Broken Barriers (Barriers Series Book 4) (5 page)

I deepened our kiss. Her hands fisted my button-down dress shirt as her hips pushed into my throbbing erection. She knew what she did to me, and we’d done this plenty of times that summer, but this moment felt different. I was leaving her in a few days for the Marine Corps, and she didn’t deserve a five-minute quickie. Not after she whispered how much she wished we had more time for “us” before I had to leave.

Courtney deserved to be loved and caressed into a state of euphoria that I didn’t know I could give her. That night, I made love to her all night long, and she understood how much she possessed my heart and soul.

The sound of a boat horn out on the bay broke me from the memory that would forever be embedded in my mind. I should have told her that night how much I needed her and loved her, but when a knock on the door interrupted that moment of truth, I never found my voice before leaving. Another lost opportunity.

I quickly placed the photo back onto the buffet and walked away from it. That was the reason why I was here. I needed to face the fact that I screwed up and needed to push myself in the right direction.

What direction was that? How the hell did I know?

All I knew was that my ass was getting in the shower, and I was about to start my first day figuring out what my future held.

It took me damn near an hour to paddle across that one bay. Now, I wasn’t a fuckin’ yachtsman, but I could tell you that getting the kayak from my dock to the marina shouldn’t have taken more than fifteen…twenty minutes, tops.

My arms were shot to hell, shaking before I reached my final destination. I was clearly out of shape, even after doing push-ups and sit-ups every chance I got overseas. I found myself gasping for air as I heaved the kayak out of the water and onto the docks. Old timers on their old, rundown rowboats shook their heads at me as I passed them on the bay. While their fishing rods dangled off the back of their boats yielding nothing more than maybe a trout or two, I pushed the paddle in the water and gained short ground, like I was pushing through thick mud.

Then to top it off, I had all the summer vacationers raising their eyebrows as my dented old kayak sat next to their precious, shiny, overpriced powerboats on the docks. They glared at me, as though it embarrassed them. That look silently said all I needed to know. They had big money boats and wore their polo shirts and leather boat shoes, while their wives or mistresses sat on board with their big hats and sunglasses gossiping. They clearly didn’t like the fact that I left my kayak anywhere near them.

They’d get over it. If they really knew how much my family was worth, they might have thought differently, but that was nobody’s goddamn business. All those years of active duty had also managed to get me to a place that should have allowed me to live comfortably for many years. It wasn’t like I had a lot of opportunities to spend money on base. The supply shop, or PX as we called it, didn’t exactly have a big red bulls-eye logo on the front. The inside looked more like a twenty-four hour convenience store than a mall or department store.

I laughed at the shit the guys and I would come back to the can with some days. We’d have ten pounds of Tang and enough beef jerky and sugary snacks to guarantee a dentist’s wet dream once we came home. Sure enough, last week when I visited my dentist in Connecticut, I received three shiny new fillings before I left for the lake.

I still hadn’t made it to the general store here in town. In fact, I hadn’t left the dock area. It was nearly noon by the time I yanked the kayak out of the water and sat at Wolfe’s Tavern grabbing lunch and catching my breath. It was just the liquid form of lunch, though. I was planning on getting food, eventually. I was in no rush. Days were short, but nights were long around here. I was supposed to be enjoying life, right?

As I let out a deep belly laugh at that one, the bartender came over from the other end of the bar. This guy seriously had to have been making all the girls and married ladies in town wet themselves. He didn’t fit the image of Wolfe’s; that was for damn sure.

The dining room might not have boasted cream-colored tablecloths, but silver tavern mugs hanging from the ceiling and flat screen televisions behind the bar didn’t say dive bar, either. He was possibly the same age as me—maybe a few years older—and a near match to my height of about six-foot-one. He had a short, scruffy beard and flowing untamed hair he kept pushing behind his ears to keep out of his face every time he stood up. Me, well, mine was still short, but it was getting back to the length it used to be before my deployment. I needed a good haircut.

I noticed the college-aged waitresses gawking and whispering as they stared at him each time they came inside from the outside patio tables to pick up their drink orders. The guy knew what he was doing. Bartending here in the summer looking like that definitely got him tits…I meant,
tips
galore. Christ, even I might come in my pants if he stared at me the right way.

He stopped in front of me before pulling another beer bottle from the cooler. He replaced my empty bottle with a cold full one without me even asking. I guffawed.
Guess I was staying for another.
My eyes raised from the shimmering copper bar top to stare at him. He tossed the bottle into the nearby trash bin and leaned back against the bar, folding his arms over his chest, staring back at me. His muscles flexed, and I caught the sight of some black ink peeking out from under his T-shirt sleeve.

“Looked like you weren’t planning on going anywhere anytime soon,” he said to me as the drink order machine spat out a couple of new orders. He pushed off the bar and began preparing the drinks. He turned and stared at the ceiling full of tin beer mugs. Each one had a different number on the bottom. He stretched his arm high up to pull one of the mugs down for an order. He stood there, pulling on the tap handle filling the mug with beer.

My eyes narrowed as the ink from his tattoo peeked out a little more, and I caught the familiar Victorian-style letters etched behind his bicep more clearly. My hands wrapped around the cold glass of my new beer bottle as I tipped my head in his direction. “Marine Corps?” I asked, knowing you didn’t brand yourself with those four letters if you hadn’t served.

I watched him narrow his eyes in my direction and drop the drinks at the pick-up station at the end of the bar. He pushed the drink order receipts onto the pin, wiping his hands on the bar towel before making his way back toward me.

“You in the Corps, too?”

I nodded as I took a long sip of my beer. “Was. Just got out a month ago.”

“No shit. What unit?”

“MWSS 469 out of Pendleton.” I tilted my beer bottle toward him. “What about you?”

“
Company B, 1st Battalion, 25th Marines out of Londonderry, New Hampshire. I got out a few years ago. Did my two tours in Iraq, and after 2010, I’d had enough.” He walked over and shoved his hand out to me. “Name’s Everett Smith.”

I firmly slapped my palm against his and shook his hand. “Drew. Drew Daley.”

“So, Drew, let me guess. You just got out of the Corps, and your girl wanted some time
alone
, so she dragged you up to this exciting place to
reconnect
?”

I let out a laugh from deep within my stomach. “Not exactly. I just got back from Afghanistan after finding out the girl I loved married another douche six months ago, and now I’m here to apparently do some ‘soul searching.’ Or at least that’s what my sister is calling it.”

Everett glanced behind me and winked at what I could only assume were some of his
friends
. As I pulled the bottle from my lips, I peered over my shoulder and saw a couple of girls sitting down at one of the tables out on the sunny deck. One of them pulled her aviator sunglasses off the top of her head to cover her eyes. Her long blonde hair blew effortlessly in the wind against the bare skin of her shoulders.

The other girl, a brunette with wavy locks, sat with her back to me so I couldn’t tell much about any of her features. She casually placed her purse onto the ground next to her seat before threading her fingers through her hair. Her fingers twisted and pulled before her loose hair was finally held up off her neck in a band.

The afternoon sun radiated off the water as it beat down on the marina and patrons dining outside. I caught one more glimpse of the blonde looking inside the tavern and smiling at Everett before whispering to the brunette.

Everett shook his head, rested his palms against the countertop, and chuckled. “Well, Drew, I can tell you if you are looking to get over a broken heart, this is certainly not the right place to be. The girls up here are one of two kinds: the ones with money and statuses, which make hooking up with a Marine virtually blasphemy in their eyes, or the ones in the other category.”

“Oh, yeah, what’s that?”

“The drop-dead gorgeous ones that are either already taken or completely off limits because you know for a fact that anyone that beautiful is bound to break your heart in two.”

A light breeze suddenly filled the tavern through the opened French doors. My eyes roamed outside when I felt the sense that someone was watching me. It could be called intuition or Marine Corps training, but when it was eighty degrees outside, and the breeze on my neck sent shivers down my spine, something was about to happen.

I narrowed my glance over my shoulder and noticed the silhouette of the brunette at the table. With the sun shining behind her, the light hid her face, but I could tell she was staring at me. Then her head turned toward her friend, and a flush of adrenaline tingled through my body. The moment was gone, and yet just her stare had my body on edge.

“Don’t get mixed up with those two, if you’re trying to mend a broken heart.” Everett caught me staring while he was pouring a pitcher of beer.

“You know those girls?” I angled my head in their direction outside.

“Know them is an understatement. The blonde is Morgan, and the brunette is Cole. Those two are inseparable.” Everett placed the full pitcher onto the bar as the waitress blushed before turning back to serve her table of patrons. “Cole lives a few houses down the road. She lives in a large bungalow and runs Trouvaille downtown. Morgan—“ He dropped his heavy head to the floor, shaking it before letting out a long painful sigh. “Morgan is here for the summer. Her family owns a place at the other end of the lake, and she comes over here just to torture me. She helps run her dad’s art gallery down in Boston, so she gets summers off up here.”

Everett told me that he lived in the area and had worked the bar for the last few years. Wolfe’s was one of those places where vacationers flocked in the summer, and the locals hung out in the winter, so business was always booming. He and Morgan had hooked up a number of summers ago, and she came back to play games with him every summer. Cole had been her best friend since they met up here as teenagers.

I watched the two girls chat and laugh quietly outside on the deck. Cole appeared to be the more reserved of the two, but that could be because she was a permanent resident and business owner here. Morgan was definitely one of those girls that could do ‘some big time damage,’ as Everett said. She had it all going on—long blonde hair, legs, and curves that any guy would drop to his knees for.

The noontime lunch patrons had all but left now, and I realized that I’d been here chatting with Everett for nearly two hours. It was funny how two Marines could just meet, and yet there was a bond there that only we could understand. It was a brotherhood. We were family, not by blood, but by sacrifice. Everett’s time in Iraq was certainly a lot more hostile than anything I encountered on a daily basis in Afghanistan. Two totally different wars and all it took was one convoy to turn a simple deployment into chaos.

My pulse raced again at just the thought of that day, and suddenly the room was about to cave in on me. My palms grew sweaty, and my eyes that were clenched shut opened with alarm. I gauged my surroundings, and with one final glance toward their table, I swigged back the last few drops of my beer. The sun had shifted slightly, and I caught just a glimpse of her as the two of them walked down the outside ramp and out of sight.

My pulse settled and slowed back to normal, and I rose from my barstool. With a quick wave to Everett, who was chatting with other staff members, I dropped a twenty onto the bar and told him I’d catch him around soon. Apparently, he was having a little bonfire party that weekend at his cottage for the big Fourth of July weekend. My sister was doing something with Josh’s family, and, well, since they all had kids now, I was the odd man out. I got the invite, of course, but said I’d take a rain check.

I moved out the front door of the bar and heard faint sounds of giggling and saw Morgan and Cole pulling a boat out of the docks from a distance. My eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the sunlight, and by the time I pulled my sunglasses from my pocket to cover my eyes, it was too late to see them clearly. The boat had already turned away, headed even farther away out on the lake.

Given my situation, I understood that I shouldn’t get mixed up with any girls, but the truth was, I had to start somewhere. I had to move forward and put
her
in my past. My future needed to begin now. I had all the puzzle pieces. Somehow I just had to put them all back together.