The SEAL's Second Chance: An Alpha Ops Novella (4 page)

“Hi, Coach,” Grace said.

“Come on, Grace,” Charlie said. “You, too, Olivia. And you, Bryce.”

“I’m going to the library to study,” Bryce objected.

Seniors technically had open campus, so the odds of Bryce ending up in the library, not in his car smoking something carcinogenic and/or illegal, were slim to none. “This will be far more interesting than study hall. Let’s go.”

It was a little harsh. Normally she did her best not to embarrass her players or intrude on their personal lives. She had no authority there, and she wanted the girls to respect her, follow her example, not to fear or resent her. But Bryce and Grace had been joined at the hip since the season ended, and as far as Charlie knew, Bryce had no plans beyond graduation. Grace fell in beside Charlie, Olivia and Bryce at their heels. They were the last people to enter the gym, which meant they ended up sitting on the very first bleacher, right in front of the row of chairs for the principal, junior ROTC members, and Jamie.

He was wearing a camouflage uniform, the pants tucked into boots laced to his calves, the sleeves of his shirt rolled to just below his elbows. Stunned by the transformation from Jamie Hawthorn, scrappy basketball player, to Petty Officer James Hawthorn, United States Navy SEAL, Charlie had to feel for the bleacher to sit down or risk dumping herself inelegantly onto the gym floor.

He was in the middle of a conversation with Principal Belmeister, listening attentively, nodding, feet braced, face serious, demonstrating
respect for authority
for the two hundred watching eyes. Charlie took the opportunity to look around. The assembly, the reception at the Garden Club, and the banquet itself were mandatory for her players; they knew her well enough to raise their hands when her gaze skimmed the crowd for a headcount. All present and accounted for.

When she turned back around, Jamie was looking right at her. Before she could stop herself, she lifted her fingers in a little, unobtrusive wave. He smiled at her, nothing big or showy, but there was a private knowing in it that sent an electric charge along her nerves. It was a smile from before, a fast flash almost too quick to register if you weren’t looking for it, his way of letting her know he’d seen her, was looking for her, couldn’t wait to see her on the court.

“Do you know him?” Grace asked.

“Yes,” Charlie said, composed. “We each played on championship teams.”

“Oh, right,” Grace said. Her tone walked the line between respectful and teasing, staying just on the side of respectful. Charlie knew better than to respond, opting instead to flip through the papers secured to her clipboard, catching up on a teacher’s never-ending paperwork.

Bryce sprawled out on the bleacher, leaning his elbows back onto the seat behind him, making two girls roll their eyes and scoot closer together. Grace smacked him, but he didn’t straighten his posture, remaining deliberately casual through Principal Belmeister’s introduction. Then Jamie stepped up to the podium.

“I’d like to thank Principal Belmeister for having me here today,” he said. “It’s a real honor to come back to the place that made me who I am today.”

You could have heard a pin drop in the gym. No one expected a Navy SEAL to stand in a high school gymnasium and say that place made him who he was.

“What do you think goes on in the military?”

A few hands went up. “Defending our freedom.” “Peace-keeping missions.” “Border patrol.” “Taking bin Laden down.” The last one came from some smart aleck in the back row, prompting laughter.

“Sure,” Jamie said, easy, holding their attention in the palm of his hand. “What do you think prepared me best?”

“Weight room,” one of the football players said.

“Track,” the cross country guy piped up.

“Basketball,” Grace said suddenly. “Teamwork. You need teamwork. Aren’t they called SEAL teams?”

“They are. That’s the second-most important thing I learned,” he said, giving her a smile. “What’s first?”

Silence.

“Mrs. Fagles.”

“Mrs. Fagles?” someone repeated from behind Charlie. “The algebra teacher?”

“Mrs. Fagles. After we’re done here, I’m going to track her down and tell her thank you. Once I got through BUD/S, which is the basic underwater demolition SEAL training, I had to get through SQT, SEAL Qualification Training. To get through that I had to pass tests. Dive physics, which involves college level math and algebra. Land navigation calculations. Demolition calculations. You know in the movies how they slap some C4 up on a door, run a wire to it, and
boom
?”

Laughter. Everyone knew what he was talking about.

“Without demolition calculations, you might have no boom, which is bad when you’ve got targets hard on your heels. Or you might get too big a boom and you destroy your target or innocent civilians, or your team. I know guys who failed a math test and spent a year in the regular fleet before coming back and trying again. And they didn’t spend that year concentrating only on conditioning. They also spent it studying math.”

Charlie could hear the wheels turning in the room.

“It’s true for all roles in the military. I can’t afford to just be a big, tough badass, although you can be sure I strive for it. I have to be smart, in so many ways, every single day. When you join, every other man and woman in the service is counting on you, as are all the civilians you protect and defend. There’s no room for swagger. The SEALs call themselves the quiet professionals for a reason.” He looked around. “That’s all I’ve got. Questions?”

Charlie heard the rustle of clothing as hands shot into the air, Bryce’s straight up from his shoulder. He was sitting upright now, feet under his knees, unconsciously adjusting his body language to give him the best chance of attracting Jamie’s attention. Charlie caught Principal Belmeister’s eye and smiled.

*   *   *

When the assembly ended, Jamie had a small squadron of enthralled teens escorting him to the Math block where Mrs. Fagles still reigned as the department chair. Charlie had the next period free so she hung around in the gym, making herself available to her players. She remembered all too well the days when a smile or a “hi” or a pat on the shoulder from her coach was the only positive adult attention she’d get, how she turned to it like a flower to the sun. East High’s student body hadn’t changed much in the last ten years. Seventy percent qualified for free lunches, and a significant portion came from single-parent homes, where adults worked odd hours and could be so swamped with the details of keeping the lights on and food on the table that “quality time” with kids just didn’t happen.

She reminded Grace to sign up for summer school to work on her math, and told her she’d given her a good reference for the summer job at the zoo. She got an update from Emilia on her father’s immigration status. She checked in with Mandy and Brooke, both of whom had been caught ditching school, to make sure there was a good reason for it—work to help pay the bills, a sick brother or sister who needed care—then put the fear of suspension in them and got assurances they’d be in class, and studying when they weren’t. She walked with Lyssa, her star center, six foot three, a work ethic like nobody’s business, back to the Science block. The girl rarely said anything in class or practice, but Charlie could always count on Lyssa being at her elbow, absorbing God only knew what.

“Want to talk?” she asked. Just in case. She never knew when one of the girls would say yes, spill something that broke her heart and made it abundantly clear why she’d come home, why she was never leaving again.

Lyssa shook her head, gave her a small smile, the equivalent of exuberant jumping up and down from Grace or Emilia, then tipped her head toward Charlie’s office. A pair of sand-colored boots and camo-clad knees protruded into the open sliding door. These days it could be a student wearing Cat boots and army surplus pants, but she knew, she just knew, it wasn’t.

“See you later,” Charlie said quietly, giving her a pat on the shoulder. Lyssa settled into one of the tables in the Science block’s common room and opened her history book. Charlie walked into her office, a narrow slot at the back of the common room, and found Jamie sitting in the chair beside her desk.

“Hi,” she said, glad of the two seconds of warning Lyssa gave her. She sounded normal, calm, professional. “Nice job in the assembly.”

“Thanks,” he said with a shrug, turning his hat in his hands. “It’s weird, being asked to speak to them. You’re trying to tell them things they can only learn by going through them.”

“Building character isn’t easy,” she agreed. “All you can do is show them the opportunities and stand with them while they try to grab them.”

“I saw you with your girls afterwards,” he said. “Brings back memories.”

She smiled at him. “Of me hanging on Coach Gould’s every word?”

He looked at his hands. “It’s good to remember the people who made a difference in your life. Keeps you humble.”

He always could surprise her. “You feeling like you need to be taken down a few pegs?”

His dimples flashed, then disappeared. “Any time you think you can, you’re welcome to try, Stannard.”

Meeting his eyes, she laughed, the kind of laugh she rarely heard from herself anymore. Being on all the time took a toll, one she willingly paid. But she’d forgotten how being with Jamie made her feel more than restless and worked up, wanting all the time. He’d made her laugh, too.

The air changed, took on a charged hum. She couldn’t tear her gaze away, couldn’t stop the heat rising in her face, the flash of desire making her clothes feel too tight, too warm. Jamie’s gaze softened, grew more intense, infused as it was with a boy’s desire and a man’s ability to fulfill it.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she said helplessly.

His expression didn’t change. Some distant part of her mind recorded the look on his face, bare of any duplicity, just stark naked desire. “Meet me tonight.”

“I can’t talk about this here,” she said, and started straightening stacks of final papers on her desk, just so she wouldn’t have to look at him. Lyssa was watching, covertly of course, but watching nonetheless.

“Meet me tonight,” he said again.

She shot him a quick glance and was relieved to find humor in his eyes. “Just like high school,” she said.

“Except now we’ve got somewhere to go, and no one to answer to,” he explained.

She’d never had anyone to answer to. Her mother expected her to go out and have fun, cut loose a little, bring home a boy, any boy. But he was right. She had her own car, her house with doors that locked, a bed with eight hundred thread count sheets on it. She was on birth control, and had money, some security, if it failed. She could protect herself from everything except Jamie Hawthorn.

All he was offering was what she wanted, closure, a no-strings-attached opportunity to resolve a woman’s regret for a teenager’s refused chance. Her heart wasn’t in any danger. She was mature and experienced enough to know how to go about taking what he offered. But she wouldn’t be easy about it.

“We play for it,” she said.

An unholy light went on behind his eyes, so fierce and intense she thought she’d find herself pinned to the wall between her Albert Einstein poster and her filing cabinet. But he visibly pulled himself together. “See you on the court, Stannard.”

*   *   *

When the pretty twilight sky turned from lilac to purple, she pulled a clean pair of tights from her drawer, added a sports bra, zipped up a running jacket that fitted her from hip to chin, and laced up her sneaks for the walk to the court. A couple of blocks away she knew he was there, the faint arrhythmic thud of the ball coming to her faintly, then louder as she approached.

“One-on-one?” she said, tightening her ponytail.

He checked it back with a nod. They fell into a tentative match, playing with bodies ten years older, carrying an assortment of invisible injuries. Her right knee was well and truly fucked, while he was protecting his left ankle, pronating on it to avoid the pain of putting all his weight down. It gave her an opening to exploit, but she didn’t. Instead, she approached the game like she was coaching, just enough to harass and teach one level above her players’ skills. As she warmed up, she discarded her jacket, playing in her sports bra and leggings. A few plays later, he pulled his sweat-soaked shirt over his head, so that his bare chest slid against her back. The constant contact sent shiver after shiver down her spine to pool between her legs, his body hard against hers, elbows and hands and arms slapping, her back to his chest, the fabric of her tights and his shorts doing little to mask the musculature flexing underneath. She started sweating, then started breathing harder, eyes narrowed, lips pursed, watching him for signs of tiring. Saw none.

They hacked around, the score inched up by twos because neither of them had a three to save their lives anymore. “Who’s up?” he asked.

“You are,” she replied distractedly. “By four.”

She went low, driving past him, and he stopped her not with his body but with his hand on her wrist, pulling her up while the ball bounced away down the court. The tug brought her back against his body, chest to chest, hip to hip. “We’re done,” he said. “I win.”

His hand still firmly gripping her wrist, he kissed her, hot and slick, his stubble rough against her lips, the sweat stinging in her abraded skin. But she couldn’t stop, couldn’t back away. It felt so natural, like all their games before should have ended this way and didn’t, like this was the natural conclusion to their running scrimmage that was so much more than a game. It was a fight, a struggle against themselves, against each other, against the timing that made anything more than basketball possible.

It was over. His mouth, hot and questing, only confirmed what she knew deep inside. For better or worse, the wait was over.

His lips dragged from her mouth, along her jaw, to nip at her earlobe. “Take me home with you.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

She snagged her jacket, knotting it around her waist while he grabbed both the ball and his shirt. “Leave it off,” she said when he thrust his arms into the sleeves.