Until the World Stops - L.A. Witt Page 0,5

also make me dependent on Parker. Not just in the sense that I’d be swapping my active duty ID card for a dependent ID, but because I’d be literally dependent on him. Completely dependent on him. Married to him, I’d have most of the benefits the Navy was yanking from me, but I’d be one shouting match away from losing it all again.

With a heavy sigh, I put my coffee cup aside and rubbed my unshaven jaw. So this was what it felt like being stuck between a rock and a hard place. I had two options—take the admin sep and find my own way somehow, or marry Parker and hope I could stay in his good graces long enough to get a degree and a job.

Neither of those choices sat well. I didn’t like depending on anyone. Hell, I’d joined the Navy because it was an express ticket out of my parents’ house. I loved them, don’t get me wrong, but I needed space. I especially needed my own income and my own means of paying for college, because my parents had a habit of using money to manipulate and control us. They’d paid for my older brother to go to college, and they still used that as leverage any time they wanted something from him. They’d helped my sister and brother-in-law when each of my nephews was born, which they lorded over them any time they felt they weren’t getting to spend enough time with their grandsons. I’d learned from a very young age that I was better off making my own way and not asking them for help unless I wanted a lot of strings attached.

So I really, really, really didn’t like the idea of being dependent on Parker or anyone else.

At the same time, whether I liked it or not, I was seriously limited on options. In under sixty days, I’d be processed out of the Navy with a DD214 that lacked the word “Honorable” in front of “Discharge.” It wasn’t dishonorable—you pretty much had to commit a war crime that didn’t get a presidential pardon if you wanted a dishonorable discharge—but it wasn’t honorable, either, and that could be a problem when I went to apply for jobs. Or school, for that matter. Not that I had a prayer of paying for college any time soon, least of all on whatever income I made from whatever job actually hired me with the Navy’s boot print on my ass.

“Fuck my life,” I muttered into the silence of the cramped basement studio apartment I wouldn’t be able to afford much longer. Because damn, I’d need to break my lease, too. I had some savings, but not enough to keep up my rent and truck payments for much longer.

First, though, I needed to get dressed and shave because I still had to go to work until the Navy finished processing me out. I was pretty sure that was all I’d be doing, too—working on my out-processing paperwork, or sitting around waiting for more of that paperwork to come my way.

Whatever. If they told me to do anything else, I’d do it, but I hoped no one was expecting a lot of effort or enthusiasm.

They’d get the bare minimum from me and they’d like it.

MA2 Colby was at the gate when I pulled up. She knew me, so I really didn’t even need to show my ID, but we’d been dinged by auditors recently for not checking the ID of every person who came on-base. I mean, seriously—did MA1 Sullivan really need to check his own wife’s ID before letting her through the gate? God. Fuck this place.

Anyway, I handed over my ID card, and Colby gave it a cursory look before handing it back. She waved me through, but not before offering a sympathetic grimace. I smiled halfheartedly and drove past her. Great. So the people who’d been on my side would be looking at me with pity, and the people who’d been rooting against me would probably be smug assholes. The next two months would be fun.

Our base was a small one—just a guard shack, a larger building that held our locker rooms, restrooms, gym, kitchen, and a few offices, plus some other buildings staffed by civilian contractors.

All in all, Providence Point wasn’t much different from Prospect Harbor, another tiny base up the coast, except that one also had a lighthouse that doubled as a vacation rental for active duty and retirees. I’d slept with one of