I Do! by Rachel Gibson Page A

conquered those enemies. He had a footlocker full of medals and commendations. He’d been shot twice, had screws in his knee, and had fractured his feet and ankles more times than he could recall. He’d served his country without regret or remorse. When he retired from the battlefield, he thought he’d left the enemy behind. Thought he was done fighting, but he was wrong. This enemy was deeper and darker than any he had faced before.
    You can stop after one drink.
    It whispered lies and plagued his waking hours. It lived in his soul. It had a bounty on his life. A bounty he couldn’t ignore. There was no getting away from it. No leave. No passes. No stand-down time. No hiding in the dark as it passed him by. No dialing in his scope to take it out. Like the enemies he’d faced on the battlefield, if he did not defeat it, he would die. No doubt about it, but the problem was, he craved the taste of this particular death in his mouth.
    You don’t have a problem .
    Out of all the things that had been hammered into his head at the fancy rehab his brother had forced him into, one of the things he did believe was that if he did not stop, he would lose his life. He’d been through too much to be taken out by a bottle of Johnnie. Too much to let his addiction win.
    The craving rolled through him and he set his jaw against it. His addiction doctors and counselors had preached avoidance, but that wasn’t Blake’s way. He didn’t avoid demons. He faced them head-on. He didn’t need a twelve-step program or daily meetings. He was not powerless over his addiction. He was Special Warfare Operator First Class Blake Junger. Retired from SEAL Team Six, and one of the deadliest snipers in the history of warfare. That wasn’t a brag, just a fact. To admit he was powerless would be admitting defeat. There was no quit, no giving up. Those words were not in a Junger’s vocabulary. Not in his or his twin brother, Beau’s. They’d been raised to win. To push themselves and each other. To be the best at everything. To follow in the famous footsteps of their father, Captain William T. Junger, a legend in the SEAL teams. The old man had earned a tough reputation in Vietnam and Grenada and countless other clandestine engagements. He was a tough warrior, loyal to the teams and his country, and he expected his sons to follow. Blake had done what had been expected of him while Beau had signed with the Marine Corps just to spite the old man.
    At the time, Blake had been pissed at his brother. All their lives they’d talked about serving in the teams together, but Beau had stormed off and joined the jarheads. In hindsight, it was a blessing that they’d served in different branches.
    They were monozygotic twins, had split from the same egg, and were so alike they could pass one for the other. They were not different sides of the same coin. They were identical sides, and it was no surprise that each had signed up for sniper school in their respective branches. No surprise that each earned a reputation for his accuracy and lethal shots, but when it came to numbers, Blake had more confirmed kills.
    The brothers had always been competitive. Their mother claimed that even in the womb they’d fought each other for more room. At the age of five, Beau had been the faster swimmer, had won blue ribbons while Blake had won red. Second place spurred Blake on to work harder, and the next year the two traded places on the winner’s podium. In high school, if Blake won more wrestling matches one season, his brother worked to win more the next, and because they were identical twins, people compared the two in more than looks. Beau was the smart one. Blake was the strong one. Beau ran faster. Blake was the charming one. A day later, the script would flip and Blake would be smarter and faster. But no matter how many times the comparisons spun in opposite directions, Blake had always been the more charming twin. Even Beau conceded that win.
    If they’d both