prologue
Lincoln ‘Linc’ O’Brien
“Here’s your mail, handsome.”The petite blonde nurse winked at me. I nodded, my lips pinched. What was it with the women in my life being too happy, too bubbly?
Not that I actually had a woman in my life.
I didn’t have to glance at the crisp envelope in my hands to know who it was from.
Joy Espinoza.
“Thanks.” My voice sounded raspy from not talking very often, but that was nothing new. Before my injuries took me out, benching me from my Seal team, I was a quiet motherfucker. It was just in my nature.
You could ask my older brother, Chuck. I’d been that way since I was small. Not that he would take a call from me. It had been forever since we had spoken. Hell, he had no idea I was laid up in a military hospital in San Diego. But that was neither here nor there.
I held the bright white envelope and stared at the front of it for a long minute. I tried to fight the urge to rip open her newest letter and devour it like some savage bookworm. Letter after letter, ten to be exact, on the daily, this sickeningly sweet, dangerously positive high school teacher had written me before I finally caved and wrote her back.
Angry and frustrated with the turn my life had taken, I had been a grade-A major asshole in that letter. Asking her what kind of Rainbow-Brite Care Bear hybrid had crawled up her ass. Didn’t she get the point when she didn’t receive a letter back after three? After five? I’d told her she was obviously fucking clueless if she’d wasted her time writing ten letters to a complete stranger. That she needed to stop.
The moment the letter was gone and sent, I’d regretted what I had written. But without a way to take it back, what was done, was done. I’d thought that would be the end of it. I’d simply pushed one more person out of my life, and I was better for it.
I was a bitter asshole and didn’t want to deal with anyone.
I had shut everyone out, including my buddies on my team. But Joy Espinoza was relentless. To my surprise, three days letter, I received mail.
Joy had written back. Letting me know how glad she was that I had obviously enjoyed reading them since I knew the exact number of letters she’d written. Then she went to talk about her day at work and life as if I hadn’t been an incredible asshole.
As if nothing.
As if we were best friends.
The girl was a nut.
After that, there was no way I could resist and had been writing back ever since.
Two months of letters sat in an empty Kleenex box beneath my bed. I stretched trying to ignore the ache in my shoulder. The stitches and grafts didn’t pull as much as they had over my torso the way they did when I first arrived. I was lucky. Not only was I living and still kicking, I would most likely be able to return to my team. I was just a stubborn self-centered asshole who liked shaking his fists at life.
But who would blame me?
Life was a bitch and had never been all that kind to me. First, it’d taken my best friend, my neighbor, at eight years old. Fucking cancer. Then life had ripped me a new one when my homelife fell to pieces. My parents had passed, leaving my older brother and me basically alone in the world. He had stayed in our hometown, was now a mechanic at a local shop. He had always liked getting his hands dirty under the hood of a vehicle, no matter what kind. But I knew why he hadn’t gone off to live his life.
He’d stayed close to watch over me. Because I’d been a nuisance. A bad luck charm.
I wasn’t going to stick around and watch life take him away from me, too. The moment I was able to, I got away. Determined to be the one who left. The second I turned eighteen, I enlisted into the Navy, doing everything and anything to become a Seal. And in doing so, I created an even bigger wall between Chuck and me.
The tips of my fingers traced her pretty writing. The way she’d addressed it was pretty. It swooped and swished, almost like fucking art. I’d asked her about it, and she said it was something called lettering. She had taught herself because growing up, she’d had the ugliest penmanship between her and her sisters. Karma, the middle one, would make fun of her.
I shook my head. Lettering. Who the fuck had time to learn to do that kind of shit? Not me. Nope. That’s not why I had a notebook underneath the box of Kleenex that had pages of cursive wording. Mostly Joy’s name written in it. But no matter how hard I tried, it never looked as good as hers. The woman was a fucking genius when it came to that shit.
I opened the envelope carefully, and my lips thinned in a weak attempt not to smile as confetti in the shapes of crescent moons and stars tumbled out. In all their glittery blue, gold, and silvery goodness.
“Fuck,” I cursed to myself as I sat up in bed, grabbing a fistful of the bits she’d stuffed in the letter. I always forgot to check if she did this shit. Liar, a little voice whispered in the back of my head. You like it when she does this.
Not that I would willingly admit it.
I held a star between my fingers as my lips twitched before I took out her letter.
Hey Grumpy.That’s what her letter started off with. The nickname made my lip twitching move into a smile. A small one, but it was there, nonetheless.