Their mission was supposed to be simple. A look-out spot trying to gain new intel. Watching a back road that insurgents had been using more and more. But pretty quickly, they had figured out that something else was going on, andmorehad turned into almost four months of not talking to his Melanie.
Not hearing her voice.
Fuck.
He didn’t even know if the marines had let her know he was all right.
Sometimes protocol sucked balls.
He walked back into his own tent that he shared with Dean and two other men, as Dean gave him a look.
“You signed.”
A statement. Not a question. If there was anyone that understood him and his reasonings it was Dean.
But leaving his team, and Dean, would be hard.
“We’ll be fine, man. Your girl needs you,” Dean said, reading him well.
“I’m telling you, in a couple of months when your papers come through, my couch is open, man,” he reiterated, and Dean just smiled, not committing.
James knew where he was from, what he wanted, and where his home was, but Dean was the opposite. Foster homes and homelessness, that was Dean’s past.
He just hoped that someday Dean could find what he had.
“So what’s the first thing you are going to do besides kiss your girl?” He smirked and Dean chuckled. “Yeah, never mind. I don’t need to hear that shit.”
Four months of no calls, and nine months of not seeing her, and he wasn’t sure what ached more.
His heart or his hand from yanking it off to her picture in his head.
Her pretty sapphire blue eyes and curly brown hair.
God, he missed his girl.
Just then, a screeching sound filled the air, and he froze.
Fuck.
His eyes shot to Dean a moment before he heard yelling outside the tents.
Dean’s eyes held the same terror that he knew was reflected in his own.
“Get down!” he roared, right before the explosion rocked the ground.
He was tossed to the side, the image of dust and fire before him, and the memory of his Melanie filling his mind before it all went black.
CHAPTER4
MELANIE
“Here you go,” Tracey said, plopping another container down on the table and taking the twenty that she held out. “You hear anything?”
“Nope,” she snipped. Everyone was constantly asking her that, and she was sick of it. But worse than that, she was sick of the pitying looks she’d receive after they asked. It was a look that said that they knew, and they were waiting for her to catch up.
“Hey, honey,” Mac said as he walked in and took a seat next to her.
“Hey,” she replied, turning and looking into the same familiar blue eyes that they had gotten from their father.