Flirting with the Frenemy (Bro Code #1)(27)

Two pirates on unicycles are juggling back and forth right in the center of Blackbeard Avenue, and the Sea Cow Creamery across the street is handing out free samples to anyone willing to shout Ahoy, matey! to distract them.

Everyone’s smiling despite the pirate insults flying.

Everyone except the Blond Caveman.

He’s scowling at me.

And I’m ignoring him.

“You guys are coming with us to Cannon Bowl, right?” Monica says.

“Wyatt promised Tucker a trip to Davy Jones’s Locker,” Ellie says with just enough regret in her voice that I almost hope Tucker announces he’d rather go bowling.

He doesn’t, of course.

Kid loves a good water park.

But I make sure to kiss Ellie goodbye before the bridal party departs. A good kiss.

The kind of kiss that suggests there’s more waiting where that came from.

And fuck if I wouldn’t kiss her longer if I could.

Blond Caveman glares at me.

And I decide I’ll be perfectly content playing her boyfriend for the rest of the week.

“Dad, friends kiss, right?” Tucker asks as we head to the car for the swim bag and more sunscreen.

“Grown-up friends do sometimes, yes,” I tell him.

“Does that mean you’re getting married too?”

Fuck, I never should’ve gotten married the first time, but I thought it was the right thing to do. No chance in hell I’ll do it twice.

I squat down to his level. “You know you’re number one in my life?”

“Behind your job.”

I shake my head. “I do my job to keep you and your friends and your friends’ families safe. Because I love you first, even when my job keeps me away. I miss you every day. And I might have special friends come and go, but you will always be most important. Okay?”

He frowns like he wants to ask more, but just says, “Okay.”

And once again, I wonder how much I’m messing him up.

But this is my life in the Air Force. I move. I make new friends. They leave. I make more friends. Then I leave. It’s the life a lot of military kids live too.

You have to say goodbye a lot, but you meet a hell of a lot of good people along the way.

I’ll miss it when I’m done, which will be sooner than I ever wanted, but the odds of me having a long career in the Air Force close to Tucker are slim to none.

“We’re pretty dang lucky,” I tell him. “We got to share lunch with a bunch of people who think you’re awesome.”

He grins at me. “That’s ’cause I am awesome, Dad.”

He sure fucking is.





Ten





Ellie



I spend the rest of the day feeling weirdly lonely despite being with Monica and Jason.

Yes, and Patrick and Sloane too, but it’s weird to hang out with a man I’ve seen naked, knowing he gets naked for someone else now, so I’m concentrating on my best friend instead.

And not on Wyatt.

That kiss.

Tucker and his sweet insistence that no one else could ever draw pirates like I could.

“The parents get here tomorrow,” Monica tells me with a nose-wrinkle as we reach my car in the parking lot. She insisted on walking with me, and since we haven’t had much alone time the last few weeks aside from driving out here, it’s good to have a few more minutes of us time. “My mom still doesn’t understand the pirate wedding thing, but I think when she sees Jason sword fight the mutinous pirates who want to steal me after we say our vows, she’ll get it.”

I laugh. “I love you.”

“Of course you do. Everyone else you know is B-O-R-I-N-G.” She gives a mock eye roll, and we both crack up again, because there’s nothing remotely boring about the people I’ve known longest in my life.

Beck and half the guys we grew up with have been world famous since before I graduated high school, and it hasn’t always been easy to find the true friends from the people who just want to get close to Beck and his Bro Code bandmates. But Monica’s all country, all the way, and she always has been. She couldn’t pick a boy band out of a lineup, and she’d rather drool over Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean and Captain Hook from Once Upon A Time than check out my brother’s Instagram page.

She also always asks me to turn the cardboard cutouts of him around whenever she stops by his house.

Or my parents’ house after Beck’s been there and left a few more.

He’s such a goober.

“Seriously, though, I will completely understand if you beg off anything with Jason’s parents. I sometimes wonder how he came out of the same gene pool as the rest of them.”

“Every family has a black sheep.” The Dixons’ is Jason. He works for a nonprofit whose mission is to provide clean drinking water in third world countries, instead of going into the banking business with his father and brother.

Or even into the socialite business with his mother.

It’s been long enough since Patrick and I broke up that I’ve finally been able to see clearly how my priorities have been messed up most of my life. I thought having a solid career, a stable husband in a complementary career, and adorable children to carry on the Ryder family environmental engineering firm was what it’s all about.