the same thing. To get along. “We’re working on it. Her dad was recently elected mayor of New York.”
“No kidding.” He grinned. “You going to make an honest woman of her anytime soon? ”
“Working on it.”
“What’s the hold-up?”
“A small Asian man named Roo, who insisted that he needed an opportunity to redeem himself.”
“Do I even want to know?”
I laughed. Damn. Why was I always laughing? It was ruining my tough guy image. “Nope.”
“MacDog.” Someone called Jackson away.
Could these doors open any slower?
Finally, they lowered. I slung my heavy canvas bag over my shoulder and picked up my Sig P266, before walking down the ramp.
And there she was. Tall. Leggy. That gorgeous blond hair blowing in the breeze. She stood beside Emily and lifted her hand to smooth the hair off her cheek. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
My girl-next-door.
So mischievous.
How I got so lucky, I had no idea, but her presence in my life filled me with so much fucking happiness I almost couldn’t breathe.
She paused, and her entire smile radiated joy when she caught sight of me.
Right now, I looked rough as hell and had an attitude to match.
It took a couple days stateside to turn off my inner warrior. After being deployed, I came back too intense, too wound up, too focused. But Beth didn’t seem to mind. Her exact words were that my intensity was ‘hot as fuck’. Which worked out in my favor. My last trip home we fucked so much, I thought my dick would break.
It didn’t .
I studied her, as my long strides ate up the distance between us. She was my second chance.
At happiness.
At living.
At feeling alive.
Maybe I didn’t deserve her, but fuck if I wasn’t going to spend my life doing everything I could to make her happy. As happy as she made me.
A soldier whose name I didn’t know, walked beside me. He gave a low whistled. “Who’s the hot blond?”
“Her name is Beth.”
She ran towards me, and those sweet arms, wrapped around my neck. I tugged her lithe body hard against mine.
Fuck she felt good .
I buried my face into her neck, breathing in all her sweetness.
She lifted her face back. We technically weren’t supposed to engage in sexual affection on the deck, but I stole a hard kiss from those lips.
“You’re home,” she smiled into my eyes.
“Yup,” I kept all the expression off my face.
“And you’re wearing your uniform.”
“They’re called fatigues,” I growled low.
Her pink tongue played with her upper lip, and that small action gave my dick ideas. A lot of dirty ideas.
“Whatever they’re called, your soldier clothes make me hot,” she breathed dramatically. “So hot.”
My huge fucking grin ruined my tough guy act. We both laughed.
Her warmth, her heat, her passion and her fire had melted the ice wall I had built up around my heart.
How did you even thank someone for doing that?
I never could find the right words to tell her how much she meant to me. I tried, but I failed wide in that department. So I tried to show her in a hundred other ways. A lot of those ways involved my dick, but in the end, my goal was her happiness.
Was this normal?
I had no idea, but it was my new normal, and I loved every second of it.
Her gorgeous face beamed up at me, “I missed you. ”
I wrapped my arms around her waist and crushed her back against me. “I missed you too.”
“Take me home?”
I held her hard against my body. “I’m already home.”
Hello fun reader. Thank you so much for reading the final book in my Navy SEAL Duet. I hope you enjoyed this series. If you enjoyed these characters, you’re going to love the tough-as-nails, rugged Vancouver Wolves hockey players.