A SEAL's Heart Read Free Page A

always there, ready to make her shoot milk out of her nose laughing. Zuly could recall every weekend spent camping out at the cabin he now owned--hours swimming around the small lake on the property. She could remember the time they spent the night in a makeshift canopy because they thought they heard a bear growl. She could remember waking up before him in their tent, staring at the way his dark lashes fanned out on his cheeks, covering eyes so blue they reminded her of the sky.
    Where had those days gone? Where had that Fitz gone? Was she selfish for needing him? For wanting him to need her too?
    “I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody. Just fucking leave me alone, ‘kay? Understand now?”
    Those words would never be forgotten. The look of fear and anger in his irises would never fade from her memory. Neither would the way she cried afterwards. How she’d stayed in bed for days on end, praying he’d pick up the phone and call her, ask her to come cook for him. Fitz never had. And every day that went by Zuly felt like someone was twisting a scalding knife deeper into a wound that formed the day he left for boot camp fifteen years ago.
    She’d wanted to stop him then. Beg him not to leave her, but it was his dream.
    “I’m gonna be a Navy SEAL someday, Z. One of the biggest heroes to walk the planet.”
    Even now she could hear the echo of his twelve-year-old voice telling her how badly he wanted to join the military, how he’d save so many lives. What kind of bitch would ask him to give all that up?
    So Zuly had sent him off like the rest of his family, secretly praying every night that he’d come back to her whole and able to see how much she loved him. She couldn’t pinpoint when it had happened exactly, but one day she’d looked up and suddenly noticed how the curve of his jaw had gone from baby fat to granite. How his shoulders had gotten broader, stronger. How his lean muscles had begun to slowly transform his body into that of a man’s. How the roughness of his palms and the baritone of his voice rolled over her skin in ways her adolescent body shouldn’t have noticed.
    It felt like she’d wanted him forever. And she’d had every intention of having him when he returned to her. Zuly had plans. Plans that would’ve included telling him all the different ways she loved how his chest rose and fell with every inhale and exhale. But her plans had been shot to hell and her frogman had returned damaged. She hadn’t given a royal fuck about anything aside from him coming home safe and sound.
              Fitz had done that and so much more. But he didn’t want her. Apparently, he didn’t need her either. What was she to do? How could she heal a man who refused to take it? As a RN she’d seen her fair share of patients with injuries that surpassed just the physical, yet she had no idea what to do here.
              Zuly simply wanted Fitz near her. Wanted to run her fingers across his scalp, curve her hand around that granite jaw, let him know he was loved. Over the last two months she’d begun to differentiate between the howls she heard and now understood which ones were mournful, lonely.
              Why wasn’t it that easy for them? Why couldn’t they simply communicate with a sound?
              “God, Z...” Kamilah murmured, suddenly standing in front of her with a paper towel, wiping her face. “You’ve got to stop doing this to yourself.”
              She sniffed; hadn’t even realized she’d been crying until her sibling pointed it out. “Sorry. I’m just having a weepy moment. It’ll be better in a second.”
              Kamilah hugged her close, running a hand down her back in the same soothing motion she used to use when Zuly would run home crying about how other kids in class were calling her bush head. That had stopped when Fitz had come around, of course. “Oh, baby,” she murmured against Zuly’s temple. “He’ll come