Fly With Me (Wild Aces #1)(35)

I wanted to go to Florida. Wanted to make an effort to see her, wanted her to know she was a priority. I’d been here before. I mean not here, not with someone I liked as much as I liked her, but there had been other girls I’d wanted to date, other attempts at starting relationships that had crashed and burned because no matter how hard I tried, work always came first.

What I hadn’t told Jordan was that I’d gotten my call sign in part because of an emergency I’d had in the jet, but also because I was shit at relationships. When I was younger, it had been easier to shrug it off, to tell myself it didn’t matter, that I had plenty of time to meet a girl, start a family. And now I felt like an idiot. I was thirty-three, and my life wasn’t that different from what it had been a decade ago. Still going out to bars and clubs with Easy, looking to get laid, still spending holidays in front of the TV with crappy takeout on the years that I couldn’t make it to California to see my family.

And now there was Jordan. And even though it hadn’t been that long, and I had no idea how things would play out between us, she was too perfect for me to ignore the twinge that told me that if I f*cked this up with her, the odds of me finding a girl like her again were pretty much nil.

She nudged me. “You okay?”

I nodded. “Yeah.” I hesitated, wondering when I’d become the guy who initiated the relationship conversation. Maybe it was a side effect of growing up. Or maybe it was the fear of losing out on this chance.

“I can’t believe you have to leave tomorrow.”

“I know. It’s been a short visit.”

I squeezed her hip. “So when am I going to see you again?”

A hesitant smile played at her full mouth. “You want to see me again?”

“Yes.”

The smile got bigger. “Good.”

I felt like a teenager again, but it was the truth, and somewhere along the way I’d made the conscious decision not to play games with her.

“I like you. A lot.”

She beamed back at me, squeezing my hand. “I like you a lot, too.”

“I know this is tough with our schedules and everything, but I want to try to make it work.” I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation in the entrance of a pancake restaurant, but at the moment I couldn’t be bothered to care all that much. “I want to see if there could be a future here.”

My heart pounded. On the one hand, we were both definitely at that age when relationships implied settling down. On the other, honestly, I’d been here enough times to be hesitant to make promises I couldn’t keep. And she seemed like she understood about my job, but other girls had before her, only to end things when an unexpected deployment came up or I missed the holy trifecta of Valentine’s Day–birthday–anniversary.

Jordan leaned toward me, wrapping both of her arms around me, pressing her face to my chest. Her words were muffled there, but I heard them anyway.

“Me, too.”



JORDAN

It was way too soon for me to admit this. Way too soon for me even to be feeling it. But I did.

I liked him. A lot. And despite the logistics of it, my heart could definitely see a future with him, even as my head struggled to figure out how to have a future with him without giving up something that mattered a lot to me.

We spent the day doing touristy stuff, Noah showing me around Oklahoma City. I didn’t know if it was the fact that he’d basically exhausted me or what, but the sexual tension between us settled to a more manageable level since the first time I’d met him, and instead of thinking about how much I wanted to jump him, I spent most of the day just enjoying his company.

He was really fun and smart. He made me laugh constantly. And he was sweet, affectionate in a way that tugged at my heart.

He held my hand as he led me around the city. When he drove us places in his big SUV, his palm rested on my thigh, not in a sexual way, but like he wanted the reminder that I was next to him. Like he needed it.

With every hour that passed, I fell deeper, harder, and I freaked out a little bit more.

For dinner, he took me to a hole-in-the-wall barbecue restaurant that had amazing brisket.

We were that couple—we sat next to each other in the booth, his hand on my thigh. I’d never understood why couples sat like that and even mocked my fair share for looking like they were Velcroed together, but now that I was in the same position, I totally got it.

And liked it. A lot.

“So what does March look like for you?” Noah asked, his fingers stroking my leg through the denim.

Ever since he’d broached the subject of wanting to see me again, I’d thought about my schedule, wondering how many more weekends I could ask Sophia to cover for me and watch Lulu before she got annoyed. I’d definitely done my share of weekend shifts for her, but still, I didn’t want to be that girl—the one who met a guy and let him take over her life. I’d worked too hard to build my business and was too proud of the store to start flaking.

“Spring break is always busy for us, so the store will probably be pretty hectic. And my sister’s getting married at the end of March.”

And I still didn’t have a date.

I thought back to our earlier conversation in the pancake restaurant, wondering what exactly Noah meant when he talked about seeing if we had a future. Were we a couple now? It seemed kind of fast, but everything he’d said sort of gave that impression even though he hadn’t exactly said the words.