Page 5 of Starlight

The line went completely quiet for a second before Marco burst out laughing. “You’re something else, Liam. I’m glad you’ve kept your sense of humor.”

“Me too,” I said quietly.

Marco cleared his throat. “Is it okay for me to give Tony your number? That way you two can work things out without going through me.”

The pang of disappointment took me by surprise. “Sure. And thank you for your help.”

“No problem, Liam. I’ll talk to you soon.”

After I hung up, I stared at my phone screen until it faded to black. Shit. I had a crush on Marco.

3

Marco

I stared at my phone. Had Liam been flirting with me? My head fell back and I closed my eyes. “Fuuuuck.” The man was going to be the death of me. “No,” I said aloud. This was not happening on the anniversary of Terry’s death. Liam was gorgeous and sweet and nothing like my usual hookups. He also didn’t strike me as a one-and-done kind of guy. Liam was more like a cuddle-on-the-couch-in-front-of-the-fire kind of guy. I was not going there with anyone ever again.

I went over to the mantel above my stone fireplace and picked up the picture of Terry and me. We had just finished a successful mission in Afghanistan and were grinning like idiots. His buzzed blond hair was bleached nearly white by the sun and his bright-blue eyes glowed with humor and happiness. Less than six months later, he was in a military hospital fighting for his life, and our world was turned upside down.

We were ambushed while following bad intel. I was wounded, but my lieutenant and I managed to keep the enemy off us until reinforcements arrived. There’d been seven of us on that mission. Five survived. One of the guys ended up in a wheelchair. Another lost a leg because it was either a tourniquet or bleeding out. Terry took a bullet in the gut that hit his liver. He almost bled out too, but the helicopter got us to the field hospital in time. The bullet also shattered one of Terry’s vertebrae. It took three surgeries and months in rehab to get him back on his feet.

Rehab only got Terry walking again. He wasn’t fit enough to be a SEAL anymore and was medically discharged back to the States. But Terry had nowhere to go. His parents threw him out at sixteen because he was gay, so I asked my parents to take him in until I could get out. I had been close to the end of my time to re-up, so I took the honorable discharge and headed home.

Things weren’t easy at first. Terry didn’t really know my family—only what I’d told him and from when he’d sit in on our rare video chats. He wasn’t used to a big family loving on him like mine did. We were the stereotypical loud Italian family, complete with seven kids, five grandkids, and counting. My parents’ house was always full, even though only our youngest sister, Gianna, had still lived there when she wasn’t at school working on her doctorate. Terry hadn’t known how to handle it all, at first. But if my mother knew anything, it was how to love on a hurting child. He’d had no choice but to fall under her spell.

I’d hoped that after I got home, things would be better, and for a while, they were. They were so good that I asked Terry to marry me and he said yes. He continued his rehab locally and got more mobility back. Tony hired me to do personal security work for his company. Once he was able to, Terry also started working there.

The trouble came when Tony got a contract to do personnel extractions for a corporation that did business overseas. By then, he had hired a few more ex-military, and we formed an extraction team, which I trained. Terry insisted he was fit enough to be part of the team, and I couldn’t tell him no. I should have.

Our first assignment came about two months after Tony took the contract. One of their overseas executives had been kidnapped for ransom and we were sent to get him out. The operation was going well until the idiot we were trying to rescue decided to try to “help.”

Instead of helping, the asshole got in the way and almost got himself killed. Terry got him out of harm’s way but got slammed into a wall for his trouble. I watched helplessly as the man I loved fell to the ground like a fucking rag doll. His scream of pain still haunted my nightmares. My team had barely gotten out intact. They had to keep me away from our subject because I wanted to put a bullet in that motherfucker’s brain.

Terry had to get surgery to repair the damage from his reinjury. His surgeon had been beside himself. Angry that Terry had risked his ability to walk for what he called “some GI Joe bullshit.” Terry had been in the hospital for three weeks and rehab for another two months.

Things just got worse from there. Terry couldn’t go on extraction missions anymore. He even had trouble doing personal security because he couldn’t stand for long periods. My brother, Michael, the computer genius, tried to get Terry to help him with the cyber security end of things. Terry had always been good with computers, and I thought it would be a positive alternative for him.

It hadn’t been enough. When Terry’s parents threw him out, he’d vowed to prove to them he was a “real man”—whatever the fuck that meant. His whole identity had been tied up in being a SEAL. I’d tried to get him to go to therapy to help him deal with the loss, but he wouldn’t. He’d kept saying he was fine and would get through it. Instead, he started drinking. Little by little, the man I knew and loved had disappeared, replaced by a bitter, raged-filled monster.

That last day was burned in my memory. Terry had started drinking early, even though he was supposed to be working remotely with Michael. When Michael called him out on it, Terry called him vile names and ended their video call by throwing his laptop against the wall. I only found this out after Michael called to tell me he couldn’t work with Terry anymore. He was too volatile.

When I went home to try to talk to him about it, Terry blew up at me. He screamed at me, calling me all sorts of names for letting my brothers push me around. I tried to get him to calm down, to tell me what was really bothering him. He told me I should have let him die in the field. Then, at least, he could have died a hero. Instead, he thought of himself as a useless cripple.

I’d told Terry I couldn’t let him die because I loved him. That was when he hit me. We were both shocked because in all the years we’d been together, neither of us had ever laid a hand on the other. Terry had started crying. I’d let him pull me into his arms and hold me while telling me he was sorry. I’d held him tight and told him I loved him, but he had to get help for both our sakes. He promised he would. He’d said, “I’ll fix it, baby. I promise.”

We made love that night for the first time in months. And while I was asleep, he drove his car to Sandy Hook, walked onto the beach, drank a fifth of vodka, and shot himself in the head.

The note he’d left on my nightstand said:

This is the only way I know how to fix it. I’m sorry. I love you.

I put the picture back and shook my head. Time to stop thinking about Liam as anything more than a friend. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and hit Tony’s number. He answered on the first ring. “Hey, Marco. What’s up? You want some company today?”

“Nah, I’m good. I just got back from the cemetery.”

There was a moment of silence on the other end. I knew what was coming. “The fuck, dude? I told you I would go with you so you didn’t have to do it alone.”

I closed my eyes. I loved my brother, but he didn’t know when to let things go. “And I told you I was good to do it alone.” When he started to protest, I interrupted him. “It’s my time with Terry. It’s all I have left. Let it go.”

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