Mr. Big Jerk: A Forbidden Second Chance Romance (Kinda Cocky Series Book 3), стр. 38
My stomach plummeted to my toes.
Brutus: Still on for our yearly beer call?
Ashton: You know damn good, and well, I wouldn’t miss this for the world.
Riley: Yep. Wife’s got the kids for the night. I’ll be there.
Brutus: Clint, you in?
Ashton: A beer for our fallen brother?
A horn honked, pulling me out of my trance, and I slammed the gas pedal to the floor. I tossed my phone into the passenger’s seat and made a quick U-turn, cutting off the flow of traffic. Work wasn’t happening today. Not after those text messages.
How the fuck did it slip my mind?
Today marked another anniversary since my best friend had been blown to bits overseas. Today marked another anniversary of the day I had lost the only man in my life that ever meant something to me. Today marked another anniversary of the day I had to knock on his wife’s door and tell her that the father of their children had died, right there in my arms.
And I needed something stronger than the whiskey I had with my father at lunch.
19
Roxy
I pulled up to Clint’s place with a massive smile on my face. Mostly because I was excited to see him. But, partially because I bought a yummy-looking blackberry pie, and I wanted to smear it on my body and have him lick it off me.
Well, maybe not that intense. But, the damn thing smelled delicious, and I was ready to dig into it.
However, when I got to Clint’s place, something was wrong. I found his apartment door ajar, and I smelled the heavy scent of booze filtering through the crack. My gut turned over onto itself at the smell. It made me sick to my stomach. But, I also knew something was wrong.
Something was very, very wrong.
“Clint?” I called out.
I eased the door open with my foot and found him slumped against the couch.
“Clint? Sweetheart?” I asked softly.
I watched him throw back the rest of the amber liquid in his glass before something tumbled to the floor. He leaned forward, slamming his glass onto the crooked coffee table, but not once did he look at me. I walked into his studio apartment and closed the door with my foot, trying to swallow down my own bile.
When he finally turned to look at me, I saw nothing but sorrow in his features.
“Oh, sweetheart,” I whispered.
I dropped the food by the door and rushed to his side. I sat down, taking his trembling hand in mine. His cheeks were wet, almost as if he had been crying. And as I brushed his tears away, I heard a voice wafting up from the floor.
“Hello? Is someone there?”
I paused. “Uh, hello?”
“Down here. Clint’s phone.”
I eyed Clint curiously before I bent down and picked up his phone. Which was what had apparently dropped to the floor. And when I turned it over, I saw a video feed with three other guys staring back at me.
“Uh, hi?” I asked.
“Are you Roxy?”
I stared at the man with a scar running down his left cheek. “Yeah. I am. Who are you?”
Scarface waved. “I’m Riley. The one with the blonde hair is Ashton. And the big guy with the crooked nose is Brutus.”
“Hey,” they both said as they waved.
I looked over at Clint. “How do you guys know each other?”
Clint didn’t even look at me as Riley answered my question.
“We were all on the same SEAL team.”
I looked back at the phone. “Do you mind if I ask you guys what you were talking about? Clint doesn’t look very well.”
Brutus spoke up. “Bryce.”
I blinked. “Who’s Bryce?”
Ashton sighed. “Oh, boy.”
“Clint?” Riley asked.
“Hang up the phone,” he murmured.
I peeked over at him. “Honey, I really think--.”
He whipped his eyes over toward mine. “I said, hang up the fucking phone.”
I did as he asked without hesitation, though I felt bad for the other guys on the line. I tossed his phone onto the coffee table before I took his hand within mine, scooting ever so closely to the man I’d come to care for. I smoothed my hand over his chest. I pressed my palm against his heart. I watched his eyes as they panned across the room, looking for nothing in particular.
Then, I sat there and waited until he was ready to talk.
“Bryce was the best SEAL I’d ever come across,” he said.
I nodded as I sat there silently, listening to whatever he had to say.
“Bryce was my buddy. We went through BUD/S training together.”
“What’s that?”
“Part of specialized training for underwater maneuvers, and we took the SEAL test together. Damn near puked up our guts together after all the salt water we swallowed. But we did it. Together. And we were supposed to do this together, too.”
I grinned. “What? Have a baby?”
He slowly looked over at me. “Life, Roxy. We were supposed to do life together.”
I cupped his cheek. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Do you need to talk about it?”
“The guys think so.”
I slid into his lap. “Then, maybe we should try talking about it. Just a little bit. Okay?”
His eyes stared off into the distance. “His favorite color was red.”
“It’s a good color.”
“I hate that color now.”
“Why?”
“Because it was the last color he was covered in before I had to pull his lifeless body into the nook.”
“The nook?”
His eyes found mine. “A chinook?”
I blinked. “What’s that?’
“The helicopters with two blades?”
“Oh, oh, oh! Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what its name was.”
He shrugged. “It’s fine. Most people don’t.”
I ran my fingers through his hair. “What happened out there? When Bryce died?”
He sniffled. “Gunfire. And lots of it.”
“Were you on a mission?”
His arm wrapped around me tightly. “An overnight mission.”
“What do you mean?”
“It means we were pulled out of our beds in the middle of the night for a rescue mission.”
“Oh.”
His head fell back. “We choppered into this small, innocent town in the middle of some deserted nowhere. After a while, they all start to look the same, but the mission was simple: find our man,