I’ve lost her. Just like I’ve lost Rhys, and Tyler...
Tears sprang to her eyes again, and as unobtrusively as possible, she wiped them away. Still, Geo noticed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked softly. “Not feeling well?”
“Feeling alone.” The admission came easily, too easily, but Lani didn’t care. After tonight she doubted he’d spare her another thought. Right now she had his full attention, and damn if it wasn’t exactly what she needed. “My friends were all team wives, remember? So now that I’m not with a team guy anymore...”
“Ah.” He nodded. “Guess that means time to expand your horizons. Find friends outside the community. We’re all pretty much assholes anyway.”
She snorted. “Pretty much.”
“You’re better off without us. You really are.”
They snickered together, and she said, “I wish moving on was that simple, though. I was with Rhys for ten years.”
He glanced at her. “Wow. High school sweethearts?”
“Sort of.” She bit her lip. How could she explain to a stranger everything Rhys was—and wasn’t—to her?
Finally she settled on, “My brother died suddenly when I was fourteen. Rhys and I were friends, and afterward, we clung to each other. As time went on, it was easy to convince ourselves it was love.”
“But it wasn’t?”
“Well, let me put it this way. I’ve had a more meaningful conversation with you this past hour than I’ve had with Rhys in years.” She shrugged. “Looking back, we were going through the motions, that’s all.”
Needing something to do with her hands, she fished a hair tie out of her pocket and pulled her hair into a ponytail, aware of Geo’s sympathetic gaze.
“The end of a ten-year relationship is no joke. I’m sorry.”
His quiet sincerity was a balm to her ragged emotions. “Thanks.”
They strolled on in a companionable silence, their shoulders so close together, they almost touched. Lani glanced at his moonlit profile. “So. Who were you drinking with tonight?”
His lips tightened into a thin line, and for a moment, she didn’t think he’d answer. Then he grunted, “A teammate. Died one year ago today.”
She winced at the pain threading through the terse words. “Aww, shit, Geo. I’m—”
“Yeah,” he interrupted. “Me, too.”
He didn’t want the pity. Well, she could relate. Painful memories surged, of morbid curiosity, intrusive questions, or worse, judgmental silences followed by disgust. After a while, she’d stopped mentioning Tyler’s death to anyone, leaving Rhys to carry that particular burden alone...
“One-year anniversaries are hard,” was all she said. “I know.”
After a long pause, Geo exhaled slowly. “Yeah, I imagine you do.”
“How long did you and your teammate serve together?”
“Oh, God, off and on for ten years. I actually met Cade before I went to BUD/S, before I was even a SEAL.”
“Yeah?” Instinctively, she kept her tone light, encouraging, remembering her own clawing need to talk to someone, anyone, about who Tyler was, and her desperation not to define him by his death. “How’d that happen?”
Geo shrugged, although a tiny smile played about his lips. “You really wanna know? It’s kind of a cool story.”
In answer, she dropped to sitting in the sand and looked up at him expectantly.
Grinning now, Geo sank down next to her and lifted one knee to drape his wrist over it. The pose drew his jeans tight across his lap and powerful thighs, the sight of both drying Lani’s mouth up. She gulped, then thought, Fuck it. There was no law against appreciating a beautiful man, and it’d sure give her a nice memory to hang on to during the long, lonely nights ahead.
When he didn’t immediately say anything, she prompted, “So ten years ago, you were—”
“Twenty years old, and convinced I knew everything.”
“You weren’t a SEAL yet?”
“No, but I was in the Navy, had been for going on two years. In those days, you enlisted the regular way and then applied for Naval Special Warfare. Now you’re sent to a bootcamp that feeds directly into BUD/S, but when I first went in, you had to apply and then wait to hear.”
“That must’ve been hard, the waiting.”
“Shit, you have no idea,” Geo said fervently. “After two years with no word, I’d pretty much convinced myself it was never gonna happen. Then one day I was called into my department head’s office. He had some news for me.”
“You’d made it!”
“Yeah.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t believe it. A couple other dudes were in the office, too. They were part of a SEAL platoon we’d seen around the ship, and when they heard the news, they decided to come check me out.”
“And bust your balls, of course.”
He fell back on his elbows in the sand, his T-shirt riding up a bit with the motion. Tearing her gaze away from the hint of hair-roughened skin below his navel, Lani shivered as Geo’s husky chuckle washed over her again.
“Of course,” he said. “They laughed at me, told me there was no way I’d make it, that I should just decline the SEAL contract right now instead of embarrassing myself at BUD/S. This one guy, I think he could see I was getting pissed, so he told me to speak freely.”
When he didn’t go on, she prompted, “Did you?”
The wicked curl to his lips sent another quiver through her. “Oh, yeah. I got up in his face and said, ‘Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I’ll see you in the teams.’”
“Oh, God.” She clapped her hand over her mouth to suppress her giggle. “Did they give you a beat-down?”
“Nah. I think they were more amused by my arrogant punk-ass routine than anything else. My Chief dismissed me, and as I was heading back to my duties, I heard my name being called. It was one of the SEALs, and yeah, I figured it was time to get my ass kicked. Before I could say anything, he goes, ‘Me and my buddy made a bet. Wanna hear it?’”
Lani groaned. “Let me guess. Something about how long it’d take you to wash out.”
“That’s what I thought, too, but nope. The bet was whether I’d make it or not.” Geo shook his head wonderingly. “Believe it or not, this guy bet I’d make it. You could’ve knocked me down with a fuckin’ feather when he said that. Then he punched me on the shoulder, said his name was Cade Barlow and that I should look him up when I got to the teams. Not if, but when.”