Invincible

28.

Deployment day was here. I didn’t know how long I’d be gone, but at least seven months. Annie and I had spent a great month together. We were assigned a wonderful housing off base in Point Loma, near Liberty Station. It was a three-bedroom townhouse with a small yard for Trigger. I introduced Annie to all the SEAL wives and of course they loved her. They saw her just how I did. As a survivor. The SEAL wives had promised to keep her busy while I was away. Maybe I had been wrong about marriages in our community. Yes, most fail. But the ones that worked, were because of the strongest, most loyal women. And I knew Annie was stronger than them all.

Annie started taking college classes again. She was majoring in sociology, which sounded depressing and useless to me, but who was I to judge? I had a high school diploma and had no need for a college degree. Annie also threw herself into yoga and volunteering at the animal shelter. Our love grew deeper by the day and for the first time since I’d become a SEAL, I dreaded deploying and leaving her.

Kyle and Vic would be deploying with me. They were both still tragically single, which was ironic since I was the one of the three of us who’d been most dead set against a relationship.

Annie stood outside on our tiny balcony. The breeze blew Annie’s hair off her face. She was wearing a sundress that showed off her tan skin. She looked up to me, and her crooked smile that I’d first noticed in the brothel melted me.

“I’m going to miss you, Pat.”

“Me too.” I kissed her slowly. I need this kiss to take me through a long deployment.

Her arms wrapped around me. She held me tight, and nibbled my ear. I loved it when she did that. She reached out and grabbed my hand and led me to the bedroom.

I was about to undress her and make love to her for the final time before I left. But she stopped me and knelt in front of me on the bed.

She took me in her mouth, and I gasped. No condom, no barrier between us. I felt guilty receiving pleasure from her, so I hadn’t let her go down on me since the night in the brothel.

I stopped her and made her look at me. “You don’t have to do this Annie.”

“I want to, Pat. I missed you so much it hurt. I love you. I want to please you. I’m your wife.”

She wrapped her lips around me, her tongue dancing again. My mind flashed to that night in the brothel. We’d come full circle. Same girl, same amazing technique. But this time, instead of imagining that she was my faithful, loving, girlfriend, that she lived for pleasing me, and that being with me even for just a few months out of the year was worth enduring the loneliness when I was gone, it was real. She was real. She was mine. She respected being a SEAL was my calling, and she didn’t want to change me.

I pushed her off me. I had something to tell her.

“I love you, Annie.”

She squealed, probably thought she would never hear those words coming out of my mouth. Hell, I never thought I’d say them.

But I meant it. I loved her.

She was no longer my mission.

She was my wife.

The End