I would get it done.
And I had a while to wait because Troup’s plane wouldn’t land in Colorado for another two and a half hours.
I wanted to make sure that he was okay.
And I had to explain to my parents that I was backpacking across Europe anyway.
They would not be happy.
Only, I hadn’t realized that by going over there and seeing my dad, that I was also saying goodbye to Trouper. For a very, very long time.
Trial after trial came our way.
Trouper struggled with his second semester, while I did, too.
Our phone calls dropped off as life took over.
Though I never once stopped loving him or thinking about him.
And suddenly, more time passed, and life continued to get in the way.
When I was free, he wasn’t. When he was free, I wasn’t.
When we both were free, he just so happened to be on an aircraft carrier in the middle of an ocean, or in freakin’ Germany, making it nearly impossible to get to him.
Time after time, instance after instance, life got in the way.
And soon, years were passing.
But never once did we lose track of each other. Or stop talking.
Never once did I look at another man.
Never once did I think that he was anything but mine.
PART II
CHAPTER 8
I used to be so nice and sweet. Now I’m all fuck this, fuck you, fuck everything.
-Text from Beckham to Troup
BECKHAM
Eight years later
“This is your assignment,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Adrian Wilkerson, my immediate boss, said.
The door opened and a man entered.
That man made my heart creak in surprise.
Then a wide smile took over my face, and I couldn’t help standing up and throwing my arms around the once-scrawny kid that used to get beat up on a daily basis.
He didn’t look like he could be beat up anymore.
“Easton!” I all but threw myself at him.
Easton laughed and caught me.
He squeezed me tight for a few seconds before letting me go.
“How are you, Beckham? Slumming it with us East Texans?” he teased.
I snorted.
Both Easton and I had gone into the FBI after graduating. Only, he’d stayed in Texas while I’d gone up north. He was in cyber division while I was in the civil rights division investigating human trafficking.
Sadly, our two worlds collided on a case in Valparaiso, Florida.
“We’re not in East Texas, weirdo,” I teased as I finally let him go.
“As nice as this reunion is, I would like to go ahead and finish this up. We do have other things to do today,” Adrian snapped.
I smiled stiffly and sat down, wanting to fire off a million and one questions in Easton’s direction.
Even though he was related to Troup, being his half-brother, he really looked nothing like him.
Troup was all dark and intimidating.
Sure, Easton had the intimidation, but he was light where Troup was dark.
“As you know, we’re all converging on this area because of the recent influx in human trafficking believed to be going on in the region,” Adrian continued. “We’re working with the Air Force, because it’s believed that they’ve had three of their own lost to this.”
My heart started to pound for a different reason than the sex trafficking that’d been my life for the past two years.
I’d done copious research, fieldwork, and put tons of woman hours into everything over the last two years.
But hearing the mention of ‘Air Force’ was enough to make my heart pound and my fingers itch.
Troup.
God, how I missed him.
Even all this time later, the man still had the power to break me.
“Easton, you have your Air Force liaison?” Adrian asked.
I felt my entire fuckin’ heart seize in my chest.
“Sure do.” Easton grinned wickedly at me.
That’s when I knew who his Air Force liaison was.
I popped the top three buttons of my shirt, suddenly finding it hard to breathe.
“Let me go get him,” Easton said as he stood up and started toward the door.
I was close to hyperventilating when the ‘liaison’ finally made his way into the room.
And I felt motherfuckin’ tears gather in my eyes.
I swallowed hard upon seeing that familiar form filling the doorway.
My eyes took him in like a droughted countryside accepting a summer rainstorm.
He’d gained weight. Muscle and bulk.
The jacket that I’d bought him didn’t fit him like I thought it should.
In fact, it was tighter.
Way tighter.
On the verge of too small tight.
At first when Trouper entered the room, he was staring at his brother and laughing.
His face was turned away, revealing the clean-shaven square of his jaw.
There was a new scar on his jaw, right along the line of it, that he’d told me had happened when he’d had to eject from a plane and had hit a roof or something. The side of his face had split open, and he’d had to get ten stitches.
His hair was still stupidly short, and not even remotely how I liked it.
But still, it was Troup in front of me.
The rest of his body, which I hadn’t looked at until then, was encased in an old, worn-out pair of light-colored jeans, a white t-shirt, and he had a pair of sunglasses in his hands that looked like Ray-Bans but were actually Randolph Engineering ones that I’d purchased him two Christmases ago.
That same Christmas he’d given me a pair of diamond earrings that I had in my ears right that moment.
“Oh, okay,” Trouper’s deep, melodic voice drawled.
Then he turned, and our eyes met.
It was as if there weren’t anybody else in the entire room.
There was a long pause, and the small snort of Easton as he took in both of our reactions.
But I couldn’t look away.
Trouper’s pond water eyes hadn’t changed.
Not one bit.
I’d know those eyes anywhere.
Upon seeing them lock on my own, I suddenly found it hard to breathe.
My breathing sped up, and suddenly I couldn’t find the ability to regulate anything.
Not my heart rate. Not what my hands were doing.
Not even my tears.
Because suddenly I was crying.
It’d been so freakin’ long.
“Trouper,” I whispered.
Then I was up and moving, throwing myself at the man as if eight years hadn’t separated us.
Eight years, a couple job switches, four countries, multiple number changes, and a very shitty schedule that always, always hit at the most inopportune times.
I didn’t care that I was hugging the man in front of two of my bosses, multiple of my colleagues, and in the middle of a crowded conference room of people that I would be working with on a case for the unforeseeable future.
I didn’t care about anything but the man in my arms.
“Beck,” he whispered, then pulled back and kissed me.
“Umm,” I heard someone say.
Then Easton was laughing.
“Sorry, sorry,” Easton said. “They’re old friends.”
“Looks like they’re old fuck buddies,” I heard someone say.
I didn’t pay anybody any attention.