“What?”
“Are we going to talk about the possibility of you screwing your archnemesis six ways to Sunday by the time you get to Vermont? Because in that outfit, I can’t see this trip ending any other way.”
Lilly’s mouth dropped open and her face flushed with unwanted heat. “That is not going to happen!”
Paige shrugged as she stood up to leave for work. “Never say never. Those words will always come back to bite you in the ass.”
Lilly checked her watch, severe irritation chasing away the last vestiges of doubt in her mind. Seventy-two minutes late. She folded her arms across her chest and glared at the entry door. “This isn’t a seduction, Paige. It’s a war. And you can bet your last dollar that I’m going to win.”
Chapter Two
You’re so fine and you’re mine. I’ll be yours till the end of time…
Nate Jennings swept his arm across the messy nightstand on a search-and-destroy mission. Whichever electronic device he owned that was dragging him back into consciousness was going to die a slow and painful death. Was that…Madonna?
He slammed his fist down on what he guessed was his phone and the music ceased. With a groan he collapsed back onto his sweat-drenched pillow. He was in the ninth circle of hell. Or maybe that was just the hangover he’d inflicted on himself beating the shit out of his brain. Jesus H. Christ. How much had he drunk last night?
He cracked an eye open and the empty fifth of whiskey sitting next to his bed answered his question.
Note to self: Whiskey is not our friend.
However much he’d had to drink, it hadn’t been enough. Despite the black fog that the alcohol had created, the nightmares had still found a way through. They always did.
He closed his eyes, trying to ignore how cold and wrong the dog tags around his neck felt against his bare chest—especially with the memory of charred flesh and death still fresh in his mind. He wanted to rip off the damned metal tags…but even that felt like a betrayal. The weight of them around his neck kept him grounded. Made sure he never forgot—I’m the one who survived, and this is my fucked-up life.
An empty fifth of whiskey. An empty bed. Everything just…empty.
He felt sick.
Like a virgin. Touched for the very first time.
The music had started up again from the floor beside his bed. Motherfucker. Nate leaned over the mattress and grabbed his cell phone off the floor. A picture of his brother flipping him off with a shit-eating grin on his face flashed across the screen.
“You’ve been fucking with my phone again,” Nate snapped into the receiver.
“It could have been worse. I could have gone with Miley Cyrus.”
He sat up and threw his legs over the edge of the bed, pinching the bridge of his nose. His head throbbed, pinpricks of pain that mimicked the steady beat of helicopter blades slicing through his thoughts.
“You’re a sick bastard. You know that, right?” he muttered.
“I’ve been trying to call you all morning. I thought I was going to have to send a search party.”
“I was sleeping.” Nate pushed himself off the bed and lumbered to the bathroom where he put the phone on speaker and set it on the counter. Jesus. Couldn’t he have one night of getting shit-faced and sleeping away his demons without the rest of the world beating down his door? He twisted on the cold water and splashed his face in an effort to wash away the remnants of his nightmare.
“Why do I get the feeling ‘passed out’ is the more appropriate term here? You sound like crap,” Jace observed. “You okay?”
Okay? Nate braced his hands on the counter and stared at his dripping reflection in the mirror. His scars were on full display, the ridges of white flesh a cold reminder of the crash that had turned his life upside down and inside out. He ran a hand over the tattoo on his bicep that had once been the marine insignia his father had worn on his skin. Now the ink was broken up and unrecognizable where hot metal and flames had licked his flesh. The nerve endings were long gone, leaving the area numb, but days like today, he could still feel the burn.
His hands shook against the counter and he clenched them into fists to calm them. The haunted eyes that stared back at him in the mirror made him feel like he was looking at a stranger. A stranger who was pissing away a second chance at life. A chance he didn’t deserve. He grabbed the dog tags around his neck and gritted his teeth, painful pressure pressing against his ribs, his heart, his skull.
Hale. Clemmons. Keller. Puckett. Rivera. Hanson. Lopez.
He blinked, and turned the water off. “I’m fine.”
Jace paused and blew out a breath on the other line. “You know…it’s okay if you’re not. You could talk to me about it. God knows, it would be nice to talk about something other than fucking flower arrangements and seating charts.”
Nate scrubbed a towel over his face and bit his tongue. Lashing out wasn’t going to help. It would just make Jace feel like shit and make Nate feel even worse. They’d done this dance too many times to count in the beginning…back when he hadn’t yet figured out how to hide just how fucked-up he was inside. Since then he’d learned. Smile. Nod. Give Jace shit at appropriate times and keep a tight lid on the darkness that was eating him alive. Most days he felt like he was on autopilot. But at night, inside the quiet confines of his apartment, he crashed. Over and over again. Jace didn’t know that. Couldn’t know that. Nate refused to drag his brother down with him. Especially when he’d finally found the happiness he deserved. The less Jace knew, the better.
“Did you call just to bust my balls or are you getting cold feet? If you’re looking for a getaway driver, you’ll have to look somewhere else. I’m suddenly not feeling very brotherly.”
Jace hesitated. That was always a bad sign. His brother was usually pretty straightforward…unless he was about to drop a bomb that he knew would piss him off. Nate tensed, wondering if he’d found out he was leaving again. God, he hoped not. That shit was something that needed to be dealt with face to face. Man to man. And definitely not a few days before his wedding.
“I need a favor.”
“Am I supposed to be surprised?” Nate tossed his towel in the hamper, feeling awash in guilty relief. A favor, he could handle. In fact, he’d become all too familiar with the I-need-a-favor call from Jace over the past eight months. But then, it was a probably a real bitch trying to run a business from the Sudan. Nate had been doing everything from slinging drinks to handling payroll at the club they owned together while his brother was jet-setting across the globe. Nate couldn’t complain. He had encouraged him to go after Hayden, after all. He’d just expected him to bring their girl back home a little sooner.
“You need me to swing by the bar on my way out of town?” he asked.
“No. Nothing like that.” Jace paused. “I need you to go home.”
“I am home, jackass.”
“No…I need you to stop by Mom and Dad’s on your way to Vermont. I want to give Hayden the necklace Grandma left to Mom. I know we never discussed how everything was going to be divided up, but…”
Discussed? They never even mentioned it. That old house in Cedar Springs, Virginia, was like a museum—everything they’d known from their childhood locked up, frozen, and forgotten. Neither of them had ever had the heart to sell the place. To pick apart and pack away what was left of their parents.
Nate stared at the floor, hating the crushing pressure in his chest. “It’s yours,” he finally said. “Mom always loved Hayden. She would have wanted her to have it.”
Silence stretched across the line before Jace cleared his throat. “Yeah. I think so, too. I left all of the stuff in Mom’s room the way it was, so it should be in her jewelry box. The wooden one with the blue doves on it.”
“Consider it done.” Just the thought of setting foot in their hometown again made his stomach roil, but he owed his brother at least this much.
“I know I’m pushing my luck here, but I need one more favor,” Jace said. “I need you to give Lilly a ride to the wedding.”
Just hearing Lilly’s name caused Nate’s stomach to clench even harder. Memories of strawberry-flavored lips doused the awful flames in his mind with desire and his cock stirred with interest.
No. He wasn’t going there. Cedar Springs and Lilly? Make that a hell, no. He had enough shit to deal with at the moment without that particular walk down memory lane. Like finding out a way to tell his brother he’d been recommissioned…
He glanced over at the official papers taunting him from the dresser across the room. Everything was done. The date was set. He had two weeks left in civilian life, and then his ass belonged to the United States Marine Corps again. He could still see the look on his former commander’s face when he’d told him he wanted back on active duty. Who would have blamed him for thinking Nate was off his rocker for wanting back in when he had the safety net of his own business and a supportive family? Not to mention the disability checks they’d started sending him after he’d been med boarded out. Most men would have moved on, taken the money and started a new life. But Nate couldn’t do it. Getting those checks in the mail every month was like a slap in the face. Men were in the ground and he was getting paid to sit on his ass.
“You have a good thing going for you, Nate. Your whole life ahead of you. Why the hell would you want to take this kind of risk again?”
Because it was time to make things right.
He wasn’t delusional. Search-and-rescue pilots had the shit end of the stick. Nine times out of ten you were flying into conditions that could go from bad to cluster-fuck in the blink of an eye. None of that mattered. He needed this chance for redemption. He needed this chance…to escape.
There was nothing for him left here. He was done pretending that he wasn’t completely fucking ruined inside. He’d led a civilian life best he could. But in the end…he didn’t fit into this world anymore. He never would. Not until the world he’d left behind stopped haunting him. Not until he stopped running from the ghosts on his heels.
It was time to go back.
Time he started to sort out the shit tying his head into knots.
He may not be able to bring back the men he lost, but he could, at the very least, go back and do his part to save the lives of the rest of his brothers who were out there risking their lives every day. And if he didn’t make it back alive this time, at least the torment would be over. At least he would have died doing something that would make his father proud.
Being stuck with a woman who did nothing but remind him of everything he couldn’t have…well, that would do nothing but hinder his progress. He had a plan. And Lilly was a detour he didn’t have the time or energy for. He’d already said good-bye. Put her out of his head. Buried the undeniable attraction to her so deep it would never see the light of day.
“I can’t do that,” he finally said.
“I already told her you would.”
“Are you high?” Nate choked out. “Why would you do that?”
“Because her flight got canceled due to the storm. She’s stranded with no way to get here,” Jace said, and pushed out a breath. “I guess I was foolish enough to think you’d man up and do the right thing.”
“Trust me. I am doing the right thing,” Nate said. “Neither of us would survive the trip.”
He squeezed his eyes shut trying to quell the pounding inside his skull. He couldn’t deal with this. Hell, they couldn’t even be in the same room together for five minutes without pissing each other off. And Jace expected them to take a road trip together?
Worse, seeing Lilly again would lead to wanting her. And wanting her would lead to kissing her, touching her, ripping her panties off with his damn teeth. Things Nate had no business even dreaming about when he had a countdown clock to departure hanging over his head.