He went rigid.
“I honestly don’t know,” I answered, doing my best to cover whatever reaction he was having to the question. “But I can tell you I know why he carries this scar.” His hand was warm as I picked it up, turning it toward Gray so he could see the scar across the back of it.
“Tell me it was something undeniably stupid,” Brown pled. “You have to give us something.”
I grinned. “Coral in Fiji. My necklace fell off, and he swam down to get it, cutting his hand up.” My touch lingered before I let his hand go, and our eyes met.
“Must have been some necklace,” Gray said. “Coral cuts like a knife.”
“It was,” I said without looking away from Nate, remembering the way he’d made love to me when we’d gotten back from snorkeling that afternoon. My body heated at the memory, and given the way his eyes darkened, I wondered if he was reliving those hours too. “It’s still one of my favorite pieces of jewelry, considering you gave it to me twice, first on my birthday and then after you found it.”
“It always looked good on you,” he said softly. “Took me hours to pick out the right one.”
The block of ice I’d kept around my heart when it came to Nate didn’t just thaw; it melted. Whatever had bound us together in the first place was still there, as tangible as ever. We’d buried it, ignored it, burned it to the ground, but never managed to sever it. At least not on my end.
It would always be there.
The radio made a noise, and Gray’s attention shifted as he lifted the handset, answering what appeared to be a call.
“Do you have any embarrassing stories for us? Anything we can use against him?” Rose asked. At least I thought it was Rose. Lilac was a real possibility.
Nate lifted a single brow.
I shook my head. “No.” Ripping my gaze from Nate’s, I managed a smile at Rose. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“Green,” Gray said, lifting the handset.
Nate stood and crossed the aisle, breaking the twelve-inch rule.
“Is he scared of anything?” Gray asked, sliding into Nate’s seat. “Spiders? Bats? Cucumbers?”
I laughed at the cucumber question and shook my head as Nate picked up the receiver. I knew exactly what Nate was afraid of, but that wasn’t my secret to share. And from what I’d seen, he wasn’t anywhere close to becoming his father.
“This is Navarre,” he said so quietly that I barely heard it above the ridiculous suggestions being tossed my way. Cats. Hugs. Snakes. He wasn’t afraid of any of them, so I didn’t respond.
“Navarre?” I whispered, watching Nate’s shoulders straighten as he nodded at whatever was being said, but his reply was lost in the hum of voices around me.
“His call sign,” Gray answered quietly. “The color thing is so you don’t know who we are. Our call signs are so we know who’s actually on the other end of the call.”
Navarre. Gravity shifted beneath my feet.
Isabeau’s lover, cursed to only see her at dawn and dusk. Doomed to love her but never touch her. Never hold her. Never make a real life together.
“You okay?” Gray asked.
I nodded.
Guess Nate hadn’t managed to sever the connection between us either.
CHAPTER TWENTY
NATHANIEL
Tacoma, Washington
June 2017
“I know you’re not trying to talk me out of going three hours before my flight,” I grumbled from the passenger seat of Torres’s truck as we sped toward the airport.
Sped because he’d talked me into one last workout before leaving.
“Of course not.” He shot me a look before passing an SUV and cutting across three lanes of traffic. “I saw how much you paid for those tickets.” His dark brows furrowed.
“Go ahead and say the but, because I know one is coming.” My weight shifted as he took the off-ramp. I was starting to wish I’d driven myself and just paid to park my truck at the airport.
“Do you even realize how lucky we are to both have passed selection?” He hit the brakes hard at the stoplight.
The fact that I passed psych was a miracle, but I’d gotten pretty good at giving the answers they wanted to hear.
“I do.” We’d spent nine weeks in North Carolina proving ourselves for Special Forces Assessment and Selection, and both Torres and I had made it, along with Rowell and another guy from our unit, Pierson, which made sense since the four of us had spent the last eighteen months training both on and off deployment.
It had been hell, but it had been worth it.
Pierson was thrilled to make it, but I knew this was just a stepping stone for Torres and Rowell . . . and for me. That long-ago thought I’d had on the plane with Izzy, that it would be cool to make Special Forces, was now a very real, very actualized dream. I was damn good at what I did, and I had to admit: I wanted to be the best.
“And you’re just going to jet off to Fiji, knowing that we’ll only have a couple weeks to get ready to PCS to Bragg.” The light changed, and he turned toward the airport.
“I’ve been talking about this trip with Izzy for years,” I said, recognizing how defensive that sounded. “And it’s not like a vacation is going to get extended. I’ll be back in time to leave for Bragg.” I hadn’t seen her since Mom’s funeral six months ago, and the terms we’d left on hadn’t exactly been clear. We’d spent that night together, never talking about Mom, or our lack of a future, or anything that mattered outside that room. I’d left her asleep and sated, the sheets tangled in her long, beautiful legs, choosing to let her sleep instead of waking her for what was bound to be an awkward goodbye.
That night lived in my dreams.
Her mother snapping that she was chasing after a soldier . . . that lived in my nightmares. Knowing Izzy was out of my league and hearing it directly from her mother were two different things.
“You’d better be back. We said we were doing this together.” Torres glanced sideways at me.
“Yeah, yeah.” I shook my head. He was my best friend, and there was no one I’d want to go through it with, but he was a little intense these days. Or maybe my focus was just on getting to Izzy. “I know. Get through Q Course, and then it’s all about Delta.”
“It’s going to be awesome.” He grinned. “My old man is going to flip that I’m following in those boots.”
I couldn’t help but smile at how happy he was.
“Does your non-girlfriend know?” he asked as we pulled up in front of the departures drop-off point.
My stomach sank as I climbed out of the cab, shutting the front door, only to open the back one for my bags.
“You’ve told her, right?” The look on his face was equal parts judgment and worry. “Because from what I know about Izzy, she’s going to want some path forward, considering she just graduated law school.”
“I’ll tell her.” I shouldered my backpack and hefted my suitcase to the sidewalk.
“Where the hell does she think you’ve been for the past few months?”
A grimace crossed my face. “I didn’t really explain it.”