“Did you put your rules on what a relationship was with the woman who interested you at the time?”
Nodding, Dan said, “Right or wrong, I did. I didn’t want any of them to get tied down like my father had been tied down with my mother. I saw what it did to him. I didn’t want it to happen to me.”
“I see.” She pursed her lips, holding his bleak gaze.
“It worked,” he admitted, his voice sounding tired. “I laid out the rules with the woman, and if she went along with what my boundaries were, it served both of us.”
“But you had commitment phobia. That’s what it’s called, Dan. There are lots of men who have this issue. You aren’t the only one.”
“I was trying to protect myself against the inevitable,” he said.
“I’m so sorry,” Sloan whispered, reaching out, and resting her hand against his clasped ones.
He cocked his head. “Was your family like mine?”
“No…very different. I come from a very loving family.”
“In all the time we went together, I never asked you anything like that. I never really asked you any personal questions.”
She released his hand, giving him a sad nod. “That’s because you probably assumed all families were like yours?”
“I knew they weren’t all like mine because of going to school,” he admitted. “As I grew up, I realized that not all families were broken up as mine had been. Boys never talked about such things, but I saw signs like parents coming out to watch their kid play a basketball game.”
“Was your dad ever able to be there like that for you after the divorce?”
“No. He had his job as a truck driver for a meat-packing company out of San Diego five days a week. When I got home from school, and he came home from work, we ate together because I fixed the dinner. We rarely talked. I would go to my room, do my homework, play computer games and then go to bed.”
“Did you have family there in the San Diego area where you grew up?”
“No. My mother’s parents were dead. My father’s parents lived in Vermont. I knew of them, but had never met them.”
“Did your dad have siblings?”
“No, he was an only kid like me. Why?”
Sloan shrugged. “You were in San Diego with no relatives that might have been able to stand in and help you and your dad. That’s why I asked.”
“No, there was no one. Dad was never an extrovert, and he didn’t have many friends. He played poker on Saturday night with a group of buddies from work, but that was all.”
“And what were you doing?”
“I lived in San Diego. When I was thirteen, I got a part-time job on a scuba diving boat. I would spend my weekends on it, working as a deckhand.”
“That’s where you got your love of diving then.”
“Yes, and the captain of the boat, an ex-Navy SEAL who everyone called Cap, felt sorry for me.”
“Did he know your story?”
“No, never spoke about it. But he was divorced and had a couple of kids he never saw from what I learned over time. He took me under his wing and taught me a lot about diving, air compressors, mechanics and running a boat. He always had ex-SEAL buddies who would hire his boat out, and we’d go up the coast to the La Jolla kelp beds where they’d dive for abalone and spear fish for dinner.”
“So, in a way,” Sloan searched, “they were like a family of sorts to you?”
“Yeah,” Dan said, “in their own way. Cap was always playing tricks on me to lighten me up. I was a very withdrawn kid by that time. He made me responsible, made me realize that you had to work hard to gain another person’s respect. He imbued me with the SEAL culture—how I should always be a team player, be there for the team if a member needed help.”
“So he was a mentor of sorts to you?”
Nodding, his voice grew warm. “Yeah, Cap sort of took over being a second dad to me, I guess, looking back on those years with him. I looked up to Cap because he never lied to me. He was always straight with me. I worked hard, played hard and over the years, I came to realize I wanted to be in the military. He was a man of integrity, morals, and values, Sloan. So was my dad. But I couldn’t reach him. He had disappeared inside himself. I could take the bus down to the wharf area in San Diego, hop off, walk to Cap’s boat and I’d spend the weekend working with him.”
“I’ll bet you looked forward to it.” She smiled wistfully, thinking of Dan growing up under the salty ex-SEAL, who she was sure, was a tough, but fair, taskmaster.
“I always did,” he admitted. “And my dad was okay with it. There wasn’t much left between us, anyway. And when Cap started teaching me scuba diving, I was a natural for it. We had a lot of good times together.”
“Was he proud of you?” Sloan saw a faint smile pull at Dan’s mouth.
“Yeah, he was.”
“How did you know that?”
“He’d pat me on the back if I did something up to his standards. Give me a smile or a nod of a job well done. He pretty much gave me a template that served me as an Army pilot and later, as Night Stalker pilot. I made the team first, and I learned that being part of a team was everything to me.”
Sloan sat there digesting all the information. “There’s one thing I don’t understand, Dan. When you crashed, and the investigation report came back as weather-related?”
“Yes?”
“Why did they release you from the Night Stalkers? I never understood that.”
Sloan watched Dan wrestle with her question. He opened his hands, enclosing hers. “It was a three-man board,” he began hoarsely. “Composed of my peers. Two majors and a colonel, all had been Night Stalker pilots. The colonel, a man named Bob Baker, never liked me. I’d been assigned to his squadron, and for whatever reason, he never warmed up to me like he did other pilots in his command. I eventually got transferred out of his command and into another one. When I saw him as the head of the investigation, I knew there wouldn’t be a good outcome for me. It was just a feeling. I felt he had it in for me and to this day, I don’t know why. Maybe his personality clashed with mine.” He gave a painful shrug. “I just don’t know.”
“What did he do to you, Dan?”
Taking a deep breath, he said, “Even though the accident report cleared me, he orchestrated the final decision on the crash to have me transferred out of the Night Stalkers permanently.”
“But why?”
“Because he could, Sloan. He never liked me. I never gave him a reason to dislike me, but sometimes commanders didn’t like a certain pilot. It’s not that I screwed up in his command. I didn’t. In fact, just the opposite happened. I was one of the top three pilots in flight skills, and I was up for early rank. Maybe I reminded him of another person in his life he hated. I won’t ever know.”
“Did the other two officers on your tribunal feel the same way about you?”
“No. They argued strongly to stop the colonel from jettisoning me out of the Night Stalkers. They were for me staying, but the colonel overruled them by rank and by being the head of the investigation. He could do it, and he did.” He looked over at her, holding her hand gently between his. “I have fucked up so damn badly with you, Sloan. I can’t even give it words. I walked out on you just like my mother did to my father after he was fired from his job. My God…”
CHAPTER 9
Dan stared at Sloan, unable to say anything, the sudden shock, and awareness that he’d been just like his mother, slammed into him.