Free The One Worth Waiting For by Alicia Scott

her eyes still cautious, but sincere with their concern. He hated to see that concern in her eyes. No one should ever have to worry about him, but himself. Disgusted at the whole turn of events, he let the glass go and drummed his fingertips impatiently on the table.
    “I remember Hell Week,” he said suddenly, his fingers fast and rhythmic. “I remember training.” The jogging with green fatigues and heavy boondocker boots through seven days and nights of sand while the extra twenty-eight pounds of his wet kapok life vest practically dragged him to his knees. He remembered the sheer exhaustion of being allowed only two hours’ sleep a night, and the temptation to give in that might have been too strong if Austin hadn’t always been right there at his elbow, egging him with his golden, surfer looks.
    “That’s good,” Suzanne encouraged him. “That was fifteen years ago?”
    “Thirteen.”
    “What about five years ago?”
    His fingers stalled momentarily, and more images poured into his mind. Creeping low through jungles with his tigerstriped team, MP-5s carried low, but safetied. The XO motioned ahead, and Garret responded immediately to the silent command, falling into flanker position with Austin at his side. Into the clearing, target in sight. The first shot rang out, and the yells began. “Early contact, early contact.” MP-5s were switched to full-fire and the SEALs released the jacketed hollow-point bullets in controlled three-shot bursts. His arms vibrated with the motion as he raked the submachine gun around, sweeping the four-to-six position. He didn’t feel anything though. In the chaos of combat, he was only aware of the singing of his blood and the dull roar of adrenaline in his ears.
    “I remember,” he said.
    Suzanne nodded, but her eyes were more intent on his face now. His fingers had stopped drumming, but his shoulders moved instead, as if he was reliving a scene hidden to her eyes.
    “Three years ago?” she tried.
    “Parachute,” he responded promptly this time. In his mind, he was at eighteen hundred feet and fighting with two collapsed cells of his silk chute while the altimeter clicked away precious feet. At the last moment, he wrenched the cells enough for them to suddenly catch the air and he buoyed sharply up. Several hundred feet off course for the LZ, but at least in one piece.
    “Two years?”
    His brow furrowed, and suddenly he wasn’t so sure. He could feel the weight of a Beretta in his hands, ringing off a quick two shots as he rocketed up through the hatch of a plane. Or maybe it was just training, and those weren’t terrorists at all but the three-by-five note card he had to hit with both shots on all occasions. Then he had escape and evade training, E&E, and he was under water, holding his breath as the sound of a ferry passed by. Two more minutes, his lungs burning more and more as the seconds ticked off. Until just when he thought he couldn’t possibly take it anymore, he lifted his head up and saw the three-man craft finally turning away.
    Training. He’d been participating, part teaching. And then…
    He’d left, he thought for the first time. At the end of the two weeks, he’d left and gone—
    “Garret?”
    He shook his head, the pieces slipping away as before. “I don’t know.” Suddenly, he couldn’t bear it, and he jerked back his chair to stand. He swayed immediately, but this time he didn’t care. He hated being sick and he hated being weak. Damn it, his SEAL team was out there somewhere. Austin and Luke and Charlie and C.J. and the others and what the hell was he doing sitting in some dining room not even sure of his own memories? Where in hell had he been? And what had gone wrong?
    “I should check in,” he muttered. But the minute he said the words, other images filled his mind. The fire consuming the building while he frantically swung his ax, trying to save what he could while bullets whizzed behind him and the distant sound of shelling