But looking into Cam’s gaze, she couldn’t see him ever trying to make her into something she wasn’t. Life with him would only get better.
But they weren’t going to go there. And if that caused a little teeny, tiny spark of sadness, she shoved it aside. This wasn’t the time to dwell. She needed to live in the moment, which normally she could do only by writing a reminder in a journal. Easy enough to do, since her journal was ever present. Right now it was in her purse. “Do you have your keys to the truck?”
“Yeah. What do you need? I’ll get it for you.”
Okay, she had two options: admit her crazy or keep it to herself. But maybe to prove that this wouldn’t—couldn’t—last, she gave him the truth. “I need to write something in my journal.”
“Sure,” he said without blinking an eye, and turned toward the stairs to get to the parking lot.
She stared after him, dumbfounded. Just the fact that he’d go get it made it possible to stop him. “Actually, it’s okay. It can wait.” Then she stepped into him and pressed her face in the crook of his neck to just breathe him in for a moment, willing herself to remember.
Live in the moment.
After all, there was no sense in thinking about the future, because as she knew all too well, not everyone got one. So why ruin the here and now by running ahead of herself? Besides, she thought with a happy sigh as Cam’s arms came around her, the here and now was pretty damn amazing. “Thank you,” she whispered against his skin, and then, unable to resist, she kissed his throat.
He took a deep breath, and his arms tightened a little. She thought he’d kiss her, but he didn’t, maybe because Brodie was suddenly there, taking their helmets, grinning, asking them how their ride was.
“Great,” she said, stepping back from Cam. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. It was your man here. He dragged me in on my day off. Said I owed him.” His smile was lopsided and very genuine as he looked to Cam. “And I do. I owe him my life. Several times over.” And with another quick salute, this one not sarcastic, he turned and vanished into his shack.
She looked at Cam, but he didn’t say anything, just took her hand and walked with her back to the truck.
“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked when they were on the highway.
“Yes, in case you couldn’t tell by the grin on my face.” She squeezed his hand. “Thank you, for reminding me to take time to fly.”
He brought her hand up to his mouth and brushed a kiss against her palm, which hit her heart. And also decidedly south of her heart. “What did Brodie mean, he owes you his life?”
His eyes were on the road now, but she sensed a rare hesitation.
“You can’t say,” she guessed.
“There’s a lot of my military past that I can’t talk about.”
There was something in his tone now. Wariness? “I understand,” she said.
He glanced at her. “You do?”
“Of course. Your missions are probably mostly classified.”
“This one wasn’t. It’s just hard to talk about. He was on a training mission that went horribly wrong. His parachute didn’t open correctly. He got separated from his unit, landed in unfriendly waters, and then it became a rescue situation.”
“And you were the one who rescued him,” she guessed.
“My unit, yes.”
“You’re a close-knit bunch?”
“Very.” He shot her a smile. “A unit spends more time together than most families ever do. We get into, and out of, a lot of shit together.”
“So what does a day as a Coastie look like?”
“At the unit, or deployed?”
“Both,” she said, giving in to her ridiculous curiosity about him since he seemed willing—somewhat—to answer her questions.
“If we’re at the PSU—our Port Security Unit,” he clarified, “we start at 0500. It’s training, training, and then more training, most of it brutal. Muscle memory’s everything. We conduct muster, shoot guns, meet with the division, shoot more guns, clean boats, drive boats, and shoot even more guns. Then we go to the range to shoot again until we can’t hold our arms up.” He glanced over at her. “Sensing a trend?”
“Definitely. When do you eat and sleep?”
“Oh, all that’s just the first part of any given day. There’s also division-specific training and inspections. We eat or sleep whenever there’s a spare second. Then wake up and do a wash and repeat.”
Hard life. “And when you’re deployed?” she asked.
He rubbed a hand over his jaw. A rare tell, she’d discovered. He wasn’t uncomfortable often, but he definitely wasn’t a fan of talking about himself.
“Sometimes it’s almost a relief, because there’re no inspections. Rule number one: keep weapons clean at all times. A dirty weapon’ll get you killed. There’s mission planning, equipment checks, reports. And then rule number two: sleep when you can and eat anything other than an MRE when you can. We take eight- to twelve-hour shifts, either driving boats, working in a TOC—tactical operation center—or manning an overwatch with mounted machine guns protecting high-value assets.”
“High-value assets.”
“Such as a navy ship, or Guantánamo Bay, or even a liquefied natural gas ship if the US has intel that it might be used in a way that could be detrimental to a highly populated area.”
She boggled and was in sheer awe at the core strength of this man and all the others like him. “Do you ever get downtime?”
“Sometimes. We Skype home, chase any kind of ball we can get ahold of, and drink. In general, if there’s trouble or merriment to be had while we’re gone and left to our own devices, we will find it.”
This she could believe. “Do you know what I think?”
His expression went slightly wary, the equivalent of a normal man’s full-out wince. “Do I want to know?”
“I think you’re incredible.” She saw his surprise, something she was pretty sure he didn’t normally experience. She smiled. “What?”
He shook his head. “Let’s just say I’ve been in a few relationships where me not being able to talk about specifics was a huge issue, like I didn’t trust them enough.”
“Were any of these serious relationships?”
“I thought so once or twice,” he said. “But I was wrong. I know it’s hard for people to understand that it’s not about trust. Sometimes it’s literally my job not to tell.”
“I get it,” she said softly.
“That easy?”
“For me, yes.” Then it was her turn to pause. “But I’m sorry if the people in your past weren’t able to understand it and you got hurt.”
A very small smile touched his lips, but he kept his eyes on the road. “My mom used to say that the past was just building blocks to the future. That all regrets, mistakes, and miscalculations were the foundation, and as necessary as air.”
She smiled. “I’d have liked your mom.”
“She’d have liked you too.”
CAM HAD JUST turned onto their street when Piper got a page calling her back in to work. He parked and walked her to her car, though he really wanted to feed her again and tuck her into bed because he knew she was tired. But he hated being babied, and he knew she’d hate it too. So he opened her door for her and said, “Be safe.”