In the Likely Event(72)

“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.”

“But you’ve told her that you’re back.”

“I . . . sent her an email a couple weeks ago to make sure we were still on for the trip.” Everything I had to say to her needed to be said in person, which wasn’t an opportunity we’d had.

“You’re seriously going to get on that plane, hope she shows up at LAX, and then what . . . pray she didn’t get a boyfriend who can actually be around in the last six months?”

“Pretty much.” She’d said she was coming, but the email had been short, which I’d expected given the timing of her finals. Didn’t mean my stomach wasn’t in knots that she might have changed her mind. We’d both bought tickets in January, and I’d covered the resort, but the financial cost would be nothing compared to the blow of knowing I’d messed up our entire relationship because I hadn’t been able to keep my hands to myself six months ago.