Seth was no exception.
“So they’re sending the hostage negotiator now?” Seth’s voice was low and rusty, as if his vocal chords didn’t get a daily workout. He wore the hood of his sweatshirt up despite the humid night and wouldn’t look in Cam’s direction, kept his gaze focused on the ocean.
Cam shrugged. “They’re all worried about you.”
“I’m not going to hurt myself,” he said after several beats. “I didn’t live through hell to kill myself now. And I’m not going to go all ape-shit and start picking people off with my rifle from the lighthouse or something.”
“That’s good to know.”
“I’m not crazy.”
Cam laughed. “C’mon, Jude’s your best friend. You expect me to believe that line of bullshit? You have to be a little crazy to hang out with him.”
The corner of Seth’s mouth twitched upward. “He used to tell me stories about you and Vaughn when we were deployed.”
“He used to tell us stories about you when he was home.”
“He blames himself for what happened to me.”
A vice of guilt clamped briefly around Cam’s heart and he took a deep breath to loosen it. “Jude blames himself for a lot of things that aren’t his fault. It’s just the kind of guy he is. He takes everything to heart.”
“I know. It’s…nice to see him happy.”
“It is.”
The tension seeped out of Seth’s shoulders. “I just wanted to come here and wish Jude and Libby well. Say congrats, maybe toast the newlyweds like a normal best man. He asked me to stand up for him, you know?”
“Yeah, he mentioned that.”
“I wanted to, but…I couldn’t.” His fists balled inside the front pocket of his hoodie. “I’m so fucking sick of being afraid. I’m tired of worrying I won’t be able to keep the people I care about safe.”
Oh damn. Didn’t that hit a little too close to home for comfort? “Yeah,” Cam said softly. “I get that.”
Seth glanced over and lowered the hood of his sweatshirt. Stubble covered his head, so short his hair color was hard to judge. A thin white scar started at the edge of his hairline, cut across his forehead and the bridge of his nose, and ended at the corner of his eye, but that one was nothing compare to the ragged ridges of scar tissue on his neck peeking out from under the collar of his sweatshirt.
“You know, people always say they get it. Usually, it’s just words. Hollow. How come I feel like you mean it?”
Cam tore his gaze away from the scars and stared out over the water, his mind kicking up all kinds of gut-wrenching images of Seth with his neck slashed open. Beaten. Tortured. Brutalized.
And then, in a sickening twist of his imagination, Seth’s face morphed into Jude’s.
It could have been Jude in that prison camp. Hell, if he hadn’t gotten dangerously ill right before the mission that landed Seth in that horrible place, it would have been Jude.
And Cam would have been stuck stateside, unable to do a damn thing to protect his baby brother. Helpless, just like when he’d been eleven and his entire world crumbled out from under his feet after a senseless act of violence left the five young Wilde boys orphaned. They had lost so much more than their parents that day. They’d lost their home, their sense of security. And Cam had lived every second since then terrified it would all happen again.
Seth was still staring at him, and he had the strangest sense those blue eyes could see through him. The silence started to get too thick. Yeah, he wasn’t any more immune to the silent treatment than the next Joe Schmo.
“So,” he said after another long drink of the too-light beer. “Jude’s glad you came, but he doesn’t want you staying if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“I know.”
“Do you need a ride home?”
Seth heaved out a breath. “Yeah. I guess I’m not ready for this yet.”
“All right. You wanna stay here until I get my keys?”
He nodded and up came the hood again.
Cam pushed away from the tree and emptied the rest of his beer out in the sand. “I’ll be back in a few.” He didn’t wait for a reply and walked toward Eva on the boardwalk, depositing the empty in a bin on his way.
“What happened down there?” she asked and handed back his Hawaiian shirt. “You look a little rattled.”
Only she would see the slight tremor in his hands that gave away how much that encounter had upset him.
Cam slid into the shirt and buttoned it. “He has a house not too far from here. I’m going to take him home so he can regain his bearings without all this noise and confusion around him. Cover for me, will ya?”
She rubbed a hand down his bicep in a friendly caress that wasn’t the least bit sexual, and yet his balls tightened at the skin-to-skin contact. She looked too good in that damn dress, with her hair loose and wavy with wilted curls…