Blogger’s Note: Welcome to the character series of blog posts for the main characters from Operation Pale Horse! I’m glad to be able to share some inner thoughts with you about their backstory leading up to the beginning of the book. Fiona Mercedes, the protagonist, is the first to share her thoughts.

You know that old cliché, “Familiarity breeds contempt”? Has it for me? I’m beginning to wonder if it does indeed apply to Skylar James and me. I’ve been dating Skylar for almost nine years now. In today’s parlance, he’s my partner because we’ve been committed to each other for the entire time. It’s funny, though. We like to have our separate spaces, but that doesn’t mean we don’t spend the night together a lot. We do. We always said we didn’t need our last names to be the same or a marriage certificate to show that we were together forever.

You may wonder if he ever proposed. He did in May 2019, just after Shelly and Butch married. I turned him down, stating exactly what I just said. He seemed cool with it, and part of me wondered if the wine we’d drunk had influenced his desire to propose.

Then came last summer. If you’ve read Operation Impact, then you know what happened to Skylar. He got shot in the gut during an ambush. Were it not for the skilled hands of my surgeon friend, Diana Kasem, and those of her colleagues, he would have died. The experience shook me up, made me realize that I do love him and do indeed want to marry him.

Except now, he’s not interested. I’m confused. I mean, he’d proposed to me three years before. I now realized how much I wanted to be the one to make those end-of-life decisions, how much I wanted to make our bond so real now. We argued about it in October. Heatedly. We’ve always had a somewhat spicy relationship due to my Latina side, but we usually could work through things.

Not this time, it seems. Since that argument, there’s been this emotional distance between us that I hate and don’t know how to address. And because I saw no way to return to that closeness, I’ve dealt with it the only way I know. I’ve put my heart and soul into work. As the president of Kitchen Sink Air, I’m also a pilot, and this past fall and winter, a couple of my female pilots were out on maternity leave. I’ve been flying a lot more to take their place, and it’s given me an excuse to avoid things at home.

Then, when I’m home, Skylar too has seemed distant, especially since 2022 turned over to 2023. Sometimes, I wonder if he’s seeing someone on the side. Regardless, neither of us has had the courage to broach the tough topics we need to discuss. It’s like if I’m home, he’s working at his restaurant, Regions. And then when I’m not home, he is.

We can’t keep avoiding each other like this, but it’s like we can’t communicate anymore. I need help on how to communicate with him.

What ideas do you have that would help us bridge this distance?