Free Into the Blue (A Wild Aces Romance) by Chanel Cleeton Page B

wasn’t sure which I preferred—for him to have thought of me often or for me to have been little more than a footnote in his mind.
    Liar.
    “I should get going.” We were drifting dangerously into territory where I just didn’t have it in me to go.
    I rose from the bench, not looking at him.
    “I’ll see you around.”
    He didn’t answer me, didn’t try to stop me. He just stayed there on that bench while I walked away, leaving the people I’d loved and lost behind me.

THOR
    I stayed on the bench long after she’d left, my gaze trained to the direction in which she’d walked away, as if that somehow could bring her back, my mind racing. I felt like the carelessness of my actions kept springing up again and again, the reminders that I’d caused her pain everywhere I turned.
    I hadn’t come back to Bradbury because I couldn’t stand the image of myself that I saw here, the way the town and all of the memories it contained reflected back the worst version I could be, the way she reflected an image of myself that filled me with shame.
    I knew the reasons behind why I’d left, remembered feeling like the walls were closing in on a future that I wanted but wasn’t ready for, a future that had seemed like a good idea in abstract but, the closer and closer it came, began to feel like a noose around my neck.
    The only thing I’d been sure about was her. And for a long time, I’d thought that was enough. That for all the moments when I stumbled, when I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted out of my life, she would be there, steady and strong for me to lean on.
    But it wasn’t enough.
    I didn’t want her carrying me. Didn’t want to end up like my parents—my mother working her ass off supporting us, working two jobs while my father drank himself into a stupor every day until one day he just said fuck it, and left everything behind him.
    I wanted to be a man she could be proud of, a man who would be a better kind of father, the kind of father who was there for my kids, who taught them not to make some of themistakes I’d made, the stupid acts of rebellion that had sent me to juvie and had me repeating a grade in high school. I’d wanted to be someone I had no clue how to be, and the second I spoke to the military recruiter, when he arranged for me to talk to one of the F-16 pilots stationed at Shaw, it was like something clicked. Something I’d only ever felt with Becca. Suddenly, I’d known exactly what I wanted to do with my life, known the kind of man I wanted to be.
    Before I joined the military, we’d been the odd couple. Becca had graduated as the valedictorian of our high school class, had gotten into the University of South Carolina on a full ride. In the back of my mind, I’d always known she could have gone to a more prestigious school, but she’d said she wanted to stay close to home—close to me. I’d have been lying if I didn’t admit that it had bothered me the way people looked at us like they were just waiting for me to drag her down to my level, like she could have done so much better than me. No guy wanted to feel like the girl he was with had settled to be with him, even though I knew Becca had never felt that way.
    But still. It was enough to light a fire under my ass. To make me determined to be someone worthy of her. And then, of course, I’d lost it all anyway, and the irony of it was that I didn’t like the guy staring back at me in the mirror much anymore, either.

BECCA
    I hit “Accept” on Eric’s friend request when I got home that night, feeling like I was sliding deeper into something I wouldn’t be able to pull my way out of. Because, of course,it didn’t just stop at me accepting his friend request. No, I couldn’t resist the urge to go through the pictures, flipping through a slideshow of the last decade of his life.
    Mistake. Big fucking mistake.
    There were women. Lots and lots of women. Pictures of Eric all over the world with guys from his squadron,