Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Immediately, I hit my knees resting my head and hands on the top of her tombstone.
“Nixie, my girl. I wish I could trade places with you,” I whisper to the air around me. “If I could turn back time, I’d give up everything to hold you once again.”
Rolling back to rest on my heels I look at my daughter’s picture. “Forever three you will be,” I mutter as I remember
“Master Chief Benson, got a red cross message.” My commander explains standing over my hospital bed.
I jerk up crying out in pain as my arm begins the tremors yet again. Four days ago, on a mission with my SEAL team we were caught in an ambush. I saw the grenade incoming, yanked two of my teammates by their collars trying to get us out. The shrapnel wound to my arm has created nerve damage. Right now, long term we don’t know what my future holds. Every movement sends my arm into uncontrollable tremors, painful ones. With a metal fragment sticking out of my forearm, I managed to drag my unconscious frogman brother out of the line of fire. His head injury is undetermined at this time, but he is alive, which half of our unit isn’t. To say this is the worst week of my life is an understatement.
Now a red cross message.
That means something back home. There are only two people left back home to even need to send this kind of message.
“Ayla? Dominiks?” I ask as the panic fills me and my head throbs.
My team is either on a plane back home in a box, or laying in another bed in this German hospital waiting for release so we can either return to duty or home. In my case, Lieutenant Connor here has already given me the order that I’ll be returning home once I’m cleared to travel. Once home, I will await my career’s fate in the hands of the medical board.
“I’m gonna give it to you straight, frogman and it’s not good.”
I swallow the lump in my throat and steel my nerves somehow knowing I’m not strong enough for whatever he’s about to tell me.
“There has been an accident. We’re working out getting you a medical assisted flight home, Benson.”
“L-t, give it to me. There’s been an accident. What happened to my wife and daughter? I don’t have any other family and any other reason for there to be a red cross message.”
He shakes his head and I scream, “no!” Without the words, I simply knew.
The rest of the conversation is still a blur. In an instant, my entire world shattered. No one knows why, even to this day. Apparently being the wife of a Navy SEAL in a foreign country was too much. Maybe it was demons from her past haunting her. I’ll never know.
At thirty-two, I lost my career, my wife, and my kid. Not a single fucking medal from the Navy can ever replace what I lost. Awards, ranks, benefits, the honor in service is nothing to me anymore. Without them, I merely exist. Losing my job too, icing on the fucking cake made out of shit.
Ayla and I met when I was on a mission abroad. She was working at an embassy in Bulgaria. Instantly, I was sucked in by her beauty, dark hair that was natural, deep brown eyes, olive skin tone, high cheek bones and an accent that shot right to my dick, she was it. While she lived in a small providence that spoke Turkish, she was fluent in English thanks to her education.
In a whirlwind, I married her after two weeks together and sent her back to the United States while I finished my mission. At the time I was stationed in Little Creek, Virginia Beach and rented a small condo there. She didn’t like the deployments, but seemed to understand.
We had an agreement. I was going to do twenty years, but we would continue to build our dreams for after my time in service was done now. She wanted to move her mother over from Bulgaria and I agreed. First, we bought land in Alabama since I knew I wanted to return home after retirement. Once the land was purchased we had a custom built home. That is when Ayla decided she wanted to live in Alabama full time. She never seemed to find her place in Virginia. Friendships didn’t form. Being the wife of a SEAL, she didn’t engage the other wives like I had hoped would happen. Her sadness in Virginia was obvious. Therefore, her moving to Alabama, well, I agreed reluctantly.
She did make a few friends here in Bama, but she was still homesick. I came home as much as possible, even hopping quick flights just for a weekend with her. She did the same visiting me in Virginia as well. We even had her mom fly over as often as possible.