Free Fall

The power of it all was so strangely energizing and depleting. She’d given up trying to understand why it was this way between them. His arms gave out and he collapsed on top of her. His breath was hot against her neck, their skin sealed together with sweat.

So in tune with him right now, she could feel him drifting off to sleep, truly asleep, not some micronap on a plane. One of the very rare times, Jose was completely out of it, not simply dozing with an ear fine-tuned to stay on watch.

Her fingers trailed along his back as she turned her head to look out their fourth story window at the harbor leading to the Indian Ocean. For tonight, she would watch over Jose because tomorrow was completely out of her control.

***

Jose dreamed of guava jam and Stella. Of their bodies tangled up together months ago on a picnic blanket in a private cove by the Shebelle River in one of the most fertile places in all of Somalia. He’d planned the safari-esque escape, minus the hunting, because hell, they got more than enough time with guns on the job. Their time together, eating lunch off of each other’s bodies, had nothing to do with work and everything to do with playful sex.

The lush landscape along the Shebelle offered a stark contrast to the scrub brush and cracked dry places of desperation elsewhere in the country. Their jobs were tough enough, brutal even at times. Their mutual time off was rare and finding places to be alone, to shed undercover personas to be themselves? Even rarer. He wanted to show her life at its best when he could.

Except he couldn’t escape the feeling that they were transitioning into something… intense. Being with Stella was different. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that their connection was different. Unique. And that had his heart pounding heavier in his chest with a sense that what little time they had together could be racing full-out toward a gut-wrenching crash.

Shit.

He pulled his focus back onto the indomitable woman at his side and thumbed a droplet of perspiration from her forehead. Lime and banana tree leaves rustled overhead but offered minimal shade against the harsh African sun. Her freckled skin started to redden, matching the pink-backed pelican wading along the bank. He tugged a generous edge of the picnic blanket over her body. The handwoven cloth swept around in bright splashes of green and red.

She brushed his hand aside, laughing. “It’s no use covering me up. I’ll be sunburned all over, but it’s a price I’m more than willing to pay.” She stroked down his side to his left buttock with the two green footprints tattooed in honor of the early PJs who’d been picked up by a helicopter called the Jolly Green Giant. “And I do enjoy checking out your all over tan.”

Ethnicity wasn’t something he thought of other than when time came to fill out forms and check the box. He was a U.S. citizen, wore the uniform. But he did have a heritage he was proud of, a grandma who’d put her life on hold to help them out when times got particularly tough with his mother. “My paternal grandmother was born in Cuba. Jose was her father’s name and my dad’s name.”

“Sounds like perhaps your grandmother was more of a maternal influence than your mom.”

“She tried until her health gave out.”

“Health?”

“She had diabetes, but she put her needs on the back burner to help out when my mother tried rehab… Then Gran was too sick.” He’d wanted to be there for her the way she’d been there for him, but he was a kid without a driver’s license. He’d jogged to her nursing home eight miles away on weekends when the weather permitted.

The breeze off the Shebelle cooled his skin and hopefully hers too. He was doing his damnedest to romance her, and certainly their dating had been unusual, exotic. But what happened when they returned to real life?

The everyday Jose was a recovering alcoholic with a family so dysfunctional they could eat up a whole season on some Jerry Springer type show. He didn’t want to lose Stella, but he didn’t know how to keep her. Here, in Africa, their time together was all fueled by adrenaline—sneaking off when she returned from some covert op in a nearby village to ferret out human intel on local radicals. Or after he got back from a mission on the ocean rescuing vacationers from the never-ending flow of pirate attacks.

When he saw Stella, they were either hyped up on the adrenaline of victory or if the mission hadn’t gone well, then they came together with an edge of frustration.

Stella smiled up at him, her nose red from the sun. “When we get back home, it’ll be a lot easier to grab sunscreen from a nearby drug store. Not that I’m complaining about the picnic, mind you, I have a permanent love of guava jam.” She rolled to her stomach and kissed his chin. “I have a permanent love for you.”

She was saying exactly what he wanted to hear. She’d said it before.

And every time it sliced him to ribbons inside. “Stella, I love you too.”

Fuck. He hated how damn agonized the words sounded when he said them.

She swatted his shoulder. “Jeez-Louise, Jose. You are so damn dramatic. It’s going to be okay.” She tapped his temple. “Think about it. We love each other. You’re just stressed right now, and I get that the kind of work we do is rough on the nerves. We’ll get home, indulge in a full week of jam and tantric sex…”

“Stop, Stella.” He eased her off him and stood, yanking on his shorts. “Going home will only make things tougher, not easier. The me out here in the field, that’s the better me, and I’m still struggling.”

At least she didn’t laugh. She quickly pulled on her bra and panties, avoiding his eyes. He sat beside her again, watching her warily as she stared off in the distance.

An ostrich ambled by on lopey legs, staying way clear of the rhinos on the other side of the lake. The smell of syrupy jam clung to her skin and he just wanted to roll her underneath him and make love again. But after four months with Stella, he knew her pensive face and she wouldn’t budge until she’d sorted through all the “facts” in her mind.

Finally, she sat again, hugging her knees, her spine so vulnerable, at odds with her indomitable air. “You’ve spent over five years pushing yourself to the limit in one of the most stressful jobs there is. You’ve gone overseas, seen combat, natural disasters, and no one would have faulted you if you’d cracked and taken a drink. But you didn’t.” She searched his face with those too wise and logical green eyes. “You’re an expert at running, Jose. Why do you doubt that you can go the distance in your personal life as well?”

“It’s not about the pace or the distance.” He toyed with the tail of her braid, brushing it along the back of her shoulders. “It’s the ‘afterward’ that has me worried, the everyday life part, the quiet moments. As long as I keep running, I’m good. When I stop, I crash.”

“A crash? Why not think of it as a cool down, relaxing and reveling in success? You don’t have to keep running until you burn out.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” He dropped her braid and scratched his collarbone, itchy from more than jam.

She stayed silent while an albatross flapped low over the water, then sighed hard, a forced smile on her face. “What made you start racing?”

He grasped the subject change with grateful hands. “I was a hyper kid. My grandma would make me run around the outside of the house until I got so tired I wouldn’t run around the inside.”

“Smart grandma.”

“Then I started running in school, especially near the end of high school.” He’d stuck around to avoid going home, taking on extra workouts and stints in the weight room.

“When your mom was drinking, after your grandmother got sick?”

“It was simpler for everyone if I stayed busy at school. Dad would swing by and pick me up on his way home. We made it work.” He started to stand.

She clasped his hand and tugged him back down beside her. “What about your niece and nephew? Are they into running? How old are they?”

“My niece is twelve and my nephew is eight. Madison is into soccer…” He paused, stuffing painful images to the far corners of his mind. “Michael swims.”

“Those are fun ages. My brothers and I were all athletic. Of course, I pretty much had to be if I wanted to keep up with them.”

“Paid off for you in the field,” he said, his breathing leveling out again as she veered off the subject of his family.

“You’re right there. Little did I know, all of our tree climbing to prove I wasn’t a scaredy-cat would help in survival and resistance training.”

He’d seen firsthand how tough she was in the field and right now he felt like the scaredy-cat, shaking at the thought of her injured, captured… Or dead. “What do your brothers think of your job?”

She crinkled her sunburned nose. “They’re under the impression I’m an interpreter for Interpol.”

“Good cover story. I guess ignorance is bliss.”

“I actually thought I might segue back into that field someday…” She looked at him through her eyelashes. “When I’m ready to settle down and have a couple of rug rats of my own.”

Time to veer off that topic ASAP.

He looped an arm around her waist and hauled her close. “Talking about kids when you smell like guava and sex feels somehow wrong to me.”

Pressing a hand to his chest, she arched her back. “Are you going to be that guy? The stereotypical dude we see in Hollywood movies who’s afraid to commit? I really expected more originality from you than that.”

Now that stung. “Call it what you want. I have a commander who’s on his fourth marriage. Stories like that can give a guy pause.”

“How’s his fourth marriage going?” She snapped the waistband on his shorts.

Damn, he loved her sass. “I believe he’s got a keeper this time,” he admitted begrudgingly. “Of course, he’s not in the field as much anymore. Good thing, since they have a kid on the way.”

“You’re not helping your case here. Any other tales of military life misery you want to share to shore up your argument?”

“You’re too smart, you know that, right?” His teammates and their wives were producing like rabbits these days. Brick and his wife had a new baby. So did his old teammate Hugh Franco.

“So it can be done,” she pressed, her smile tight. “You just don’t want to.”

“Roger.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Not really.” Images of his nephew tormented him, little Michael scarred for life because he’d been neglected by an alcoholic mom too drunk to hear her child’s screams. Bianca had already been through rehab. They’d thought she’d turned her life around.

They’d grown complacent and Michael would pay the price for the rest of his life.

Jose refused to be complacent. Every day he fought the urge to take a drink and yes, so far he’d won. But this was his battle. He’d devoted his life to saving others on the job. How in the hell could he justify the risk of breaking the sacred promise of a parent to protect a child?

Intellectually, he understood from AA meetings that others found a way to rebuild a family life. But that didn’t stop the images of Michael for him. Only work offered him complete forgetfulness and he was beginning to realize Stella wouldn’t be able to accept that. Hell, she deserved more.

He slid an arm under her legs and lifted her against his chest. “Enough talking. I’d rather take you for a swim.”

He waded into the Shebelle River, knowing he’d only delayed the inevitable with Stella. They were headed for the crash…

***

Holding her sleeping body against him now as the sun rose on a new morning in Mogadishu, he let the memory of that afternoon kick around inside his head awhile longer. They hadn’t broken up that day, but it had marked the beginning of the end for them.