Headed for Trouble - By Suzanne Brockmann Page 0,43
was actually crying, which she rarely ever did, tears making streaks down her face.
“Hurts, huh?” Jules sat down next to her and gave her his hand to hold. Now that dying was off the table, he knew she was starting to feel as if she had a broken leg.
She took his hand. Yow. She had some grip there.
“Actually,” she told him, “I’m feeling really good.” Jules nodded.
“You know what I want?” he said, answering the question that she’d asked just moments before the second bomb had gone off. “I want what you have with Sam. I want someone who won’t freak out when I have a night like tonight. I want trust and respect and … I want someone who’ll say I love you in front of a crowd of co-workers and friends.”
She wiped her face as she laughed. “Yeah, that’s pretty nice to hear, huh?”
“Yes, it is,” Jules said. “I want to meet someone,” he continued, “and not think … maybe. I want to meet him, I want to look into his eyes, and think, Yes. I don’t want to have to wonder. I want to know, right away, that he’s the one.”
Alyssa was silent. “Unfortunately, sweetie, life’s not a Disney cartoon,” she finally said.
Jules laughed. “No shit, Cinderella.”
She looked at him. “You know, when I first met Sam … Jules, sometimes you meet someone, and you think, Please God, not him.”
She laughed, but Jules was silent. He knew, too well, what that was like …
“And then,” Alyssa continued, “you go from no, to maybe … And then, eventually to yes. After, you know, you force yourself to admit that you might’ve been wrong about him.”
“What if you’re not wrong?” Jules asked her quietly. “What if you know that he can crush your heart and … destroy you?”
She brought his hand to her mouth and kissed him. She knew full well that he wasn’t talking about Ben. He was talking about Robin—the one man he’d been unable to forget.
Jesus, it had been years since Jules had so much as seen Robin, and he was still thinking, Please God, not him …
“Then you settle for the maybe that you’ve got right now,” Alyssa told him gently. “Ben may not be able to tell you that he loves you, not in front of his Marines, but … that could change. The same way that the maybe you’re feeling could change to a full-throttle yes. And if it doesn’t … Well, at least you tried, right?”
“Tried what?” Sam appeared in front of them—having dug his way through the rubble, probably by chewing it into molecules with his teeth. He was covered with dust, and was sweaty as hell, but he kissed Alyssa on the mouth. “What are we talking about?” he asked as he handed each of them a bottle of water, then turned his full attention to Alyssa’s broken leg. He didn’t cut her pants leg open, probably because he could see it was holding the broken bone in place.
Jules knew right then that Sam was eager to get Alyssa out of there—he didn’t want to wait for the medics to arrive.
“I was just telling Lys that I’m going to sign up for one of those ex-gay camps and then steal her away from you,” Jules told him.
Sam looked up at him askance. “That shit doesn’t work.”
“I know. I’m kidding,” Jules said. He looked at Alyssa. “Sam loses his sense of humor when you almost die.”
“Besides, Squidward,” Sam spoke over him as he gently lifted Alyssa into his arms, careful not to jar her injury, “we like you just the way you are.”
“Told you I wasn’t leaving here on a stretcher,” Alyssa said as her husband carefully carried her out.
Leaving Jules alone with his doubts—his unsatisfactory maybes.
And wasn’t that the way the story always ended? He was like that guy in that old song—alone again, naturally.
But then Sam gave a shout from out in the tunnel. “Cassidy. Move your ass. We’re waiting on you.” In the romance department, Jules’s life may have been a maybe, but as far as his friends went, Jules had himself a rock-solid yes.
“I’m right behind you, SpongeBob,” Jules shouted back, then followed his two best friends out of the tunnel and up into the clean, crisp, star- and promise-filled night.
Maybe he could live for a while with maybe.
At the very least, it was worth a try.
CONVERSATION WITH NAVY SEALS MARK “JENK” JENKINS, DAN GILLMAN, JAY LOPEZ, AND IRVING “IZZY” ZANELLA