“Diego, wait!” I called after him.
He spun around, and the tears in his eyes stunned me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I caught up. “What’s—”
“I can’t do this, okay?”
“Do what?”
He clenched his jaw and swiped at his eyes. “Look, I tried, all right? I really thought I could handle this. But everything in there?” He pointed sharply at the room. “All of this?” He made a sweeping gesture at my uniform, his lip curling with disgust like he couldn’t remember telling me two hours ago how badly he wanted to fuck me in this. “This is what I wanted, Mark. It’s all I wanted. Everyone in that room has it, and what do I have? Not a goddamned thing.”
I stared at him, too stunned to speak for a few seconds before I managed, “Then we can go. Let me get my jacket, and we’ll—”
“No,” he whispered, shaking his head. “I’ll go.”
“But we—”
“Mark.” He pressed his lips together and pushed his shoulders back, but he avoided my eyes. “And it’s not just the fucking Navy, okay? It’s you.”
My knees almost wobbled out from under me. “What?”
He looked at—no, glared at me, and his voice was even shakier as he said, “How could you tell your CO about me?”
“I didn’t tell him it was you! I—”
“Oh, yeah. That makes a huge difference.” He rolled his eyes and clenched his jaw. “Don’t you get it? He can put two and two together, and if he does, I’m fucked. I trusted you, Mark. I didn’t think I had to spell out that you can’t fucking broadcast my—” He glanced around, then lowered his voice. “It’s not something you can just throw out in a conversation. Not with people getting deported left and right.”
“I’m . . .” I exhaled. “Jesus, Diego. I’m sorry.” Showing my palms, I added, “You’re right. At the time, I didn’t think you’d ever meet him, because you didn’t want to come to military functions, so it didn’t seem—”
“And look at us now,” he growled. “But it doesn’t fucking matter. There’s someone in there”—he gestured sharply at the ballroom we’d abandoned—“who knows what I am, and even if he didn’t, I can’t stay here. I can’t . . . I can’t fucking do this, Mark. Whether either of us like it or not, being with you means being with all this shit.” He cleared his throat. “Being with you means constantly being around reminders of what I had taken away from me, all because I had the audacity to get hurt doing my job in a fucking war zone. Now I can’t even live here legally.” He paused, pulling in a deep breath through his nose. “I did everything and gave everything so I could have the career that you and everyone else in there have. Now I’m somebody who gets mistaken for a waiter and probably would get picked up if ICE did a raid. And since someone in there knows what I am . . .”
I had no idea how to respond. Nothing he’d said was wrong. Well, it was wrong, but factually incorrect? No. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to change it. He was scared. He was hurt. He was angry.
And there was nothing I could do.
Before I could come up with a response, he stepped back. “I can’t do this. It’s just too much.”
My heart fell into my feet. “What . . . what can I do? There’s—”
“There’s nothing you can do.” He sounded exhausted. Like a man who’d been treading water in rough seas for so long, he had no fight left in him. Tone wavering and heavy, he said, “You’re Navy. I knew that from the beginning, and I thought I could handle it. I thought—” His voice nearly broke, and he cleared his throat. “Give me one good reason why I should spend another fucking minute around all of that.” He stabbed a finger in the direction of the party. “Especially when your fucking CO knows about me.”
“I told you—we can go.” I put up my hands. “We don’t have to stay here. Just . . . I don’t want to lose you.”
He sighed, shaking his head again. “I’m sorry. I need—”
“I love you, Diego.”
He flinched and looked away.
“I mean it,” I said. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to say it, or when, and I—”
“Don’t.” He faced me again, and the shine of tears in his eyes hit me hard. “What do you want me to do? Even if I could ignore the fact that you told someone about me, the military is . . . it’s too . . . Look, I almost got fucking killed for a country that will kick me out the second they realize I’m here illegally. Why would I want to be surrounded by people wearing the same uniform I wish I was still wearing? And the same uniform as the people who said I wasn’t good enough while I was still recovering from a fucking explosion?” A tear slid free, and as he sharply wiped it away, he muttered something in Spanish.
I cleared my throat. “I don’t even know what to say. I’m . . . God, I’m so sorry, Diego.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “That part isn’t your fault. But I just . . . I can’t.” He swallowed, and after a moment, he whispered again, “I’m sorry.”
And then he turned to go.
He didn’t stop this time.
Jaw hanging open, stomach churning, I stared at his back as he strode down the hall. Jittery panic shot through me as he neared the door, but what could I say? I wasn’t going to physically block him from leaving, especially if it hurt him this much to be here. To be with me after I’d inadvertently—but unmistakably—betrayed his trust.
The door shut behind him. I couldn’t hear his footsteps, and suddenly it was like he’d never been here at all. Like I’d been standing out in this hallway alone, and the last few weeks of falling in love with him had all been in my head.
Except he had been here, and those weeks had happened, and . . . Fuck.
What do I do? What can I do?
Nothing. I couldn’t go after him. I couldn’t go back to the party that had salted his wounds. I couldn’t fucking move.
Because Diego was gone.
I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t do much of anything the next day. Had I been this shell-shocked and lost after Angie had dropped our divorce papers? Christ, no. I vaguely remembered getting choked up when I’d realized what they were, but it had been more relief than sadness. It had been like being handed a cease-fire after fighting for too damn long.
Last night had come out of nowhere.
Except . . . it hadn’t.
Sitting back in my La-Z-Boy, feeling anything but relaxed in the comfortable chair, I swore into the silence of my empty living room. I was too restless, and I desperately needed some air, so I went outside. I leaned on the deck and stared out at the ocean. The Pacific was rough today, with whitecaps dotting the gray water from the shallows all the way to the horizon. A thick blanket of clouds halfheartedly dropped some misty rain. This was what everyone had told me to expect when I came to this part of the country, especially this time of year, and yeah, it was depressing as hell. Kind of fitting for my mood. A bright, sunny afternoon would almost be insulting at this point.
The cold, salty air was pleasant, but it didn’t make me feel any better. As I stood there and let the mist settle on the back of my neck while the wind played in my hair, my mind kept going back to last night.
I should’ve let him tear off my uniform and take me to bed. Yeah, it would’ve been bad form to miss the party, and Monday might’ve been a little awkward at work, but I’d still have Diego.
But . . . for how long?
My heart fell. It had only been a matter of time. Sooner or later, he’d have realized Hawthorne knew about him. Even if that hadn’t been an issue, there was still the Navy. If the Navy was that big of a sticking point for him, we could only avoid it for so long. If it hadn’t been last night, it would’ve been . . . well, sometime in the future when I was even more attached to him. When watching him leave would have hurt that much more.
This couldn’t be how it ended, though. Maybe he’d slept on it, and now I could properly apologize and we could adjust some boundaries a little, and—
That would explain why he hadn’t called.
My heart sank even deeper into the pit of my stomach. If things were okay, or at least not as bad as they’d seemed last night, he’d have called. Right? Unless he really was that angry. Which . . . fuck. Could I blame him?
Fuck. I needed to talk to him. Now that we’d both had a chance to clear our heads and get some distance between us and last night, we needed to talk. If he was still firm and this was still over, then . . . then I’d figure out how to deal with it. But first I needed to know.
Blood pounded in my ears as I took out my phone and called him.
It rang twice on the other end. Then, “Hey.”
The sound of his voice—his soft, tired voice—almost bowled me over. “Hey. Um.” I gulped. “Can we talk?”
His end was silent for a while. Long enough I thought he might’ve hung up. Then he exhaled. “Okay. We can talk.”
I moistened my lips. “Look, first things first—I’m sorry about Captain Hawthorne. I talked to him because I was trying to understand what happened, and if there was anything that could be done.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, was there anything he or I could do for someone who’d been fucked over by PTS and wound up in your situation.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Is there?”
I sighed. “If there was, I’d have done it. Honestly, though, that’s the only reason I mentioned it to him at all. I’m sorry. I really am. I was trying to help, and I . . . I’m sorry.”
More silence. Then a heavy, resigned sigh. “I guess I can understand that. Just don’t do it again, okay? Please?”
“Of course. I promise.” And yet again, silence, this time because I didn’t know what to say. He’d asked me not to fuck up again, but did that mean there was a chance for me to fuck up again? Finally, I managed, “What about us? Are we really done?”
Diego didn’t answer for a few painfully long seconds. “I don’t know how we can’t be. I thought I could live with you being in the Navy, and I’ve been trying really hard to not care about it, but last night . . .” He paused, then cleared his throat. “I just can’t do it.”
A lump rose in my throat. “We don’t have to go anywhere near the base. Or any functions. It’s—”
“It’s still too much.” His tone sounded like he was pleading with me to understand. “I thought I could do this. I was wrong. I tried to tell myself I could tough it out until you retired, but last night . . . everything there was my entire life, Mark. And everyone there has all the things I wanted. They still have careers. They’re not going to get thrown out of the goddamned country if someone asks to see proof they’re allowed to be here.”
“I get that. I really do.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “There’s always retirement if—”
“No,” Diego said sharply. “Mark, you just made rank. You retire now, you get commander’s pay. I’d stay in if I were you, and I don’t want you giving up your career for me.”
“But that means we can’t make things work between us. Right?”
Diego sighed. “I didn’t want it to mean that. I promise I didn’t. But we both know being with you means being with the Navy. Especially as high up the chain as you are, and with a deployment coming up?” Another heavy breath, and his voice didn’t sound quite steady when he continued. “It’s just part of your career. I said for a long time I wouldn’t date military men. And I made an exception for you because that’s how bad I wanted to be with you. But I didn’t realize how much it still hurts—” He cleared his throat again. “I can’t deal with it, you know? Seeing everything that was taken away from me because I got hurt doing my job.” He paused. “You understand, don’t you?”
I closed my eyes. “Yeah, I do.” My heart sank as I said the words. I did understand. I wanted to find some magic way around it, but there wasn’t one.
“I forgive you for the thing with your CO,” he said sadly. “But the rest . . . I can’t. I’m sorry.”
I exhaled. “So am I.”
Silence again hung on the line. I didn’t know what to say—I didn’t dare rub salt in either of our wounds by telling him I loved him again—and I couldn’t read his mind through our cell phones. I probably wouldn’t have been able to read him if he were standing right there in front of me. Or maybe, I realized with a sinking feeling, I’d be able to read him, but I wouldn’t like what I saw.
“I need to go,” Diego said. “I have to get ready for work.”
I wiped a hand over my face. “Okay.” There was another long, uncomfortable pause before we murmured a couple of uneasy goodbyes.
And then he was gone. Again. Still.
The wind continued to blow. The rain was starting to fall faster.
Then the ships in the distance started to blur, but it had nothing to do with the wind or the rain.
After work on Monday, I found myself out on the deck again. I didn’t remember the steps I’d taken to get here, only that I’d come home, changed out of my uniform, and wound up here. Somehow, I had a Corona in my hand, but one sip of that had soured my stomach. It tasted too much like the night I’d met Diego.
I could go to the liquor store, but I wasn’t even sure I had the energy to go back to the fridge, never mind drive into town. Was I even safe to drive? I’d made it to and from work without killing anyone, so maybe. Probably best not to chance it, though. As it was, I’d been a million miles away all day. I was pretty sure I’d spent most of the day wandering aimlessly around the ship. Nobody had questioned me. If the XO wanted to go belowdecks or follow the passageways as far aft as they would go, he probably had a reason for it, and nobody besides the CO would say a word.
Now I was home. Alone. Outside. With a drink I couldn’t stomach and a head full of thoughts I couldn’t sort out.
Thumbing the label on the Corona, I turned and gazed at the base. It was another dreary day, and the misty rain made the ships harder to see than usual, but if I squinted, I could see the glowing white 9 amidst all that gunmetal gray.
I was starting to understand, on a much more personal level than before, Diego’s hatred of the Navy. If it hurt me this much to look at the base and ships that represented the barricade between me and him, then yeah, I could absolutely understand why it was so hard for him to be around anything that reminded him of what he’d been through. My career had been a good one, and most of my years in the Navy had been smooth sailing, but just driving onto the base this morning had made me sick with anger and sadness. Yeah, he had every right to need some distance from me if I came with a whole fleet of reminders of his past. And his present.
It made it easier to understand why he’d left, but it sure didn’t make our split easier to swallow. Breakups were so much easier when I could either blame the other person or blame myself. When someone had fucked up. My ex-wife and I had both run up long lists of sins, and we’d done more wrong than right. The endings of the few short relationships I’d had before her had been easy to define too. Too much fighting. She cheated. He refused to be with someone who was closeted, and I couldn’t be out because—
Because of the Navy.
I closed my eyes and pushed a breath out my nose. This wasn’t the first time, was it? That had been a short relationship back in my late teens. A guy whose name I couldn’t quite remember. Charlie? Chad? Even his face seemed blurry. All I really remembered was some hot, secretive sex, and then a huge fight before I headed off to an ROTC drill. We’d dated two, maybe three weeks. Barely a blip on my timeline. I probably hadn’t thought of him in a decade, but I was sure thinking of him now.
There was no telling what would have happened with that guy back in my ROTC days if DADT hadn’t been in effect. If I could have been out, would we have lasted? It was impossible to say. And our relationship—if you could call it that—had been so short, the breakup had been more disappointing than painful. I didn’t remember ever feeling any ill will toward him. We’d broken up, I’d gone to my ROTC drill, and I was pretty sure I saw him with another guy a week or so later.
Had I even had the awareness to be pissed off at the Navy at the time? I was pretty sure that back then, things like DADT were just par for the course. Being out of the closet and in the Navy weren’t compatible, and that was the way it was. If anything, after that I’d just tried to set my sights on women so I didn’t have to hide a man.
Twenty-some-odd years later, after a too-long marriage had finally gone the way of DADT, I’d found a man, and I’d fallen for him, and I didn’t have to hide him, and . . .
And the Navy had hurt him.
I swallowed, staring hard at the ships and the glow of the base. I’d fallen for Diego like I’d never fallen for anybody, and he was gone because the Navy had hurt him badly enough he couldn’t even cope with wearing civvies in a room full of uniforms. It wasn’t his fault, and it wasn’t my fault, but at the end of the day, it didn’t matter whose fault it was because I didn’t have Diego anymore.
I tore my gaze away from NAS Adams and glared out at the choppy seas. It wasn’t right. This could not be the end. If one of us fucked up and the other left, or if we realized after a few weeks or months or years that we didn’t like each other after all—fine. But not like this. There had to be some way to fix this, but hell if I knew what it was.
So, I took out my cell phone and called the one person who might be able to talk me through this.
“Hey,” Angie said. “What’s up?”
I closed my eyes. “Do you have a few minutes?”
“I’m just waiting for my dinner to finish cooking, so yeah, I’ve got some time. What’s going on?”
“I need some advice. About Diego.”
“Okay? What happened?” It was kind of odd that there was no accusatory undercurrent to the question. No What did you do? lacing her words. Shit, maybe we really had unfucked our relationship.
She was waiting for an answer, though, so I pushed those thoughts away and told her the entire story. From Diego hesitating to even hook up with me because I was military to the scars he thought made him unattractive to the way the Navy had tossed him out on his ass and left him with nothing.
“Wow,” she said when I was done. “So he has all the VA benefits but can’t use them?”
“Technically he can, but if someone realizes he’s here illegally, he could be deported. I mean, the guy’s halfway to a bachelor’s degree. Even though he has the GI bill, he can’t finish it because he’s afraid to even apply for a student visa. And I’m not sure his job would cover his textbooks or anything anyway.” Fuck, I was exhausted just explaining it—I could only imagine how much living it had taken out of Diego. “He earned all this shit, and just being able to use it would probably make a huge difference in his quality of life right now. But . . . he can’t.”
“Christ. No wonder he’s bitter.” She clicked her tongue. “The Navy takes a lot from all of us. For him, it not only took his job, it took away any real shot he has at any solid job in this country. And that’s after he got hurt and traumatized in combat. Would you want to have anything to do with the Navy if it messed up your mind and your body, and cost you a chance at citizenship?”
“No, of course not. It . . .” I chewed my lip. “It already cost me enough. I can’t imagine how it’s been for him.” I sank onto one of the deck chairs, ignoring the cold dampness now soaking into my jeans. “I don’t blame him, you know? If the Navy had worked me over like it did him, I wouldn’t want anything to do with it either.”
She was quiet for a moment. “So what are you doing to do?”
“I have no idea.” I pressed an elbow into my knee and bowed my head so I could run my hand through my hair. “I don’t want to give up and admit he’s gone, but . . . what can I do?”
Angie released a long, heavy breath. “I wish I knew.”
Neither of us spoke for a long time. Gears ground in my head as I searched for some kind of solution. Something—anything—that might assuage the pain I’d seen in Diego’s eyes last night.
And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Yes, I absolutely wanted Diego back, but the most heartbreaking thing about last night hadn’t been watching him leave. It had been watching him fight back tears while I’d pleaded with him to stay. It had been watching him hurt.
I looked out at the whitecaps. “Maybe there’s a way I can help him.”
“Such as?”
“I’m . . . I’m not sure yet. My CO told me there’s nothing we can do, but that can’t be right. I know the Navy has channels for getting Sailors naturalized. Maybe if I could find a way to push things through for him, that would make up for . . . I mean, it can’t fix the last several years, but maybe it could make things easier for him going forward.”
“I’d definitely look into it,” she said. “You don’t sound sure, though. What’s stopping you?”
I let my head fall forward. “I don’t know.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Are you afraid he’ll be upset?”
I had to think about that for a minute. “Maybe? Or maybe upset that I didn’t do something sooner? Especially since he knows I at least looked into it?” I winced. “Fuck, I should have done something sooner. I should’ve dug deeper when Hawthorne said there was nothing we could do.”
“You can’t change it now.” The sharpness in her voice wasn’t angry. More like she was trying to get my attention and keep me on the rails. “All you can do is move forward. And with his situation, if there’s something you can do to help him, I say do it. Or at least find out what you can do, and ask him if he wants your help.” She paused, and her voice softened a bit. “Do you think that if you do something to help him, he still won’t take you back?”
“No, that isn’t it. It’s . . .” I stared up at the thick gray clouds. “Kind of the opposite, I think.”
“What do you mean?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m afraid he’ll feel obligated to take me back. And I don’t want him to. I don’t want strings attached, you know?” My throat tightened, and I had to clear my throat to keep speaking. Even then, my voice was thick. “I want him back. God, Angie. I love him. I really, really do. And not having him anymore hurts like hell. But I’d rather not have him at all than have him because he thinks he’s obligated to be with me.” I closed my eyes and pushed out a breath. “Does it sound as crazy to you as it does to me?”
“No, not at all. You want to help him, but you don’t want him to think it’s for selfish reasons.”
“Yes. Exactly. Because it’s not for selfish reasons. I really want—”
“I know you do.” There was a soft smile in her voice, one I hadn’t heard—or seen—in a long time. As she went on, though, it faded. “I know you’re not like that, Mark, but I’ve also known you for twenty years. He hasn’t. And I think he probably knows as well as I do that you don’t want to lose him. So, yes, there’s a possibility he’s going to think you’ve got an ulterior motive. There might not be any way around that.”
Eyes squeezed shut, I swallowed hard. “So what should I do?”
“Help him out anyway. If that makes him pull even farther away from you, then . . . I mean, it sucks, and it’ll hurt, but it won’t change that you did the right thing.”
The lump in my throat was getting more stubborn by the second. I would move heaven and earth to fix what the Navy had done to Diego, but I wasn’t going to pretend I didn’t wish there was a way I could still have him.
My ex-wife went on, “If he had anyone else in his life who was willing or able—especially able—to do this, they would have by now. If he could have done it himself, he would have by now. You’re in a unique position because of your rank, and you can fix how the Navy screwed him.”
“I know.” The words came out as barely a croak.
“I’m not really telling you anything you didn’t already know, am I?”
“No, but that’s fine. I think I just needed someone to tell me I wasn’t being an idiot.”
She laughed softly. “So you call your estranged ex-wife?”
“Come on.” I chuckled. “You were my estranged wife. You’re not so bad as an ex-wife.”
“Gee, I’m touched.” But her tone was light, and we both laughed again.
We talked for a few more minutes before we hung up. Then I stared out at the ocean again. It was still gray and choppy, the ships still partially obscured by misty rain, but it didn’t look so bleak now. Or maybe I just didn’t feel so bleak. So powerless.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Tomorrow morning, I’d get to the boat early, and I’d start making some phone calls.
And hopefully I could do something about Diego’s situation.