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“My father used to smack my mother around whenever he drank,” he said flatly. “He used to hit her pretty hard.”
My stomach dropped completely away. “Oh honey, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. Wasn’t your fault.”
“Still—”
“Eventually he started hitting her when hewasn’tdrinking, and one day I stepped in,” he went on. His voice was heavier now. Thicker. “I took a hard shot to the side of my head. My ear rang for a week.”
“Asshole!” I spat. I couldn’t help it. Cody reached out reassuringly to cup me against him.
“It was worth it though, because that was the night my mother packed our shit and left. She drove for days. Took us clear across the country until we hit the ocean.”
“Oh my God.”
He smiled, wanly. “After that we went south. Ended up in SoCal. Not the best of neighborhoods, but we ended up with our own apartment and a fresh start.”
“Your mother sounds very strong.”
He nodded, looking wistful. “She was.”
My stomach rolled again at the word ‘was’. Draping an arm over his body, I cuddled up to him all over again.
“How’d you get into the Navy?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
“I was bullied in school,” he explained. “Constantly got into fights. Always got beat up.”
“You?” I raised a shocked eyebrow. “Beat up?”
“Oh yeah,” Cody nodded. “I was a scrawny kid, with toothpick arms. But then I started training, and I trained hard. Hell, I got addicted to it. Not just the workout part, but the idea of building my body into something that could dish out some sweet payback to all the kids who ever pushed me around.”
“So you got big and strong… for revenge?”
He scratched his head and nodded. “Initially, yeah. I guess I did.”
“And what happened?”
“I kicked ass. Took names. The entire school knew not to mess with me after that, but I kept going. Got into a lot of trouble, actually. More than I should’ve. By then though, my mother was already getting sick.”
I didn’t even ask. As awkward as the stretch of silence might be, I wanted to let him take his time.
“She had an auto-immune disease,” he explained, “one so strange they never even named it. It wore her down slowly. That was the worst part. She kept telling me to get away and move on with my life, but I couldn’t leave her. We were all that each other had.”
“I uh… I totally understand that part,” I admitted. “Unfortunately.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded and kissed him lightly on the chest. “Yeah.”
Cody shifted even further across the bed, stretching his arms and legs in different directions. His naked body was warm and comfortable with mine folded against it.
“Anyway, I joined the Navy the same week she died,” he finished. “I wanted a ship-based assignment to get as far away from everything as possible. I did, too. Eventually, I became a SEAL on a dare.”
“A dare?”
“Yeah,” he smiled. “Such stupid shit.”
“Not so stupid if you actually succeeded,” I pointed out.
