Hudson Reed
Monday, March 13th, 2017
The alarm on my phone buzzes at 5:47 AM, and I silence it before Summer even stirs. She’s been sick for almost two weeks now, only in the mornings, and I’ve been letting her sleep in whenever I can. The early mornings at base are routine, nothing I haven’t done a thousand times before, but today feels different. There’s a heaviness in the air that I can’t quite name, and I push it down the way I’ve learned to do since joining the Teams. Summer’s curled up on her side, her hair spread across the pillow, and she looks so small wrapped up in our blankets. We’ve shared this bed for five years now, since we moved into this apartment together when she was sixteen and I was eighteen. Our mothers thought we were insane. Her parents thought she was too young. But Summer Ritz has never been the type to listen to anyone but herself, and I loved that about her then. I still do. I move carefully, not wanting to wake her, but her eyes flutter open anyway. She reaches for me without saying anything, her hand finding mine under the covers, and I have to force myself to breathe through the tightness in my chest. “Hey,” I whisper, leaning down to kiss her forehead. Her skin is warm, maybe warmer than it should be. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be home this afternoon.” She makes a small sound of protest, pulling me closer for just a moment before letting me go. Summer’s never been clingy, never been the type to need constant reassurance, but something about this morning feels fragile. Like if I hold her any tighter, something might break. “Your stomach okay?” I ask, running my thumb across her cheekbone. The sickness has been nagging at her for days, and she’s dismissed it as a stomach bug, but there’s something almost vulnerable about her right now that I want to protect. “Mmm, yeah. Better this morning,” she murmurs, eyes already closing again. “Just tired.” “I’ll grab some soup or something on my way back. Maybe some of that ginger tea you like.” I kiss her temple, then her cheek, then her lips, slow and careful. “Love you.” “Love you too,” she breathes against my mouth, and I feel it everywhere. In my chest, in my throat, in the place deep inside me that knows something is about to change. “Have a good day at work.” I don’t know why those words hit me the way they do. It’s routine. It’s normal. She’s said it a thousand times before. But standing there in the dark of our bedroom, with Summer’s warmth still reaching for me even as she drifts back to sleep, something in my brain starts to scream. I leave before I can think about it too hard.
The drive to Naval Base San Diego takes twenty minutes, and I use every second of it to talk myself down from whatever the hell is happening in my head. Cold feet. That’s all this is. We’ve been talking about marriage since the deployment was announced three weeks ago. Hudson, when I get back, we’re getting married. We’re building a life. We’re doing this forever. And I meant it. I absolutely fucking meant it. But then this morning, watching her sleep, feeling the weight of a promise I’m about to make, something cracked open inside me. What if I’m not enough? What if I come back different? What if deployment changes me in ways that make me unfit for the life we’ve been planning? My father deployed. He came back a different man. I’ve heard my mother cry about it when she thought we were asleep. These are the thoughts running through my head when I pull through the gates of the base. The guys are already gathered when I hit the locker room. It’s the usual chaos, the organized madness that comes before any operation. Lockers slamming, boots hitting the ground, the specific cadence of military men preparing for work. But today, the energy is different. There’s an electricity in the air that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “Reed,” my brother Huxley calls out, already in his gear. He looks identical to me, down to the scar above his left eyebrow from when we were kids, but where I’m loud and reckless, Huxley’s always been calculated. Strategic. “You’re late.” “I’m not late,” I shoot back, moving to my locker and starting to change. “I’m exactly on time.” Nathan Burns, my best friend and the man who’s been sleeping with my sister for the past six months, leans against the bench next to me. He’s grinning, that same grin that’s gotten him out of trouble more times than I can count. “Rough morning in the Reed household?” “Fuck off, Burns,” I say, but there’s no heat in it. Nathan knows exactly where I was. We all know. We’ve all been there, trying to leave a warm bed and someone we love for this job. “Huxley!” someone shouts from across the room. “Hudson! Captain’s calling a briefing. Five minutes. Conference room.” The words hit me like a physical blow. A briefing. That’s not standard for a Monday morning. That’s not routine. I lock eyes with Huxley, and I watch his face shift from amusement to something sharper. Understanding. He knows what a briefing means just like I do. Something’s happening. Something big. “What the fuck?” Nathan mutters, and I watch him move from relaxed to ready in the span of a heartbeat. This is what we train for. This is what we live for. But right now, all I can think about is Summer in our bed, sick and warm and waiting for me to come home with soup.
The briefing room is packed. Every operator who was scheduled to be on base today is there, and I recognize the look on the Captain’s face. I’ve seen it before. Rotation. Deployment. The word I’ve been dreading since the moment I realized I was in love with Summer Ritz. “Listen up,” the Captain says, and the room goes silent. “We’ve got a rotation order. Thirty minutes. I need every available SEAL on transport to Little Creek. This isn’t a drill. This is active deployment, and we’re moving now.” Thirty minutes. The words don’t make sense at first. Thirty minutes. That’s not enough time to call Summer. That’s not enough time to go home and pack. That’s not enough time to say goodbye properly. That’s not enough time to do anything but grab my gear and go. “You heard me,” the Captain continues, scanning the room. “Any questions, save them for transport. Move.” The room explodes into controlled chaos. Guys are shouting, grabbing their bags, checking weapons, going through the motions of deployment that we’ve practiced a hundred times. But my hands are shaking. My hands never shake. I’m a Navy SEAL. I’m trained for this. I’m trained for everything.
I pull my phone out of my locker as Huxley grabs my shoulder. “Don’t do this,” he says quietly, and I look at him, confused. “Whatever you’re thinking right now, don’t do it.” “I’m not doing anything,” I tell him, but we both know I’m lying. My phone buzzes with a text message from Summer
Babe: I love you. Have a good day at work. See you this afternoon?
And something inside me just snaps. I don’t even think about what I’m typing. The panic is drowning me, making me irrational, making me dangerous. If I leave her with hope, if I leave her waiting, if I come back different, if this deployment changes me the way it’s changed other men I know, then I’ll be breaking her heart. I’ll be destroying the life she’s built with me. I’ll be making her wait for someone who might not be the same person she fell in love with. So I make the decision to break her first. I make the decision to save her from me. I don’t remember exactly what I type. My fingers move faster than my brain can catch up, but I remember the essence of it. The cruelty of it. The finality of it. I tell her we’re over. I tell her I’m not coming home. I tell her this was a mistake, that we were always a mistake, that she needs to get out of our apartment and get out of my life. I hit send before I can think about it. Huxley’s face goes white. “Hudson, what the fuck did you just do?” he demands, grabbing my phone out of my hand, but it’s too late. The message is gone. It’s in the universe now. It’s in Summer’s phone. It’s destroying everything. “Leave it,” I say, and my voice sounds hollow even to me. “You just broke up with her through text? Through a goddamn text message?” Nathan’s there now, having caught the tail end of it from Huxley’s expression. “Are you out of your fucking mind? Hudson, she’s been sick for two weeks. She needs you.” “She’s better off without me,” I say, and I sound insane. I know I sound insane. The panic is turning into anger now, turning into something defensive. If I’m the bad guy, then at least I’m protecting her. At least I’m doing this on my terms. “Thirty minutes, Reed!” someone shouts. I grab my tactical bag, stuff my phone in the side pocket, and move toward the transport area. Huxley follows me, Nathan follows me, and I can feel their anger like a physical force behind me. “You love her,” Huxley says, and it’s not a question. It’s a statement of fact. It’s a reminder of something I’m actively trying to destroy. “You’ve loved her since you were seven years old. You talk about marrying her. You talk about building a life with her. And you just sent her a text message telling her it’s over?” “I’m doing her a favor,” I snap, climbing into the Hercules with my gear. The aircraft is already half full, other operators checking their weapons, settling into the jump seats, mentally preparing for whatever comes next. “When I come back, if I come back different, if this deployment makes me someone she doesn’t recognize, then what? Then I’ve wasted her best years on someone broken?” “So instead, you break her now?” Nathan’s voice is sharp, cutting through my bullshit like a knife. “You make that decision for her? You don’t give her a choice?” “She’ll move on,” I say, but the words taste like ash. “She’ll find someone better.” “No, she won’t,” Huxley says, and he’s not angry anymore. He’s something worse than angry. He’s disappointed. He’s looking at me like he doesn’t recognize me, and it kills me because he’s my twin. He’s supposed to understand. He’s supposed to be on my side. “She’s going to get that text message, and she’s going to shatter. And by the time you realize what you’ve done, she’ll have already decided that you’re not worth putting back together.”
The Hercules is filling up now, the loadmaster doing a final count, checking weapons, making sure everything is secure. We’re about to take off. We’re about to leave the country. I’m about to disappear into a deployment that could last months, and Summer is going to get that text message, and she’s going to read it, and she’s going to understand that the life we were planning is over. Nathan leans against the webbing next to me, his jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscle working. “If we come back,” he says quietly, “and I mean when, because you’re too stubborn to die, I can guarantee you she’s not waiting for you. You just lost her forever, Hudson. You just threw away the best thing you’ve ever had.” Huxley sits down across from me, and he doesn’t say anything. He just stares at me like I’m a stranger. Like I’m someone he doesn’t know anymore. The Hercules engines rumble to life. We lift off the tarmac, and I pull my phone out one more time, staring at the conversation with Summer. There’s nothing after my message. She hasn’t responded. She’s probably still asleep. She’s probably going to wake up alone, check her phone, and realize that the man she’s been planning a future with just ended everything in a handful of cruel sentences. I turn my phone off and shove it back into my bag.
Nathan’s right. When we come back, she’s not going to be waiting. But I don’t understand yet what that means. I don’t understand that I’ve done something unforgivable. I don’t understand that there are consequences to this kind of cruelty, to this kind of cowardice disguised as protection.
I’m about to learn.
