your major?”
“Well that’s kind of a boring conversational gambit, but you’re new at this, so I’ll 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
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.
“I don’t understand.”
“You know the difference between Navy SEALs and regular servicemen?”
“Special Forces, right? It means you’re more trained.”
He nodded. “Well, yeah. But it means, because we received special training, that we get sent on special missions. A lot of what I did, meaning, pretty much all of it, is classified. Meaning, I couldn’t tell you specifics even if I wanted to. And when we’re on those special missions, if one of us gets wounded, it’s not likely to get reported in such a way as to meet the criteria for a Purple Heart. And we don’t really want them, anyway. We don’t do what we do for medals.”
“Do you have any other medals?”
Stone shifted in his seat, slowing the car to drift around a wide turn. “Yeah.”
“Really? Which one?”
Stone sighed, not wanting to talk about it, but knowing he couldn’t just clam up now. “Silver Star.”
“Is that the highest one?”
“No. The highest is the Medal of Honor. The Silver Star is the third highest.”
“So what did you do to earn it?” Wren’s eyes were getting wider with every exchange.
It made Stone uncomfortable, but it also had the egotistical part of him swelling up and wanting to keep impressing her.
“Look, we’re getting into territory that I’m not comfortable with. I’m sorry. Do you know any other combat vets?” Wren shook her head. “Well, we don’t really like talking about our experiences. Combat isn’t something we like to relive. As to how I received the Silver Star…it’s a classified mission. Meaning I can’t tell you much about it. What I can tell you is it’s the same mission that got me wounded and discharged. All that’s really important is that I did what I had to do to save a few of my buddies. It was a tight spot, and I…had to get us out of it. It was my job, so I did it. I’d trade the medal a hundred times over to have my guys back. To have my career back.”
“You lost friends on the mission?”
“Yeah. More than one. The whole thing went FUBAR.”
“Foo-what?”
“Effed up beyond all recognition. It means it went really, really bad.” Wren colored at the vulgar acronym, and Stone had to laugh.
“So have you ever—”
“I’d rather not talk about that,” Stone interrupted. He hated that question.
Wren kept going. “I was going to ask if you’ve ever told anyone that story. I wouldn’t ask…what you thought.”
“Oh. Sorry. No, I never have.” He’d brought them onto the U of V campus, and Wren pointed to a cluster of residence buildings. He parked in front of the one she indicated, and then left the car idling. “It’s the kind of thing you’d rather forget.”
“Would you ever consider telling anyone? Someone really special, maybe?”
“Someone special?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t quite look at him, toying with a rivet on the pocket of her jeans. “Someone you were with.”
Stone let his head thump against the headrest. “Wren, I don’t know if I’m—if I could be that guy for you.”
She didn’t respond right away. “Why not?”
“Why do you want to know what happened so bad?”
“It’s not about that. I just…I’m curious. About you.” She ducked her head. “I like you. I want to know what makes you…you.”
