Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
“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.”