What I Should Have Known (Anchors and Eagles #3)

1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

BERNIE

A forlorn tune.

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard TAPS. It wasn’t even the first time I’d been at a funeral where TAPS was played. But something about this specific time, something about this specific moment, rolled as heavy as the dark clouds in the sky.

Everything melded together. Time constraints no longer existed as my right hand remained raised during the 21-gun salute. Each booming crack shot through me as if I had been the one to take the bullet to the head. As I stiffly swallowed, Duncan’s mother’s sobs fused with the grief running as cold as the breeze.

She should not be receiving a folded American flag.

She should not be saying her final goodbye.

None of us should be.

I’d always believed it was cliché to have rain pour during a funeral service in a movie, but it no longer felt that way as the first drop fell .

Drowning. We were drowning in a misery that shouldn’t exist. Lines blurred behind the torrential downfall of tears the sky shed for the death of Duncan Murdock. The only thing I could focus on was the three words his family had picked for the personalized inscription.

Friend.

Brother.

Son.

As our dress blues soaked beneath the downpour, the chill seeped into my bones, yet I felt none of it. A hundred times before I’d tried to imagine this moment. But not a single one compared to the anguish that ripped through my soul now.

Griffin, his face unusually clean-shaven, approached Mrs. Murdock, but his words were lost behind the pattering of rain against the tent stretched over seating next to the gravesite. A white tombstone sat at the head of the casket waiting to be lowered into the ground. The Anchor and Eagle pin from my uniform, from each of my teammates’ uniforms, were all lined in a row on the top of the blue oak wood.

I stared at the metal. Each ping from a raindrop reverberated as loudly as the lasting echo from the gunshot that took his life. A simple, dull thwunk .

A damn joke. A laugh.

I’d laughed.

A bullet had ripped through his skull as I’d laughed.

My body remained frozen, drenched in a world of grief. And I wasn’t the only one who dared not move. Even as Duncan’s mom trudged slowly our way, my hand remained in a salute, eyes trained on the coffin .

Her palm sang through the air, delivering a sharp stinging slap against Dom’s cheek, who stood beside me. But he didn’t flinch. Not an emotion flashed across his features. And then she threw herself around his shoulders.

Dom buried his face into her neck as she sobbed. His arms wrapped tightly around her small frame that shook. Momentarily pulled from the grief that held me frozen, I lowered my hand and took a step backward. My gaze slid across the gray sky and the horizon spotted with uniform tombstones.

I’d meet Duncan here someday.

Maybe that someday wasn’t too far away.

Karim al-Jabari being dead, Reyes being dead, didn’t feel like enough justice. But that was all we were left with.

Tipping my head forward, the rain sloshed off the edge of my cover and slid across the back of my neck. I turned away and took a couple of strides forward, putting distance between Duncan’s grave and myself, and paused.

Three armored SUVs drove by, pulling off to the side of the narrow road in the distance. Someone else was here. Someone else with a broken heart.

Doors opened, and men in black suits emerged. The Secret Service. I inhaled deeply as the Secretary of Defense stepped out of his vehicle, a black umbrella held above his head by an agent as he carried a bottle of whiskey.

“What’s he doing here?” Scottie whispered to Mikey .

They both stood a few feet to my right, watching the same procession as I was. A mirror of where we would be in a month. A year. Two years. For the rest of our lives, we’d only find Duncan in memories and at a gravesite.

“His son was killed in combat a couple of years ago,” Mikey replied quietly.

Like Velcro, I peeled my gaze away and closed my eyes.

It was what it was.

All of this was.

I hadn’t chosen this hell, but here I was. Here we were.

With no words to say, my throat numb, I tramped across the saturated grass back to my vehicle.

“To Duncan,” Griffin said, raising his glass.

Downing the shot, I leaned back in my seat. Being surrounded by my team should have been more comforting, but not having everyone here felt incomplete. At least we were all dry and dressed in civvies. The loud, joyous chatter bouncing around the bar along with the booming music should have lifted my mood, but even the alcohol swimming warm in my veins barely numbed the pain.

And I wasn’t one who typically enjoyed drinking, but it would’ve been nice to have the edge taken off .

“Not exactly the reunion we were hoping for,” Ford muttered, sliding a finger across the rim of his empty shot glass. The circular, ebony-stained table between us reflected the dark gloom hanging above our heads.

It was lively here, nearly every available space occupied by a smiling human celebrating something. The earlier crowd of doom that we were had been pushed out by the evening crowd. Maybe that’s what we should have been doing as well.

Commemorating Duncan’s life, not drowning in misery.

“He wouldn’t have wanted to go out any other way,” Griffin said, his tone shifting into something more… just more. It seemed I wasn’t the only one wanting to honor Duncan. And not in such a depressing manner.

Two hours and several rounds of shots later, Mikey leaned sideways, slinging his arm around Scottie’s shoulders. The blond hair upon his skin stood out against her dark shade. Despite the contrast between them, they fit.

“You have a big fucking head, you know that?” I slurred at him.

He tossed his chin to the ceiling and laughed. “Duncan mentioned that once or twice. And not just figuratively.”

“Yours is big, just figuratively,” Ford bantered at me, turning his baseball cap backward.

“And you need to cut your fucking hair, big guy,” Griffin snapped.

Ford bellowed, pulling his hat off and shaking his locks out. “My mama finds it beautiful.”

“Your mama finds Bernie beautiful, so that doesn’t say much,” Mikey quipped and slung back a swig of beer.

“That makes two mamas who find me beautiful, how many do you have?” I taunted in response.

Mikey grinned. “I was just too beautiful that my mama had to go to another realm to find anything as amazing as me.”

“Your mama went to another fucking realm to get away from you.” I wiggled my brows.

“At least my mama doesn’t have to see your ugly ass face every day like yours does.” Mikey slid an unopened beer bottle across the table at me.

“Even his mama actively chooses to not look at his ugly ass face every day,” Ford inserted.

“Yeah, ’cause then she’d see me fucking your mama,” I said, grinning at Ford.

Griffin sat silently, a wide smile on his face simply watching the drunken banter. “I see not much has changed,” he muttered, leaning toward Dom beside him.

Dom shook his head. “Not much.”

“Yo,” I inserted, popping the cap off the beer and nodding at Scottie, who sat directly across from me. “Ten bucks says I can flick this bottle cap between your fingers.”

“You still owe me forty bucks,” she replied, raising a brow. “Sure you can afford fifty?”

“Why does Bernie owe you forty bucks?” Griffin asked as Scottie held up her index fingers like two field goal posts on a football field. Resting her forearms against the edge of the table, she pressed the tips of her thumbs together to create a square without the top line .

“Because he bet me twenty bucks to kiss anyone on the team, and then doubled that bet to kiss Mikey after Mikey bit off a dude’s thumb and still had the blood on his mouth,” she answered.

Settling the cap back on top of the glass bottle, I narrowed my gaze, taking aim to flick the ribbed metal with my middle finger. “And she did it. If I make this, then it’s only thirty bucks,” I finished.

Griffin chuckled, leaning back in his seat. “Why does that not surprise me at all?”

Mikey grinned, baring both the top and bottom rows of his teeth. “I should get insurance on these the next time I go to the dentist.” He clacked his teeth together a few times.

Scottie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because you’re gonna ruin them at some point.”

“No, because they’re lethal weapons, Scotch.” Mikey pursed his lips, shooting a sarcastic glare at his girlfriend.

With my shot lined up, I released my finger, the nail ringing across the edge of the cap.

It whizzed through the air, curved to the outside of the goalposts, and right in between Mikey and Scottie, sailing on by them.

“Ow,” a woman hissed from behind Mikey.

I snapped my mouth together as five sets of fingers pointed directly at me, revealing a blurry figure.

“I am so sorry,” I quickly apologized with a slur as this stranger turned toward me, and I blinked through the haze to focus my gaze on her.

She lifted a hand to her forehead, rubbing between her eyes. Her large, round, deep blue gaze narrowed. An obvious attempt at intimidation, but whether it was the alcohol or the fact that her features were simply soft and gentle, I couldn’t stop the smile from sliding onto my lips. Her brows were immaculate, the same light acorn shade as her medium-length hair. The bright red tank top she wore brought out the golden sun-kissed hue of her skin. My head swam, all thoughts a dizzy mess as I drank in the sight of this voluptuous woman whose curvy body was as magnetic as her steely gaze.

“And now you’re mocking me.” She shook her head, her plump lips pressing dimples into her cheeks.

A sigh slipped from my mouth.

“Come on, Kat, let’s just leave that fool,” her blonde friend said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

“Not until he genuinely apologizes,” she snapped.

I smiled even wider, warmth filling the pit of my stomach. “I really am sorry,” I slurred unintentionally.

She inhaled deeply, her chest rising as my gaze slid slowly down her curves. Her very thick curves.

Damn…

“He’s clearly drunk,” her friend muttered in her ear.

“It’s fine,” she replied, and the two of them disappeared into a crowd of people.

“That’s what you fucking get.” Ford whacked me on the back of my head.

I blinked rapidly, tearing my swirling vision away from where she’d just been standing. “I didn’t mean to hit her. Damn.” I rubbed at the dull thud .

Griffin snickered. “I’m surprised you didn’t try and flirt your way out of that.”

“I’m trying to turn over a new leaf,” I replied.

Mikey rolled his eyes. “Or you finally realized how terrible you are at flirting.”

Smacking my lips together, I shook my head. “I’ve got more game than you.”

“I have a girlfriend.” He raised his brows and looked at Scottie with a smirk.

“Fuck you.” I gave him the bird and then swung it to the entire table. “Fuck you all. You’re all terrible wingmen.”

The guys resumed talking, but the words drifted away like a butterfly in the wind. My gaze searched the bar, roaming the crowd, mindlessly wanting another glimpse of that short and beautiful woman.

There was something about her. She hadn’t paid me a lick of attention for more than holding me accountable for my careless act. She hadn’t batted her long lashes that only had a light coat of mascara. Her rosy cheeks weren’t from a blush, but the heat of the densely packed bar room. The cock of her hip wasn’t a display of the goods her mama blessed her with but because she was genuinely annoyed.

Damn, I really was losing my touch.

My attention returned to the family seated around me. Brought together today by something that should have never happened. Despite the pain and grief, I was grateful they were here. I was grateful for them.

Somehow, I knew that Duncan was still with us, and he would be wherever we went.