Find A Way Or Make One (2 page)

Cale stood up and started shaking his finger at me, “Little girl, don’t you even try to act like you aren’t chomping at the bit to see your boys
again. We all know the truth.
I bet you have called them every night. That is if they don’t get the call in to you first.”

What can I say? I love
all my boys and I wouldn’t change having them in my life for a minute, but sometimes I miss the people I used to work with and the antics we used to pull.
Sometimes I feel like I am forty-eight or fifty-eight, not
soon to be twenty-eight.

Crow, a tall lanky guy with bright red hair laughed and spoke up, “Alright, it has been a while since she handed me my ass, I guess I will take one for the team!”

“Don’t try to feed us that bullshit, we all know you are only offering yourself up like that because you hope she will take pity on you and maybe one day give you Shana’s number!” laughed Sunny, a dark skinned black man.

Crow batted his eyes innocently; well, as innocently as he could I guess.
“Was I that obvious?” After a quick wink, Crow put his arm around my sho
ulders, pulled me into his side, then he mockingly shook his head, “The only reason I am after Shana is because Kye here has stuck me in the perpetual friend zone with no possibility of parole,” Crow whined.

They were all really just too much! These guys had become really good friends, and while I didn’t want anything romantic, I knew that I would always need them as friends.
Fighting side by side has a way to build strong bonds real quick.
“As soon as you grow up and get over the all-consuming need to nail each and every person with a vagina you see, I will give you her number. And be glad I want you as a friend because you know my rules. And I don’t offer exceptions for anyone!”
I had
bent my rule one time, and one time was enough.

Stepping into the ring, Crow starts to mimic me with a voice that is way, way, way too girly. “Yeah, yeah ‘when
it’s over it’s over. No
take backs and NO SECOND CHANCES
. Did you ever think that I could make it worth it?”

Shit! Where did this come from?
I quickly rush
to smooth things over with him. “Nah, experience has taught me that a run in the sack, no matter how long or
wondrous
it may be doesn’t exactly measure up to having a good friend.
Besides, I would miss your cute mug in a mini skirt too much!”
After a quick knock of wrapped knuckles, we began to dance.

After ten minutes, Crow was beginning to show signs of wear. After a quick drop kick, I wasted no time in putting Crow into a Rear Naked Choke, with my legs firmly around his so he couldn’t kick out. Crow knew that he could never get out of this hold and was about to tap, when a deep voice dripping with Texas drawl rang out from the other side of
the makeshift training center.
“Hey, I heard that there were some drunk, washed up old toy soldiers trying to pass themselves off as SEALS in here?”
I knew that voice, as memories assaulted me my hold on Crow went lack. Crow quickly swung out of my hold and pulled my arm behind me and
planted my face in the mat. Even though I
knew I was going to lose and have to pay my dues tonight, my memories wouldn’t let me go from the strangle hold that those memories had on me; body, heart, and soul.

I had just left my study group and was headed to the coffee shop down the street when I
heard a loud clap of thunder. Suddenly
, the skies opened, the rain began. Looking down at my white
V neck tee I was wearing. As
I could start to make out the outline of my bra, I couldn’t suppress the groan that escaped my lips. “Shitake mushrooms! Why does stuff like this always have to happen to me?” I shook my head and started to run, not jog, to the Starbucks at the end of the street.

After I got there, I shook the rain from my hair and reached for the door. Just as I touched the door handle a large tan hand engulfed mine
as a deep voice, full of Texas twang and southern charm said, “Allow me miss, can’t have a pretty little thing like you to stay out in the cold on a wet day like today can we? You might get the sniffles, and although I bet you’d make a mighty cute Rudolph, I can’t let you get sick, cause then you wouldn’t be able to go out with me Friday night.”

And so began the most intense and glorious
six months of my life. When I raised my
eyes to see the man the voice belonged to, I was hooked, simple as that. Tall, dark, and Texan had been the simplest way to describe
Wyatt Masters. Wyatt stood at about 6’3, was well muscled without being overly stocky, so tall was a given. With
jet black hair that belied a Native American heritage and piercing silver eyes, dark was also a no brainer. Later, I learned that he grew up on a ranch located between Dallas and Galveston, making
Texan a title he wore proudly.

From the beginning, the simple word
more
instantly popped into my mind every single time I thought about Wyatt.
He became more beautiful every time I looked at him or drowned in the twin silver pools of his eyes. He was more intelligent than most, proven by the fact that he had graduated high school at seventeen and finished college at the University of Texas with a BS in Electrical engineering by the age of twenty. The fact that he had then pursued a career as a Navy SEAL had proven that he was more driven than most.

Unfortunately, after the night that the blinders had been yanked from my eyes, more still remained the adjective I used to describe him. More devious, more dishonest, more callous, and more bastardly suddenly all fit as well
. As hard as I tried, I have
never forgotten his cruel sneer as he had delivered the dismissal he gave me
.
“Look Babe, did you really think that we were going to last? I mean, you’re a good lay, but you wouldn’t really fit in with my family and friends back home.”
He then turned his full attention to the blonde that was resting in his arm.
It was only after that night that I looked up his family and realized that they were one of the richest families in Texas and considered the upper echelon of Texas
society.

I quickly packed up and left. I moved in temporarily with Toby until I could find my own place, so Toby knew how hard I was taking it.
I had cried nonstop all week, when Toby had made me realize that I couldn’t be upset with him when I hadn’t been completely upfront and honest myself, and that for once I needed to forget my rules. Toby had also gone with me to Wyatt’s apartment offering me encouragement
. We ran into
the girl from the nightclub walking down the steps. She appeared to buttoning up her shirt. She smirked and told me that Wyatt had had to leave on assignment. But she would be sure to tell him that I had dropped by.

Toby was my best friend, and had been since the day he saved me from my doped up ex-boyfriend.
That was the first time he saved me. The next time he saved me he saved me from myself. It wasn’t that
I was
suicidal or anything, but dangerous situations did help me forget, so the dangerous situations started becoming more and more frequent.

When his girlfriend died giving birth, Toby asked me to help him with raising Seamus and my life had finally felt like it had meaning beyond trying to forget.
I had a family to love and protect.
I may have failed Toby by not being able to love him as well as he deserved,
but even when he was dying, he made sure that I had enough love in my life that I didn’t have to go out and dodge bullets in order to forget.
And
after seven years Wyatt Masters just thinks he can just walk back in my life and fuck me over again? Hell no, that was not going to
happen.

2

“My mind keeps recreating a life with you alone. And I’m tired of pretending I don’t love you anymore.”

Travis Tritt,
Anymore

Wyatt

I couldn’t believe it when I found out some of the guys from my old SEAL team platoon were here in Morocco on some joint training exercise with the European Union’s newly established vers
ion of the DEA. And to
think I had not wanted to come when Uncle Trip had all but ordered me to represent the family’s shipping company at the
Moroccan export convention. I
certainly didn’t want to have to take a trip with Sable, but Uncle Trip had become suspicious of her and wanted me to figure out what she was up to. After spending a week in Sable’s company, I am fairly certain that Uncle Trip has
it all wrong. T
he only thing that Sable is up to is finding someone to satisfy her sexual needs and worship her.

She has been trying to get in my pants since the day her mother spoke to mine, and I was forced to give her a job in the marketing department. It wasn’t that she wasn’t pretty, she was
gorgeous. However,
her overly seductive attitude, combined with the fact that everything about her, from her obviously chemically altered honey blond hair, to her lips that collagen had formed into a perpetual pout, to her surgically enhanced breasts that screamed FAKE, was a complete turn off.
To top it off she absolutely sucked at her job, and wo
uld have been fired long ago if her mother had not used the fact that she had never seemed to get it back together after some prince in Eastern Europe dumped her about eight
years ago.
I mean I had destroyed the best thing in my life seven years ago, and I was still a fully functioning and productive member of society wasn’t I?
Yes, there are
days that make that statement a bit of a stretch, but for the most part I think I pulled it off rather well.

But damn, to this day it still hurt to think about Kylee and the unspoken love in her eyes that my cruel words and thoughtless actions had replaced with hurt and devastation.
I had realized too late that she was the love of my life.

We met while I was on a training assignment at Quantico, learning how to defuse the newest IUDs. Me and some of
the other guys that were at Quantico for the same training
had been sitting on the patio outside of Starbucks talking about something, for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what, when the wind and r
ain had set in. We all got up and
turned to go inside and out of the corner I caught a glimpse of
her
.

Even to this day I can still remember the way she looked and can feel how bowled over I
had been. Her long brown hair had become drenched in the down pour that had
begun, and looked almost black
.
Her white V-neck tee started to cling to her lush figure. I could tell she was petite, maybe only 5’3 or 5’4, and while I had usually gone for taller women who fitted my build better, I soon became entranced.
In fact
, her lack of height led to our first private joke
. She had been at
my apartment one night and had decided to make dinner. I told her the pots were in the shelf above the fridge, and didn’t think of it again until I heard her jumping up and down and asked what she was doing. She laughed and said she was
trying to reach the shelf. I was laughing as I walked into the kitchen and said that
would have to midget proof my apartment. Kylee crossed her arms over her chest and stomped her
foot. S
he narrowed her eyes and while still smiling,
started walking toward me. She then took her finger and poked me in the chest as she said, “Hey Goliath, I AM NOT SHORT. I am
fun sized”.

The first time I saw her, I stood mesmerized,
waiting in the rain, seeing where she would go.
Once she had reached the door, I became captivated by her face as
well as her body. She has possessed
a round face with high cheekbones (later I found out that her great-great grandmother had been Cherokee, while mine had been Apache), and dark brown eyes that seemed to stare into the deepest recesses of one’s soul. I pulled some really lame dumbass line about her not getting sick for our date on Friday night l
ike it was a statement of fact. While some might have thought I was cocky, I really had simply
been too afraid to let her have the opportunity to turn me
down. At th
e time I had been twenty-two, and like most twenty-two year old males I had had my share of girlfriends, friendly hookups, and one-night-stands, but I had never been as drawn to a girl as I had been her. As our relationship had progressed over the next six months, I had fallen more and more under her spell.
Kylee was unlike any girl that I had ever met before. Not only was she the most beautiful girl that I had ever met, but she didn’t seem to know it, or at least she didn’t care. While most girls would spend hours upon hours getting ready to go out on a date, Kylee would take ten minutes to change clothes, brush her hair, and put on her cinnamon flavored lip gloss. To this day, the taste of cinnamon will bring a sad nostalgic smile to my lips.

Sex with Kylee was so much better than anything else I had ever
experienced. While some girls
were only out for their own pleasure, or used sex a way to get and keep
a guy’s interest, with Kylee it had been so much more. With Kylee it was an expression of love, and while neither of us had ever said
I love you, I had always known what had been in Kylee’s heart.
That was probably because it mirrored my own.

But the sex, as great as it was, wasn’t the only thing that made her
different from any other female I had ever met. At the risk of sounding overly nostalgic, it was Kylee’s heart that made me fall. Kylee never met a stranger, and would always do anything she could to help someone, even if they didn’t deserve it. One night when we had gone out to eat, the waitress did everything she could to get my attention. When she realized that all my attention was
directed at Kylee and that wasn’t going to change, she became so irate that she actually spilled a plate of food on Kylee. When the manager came over to see what was wrong and caught the girl smirking, he fired her on the spot. Once the girl pulled herself from her shock, she started pleading with the manager, saying that she needed this job to take care of her brother and sister while their mom was in rehab, but the manager wasn’t going to budge. It was only when Kylee came to the girl’s defense stating that she had been stretching out a cramp in her leg and had accidently tripped the waitress that the manager relented and let the girl keep her job. After the manager brought Kylee a clean shirt, we enjoyed the rest of our dinner. As we made our way to the door, the waitress walked up to us and asked to speak to Kylee in private a moment. Kylee never told me what was said, but before Kylee turned to walk out the door, the girl was crying and quickly grabbed Kylee in a fierce hug.