The SEAL's Second Chance: An Alpha Ops Novella (12 page)

“You’re pretty popular tonight,” she said, the clink of silverware against plates the high notes over a steady low hum of laughter and conversation.

He gave her a look that cut to the bone, then returned his gaze to the end of the hallway.

She hardly knew where to begin. All she knew was that her friendly competitive high school crush had subtly turned into a Navy SEAL, right in front of her eyes. “Jamie,” she said uncertainly, “I assumed.” She paused. Coach Gould had a saying about assumptions, and it was running through both her head and Jamie’s. “I thought we understood what this was.”

He cut her a look, sharp and knowing. “Here’s what I understand, Charlie. I love you.”

She froze while her heart did a soaring-to-the-basket alley-oop in her chest.

“No,” he said, half to himself, half to her. “I love you, of course I love you, but I’m
in love
with you.”

“You can’t be serious. No one falls in love after a long weekend,” she said, but even as she spoke she knew she was talking to herself as much as to him.

“It’s not a long weekend for me,” Jamie said. His eyes were determined, sure. “I’ve been in love with you since we were seventeen.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Ian strode down the hall, then into the office Eve hadn’t come out of. This time when the door closed, Charlie could hear the lock catch. “What’s that all about?” she asked, clutching onto anything that wasn’t Jamie making a declaration of love. “Tell me that’s not some secret hookup. Eve Webber’s about as likely to date a Lancaster cop as I am.”

“It definitely isn’t,” Jamie said. “Ian would appreciate it if you’d forget you saw that.”

“No problem,” she said. “I should get back to—”

She turned away, but he caught her by the upper arm, his grip like iron, his thumb stealing a caress, holding her there, holding her up, holding her. He hid nothing from her, let her see all his hopes and fears, the vulnerability of this warrior man of steel on full display for her. “I love you,” he repeated. “I have since we were kids.”

“Jamie,” she said weakly. “It’s just infatuation. You want what you never had.”

“You’ve spent too much time with teenagers and playboys,” he said. “Real men don’t operate that way. Is that really how you see yourself? Forgettable? Like I’d want you less because we’ve had sex? I want you more. I want you always, forever, in my bed, in my life, in my heart. I will never stop wanting you. I accepted that a long time ago.”

Another direct hit to the chest, rattling her to her foundation. She fell back on the one thing she knew for sure: long-distance relationships don’t work. “I live here. You live in Virginia Beach. What about that?”

“You said it yourself. There are a dozen ways to stay in touch now.”

“That’s fine for friendship. It’s not enough for love, for a relationship to really succeed.”

“We’ll make it work.”

“How do you know? You’ve never really tried to have a relationship with a woman while you were on active duty.”

“Because the only woman I want a relationship with is you.”

“I’ve tried. It’s never worked,” she countered.

“It’s never been me.”

She almost laughed at his certainty, the brazen, bedrock confidence in every line of his body, shoulders, hands, hips, and thighs, until she realized he meant it. Believed it. It would be different because it was him. Because it was them. Charlie and Jamie.

“No,” she said. “I can’t do that again, give everything I have to something that doesn’t really exist. I want day-to-day, I want someone to wake up with and go to bed with, someone who’s around.”

His thumb stroked once, sure and hot, over the swell of the muscle joining her arm and shoulder. Just once. A shiver raced down her spine and she shuddered. “Truth, Charlie. Was I ever not around for you? You were with me every second of the last ten years.

She couldn’t lie to him. She should, but she couldn’t. “I looked for you, every game, on every street in every city in Europe. It’s always been you, Jamie. But we’re grownups, not dreamy teenagers. I’ve seen dozens of relationships fail under the strain of distance, time apart, separate lives. Don’t tell me you haven’t. The odds are stacked against us.”

“Fuck the odds. You’d rather quit than fail?” Coming from Jamie, it was a command. A demand. A challenge thrown down like a gauntlet onto the polished parquet floor of the Metropolitan Club, so similar to a basketball court where they’d battled out all their frustrated desire years ago. “You’re no quitter. You always play to win.”

She looked at him. “My competitive days are over. I’m a teacher and a coach now. I haven’t even been playing seriously the last couple of nights. They were just fun pickup games.”

She’d thought this was obvious, but at that his face changed like she’d slapped him. His hand dropped from her upper arm and his shoulders straightened, squared up, making him bigger, broader, more intense. “You weren’t really playing?”

In a flash she knew what she’d done. She’d betrayed their on-court truth, bringing less than her best game, and the look in his eyes cut her to the bone. “We were shooting around,” she said, hating the words even as she spoke them. “It was casual. Everything was casual,” she said again, repeating herself, stumbling over the words to explain what she’d thought was patently obvious.

He leaned toward her. “I don’t do casual,” he said, his voice tight, his eyes boring into hers. “I’ve never done casual. You didn’t, either. That’s why we light up the sky every time we’re within fifty feet of each other. It’s why the games made us better players. You and me, we’ve never been casual. But if you’re bringing me a half-assed version of who you are,” he said, gesturing between them with his right hand, coming close enough to the bare skin of her collarbones and breasts for her to feel the heat, “then I’m out.”

“Jamie, wait,” she said, but when he turned around, she couldn’t say the words. “I drove you here? How will you get home?”

He just stared at her, like he couldn’t believe the inane words coming from her mouth. She couldn’t believe them either, but heard them and winced at her own stupidity. His father, mother, and brother were here. Former classmates, friends, people who’d be happy to drive him up the Hill. “Jamie, I’m sorry,” she said.

But that wasn’t what she meant, either. He waited another beat, then turned and walked away.

*   *   *

An hour later the room was clear except for the current players, who were all sprawled in the chairs around one big table, shoes off, false eyelashes in a growing pile on the table, shooting the breeze. Charlie approached the table to congratulate them on a job well done, and got a faceful of sullen teenage girl in response. Grace wouldn’t make eye contact as she said, “Thanks, Coach.”

“Do you have a problem with me?” she asked her players.

“No, Coach,” Grace said, obediently.

“I do,” Lyssa said. “You’ve made a big mistake.”

Charlie and the rest of the table stared at her. Silent, observant Lyssa, calling her out.

“He loves you. You love him. The whole room saw the way you looked at him while he was talking. We all knew who he was really talking to,” she added. “You’re always telling us to not give up. We can go to college, get degrees, because an education lasts forever. But the thing that will last the longest, the thing that makes it all worthwhile, is love. If all those things mean you can’t have love, what’s the point?”

Charlie stared at her. It was the longest speech she’d ever heard Lyssa make, and she nailed it with a profound truth. Love was what she’d been missing, all these years. Jamie’s love.

Lyssa mistook her stunned silence for disagreement. “Everything you taught us said that even if we lost a game, we’d learn something important in trying. That the effort was worth it, no matter the outcome. Did you mean it, or not?”

Context. Context was everything. She meant it when it came to education, a career, the game. But love?

She had to find out, and she knew exactly where to do that. “No curfew tonight,” she said to her players, and watched them brighten a little. “Be smart. I’ll see you all in school on Monday.”

*   *   *

She drove through the summer night to the basketball court. Jamie wasn’t there. No surprise. From snippets of conversation she overheard earlier in the night, his family had organized an after-banquet reception at their house. She parked her car, slipped off her heels, and scrabbled for the basketball that was always rolling around in the backseat. Dribbling slowly, she walked to the center of the court and looked up the Hill, where Jamie’s house clung to the edge. Maybe it was her imagination, but she could hear laughter and music over the crickets and the thump of someone’s bass music from deeper into the East Side.

With the basketball balanced against her hip, she looked around the court. For more than half her life, the basketball court had defined her, given her the scaffolding to create a life for herself. A future. When she moved back to Lancaster, she thought it was time to put her playing days behind her so she could teach a new generation of young women about the game, and life.

Was she wrong?

There was only one way to find out.

Ball in hand, she took off running across the court, into the crabgrass on the other side, then onto the sidewalk leading to the stairs up the Hill. Her dress flashed a deep, secret pink in the enormous, overgrown rhododendrons lining the stairs. Leaves brushed her bare arms, raising goose bumps, but she didn’t stop to think, just kept going, taking the stairs two at a time, her feet thumping against the wooden boards as she climbed higher and higher. Gasping, she stumbled out onto a wooden path between two privacy fences, then emerged into the street. Cars lined the cul-de-sac and the road leading into the neighborhood ranging down the gently sloping west side of the Hill.

The neighborhood no longer looked imposing, secretive, closed-off. Charlie mentally added running those stairs to her training plan for the girls. The rigor of climbing the stairs, then running down the Hill would build leg muscles to last a forty-eight-minute game, and break down any mental barriers between the East Side and the Hill.

After she caught her breath, she tucked the ball between her wrist and hip, walked along the sidewalk to Jamie’s front door and rang the bell. Ian opened the door, wearing his suit pants and white shirt, his tie loosened, a beer in one hand. His eyes widened ever so slightly. “Charlie,” he said.

She could hear conversation and laughter, music playing in the background. For a moment the stranger-in-a-strange-land sensation swamped her. She wished she’d thought to put her shoes back on. “Hi, Ian.”

“Come on in.” He stepped back and gestured into the house.

“I just want to talk to Jamie,” she said, shaking her head.

“Look, Stannard, help me out here. My mother will hand me my ass if I leave a guest on the front porch,” he said.

She stepped into the foyer, trying not to gawk.

“About what you saw at the Met,” he started.

“I didn’t see anything,” she said firmly.

“It’s not personal. I can’t say anything more than that, but believe me when I say I’ve got nothing going with Eve.”

She put “not personal” together with “can’t say anything more” and came up with Ian’s job. “I know Eve, so I have no trouble believing that,” she said, and got a huffed laugh from Ian.

“Who is it?”

“Hi, Mayor Hawthorn.” She couldn’t stop her spine from straightening or her dirty bare feet from curling away from the carpet covering the foyer’s marble tile as Jamie and Ian’s father stepped into the hallway.

“Coach Stannard,” he said. “Great job with the girls this season.”

“Thank you, sir. They worked really hard.”

“Good coaches inspire that,” he said. “Come in. We’ve got a few friends over, some of the booster club members.”

“I can’t stay,” she said. “I just wanted to see if Jamie—…”

“You wanted to see if Jamie could come out and play?” Ian interrupted, amusement dancing in his eyes.

Clinging to what remained of her dignity, she shot him a glare. “Would you get him for me, please?”

“
Jamie!
” Ian bellowed. “
It’s for you!
”

“Oh my God,” Charlie said under her breath.

No answer. She doubted Jamie could hear Ian over the music and laughter, but she wasn’t going to wait anymore. Without asking Ian for permission, she squared up her shoulders and walked down the hall, toward that noise and laughter.

At least thirty people were clustered in the rooms that spanned the back of the house, kitchen, eating area, a wet bar, a sunken living room. She’d played in front of tens of thousands, but walking in on all the people still dressed in their banquet attire, glittering and pretty and polished, reflected in the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the garden, was the most frightening crowd she’d ever played in front of. And she was playing a game that would break her heart if she lost.

Jamie, his mother, and several people she didn’t recognize were standing in a cluster by the big granite-topped island. Her heart stopped. He was still in uniform, the jacket buttoned all the way to his neck, and he looked like he’d walked out of her dreams. But his gaze was wary, guarded, and in that moment all the fight drained right out of her. She’d been fighting the wrong thing. It was time to end this, to let him in, to love him with all her heart.

“Charlie,” he said, sizing her up—her bare feet, her dress, the ball under her arm—and not coming up with anything that made sense. “What can I do for you?”

“I owe you a game,” she said.

His expression didn’t change. “And you want to play that game now.”

She nodded, distantly aware of people watching them, then discreetly moving away, picking up loose threads of conversations.

“You either bring the best game you’ve got, or we don’t play.”

“From here on out,” she said, intensely, because this was the moment when she won Jamie’s heart or lost everything. Anything that happened on the court was icing. “My best game. Always.”

Jamie stared at her, eyes narrowed, jaw set, then put his beer on the island and followed her back down the hall to the front door.