The Commander’s Wedding
I am Nola Flores, thirty-two years old, and I am a Commander in the United States Navy SEALs. I have been trained to endure freezing surf, sleep deprivation, and the kind of psychological pressure that breaks ordinary men. I’ve operated in hostile territories where one wrong move means death.
I’ve made split-second decisions that saved lives and ended others. I’ve jumped from planes at altitude, navigated through minefields in pitch darkness, and held the line when everyone around me was falling apart. But nothing in the BUD/S manual, nothing in all my years of combat training and operational experience, prepared me for the silence of a historic Episcopal church in Virginia on what was supposed to be the happiest day of my life.
I stood in the vestibule, the heavy oak doors acting as the final barrier between me and my future. My hands, which had never trembled while defusing explosives or calling in airstrikes, shook slightly as I gripped my bouquet—white roses and navy-blue hydrangeas, chosen to honor both tradition and my service. The flowers had cost more than I’d wanted to spend, but David’s mother had insisted, had taken me to three different florists until we found the perfect arrangement.
The air was thick with the scent of lilies and old floor wax, a smell that reminded me of my grandmother’s funeral when I was twelve, back when my family still included me in their grief, back when I still believed that blood meant something unbreakable. Through the crack in the door, I could see them—142 guests. I’d counted them myself on the seating chart, had agonized over every placement, every detail.
My gaze swept over the crowd now, a tactical assessment I couldn’t turn off even in a wedding dress. Friendly forces. Potential threats.
Escape routes. The exits were clearly marked. The windows were too high to be practical.
The main aisle was the only viable extraction point. My team from Coronado sat stoic in their chairs on the right side, their posture rigid even in civilian clothes, men who’d seen me at my worst and my best. Lieutenant Chen, who’d pulled me out of the water during Hell Week when hypothermia nearly took me, when my lips had turned blue and my hands wouldn’t work anymore.
Petty Officer Rodriguez, who’d covered my six during that nightmare operation in Somalia when everything went sideways and we’d had to fight our way to the extraction point. Chief Warrant Officer Jackson, who’d told me during my first week that I was “too small, too female, and too soft” to make it, then later wrote in my evaluation that I was the toughest operator he’d ever served with, bar none. My command staff from Naval Station Norfolk filled the middle rows—officers in their immaculate dress whites, the gold braid on their shoulders catching the afternoon light streaming through stained glass windows depicting saints and angels.
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