The Missionary Read Free Page B

let it go for now.” Her warm smile made something in his belly shiver. “I’m majoring in elementary education.”
    “So you’re gonna be a teacher? Which grade?”
    “Third, ideally.” She shrugged. “But they’ll put you where they need you, and as long as I’m teaching, I don’t really care too much. Now it’s my turn to ask a question. Ready?”
    “As ready as I can be.” Stone tried to ignore the squirming nerves, knowing she was going to ask a question that didn’t have an easy answer.
    “What do you do besides lead worship on Sunday nights?”
    “Um. Well, I work on this car. I work out. I do some personal security jobs.”
    Wren gave him a look that told him she knew he was omitting some information. “But what do you do ? For a career, I mean.”
    Stone sighed. “That’s complicated.”
    “Meaning you don’t want to talk about it.”
    “Pretty much.” He watched Wren out of the corner of his eye, and felt a niggling sense of unease. She looked disappointed in his reticence, perhaps hurt that he wasn’t willing to share the truth with her. “Look, Wren. It’s just…it’s complicated, okay? I don’t really have a career anymore.”
    She pulled her feet in and twisted in the seat to face him. “What’s that mean?”
    Stone rubbed at his face with his palm. “Where am I going, anyway?”
    Wren just waved vaguely. “Why can’t we just drive around a little bit? I live on campus.”
    Stone turned the car onto a narrow dirt road, away from the city, away from the university, out into the countryside. “I used to be a Navy SEAL.”
    “But now you’re not?”  
    He shrugged. “Nope.”
    Wren rolled her eyes. “See, now we’re back to one-word answers. What happened?”
    “Disability discharge.” He didn’t want to have to explain, but he was going to. She was persistent, and had a way of drawing answers from him.
    “And that means?”
    “It means…disability discharge is when you’re no longer fit for active duty.”
    “Well that explains it all, doesn’t it?” Stone watched her thinking through it. “So something happened that made you have to stop being a SEAL?”
    “Pretty much.”
    “So what happened?”
    Stone cursed under his breath, then sighed in frustration. “It’s a long story, and not one I really want to tell. It’s…not a good memory.”
    Wren nodded, but he could see the disappointment on her features. It made him feel cowardly and guilty, but he also knew it wasn’t a story a sweet girl like her should hear. Just no, on so many levels, just no.  
    That didn’t stop Wren from giving him a look akin to silent pleading.  
    “Stop looking at me like that, Wren. Here’s the short version, and it’s all you’re gonna get. I was wounded in combat. My leg got fu—messed up so bad I’m not fit enough for the SEALs anymore.”
    “You don’t limp, though.”
    “Yeah, well, that took a lot of PT. SEALs are like olympic athletes. We’re the best of the best. So I might have been able to stay in the Navy, but I’ll never be a SEAL again. So I chose retirement.”
      Wren gave him a long, considering stare. “You were wounded in combat? So do you have one of those Purple Hearts?” Stone just laughed, and Wren frowned. “What?”
    “The Purple Heart. Yeah. I’ve got one, plus like, four clusters. You get one anytime you’re hurt in the line of duty. And when you’re a SEAL, that’s pretty common. All the guys I served with have one. They don’t mean much to us.”
    “Clusters?”
    Stone waved his hand. “You get an oak leaf cluster for each injury received after the initial award.”
    “So you’ve been injured in combat five times?” Her eyes were wide with awe.
    Stone forced himself to sound nonchalant. Don’t play into it. “That’s just what got reported. You have to meet certain criteria, and it has to be a matter of official record. Not everything we do as SEALs is part of official, public military record.”
    “I don’t