Navy Blue - A Second Chance Romance (Complete)

Navy Blue: Chapter 2

As the cab sped away from the restaurant, Finn's fingers rubbed the tightness above his ribcage where the remnants of his shattered heart pulsed. The fabric of the jacket he'd borrowed to eat at the fancy restaurant strained against his forearm.

He'd rummaged through the small pile of casual clothes he kept on hand at the base to find the never worn dark jeans and crisp white shirt. Another thing he hated about being off base—fitting in. Beside him, Max looked just as uncomfortable in his light brown khakis.

Fatigues were so easy, so simple. Plus, Finn was used to them. No wardrobe clashes, just reach in and pull out a clean blue-gray coloured shirt, camouflage pants, heavy boots. No need to think. Rules and regulations dominated life in the Navy and the structure suited Finn.

"Can you tell me now why I couldn't finish my glass of Icellar wine back there?" Simon leaned forward, his knees knocking against the driver's seat.

Finn wiped away the salt spray from his eye. Well, there couldn't be any spray. He'd left the ocean days ago, but it was a force of habit. He would swear on his honour he could smell the salty ocean everywhere, like his fellow brother-in-arm insisted pain ached in a leg that was no longer there.

That's it. Focus on the big blue sea, with its rolling waves and the testimony he had to give, Finn told himself. Forget about what happened moments ago as he'd stepped out of the restroom. Forget about the soft grey eyes causing the air to still in his lungs. Forget about the sound of Em's voice, calling his name like she had after he kissed the tender skin at the base of her neck a lifetime ago.

At first, he thought he'd been hallucinating, a long-desired dream bursting from his brain. The only shut eye he'd managed on the plane had been laced with images of Em. It happened every time he returned stateside—the long-forgotten dreams, the dead and apparently not buried hopes, the want—rising from the depths of the cavern where he bottled up the one summer he'd felt loved.

Finn forced those thoughts away and held on to the lifeline of anger surging through him. This was all Simon's fault.

Years of avoiding coming home, tour after tour in foreign countries, taking on high-risk missions to not risk seeing her. But even he couldn't refuse orders, so he and Max boarded a flight bound for Washington.

The plan was to limit his movements to the base as much as possible, but his brother begged to see him. It had been two years since Simon met him in Lyon to spend a rare Christmas together. Once they'd been close, close enough, Finn ran to his older brother the summer after high school when he had nowhere else to turn. The summer he met Em. The woman who broke her promises and his heart.

"Emily was there." Her name felt like razer blades on his tongue. Eight years since he'd said it aloud.

Simon cranked his neck back toward the restaurant. "You're kidding."

"Whose Emily?" Max mirrored Simon.

Steel infused Finn's veins. "A girl I used to know."

The last time they'd been in the same room, she'd kissed him goodbye at the bus station. Emily's assurance she loved him and vow to be in the very same spot when he returned from Syracuse were the last promises from her sweet lips.

He'd tucked those words into his heart and held on to them during their separation, feasting off the sentiment. They were from opposite worlds, Emily with her summer mansion and him with a room over a boathouse, her off to study the law at university, him barely managing to hold down the bus boy job Simon had secured for him at the Waterfront Bar and Grill. Still, ever since she'd walked into the small town restaurant, sat by the window, starlight shining from her magnetic silver eyes, his compass fixed on Emily.