Chapter 9
ADAM
My eyes popped open. Immediately, the smell of piss and shit overwhelmed me.
The heat made the smell horrific. I tried pushing it from my mind, but it was the same every damn time I woke up or came to.
The smell was always worse when I first opened my eyes.
It had burrowed under my skin and taken up residence in my nose and throat.
I rolled over in the crate to avoid puking my guts out.
I lost the battle and dry-heaved until my stomach clenched painfully.
“Fuck,” I groaned when my body finally stopped trying to evict all my organs.
My head banged against the metal, bouncing my brain around inside my skull, making me sick to my stomach again.
I lay back, trying to figure out if I’d fallen asleep or blacked out from the pain, which was fucking godawful. The bullet wounds from when I was captured still hadn’t healed. Of course, my captors fucking got a kick poking at them like they were the fucking Pillsbury Doughboy.
I was back in the dog crate. I had been for a couple of days.
They’d always put me back here to “recover” from the shit they did to me.
It was a mindfuck. A devious one, and it fucking worked like a charm.
Just as soon as I’d gotten used to the solitude and healed up a bit, so I wasn’t in excruciating pain, they’d come for me.
This last time was fucking awful. Stress positions, waterboarding, electrocution. I’d lost a pinky nail. Fuck, that had hurt.
The solitude was supposed to be one of the worst torture tactics, but sometimes being left to your own devices wasn’t so bad.
I’d come to love the solitude and isolation.
Living in my own filth sucked ass. Who knew what kind of shitty-ass diseases I’d have when I got the fuck out of here?
But at least I was left to my own devices.
I only liked being pulled out of the hot box, which one of the Arabic speakers had called it, because they’d hose me down.
Right before our last deployment, I’d bought a boat, taken up deep sea fishing and hiking, and even started reading—pleasure reading, at that.
Who knew crime novels and thrillers were so damn good?
I spent a shit ton of time trying to keep my mind occupied.
But all those things still couldn’t keep my cock out of Brock’s ass.
Whenever Brock and I hung out, something came over me, and I couldn’t help myself.
We’d be watching a ballgame, working on my boat or his house, or hole up in a cabin or beach somewhere, and the next thing I knew, I’d have him pressed against the nearest available surface, fucking him until he begged for mercy and we both blew our loads.
And once we broke the seal, there was no stopping us.
We’d fuck for hours until we couldn’t get it up again for love or money.
I’m an asshole.
I doubted Brock would argue against my assessment.
I mean, I’d told the guy we couldn’t be together four years ago, but I’d kept fucking him, kept going on vacation with him, both of which I was sure fucked with his head.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d told me so many times he loved me, but I’d never given those words back to him.
I’d denied my feelings, rejecting his, yet taking the things I couldn’t seem to do without when in reality, I couldn’t do without Brock Jones. It wasn’t just sex. Even though I knew that was what he thought.
I knew because he’d screamed it at me a few months before we were spun up for this op.
Those few months between that argument and when I was captured had been the worst of my miserable life.
I had filled my off hours with all sorts of shit.
Things I didn’t give a fuck about or things that I did day in and day out.
I did it all to fill the Brock-sized gap that last argument had left in my soul.
SPRING 2009
The sun blazed down, heating the air and slowly roasting us. We’d started the day in the marina scraping the hull and doing some maintenance, but Brock had suggested we head out to do some fishing once we were done.
We were about twenty miles off the coast, and there wasn’t another boat in sight. It was so fucking amazing. Just me and Brock out there with his grunge music blaring in the background.
“This is the life,” I said, reaching for his hand as he walked past with a fresh round of beer for the both of us.
Brock gave me the stink eye and pulled his hand from mine, replacing it with the beer he’d brought me. “What, being waited on and brought your beer?”
I turned my head toward him, confused by the surly attitude. “What crawled up your ass?”
Brock scoffed at me, shaking his head. He didn’t say a word. He just got up and started reeling in lines and packing away equipment. When he headed up to the wheelhouse, I followed him.
“Mind telling me what’s going on?” I asked.
He continued treating me to the silent treatment as he started up the boat. He brought us about and headed back to shore. I sat down facing him, but he never looked at me. Never spoke to me.
I sighed and decided to enjoy the ride.
After about ten minutes, I offered, “I’m sorry for whatever I did that pissed you off.”
I didn’t know what the fuck I’d done, but I knew I’d done something. You could only shut Brock up when there was an imminent threat or he was royally pissed off. Any other time, he chattered like a magpie. Since I knew there wasn’t a threat, I knew he was pissed.
“You’re a fucking asshole. Do you realize that?” he asked without looking at me.
“Yeah. I’m aware. What made me an asshole today?” I asked.
Brock sighed and cut the engine, resting his palms on the console in front of him. “I’m trying, Adam. I’m trying so damn hard, but then you say shit like you did earlier, or we end up fucking; it brings it all rushing back, dropping me in the land of hopes and dreams.”
“Oh,” I said.
What else could I fucking say? Four years ago, I’d had hopes and dreams, too. Fuck. I still did, but I didn’t see a way out of the mess we were in.
Brock shoved his hands through his hair, pulling at the strands. He walked to the boat’s bow and looked out over the water. His shoulders were hunched in, and his arms crossed over his chest.
I wanted to ask what I could do, but feared what he would ask for.
I cannot lose him.
Brock was all I had outside my grandparents and the teams. He was so entrenched in my life that I didn’t think excising him at this point would be possible.
Whenever I spoke to Granny and Gramps, they asked about him.
They were the only people who knew I was gay—the only people who knew my hopes and dreams.
Realizing what a selfish motherfucker I was, I walked up behind him.
“What do you need from me?” I asked, nearly gagging on the words as they came out of my mouth.
“Everything I cannot have and you refuse to give,” Brock whispered hoarsely.
I put my hands on his waist and turned him toward me. He resisted for a moment, but huffed and complied.
I could see the emotion on his face.
“If you could have whatever you wanted, what would it be?” I asked.
Brock’s face hardened as tears filled his eyes. “Do you really need to ask that?”
I smiled remorsefully. “No. I don’t really have to ask that. Just wanted to know if things had changed for you?”
Brock’s hands came up to cup my face. When we’d first started hooking up, I had thought I’d hate being smaller than him, but I secretly loved it.
Secretly.
I hummed. Everything with us was a fucking secret. Secret feelings, secret relationship, secret breakup, secret hookups, and now what looked like another secret breakup. I fucking hated secrets, but it was that or nothing.
Brock brushed his thumbs against my cheeks. “No. Nothing has changed for me. I still love you. I still want to spend my life with you.”
I stared up at him, gazing into his beautiful blue eyes. I nodded, but my jaw locked down and I said nothing. What good would admitting how I felt do, other than making us both a couple of miserable fucks?
I’d always been able to set a goal and meet it. I wanted to join the Navy. I did it. I wanted to be a SEAL. I did it. I wanted to be a Tier One operator. I did that too.
I wanted Brock.
I wanted a life with him.
Two goals. Two problems that were bigger than me. Bigger than us.
We were right back where we started four years ago: two of the unluckiest bastards in Uncle Sam’s Navy.
Brock leaned in and kissed me. Our lips brushed together solemnly. I knew what was coming. I knew it as sure as I knew my damn name.
Brock shoved me down onto the sunbed and climbed on top of me. He devoured my mouth as I brushed tears from his eyes. Wanting him closer, I pulled him to me. We wrapped ourselves around each other, getting as close as possible. We took our time, slowly consuming one another.
Brock eased back, his nose rubbing against mine. “I don’t think I can keep doing this.”
He started into my face. His eyes darted from one feature to another as he slipped off my chest. I rolled toward him, pulling him into my arms so we were facing one another.
“I figured you were getting ready to say that. You’re my best friend, Brock. My brother. My teammate. How will I get through this life without you by my side?” I asked selfishly.
I was a complete piece of shit. I knew it.
“I’ll always be your best friend, your brother, and your teammate, but I cannot be your sidepiece any longer,” Brock whispered. Emotion roughened his voice.
Confusion had me reeling. “Sidepiece? Brock, there isn’t anyone else. I’ve not dated or fucked anyone in five years. The last person I fucked other than you was Carly. You’re not a side piece. You’re the only piece.”
Brock’s eyes widened. His breath whooshed out all at once. His mouth opened and closed several times. “I didn’t think you were fucking around. At least, I hoped you weren’t. But…”
I waited. Brock’s ADHD made him say shit without thinking a lot of the time, but there were times, like now, when the filter that failed him regularly kicked into overdrive.
When I was still waiting several minutes later and Brock showed no signs of continuing, I prompted, “But…”
Brock closed his eyes, sighing. “You say I’m not the sidepiece, but I am, because you’re committed to the teams. Married to them. Whereas I’d leave to be with you. Since I don’t see you ever making that decision, I stay.”
I considered what he said, wondering if there was something out there that could fulfill me the way being a SEAL did.
I knew so many guys who’d left that twisted in the wind because they couldn’t adjust to a normal way of life.
I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to live life working an average Joe job, but the thought of living life with Brock was tempting.
I thought about it. Waking up next to him, taking him out to dinner, living with him, sharing dinners, holidays, birthdays…
The mundane shit that most people hated and SEALs rarely experienced because we were off somewhere in the world fighting to make sure everyone back home got to live all those mundane things in relative safety.
“Spell it out for me. What’s your best plan?” I asked.
Maybe he had something up his sleeve that would surprise me.
“I don’t fucking know,” he said defensively. His voice was sharp and edgy. “I didn’t waste my energy on a plan because I knew you’d never consider it.”
“So you want me—us—to walk away from our life’s dream job on a whim and a prayer?” I asked, utterly fucking baffled that the man even thought that was an option.
“I fucking want you to choose us, damn it!” Brock shouted as he rushed to his feet and stalked away from me. “I want you to walk toward a life with me.”
“We have twelve years until we can retire with our pensions. If we leave now, we’re gonna need a fucking plan. As much as I love swallowing your cum, we cannot live on sex and fucking pipe dreams!” I yelled back at him.
Brock stalked back to the wheelhouse, yelling at me as he went.
“Fuck you, and fuck this! I’m done. You deny your feelings for me, you reject mine, all while fucking me every chance you get.
From this point on, get your rocks off without me.
I’m not a plaything that can be put on a shelf and taken down when you have an itch that needs scratching. ”