Jace spent the entire forty-five-minute boat ride back to his old life in silent fury. Fortunately, Charlie didn’t try to talk to him.

So. This was the way Stella wanted to play it, huh? Once again—for the last time—she’d made his decisions for him like she had a direct line to the whims of the universe and was the only one who could figure out what was best for people.

It was arrogant and high-handed, and he was done. For now. He hadn’t left because he agreed or even because he’d given up. But because he needed to be somewhere Stella wasn’t while he worked off his absolute rage that she still didn’t get how much he’d be willing to endure to be with her. She didn’t get that he was in love with her and that meant she came first. Everything else, including children, was incidental.

But had she let him explain that? Hell no. Instead, she took it upon herself to assume she knew what was best for them both, effectively cutting him off from everything he held dear. That was not her call to make. Except… it was. The bar belonged to her, as did her right to refuse any version of a relationship. And he’d have to find a way to deal with it. Because that’s what grown-ups did.

The crystal waters that had become a hallmark of his home in the Caribbean didn’t even cheer him as Charlie rounded Ilhota Rosa to head into the dock on the northwest end of Duchess Island where the rows of tiny bungalows sat in silent condemnation.

He hadn’t thought he’d come back here. The bungalows were meant for couples, or at least the ones where the former SEALs lived were. Everyone else had slipped into their relationships so easily. Was there something wrong with Jace that he’d hit brick walls time and time again with Stella?

Or was it a simple fact of having fallen for the wrong woman?

Melancholy drifted through his chest, and he hated it. Happiness was a choice, or so he’d always believed. He’d never known someone who coped with the clinical kind of depression that required medication and such. But at this moment, he definitely sympathized with Stella’s point about not being able to talk himself out of feeling like the very atmosphere had so much weight that he couldn’t quite stand straight under the pressure.

“If you want to talk,” Charlie offered as he killed the motor and tied up the boat. “My office is always open.”

Jace nodded, his throat tight. At least now he didn’t have to have a conversation with Charlie about leaving Aqueous. Though he would have for Stella. “That’s appreciated.”

But not necessary. What would he say? The woman I’m in love with still thinks of me as a kid who can’t make his own decisions? Not at the same place in life was a fancier way to say she couldn’t get over the age gap. No one could fix that except Stella, and she was in staunch denial about everything, including that.

Jace stalked to the bungalow and also appreciated that Charlie gave him space, trailing him by a few paces. But when he stormed through the door of the place he apparently still lived, Audra took one look at his face and crossed the living room to engulf him in a hug, a trick and a half since she was almost as short as Stella. He let her because she was good people, and honestly, he could use a hug right about now.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered into his T-shirt. “Stella is on my list.”

That made him laugh, and he appreciated that too. “What makes you think any of this is Stella’s fault?”

“Because I love you and that means it’s automatically the chick’s fault,” she advised with raised eyebrows as she pulled back to evaluate him. “Wanna disabuse me of that notion?”

“Not really.” It wasn’t worth talking about. So he didn’t.

For two days, he kept his head down, drove the boat on some excursions, watched a lot of TV, and steered clear of everyone who acted like they were on a mission to readjust his thinking. Because he was mad and he wanted to stay mad. If he stopped being mad, he was afraid it would really start to hurt, and he really didn’t want that to happen.

Saturday dragged on pretty much like the other days except Charlie disappeared for a long time that afternoon, and when he came back through the door of the bungalow, he was accompanied by the very last person Jace had expected to see outside of Coronado—Blake.

“What are you doing here?” he asked his brother and debated about whether or not to be civil, which was crappy, considering he hadn’t spoken to Blake in probably three months. Covert was still the code for a deployed SEAL, and Jace tried not to worry about his brother when they didn’t have any contact. Mostly he figured as long as he didn’t get any calls from his mom, things were going okay.

“I like the beach,” Blake said in his typical noncommittal fashion. “And it’s selfish of you to hog all the women down here, so I thought I’d come take a few off your hands.”

Charlie had called him. It was written all over his former XO’s face, and Charlie didn’t bother to deny it when Jace shot him a measured glance.

“You didn’t have to fly all the way to the Bahamas to check on me,” he advised his brother. “A phone call would have worked.”

Now that he was here, Jace did a quick eval. Geez. Blake looked like death warmed over, and it wasn’t due to anything so mundane as a long customs line in Freeport. His twin was always perky, even during a HALO drop after circling the Persian Gulf for thirteen hours. Something was up with him.

Blake shrugged and dropped his bag on the floor. “I’m on leave. Mom was worried about whether or not you were eating your vegetables, so here I am. Get off your ass and take me someplace fun.”

The genuine concern in Blake’s voice soured Jace’s mood even further. Sounded like Charlie had also tattled to his mom, who was also Charlie’s surrogate mother, that Jace had been in a mopey mood, which was enough to warrant an all-points bulletin apparently. Sometimes being the happy-go-lucky one of the crowd sucked. People read all kinds of crap into it. “Who says I want to do that? Maybe you should hang out with the Saint since it was his bright idea to tell you to get on a plane.”

“Don’t drag me into this,” Charlie muttered. He hated it when anyone threw his nickname around, which was of course why Jace had done it. “You do need to get off the couch and rejoin the land of the living, Custer.”

“See?” Blake said triumphantly and grabbed Jace’s hand to haul him to his feet.

It was only because they’d once shared a womb that he didn’t deck his brother. And the fact that Blake could probably take him down given that he’d been living the dream with their former SEAL team while Jace had spent the past year and a half slacking off in the muscle-honing department.

“Fine,” Jace grumbled. Fun could very well be what the doctor ordered, and he might as well hang out with someone who cared. “Let me take a shower, and then we can go to Free—Nassau. There are some great bars in Nassau.”

The slip cracked something open in his chest. He couldn’t go to Freeport. Maybe not ever again. Ducking into the shower before he did something completely ridiculous like break down, he stood under the spray, refusing to admit that he’d finally gotten to the part where the hurt outweighed the mad.

And God, did it hurt. He missed Stella with a fierce, aching longing that he suspected would always feel like a chasm had opened up in his soul, never to be filled again. Sometimes it was a horrible curse to have the words right at his fingertips to describe what was going on inside. Especially when he didn’t have any desire to be feeling like he’d lost his mooring.

When he emerged from the bedroom after getting dressed, Blake was lounging on the couch having a heated argument with Audra about Game of Thrones. His brother glanced up and cut off Audra midsentence. “You think Shae’s the worst too, right?”

Jace raised his hands in mock surrender. “I make it a habit to never disagree with Audra, or she hides my toothbrush.”

Audra threw Blake a victorious grin. “Take heed, son. I’m the queen around here.”

The melancholy lifted a bit as Jace laughed. Probably he owed Charlie a thank-you. If a man’s goal was to forget about his troubles, Blake Custer was the one to call.

But for some reason, as he and his brother drifted out the door, he found himself reluctant to spend the evening in a crowded bar. If he was going to do that, he’d much rather be on the other side of it, shoulder to shoulder with Stella.

“Mind if we grab a beer at the resort?” Jace asked. “I’m not good company tonight.”

“Duchess Island is paradise, dude. I don’t know why you’d ever leave it.”

Instead of taking the walking path through the middle of the island, which was usually fairly populous with staff traversing back and forth between Town and the resort, Jace opted to take the long way around via the beach. The waves beat the sand into submission over and over, and it had been a long time since he’d done nothing more strenuous than kick at the surf as he hung out with his brother. It was cleansing. More so than he would have expected.

“What did Charlie tell you?” Might as well nip it all in the bud now. Maybe they could clear the air and move on. Then they could spend the rest of the night getting drunk, which sounded like a plan that Jace could get on board with.

“That if I figured out how to fix your love life, I could have your spot in Aqueous Adventures.”

Jace tripped over an uneven place in the sand and nearly went for an unexpected swim. It was only by sheer will that he stayed out of the water. “What the hell. Really? You’re thinking of leaving the Navy?”

“Every day,” Blake confessed, clearly uncomfortable with it.

As he should be. Blake was a great SEAL, much better at it than Jace had been. While he’d done his time, his brother had taken to the life, loved it. Bled for it. Hearing him say he wanted out was like a cattle prod to the ribcage. “Since when?”

Of all things Blake could have said. That pulled at Jace’s conscience and heartstrings at the same time. Blake hadn’t solely jumped on a plane because of Jace’s problems, which oddly made him feel a lot better about it. Charlie was smarter about things than Jace had given him credit for.

“Seen some bad things lately,” Blake hedged. “They put us near… Well, it’s bad. Kids. Civilians. I can’t talk about it.”

That meant the team was still in the middle of a classified op. And if that was the case, and Blake was here, he was likely battling some heavy-duty psychological crap. “Sorry, man. Doubly sorry that you came all this way to fix something that can’t be fixed.”

Blake paused near a large boulder that marked the halfway point to the resort, wearing his serious face that he only trotted out on special occasions. The angle of the setting sun highlighted a new scar running from the back of his ear to his Adam’s apple, where it abruptly stopped.

It looked an awful lot like his brother had tangled with the wrong end of an ISIS butcher knife. Jace swallowed the question because he of all people knew better than to ask. That scar was a pretty hefty incentive to figure out a way for Blake to stick around the Bahamas regardless of what happened between Jace and Stella.

“Anything can be fixed,” Blake said quietly. “As long as you want to.”

“I’m not the one who doesn’t want to.”

For so long, he’d assumed he was the problem. That all he needed to do was prove he’d changed and then spend a lot of time proving it some more. Turn himself inside out until Stella saw him as an equal.

And he’d failed. But for the first time, he wasn’t so willing to take that on as his to fix.

“She’s so sure that I’m too young for her,” Jace said and was gratified to get some of his mad back that he’d thought he’d lost. “Won’t get her head straight on it.”

“Cougar town. Nice.”

Jace rolled his eyes. “She’s not that much older than me. Seven years.”

It felt like an enormous span in that moment. Unlike the things Blake experienced in Iraq, Stella had lived a life that was foreign to Jace. In those seven years, she’d gotten married, pregnant, lost the baby and her husband. That would scar a person on the inside as surely as Blake’s mission had scarred him on the outside.

“So that’s the problem? The age difference?” Blake asked.

“Yeah.” And then Blake’s comment filtered through Jace’s lens a little differently. “No. Not entirely. I don’t know. It’s not like we don’t have anything in common. It’s—”

All at once, he saw it from Stella’s perspective. Age was just a number. But she’d learned a few things in her years that made her cautious. That had aged her. She was older in her soul, not in her body, and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t picked up on that.

“What?” Blake asked. “You can’t just leave a guy hanging like that.”

“She’s divorced.” It wasn’t nearly the most important thing about Stella, but it was enough to throw Blake off the scent while Jace mulled through where he’d gone wrong. And where he needed to go right.

“Sucks. So she’s gun-shy, yeah?”

“And then some. It’s going to be hard to convince her to ever get married again.” But he had absolute confidence that he could. Eventually. After all, he had a fantastic track record of wearing her down.

A knowing glint materialized in Blake’s eyes, and he grinned. “So it’s that serious, huh?”

“Yeah.” No point in pretending. Admitting it put the flutter back in his heart that had been too faint to feel over the bruises. “But it scares her.”

That was where they differed. The only thing he was scared of was not figuring out how fix this, because now that Blake had opened Pandora’s box, all the reasons why he should be in Freeport and not hanging out on Duchess Island like a moron flooded into his chest at once.

He’d been trying to convince Stella that he was a grown man who could handle whatever she threw at him, when in reality, he’d let her show him the door. Why hadn’t he laid it all on the line when he had a chance? He’d never so much as broached the subject of a permanent spot at the Crow Bar. Why not? Because he was afraid of losing what he’d built if she said no?

He’d already lost everything. He could only go up from here. He’d bent himself into a pretzel trying to give Stella what she wanted. It was time for him to get what he wanted.

“So. What do we have to do to get her head on straight?” Blake asked hopefully.

Jace eyed his twin brother as the first tendrils of a plan formulated in his head. “How do you feel about dancing on top of a bar?”