I nodded.
“First love from high school?”
With a grin, I shouted over the chopper blades, “Best friend’s little sister who’s all grown up now.”
He laughed. “Damn, son, don’t you know the code? You never go for your best friend’s little sister.” My smile faded some, and he placed his hand on my shoulder. “You together?”
“No,” I replied as I shook my head. “I wanted to ask her, but no.”
“You sleep with her?”
I felt my stomach twist into a knot. “No, sir, but I sure wanted to do that as well.”
He stared at me for a moment. “We’ve all been there, Aiden. Most of us end up always picking the team over the girl. Sad to say it, but it’s true. Some can make it work, some can’t. The only thing I need to know from you is if your head is gonna be on straight when we land and do this op. Will it?”
“Yes, sir. A hundred-and-ten percent, sir,” I replied.
He nodded and squeezed my shoulder. “Let her go, O’Hara. Trust me, she’s better off without you in her life. It’s tough for the women around us to live this type of life.”
I ignored the slight tightening in my chest. “I agree, sir.”
“Best thing for you to do is get her out of your head as quickly as possible. After the op, I suggest alcohol and a woman under you. Maybe even two.”
With a forced laugh, I replied, “Roger that.”
“Now, make sure your loadouts are ready. We jump in less than an hour.”
With a nod, I quickly cleared my head and stood. “Roger that, sir.”
Willa
Present day – Nine years later
“How does it feel to be a free woman?” Brighton, my oldest and dearest friend—who also happened to be my divorce lawyer—asked as we walked out of the courthouse.
“Amazing. Liberating. Exciting. Do you want me to keep going on?” I asked, drawing in a deep breath of the cool air. Late September in New Hampshire was one of my favorite times of the year. With the daytime temperatures in the mid-sixties, it felt like fall, yet we could still cling to summer a bit longer. “I’m also a bit worried.”
“I was on the same page until you said worried. About what?”
With a shrug, I started down the steps of the courthouse. “I don’t know. I have a feeling Brian isn’t going to be a part of Ben’s life, simply by how absent he’s been this past year. How do you explain to a child that his father doesn’t care about him?”
Brighton gave me a warm smile. “Okay, I’m going to take off my lawyer hat now. You’ve been through a lot in the last few months. It’s been a long battle, with Brian trying to get custody of Ben at first just to be spiteful. Just be thankful that we won, you got full custody, and he’s out of your life—because we both know when it comes down to it, he’ll never take advantage of the visitation rights the judge gave him. He wasn’t even at the hospital when Ben was born.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed lately, but Boggy Creek is a small town. He’s always going to be in my life.”
“Not because of the small town, Willa. Because you share a son with him,” she stated matter-of-factly.
I wrapped my arms around my body when a sudden chill raced through me. “Ugh. He’s hardly seen Ben since the day he was born. This whole marriage has been a joke from the get-go.”
She laughed. “I know. How do you think you were granted full custody? It didn’t help his case any that your brother Hunter was in the delivery room with you while Brian was out of town with She Who Shall Not Be Named.”
At that very moment, Brian walked out of the courthouse, his lawyer trailing behind, and Ellen—my ex-best friend and current girlfriend of my now ex-husband—walking beside him.
Brian and Ellen. It even sounded better than Brian and Willamina. I hated them both, although I didn’t hate that my marriage was over. It sounded bad, but the only reason I married Brian was because I’d stupidly found myself pregnant with his baby.
My marriage to Brian was doomed from the very beginning. The late nights working at the office. The weekend hunting trips with one of the guys. The extended business trips. I had ignored every last sign that things were not right.
I’d longed for someone to want me, and in the beginning, Brian had played the role perfectly. He’d known all the right things to say. He was romantic and knew how to sweep me off my feet.
The girl who had once dreamed of a very different life, with a very different man, was now a divorced, single mother.
Brian had known I still pined over Aiden. Known I had dreamed of another life, and sometimes I felt like it had been a game to him. His only goal was to get me to the altar before Aiden could.