Stripping Her Defenses Read Free Page A

her perfectly styled short hair, I couldn’t help remembering the woman underneath all of that mess. The person I kept praying would come back to me.
    In high school, she’d been spirited; a tough girl who had refused to take shit from the kids who would pick on her for being born out of wedlock to a Vegas Showgirl, single mother. Kara was proud of her mom; she just didn’t want to be her.
    I could still see flashes of that girl I’d admired in high school from time to time. I was hoping that, when the baby got here, she’d be too busy to worry about counting every fucking calorie on her ridiculous mission to be something she wasn’t meant to be.
    Maybe the baby would open her eyes; let her see that she didn’t have to strive to be Ms. Perfect. How could she not see that she was fucking perfect exactly the way she was when she let herself just be? I only wanted my girl back.
    I loved her no matter what, but there were times when I felt like I was now married to a stranger instead of the Kara I used to know. Grandpa Pat had said all I had to do was keep the faith and stick by my wife, she’d eventually come around. Man, I hoped the old man was right.
    My cell phone started to ring from the counter in the kitchen; as a result, I disentangled myself from Kara and laid her gently on the couch. Snatching the phone up before it shut off, I flipped it quickly open when I saw that it was my Commanding Officer on the caller ID. Quietly slipping into our bedroom, I closed the door then answered with, “Sullivan.”
    “There’s a situation. Are you available?”
    Looking back through the small crack between the bedroom door and its frame, I watched Kara sleeping for a few silent seconds. Things had been good lately. Her pregnancy was going fine, and my CO wouldn’t call to ask my availability for a voluntary mission unless it was dire circumstances and operators were badly needed. I might miss her graduation, and I hated the thought of doing that to her, but I hated the thought of not being by my fellow seal s’ sides when they needed me more. Not to mention the possibility that innocent lives might be on the line. Life and death situations trumped happy moments at home. Kara’s graduation would be one small point in time I missed. I could make it up for her down the road somehow, couldn’t I?
    Decision made, I turned my back to the bedroom door as I answered, “Affirmative.”
    “Report to base at sixteen hundred hours.” Dial tone.
    Looking down at my watch, I calculated I had roughly forty minutes to pack my bag and report in. Not much time since the drive alone took fifteen minutes. Guess I’d better get my ass in gear.
    ~~~
    Kara
    It was the chill that woke me. Since the last thing I remembered was being cuddled up to my husband’s delicious warmth, the chill I felt now made no sense. Forcing my heavy eyelids open, I turned my head to look at my surroundings, searching for Riley.
    Realizing he was nowhere to be found in the living room, I used my arms to push myself up when I heard a sound coming from behind the closed door of our bedroom. What was he doing in there?
    The closer I came to our bedroom door, the more my stomach started to twist in knots. For whatever reason, I just knew I wasn’t going to like what was going on behind that door.
    Pushing the door open with my hand, my eyes came to rest immediately on my husband’s back as he stood at the foot of our bed, shoving stuff into his bag. My stomach stopped doing somersaults and promptly dropped to somewhere down by my feet. He was leaving?
    The fact that the muscles in his back and shoulders were now obviously tense, causing him to stand a little straighter than he’d been before, clued me in that he wasn’t looking forward to whatever it was he thought I was going to say.
    Just when I had let myself truly hope that things were getting better, reality had felt the need to slap me in the face with this wake up call.
    My shoulders drooped as