Fly With Me (Wild Aces #1)(53)
He emptied the bottle of beer, setting it down on the wooden railing.
“Go back to your girl. I’ll come inside in a second.”
“You sure?”
He nodded.
I turned to walk back into the party and Easy’s voice stopped me in my tracks.
“Don’t f*ck it up with her. She’s the kind of girl you work your ass off to keep. You’re not going to find another one like her. Take it from me, nothing sucks more than watching the girl you want be just out of your grasp.”
JORDAN
We got home from the barbecue late, a weird tension descending on the group. Noah was quiet and left to take a shower. Easy went to the living room and turned on the television. And I hovered in the hallway, wondering if I should say something to him because the look of utter defeat on his face suggested he desperately needed someone to talk to.
Finally, Easy broke the silence for me.
“You can just say it. I know you saw.”
I swallowed. “You love her.”
The look he sent me was an awful mix of pain and panic.
“No.”
My gaze didn’t waver.
“Yeah,” he admitted, his voice low.
That word. He said it as though it clawed its way through his throat. I’d always thought of Easy as shallow. And I’d never really understood Noah’s friendship with him. But the look in Easy’s eyes, the sound of his voice—there was a depth there I’d never imagined. And even more surprising, it had been Dani who brought it out in him.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He rubbed his jaw, that same haunted stare in his gaze.
“No.”
“Do you need to talk about it?”
He nodded.
An idea hit. Maybe it was stupid, but I felt the need to do something.
“Wait here.”
I walked to the kitchen, rummaging around in the freezer until I found the carton I was looking for. I grabbed two spoons from the drawer and headed back to the living room.
I bit back a laugh at the look of curiosity on Easy’s face. Given the state of their kitchen before I’d gone grocery shopping, I figured there wasn’t a lot of mint chocolate chip in his life. It was a travesty I was determined to rectify as soon as possible.
I handed him a spoon and the carton of ice cream.
“Eat.”
The side of his mouth twitched. “Is this supposed to make it all okay?”
“Not even close. But it’s good. Really good. And perfect body aside, you need a little splurge.”
The twitch grew. “Do you force-feed Noah ice cream?”
“I have other means of making Noah happy.”
He grinned. “I’ve heard.”
I made a face.
“No, literally, you guys are loud as shit. Noah hasn’t said a word, though.”
My cheeks flamed at the idea of Easy hearing us have sex. It wasn’t lost on me that I was, indeed, loud.
“Do you and Noah usually talk about your sex lives?”
“Usually?” Easy shrugged, opening the carton. “Sometimes. Not about you.”
That was a relief, at least.
“This is good,” he commented, polishing off a spoonful of ice cream. “Did you get Noah to buy this?”
I nodded. “The rabbit food got old.”
Another smile. He really was beautiful. “Rabbit food?”
“Almonds, celery, carrots.”
He laughed. “Fair enough.”
We sat there in silence while he ate the ice cream, occasionally holding the carton out to me so that I could dig out a spoonful. And with the magic of mint chocolate chip, he started talking.
“I keep thinking—hoping—it’ll go away. That I’ll look at her and this feeling in my chest won’t be there anymore. I keep waiting for it to die.”
I winced. “When did it start?”
“First time I saw her. We had a Hail and Farewell. It’s a squadron function where we welcome new pilots that come in and say good-bye to ones who are leaving. I’d been TDY so I’d missed the change of command, didn’t even know who she was. I just walked into the squadron bar and saw this girl standing there, playing with one of the kids, this smile on her face . . .”
His voice broke off, that look back in his eyes.
“I’ve never felt that way. Ever. I wanted to know who she was, hell, I think part of me stopped thinking and I just went over there, determined to make her mine, my brain not even considering the idea that she would already be with someone else. It seemed wrong that she should be with someone else, that she wasn’t meant for me.”
Oh my God.
Oh.
My.
God.
I’d never heard a guy say stuff like this. And given the time I’d spent in the fighter squadron, I’d really never heard a guy like Easy say stuff like this. There didn’t appear to be a lot of sensitive and deep feelings within the Wild Aces, but now I realized I was wrong.
“Then Joker came up and wrapped his arms around her and I realized who she was.”
I could only imagine how he’d felt. The pain. The epic disaster of it all. And I had to imagine that the thing that made it worse was that Joker was a good guy. This wasn’t a situation where Dani was unhappy in a loveless marriage. She adored her husband, and it was pretty clear that he adored her, too.