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“Hey, Dad, thanks for driving over to the Strip to meet me.” He slapped his dad on the back as he claimed the stool beside him.
His father’s go-to serious expression broke into a megawatt smile. “I’m glad you could find some time for your old man.”
“After tomorrow, I’m all yours for a few days,” Cade said. “But I need to head back to Coronado by Thursday. I’m saving the rest of my leave for the holidays.”
“Heading out to see your mom this year?”
“For Thanksgiving if I can,” Cade confirmed, signaling the bartender. The petite, bright-eyed redhead behind the bar appeared to be about his age. The name tag affixed to her hotel uniform read Maxine. “I’ll take a pale ale, whatever you have on draft.”
As Maxine moved to the taps, her ringlets bouncing, Cade glanced at his dad.
The retired SEAL looked away from the game and turned to him. “Have you talked to your mom recently?”
“I spoke with her when I got back to Coronado,” he said, accepting the beer with a nod. “She’s good. Happy.”
“With Rhett.” His dad spit out Cade’s stepfather’s name. “I can’t understand why she didn’t wait. I was so close to retirement. Being a SEAL is a young man’s game, you know that.”
“Yeah, but I think Mom worried that even if you retired after serving your twenty years, you’d sit around and sulk, missing the Navy.”
And that’s exactly what happened, except I’m the one who has to listen to you.
“If she’d moved closer to Coronado, become part of that tight-knit community, she’d have been okay,” his dad said. “She needed people around her who understood.”
“Maybe.” But maybe she just needed you.
His dad took a long drink from his beer. “It’s a hard thing, son. Telling the woman you love that there’s something more important in your life. And that you’re standing by your duty to serve your country until your body gives out. Hell, I would have stayed past the twenty-two-year mark if my knees hadn’t quit on me.”
“I know.”
His dad went on as i
f Cade hadn’t said a word. “If your mom had been around other families, women she could turn to with her fears, I think things would have been different. For all of us.”
It was an old argument. Cade could still picture his parents fighting over the dining room table on the rare days his dad was home. His mother would counter with the fact that she’d rather spend the months he was deployed surrounded by family and friends, not other struggling military wives.
“That doesn’t always make it better,” Cade said, thinking of Dante drunk in a bar sharing his wife’s sexting exploits with anyone who would listen. Dante had made sure his wife had every opportunity to interact with the other wives and girlfriends. And his teammate was still likely heading for the big D.
“Most of the guys on my teams had wives waiting for them back home,” his dad added.
“And how many are still married?” Cade challenged.
“About half,” his father admitted, then drained his beer. He signaled the bartender for a refill. “Enough about me.”
Thank God.
“Tell me what you’re doing on the Strip, anyway.”
“A friend got me into a restaurant opening,” he said. His dad didn’t need to know why Natalie had sent him, but he couldn’t just leave it at that. “I met this woman there. She’s gorgeous. And we’re in the same boat, looking for a break from the everyday. Nothing more.”
“You just spent, what, six months overseas?”
Cade nodded. “And this time, the things we saw…it wasn’t pretty.”
“It never is.” His dad slapped him on the back. “You need a little fun before you go back to your team. Blow off a little steam. She sounds perfect. So where’s this gorgeous girl now?”
“I dropped her at the spa, called in a favor from Mom’s friend Anna. Remember her?”
His dad’s brow furrowed. “Yeah, she never liked me.”
