Two days after entering Yellowstone National Park, the six of them were exhausted, dirty, bruised, and hungry as they climbed back into the Suburban.
Digger had tied Alpha Team’s flag around his head, wearing it proudly as he claimed shotgun for the drive to their next destination.
“Who the hell knows that pinecones will explode?” Ty grumbled to Zane. They were both in the third row of seats, curled up together and squished into the back. Losers sat in the back. “Who knows that?”
Nick snickered and pressed his fist to Digger’s. “Oohrah,” he said with a grin as he started the car.
“Who’s got the next letter?” Zane asked. He sounded exhausted, but then all of them were. Zane had held his own out there, and Nick was impressed. He’d actually been last man standing from Alpha team, but he hadn’t been able to save their flag and Digger had managed to snag it with just minutes left to the twenty-four hour end of game time.
Despite being tired and sore and dirty, and enduring some arguing over whether Nick had broken the rules when he’d faked blowing out his knee to lure Kelly out and ‘kill’ him, none of them could stop grinning.
Kelly was digging in Nick’s bag for the letters, so Nick waited before getting under way. Helen’s air-conditioning felt amazing, so he closed his eyes and let it blast right in his face as they waited.
Kelly handed the next letter to Ty, who opened it up while still grumbling about pinecones. Nick watched him in the mirror as his eyes darted over it, no doubt scanning it to make sure he could read it out loud without crying. He finally cleared his throat and looked up. “Ready?” he asked.
The other answered with nods and murmurs. Nick turned a little in the driver’s seat so he could see as Ty read.
“First of all, I want to congratulate whichever team had more devious assholes on it,” he read, eyes flicking to Digger and narrowing. He hummed as Digger beamed at him. “The winning team doesn’t get shit for winning, this ain’t Little League. Climb back in your ride and start heading for Doc’s cabin. Even if he doesn’t own the cabin anymore, I want you to get as close to his property as you’re legally able. I know that’s a long drive, so stop somewhere along the way and have yourselves a nice bath, a nice dinner, and a good night’s sleep. You’ve earned it since you each just spent the last two days trying to viciously fake kill your buddies.”
Owen gave a relieved sigh. “Thank you, EZ.”
“There’s more,” Ty told them. “Alpha Team and Bravo Team will room together from here on out, when the size of the rooms allows it. Be a team.”
Ty snorted as he glanced around. “He also says we can open the next letter when we get to Doc’s place.”
“Why are we going home?” Kelly asked. He had turned so his back was resting against the door panel, and his bare feet were propped in Owen’s lap.
Ty just shook his head, shrugging. He offered the letter for Kelly to read over, and Nick turned around and started them on their way.
“Any preferences for where we stay tonight?” Nick asked.
“Can we drive through Jackson Hole?” Zane asked. “I’ve always wanted to see it.”
Nick nodded. “We can stop in Jackson for lunch, it’s a weird little town. It’s not far enough for halfway, though.”
“Let’s just go ’til you get tired,” Owen suggested. “None of us are allowed to drive today anyway.”
“Okay,” Nick said, glancing in the rearview mirror out of habit. He found Kelly’s storm-cloud eyes on him, and they stole his breath away.
Kelly gave him a sad smile, then looked away. Nick stared at his profile for as long as the road would allow, his chest aching so much he had to put a hand over the scar on his side to keep himself from wincing. He could feel Kelly slipping away, and he didn’t know why.
The music skipped and stuttered, and Nick banged on the dash. “Helen!”
The music stopped, leaving them with the sound of the tires on the road and nothing more. When it started again, the song was in Spanish, the Pandora app playing away happily even though Nick had made a point to have one of his iTunes playlists going instead.
Digger picked up the phone, pursing his lips. “I can fix this, you know.”
Nick snatched it out of his hands. “You set fire to my phone, I set fire to you.”
Digger was nodding, his lips still pursed, considering. “That’s fair.”
Nick was fighting sleep when he pulled over on the side of the road and got out of the car to walk around. The others took the opportunity to stretch, and Ty let the kitties out to use a patch of grass. Nick was pacing back and forth along the pavement, his head down, when he saw a coin on the ground. He stopped and frowned down at it for a few seconds before picking it up.
“What’d you find?” Ty called to him.
“It’s a dime.”
Ty threw both hands up. “We’re rich!”
“Shut up and get your damn cats in the car,” Nick grumbled as he trudged back to the driver’s side. He dropped the dime in the cup holder, waiting until Ty had the kittens in the Suburban before he turned it on and got them back on the road. Whoever sat in the passenger seat had to talk to Nick to keep him awake after that. It was hard not to notice that Kelly stayed in the back.
They stopped for the night at the first large town they saw, which happened to be Rock Springs, Wyoming. Again. This time Kelly was grateful for the hotel Owen made them find, because the beds were soft and the shower had excellent water pressure and there was a bar in the lobby that was open until midnight.
Kelly spent his entire time in the shower trying to decide why he felt off. He knew the lack of contact was one thing causing him problems. He’d been relieved by Eli’s instructions separating the teams, at first. The rules he and Nick had set for themselves—no touching, no sharing a bed—were all being made official by Sanchez. It eased some of his guilt, because he couldn’t remember a time when he and Nick hadn’t touched. He just couldn’t put his finger on the rest of it, other than knowing that it was getting harder for him to work up the nerve to talk to Nick, and he decided he needed to nut up and talk to Nick about it before it became something too big for them to deal with together.
When he got out of the shower, there was a note from Ty on the desk saying they’d gone down there, and when Kelly joined them, they’d find dinner.
He got dressed quickly and headed down to the bar. It was surprisingly crowded, and Kelly stood at the entrance, scanning for his boys. He found them in a round booth in the far corner. All of them but Nick. Maybe Nick had taken the last shower as well and just wasn’t down yet.
As he threaded his way through the diners, he happened to glance toward the bar, and he stumbled against a vacant chair when he saw Nick standing there. He would recognize those broad shoulders and auburn hair anywhere. He seemed to be waiting for a drink order, both elbows on the bar, leaning his weight on one leg to give him that insolent hitch to his stature that always seemed to hit Kelly deep in his gut.
As Kelly stared at him, Nick took a sip from a beer mug and nodded to something the man beside him was saying. The guy was maybe in his late twenties, light hair, a ragged Boston Red Sox hat on. Whatever he was saying had him excited, and he was using his hands as he talked, patting Nick’s arm and back, grabbing his shirt and shaking him as he said something that made Nick chuckle.
Kelly smiled when he saw the laugh lines on Nick’s profile. But then, against his will and against every instinct Kelly had in him, his mind flashed to that video he had found on the Fiddler, the one of Nick and a fireman from Boston named Aidan.
It was like a lance to his heart, and he had to turn away before the images in his memory could blend any further with Nick standing at the bar. He staggered through the dining area, shaking it off as he got to the table where the others all were.
“Hey, Doc,” Zane greeted with a smile. He slid over, shoving his shoulder into Ty’s as he made room for Kelly. “You okay? You look a little . . .”
“Rough,” Ty said when Zane couldn’t seem to find an appropriately sensitive word for it.
“Eh,” Kelly offered as he threw himself into the booth. He glanced off toward the bar, but thankfully he couldn’t see Nick or the kid he’d been talking to. There was no way in hell he was going to allow himself to become a jealous person. It just wasn’t going to fucking happen.
A few minutes later, Nick returned to the booth with an armful of glasses. Owen stood and helped him unload them, laughing at Nick as he put his lips to one of the overfull drinks and tried to sip enough out of it so it wouldn’t spill.
By some miracle they managed the feat without a drop being wasted, and Nick was grinning at Kelly when he finally sat. Kelly couldn’t help but return it.
“What the hell took you so long?” Ty asked, sliding his drink closer to him.
“Kid at the bar,” Nick said with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder. “He heard me order and lost his shit, said I was the first person from home he’d met on his trip. He wouldn’t stop talking, Jesus.” He took another careful sip of his drink. “Fuck, this is wicked strong.”
“Mine too,” Digger said gleefully. He leaned as far as he could, pushing on Owen’s shoulder to give him some leverage. “Which bartender made these?”
They laughed their way through dinner, and then dessert, sharing stories about Sidewinder and Eli. Kelly was glad Zane had tagged along; it gave them ample excuses to reminisce, and they’d been taking advantage of it.
Despite the fact that Zane was a recovering alcoholic, he’d insisted that he didn’t mind them drinking, and though Ty stopped after one drink, the others didn’t.
Kelly had intended to. But he was trying to wipe his mind clean, and he and Nick went round for round, drink for drink. Something that wasn’t usually advisable for anyone, considering how well Nick could handle alcohol.
By the time midnight rolled around, the bar area had cleared out, and the lone bartender remained, waiting for them to pack it up so she could go home. Kelly noticed all of this only peripherally, of course, because he was hammered. Hammered.
Zane had kept a hand on his elbow because when he laughed he leaned to the side and almost fell out of the booth. Finally, Zane had just thrown his arm around Kelly’s shoulders to keep him upright, and Kelly appreciated the contact.
As he thought about it, he remembered his decision to talk to Nick about the no-touching clause they’d created, and about the feeling of impending doom he’d been suffering. What better time than right now?
He reached across the table and tapped Nick’s empty glass while Digger and Owen shared a story with Zane.
Nick blinked at the glass, then up at Kelly with a raised eyebrow.
“I need to talk to you,” Kelly told him, his voice a little louder than he’d intended.
Nick just nodded, but he didn’t move. He had his arms crossed, leaning back in the padded bench seat. Occasionally his feet had snaked their way across the table when he’d been stretching them out, and Kelly had fought hard not tap back with his toes.
“I mean like, now.”
Nick’s lips parted and his eyes widened. “Oh. Okay.”
Kelly managed to get out of the seat without falling over, or even swaying too much, and he pulled Nick out of the booth, knowing his knee would be stiff and sore by now. Nick held on to his forearm after he found his feet, and Kelly realized how close they were as he gazed up into Nick’s eyes. He blinked and shook away the desire to pull him closer for a kiss, and instead jerked his head toward the other side of the restaurant. Nick followed obediently.
They slid into another booth since all the tables already had their chairs stacked on top of them. Nick was frowning toward the bar when he scooted over on the seat to let Kelly sit beside him.
“We should let her close up,” he said.
Kelly glanced at the bartender, who was wiping down her bar. As they watched her, the other guys called to her and she headed over there, talking with them for a few seconds before sitting with them. Kelly snorted. “Owen could talk his way out of a mortuary.”
Nick made a humming sound of agreement. He turned a little, resting his arm on the back of the bench behind Kelly and leaning his other elbow against the table. “What’s going on, babe?” he asked gently.
Kelly shrugged and winced. “Something’s not right,” he blurted, and he forced himself to meet Nick’s eyes. “I don’t feel right. We don’t feel right. And I can’t figure out why.”
Nick nodded. “I know,” he said softly.
“Do you know why?” Kelly demanded.
Nick was chewing on his lip, staring at Kelly almost like he didn’t see him. “We can’t fill the silence like this,” he said finally.
Kelly’s frown deepened as he watched Nick. He was definitely not sober, maybe less sober than Kelly right now. Maybe this hadn’t been the best time to do this.
Nick’s gaze seemed to focus a little as he looked into Kelly’s eyes. “We’ve always touched. We’ve always talked. Now we can’t do either.”
“We can talk,” Kelly argued. “We just aren’t.”
Nick nodded, as if Kelly had just agreed with his point.
Kelly sat back, leaning against Nick’s arm.
“When we hit a silence we can’t deal with, what do we do?”
Kelly scowled and shrugged. He had no idea what Nick was talking about.
“We fuck,” Nick answered. “If we can’t talk about something hard, we just fall into bed and ignore it. And ignore it.” He was staring past Kelly now, his eyes glazed over. “We’ve forgotten how to talk to each other.”
And suddenly Nick’s words made sense. Kelly gasped a little when he took in a shaky breath. “And since we can’t touch, we can’t communicate at all now.”
Nick was nodding almost as if he didn’t know he was doing it, still staring past Kelly at nothing.
“Wow,” Kelly whispered. “Okay. Okay.”
Nick finally looked back at him, his eyes soft and sad.
“Okay,” Kelly said again, and he turned to meet Nick head-on. “Let’s talk then. I feel like we’re not working. And I don’t know why.”
Nick didn’t say anything, just met Kelly’s eyes unflinchingly.
“And I feel guilty,” Kelly continued. “I feel like I’m the reason Sidewinder died. And all this, it’s Eli trying to fix the mess I made of us. And it’s just making it worse, it’s making me realize more and more what I ruined by leaving. And I think . . . I think I blame you for being here and realizing all this.”
Nick was still silent, but now he was nodding almost imperceptibly.
“And I’m scared,” Kelly whispered. “Because I almost lost you in Miami. And I can tell that I’m pushing you away, and I don’t know why, and I don’t know how to stop me from doing it.” He held his breath, waiting for Nick to respond, for him to break this torturous silence somehow. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. “Say something.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Nick said softly.
Kelly could feel the anger bubbling up inside him. He was laying his heart open here, and Nick couldn’t think of a damn thing to say to him? He’d just admitted he was afraid they couldn’t make this work, and Nick didn’t have a word to say in their defense?
“What’s so fucking hard about it?” Kelly growled. “You know what’s hard for me? Seeing you innocently talking to some stranger in a bar and not being able to get the thought of you and Aidan on that video out of my head.”
Nick blinked and jerked his head back, lips parted.
“See?” Kelly practically shouted. “You’ve got to fucking talk to me! You’ve got to defend yourself before my mind is allowed to run rampant!”
“I can’t stop your mind from doing anything, Kelly, you and I both know that too damn well,” Nick finally blurted.
“I’m being serious!”
“So am I!”
Kelly shoved out of the booth, stalking away from Nick. He gritted his teeth and ran his hands through his hair, growling wordlessly.
“Kelly,” Nick called, and he sounded irritated and impatient. He sounded almost angry, and it pissed Kelly off even more. What the hell right did Nick have to be angry with him? Kelly was the one being haunted by the sight of Nick and that fucking fireman in their bed, haunted by guilt. Kelly was the one losing sleep!
Kelly whirled on him, pointing a finger and waving it in utter frustration. “I can’t get it out of my head, okay! Any of it! I can’t stop seeing your face when I told you I was leaving the team! I can’t stop it! And I can’t make myself not think about you being with someone else, someone who’s never hurt you!”
Nick stood, still looking confused as he shook his head.
It made Kelly even angrier. “All I can see is you and this other guy that I know damn well you were serious about, okay? And I know . . . I know you were thinking about trying something serious with him. And then I came along, skipping right back into your path and ruining it! I can’t get it out of my head, okay! I can’t help it!”
“Neither can I!” Nick shouted. He had his fists balled at his sides, and his eyes were blazing. He’d squared his broad shoulders, too, making him look even more hulking than he usually did.
Kelly had to stop short, taken aback by the anger and fire in his lover. He hadn’t seen that in a long time, and it brought everything reeling in Kelly’s mind to a screeching halt.
“It happened! It happened before you and me. It happened in the past, and there’s nothing I can do about that! I can’t change it, I can’t defend it! Everything you’ve said, everything you’re lingering over, it’s done and gone, there’s nothing I can do about it now!” He was shouting at full volume now as everyone in the room watched him with wide eyes, and he turned his back on Kelly and stalked away. Kelly could feel the others moving, getting to their feet in case there was a fight. “I can’t go back and fix my mistakes, I can’t go back and make my decisions over again! Just like you can’t go back and change yours! If I could, do you really think I’d be here now? Do you think I’d be stuck in this hamster wheel of guilt and regret, just stuck here trying desperately to earn forgiveness?”
“Nick,” Kelly breathed, unnoticed by anyone else as Nick paced and ranted to himself.
“Do you think there isn’t a second of my life that I wouldn’t go back and change if I could?” Nick grabbed up a beer bottle from the table he was stalking past. He put his other hand to his chest and rounded on Kelly, looking pained and seeming to implore Kelly to just listen to him. “You think I wouldn’t go back? You think I don’t remember every moment of our past together, every time you’ve looked at me like that? Every time someone has looked at me like that!” He waved the beer bottle in his hand at the expression on Kelly’s face and then spun on his heel and hurled the bottle at the wall.
Ty and Owen both flinched and then moved, Ty going to the doors of the bar and closing them, and Owen taking the bartender and escorting her out with murmured assurances that they’d take care of this. She left with little protest, and Ty latched the doors behind her so no one else could come in.
Kelly stood, slack-jawed, staring at Nick’s back. He had both hands on his hips, his head lowered, breaths heaving. He finally turned, glancing around the room as if just realizing that they were in the hotel lobby bar and he might have just terrified everyone in the vicinity.
He was calm and silent as he went to the bar and gracefully hopped over it. He was light on his feet when he hit, no sign that his knee or anything else was bothering him. He grabbed himself another beer, and the sound of the bottle opening in the dead-silent aftermath of his outburst was as loud as a gunshot. Nick met Kelly’s eyes as he leaned against the back of the bar and took a gulp of the new beer.
“Irish,” Ty whispered carefully as he approached the bar.
“First time he looked at me like that,” Nick said with a tip of his bottle toward Kelly, “was when I shot that kid in Kyrgyzstan. You remember?” he asked, turning to Ty.
“I remember,” Ty assured him with a curt nod, speaking like he was trying to soothe a wild animal.
Kelly’s heart skipped a bit. He knew exactly what incident Nick was talking about. He remembered seeing the kid pop up out of nowhere, a gun in hand. He remembered screaming at his team to stand down, it was just a boy. And he remembered the thump of the bullet hitting the child’s chest, the horror and anguish as he’d watched the boy fall away. Nick hadn’t blinked. Hadn’t flinched. Kelly hadn’t even been able to find a hint of regret in Nick’s eyes as he’d screamed at him. He remembered the harsh words he’d spat out after Nick had pulled the trigger and the others were securing the body.
“How can you even have a soul if you pulled that trigger without hesitating,” Nick recited, echoing the words in Kelly’s memories. His voice dropped to a pained whisper. “Heartless bastard.”
Kelly swallowed hard, shaking his head and desperately trying to find something to say. He watched helplessly as Nick rested his back against the refrigerator behind the bar and sank down to sit on his ass, out of sight behind the bar. Ty climbed over the bar and thumped out of sight after him. Kelly took a hesitant step forward as he glanced at Zane and Digger, neither of whom had moved or made a sound. Digger was scowling heavily, and Zane merely looked like he wanted to fade through a crack in the wall.
Kelly approached the bar, Owen and Digger joining him as they peered over at Ty and Nick, huddled on the floor together. Ty had taken possession of the beer bottle and set it far enough away that Nick couldn’t reach it, and Nick had his knees pulled up, his elbows resting on them, his chin on his arms as he stared at the floor without blinking.
“You never told him why you pulled that trigger, Irish,” Ty was saying softly. “You should have told him, he would have understood so much more.”
Kelly’s heart was hammering, he could feel it in his throat and in his ears. He hadn’t spoken to Nick for weeks after he’d shot that boy. Yes, they’d found weapons on him. And yes, he’d probably been about to open fire on them. But Kelly hadn’t been able to reconcile the killing with the man he knew Nick was, he hadn’t been able to look into Nick’s eyes without seeing that flat absence of emotion. Truth be told, he’d never really looked at Nick the same way again, even after they’d both apologized and forgiven each other.
Kelly eased around the end of the bar and approached Nick and Ty carefully, crouching a few feet away from them. “What don’t I understand?”
Nick didn’t move. As far as Kelly could tell, he hadn’t even blinked.
“You say you can’t change the past,” Kelly said, trying not to let his frustration bleed through again. “You can’t change it, but you can change what I think of it, right?”
“Can I?” Nick said as he turned his head to stare at Kelly. The look in his eyes chilled Kelly to his very bones and stole his breath away. There was nothing behind those eyes that were usually full of warmth and light, that usually danced like waves on the shore. They were empty. And they were terrifying. “You can’t change the way you see the past, so why should I try?”
“Nicko,” Kelly whispered.
“There was a kid,” Nick said as he glanced up at the others and then down again. “When Ty and I were on our first tour. We were on the gate, and he wouldn’t halt. He just kept walking, coming toward us. Had his hands raised. He stepped over the dead man’s line, and I . . .”
Kelly inched closer as Nick trailed off. His eyes had gone distant, and Kelly realized with a sinking feeling where he was going with this.
Ty slipped his arm around Nick’s shoulders protectively, and Kelly almost glared at him. Ty didn’t have to fucking protect Nick from him.
“Irish tried to save the kid’s life,” Ty practically snarled. “He didn’t shoot when he should have, and when the bomb strapped to that fucking child’s back went off, we got caught in the blowback.”
“That’s where the shrapnel in your femur is from,” Kelly realized out loud, breathless from the revelation. Nick just closed his eyes. “Is it? Nick?”
“When I hit my back, I still had my finger on the trigger,” Nick whispered, his eyes unfocused, his voice distant. “My weapon discharged. And when I came to, I found Ty beside me, bleeding out from a bullet I’d put him in. Shrapnel in my thigh so I couldn’t get to him. It was my worst nightmare, come to life.”
Ty pulled Nick tighter, his jaw jumping as he looked around at each of them defiantly, like he was challenging them to blame Nick for those injuries. Kelly glanced up at the others, who were still leaning over the bar and watching. Zane had joined them, and his mouth was ajar as he listened.
“I almost killed my best friend because I didn’t pull the trigger,” Nick hissed. “And I’m the reason Ty . . . can never have kids. Because I shot him.”
Kelly stared at them both, huddled together, Ty glaring at anyone who dared to say a word and Nick simply drunk and shell-shocked, unseeing as he lost himself to the past.
“I shot him.”
Kelly crawled closer, reaching for Nick’s arm to squeeze it, trying to get Nick to come back to them. When Nick met his eyes, Kelly slid himself closer so he could sit next to Nick. He kept his hand on Nick’s arm.
It flashed through Kelly’s mind again, the bullet hitting, the kid falling out of sight, Nick with his gun against his cheek, his eyes hard and deadly. Kelly closed his eyes and licked his lips. He should have known. The only thing that could kill that light in Nick’s eyes was a ghost from his past, he should have known before he’d torn into him, before he called him a heartless bastard with no soul. Jesus.
“That was the first time you looked at me like that, like I was a monster,” Nick said. Sitting next to him now, sobered from the shock of the argument, it was easy to hear the slur to Nick’s words. The alcohol had hit him faster than it used to, and neither Kelly nor Nick had expected that. He made a mental note to keep an eye on that from now on, to remember that Nick’s tolerance was no longer superhuman. Nick would have to relearn his limits. So would Kelly. Kelly glanced carefully to his side. When Nick spoke again, Kelly wasn’t even sure he would have heard the words had he not been looking at Nick’s lips moving. “It wasn’t the last time. It won’t be the last.”
“I’m sorry,” Kelly managed. “Nick. You know that’s not how I see you. You know that.”
“You see a video of me and another guy,” Nick drawled, eyes still staring at nothing, “and it crosses your mind that I would hurt you like that. On purpose. That I could lie to you so easily without a gun to your head as a consequence.”
He rested his back against the refrigerator, letting his legs slide out in front of him, his body going limp as he lowered his head.
“Nick,” Kelly tried again.
“You tell me you think it’s your fault the team died,” Nick mumbled to Kelly. “And then tell me to change your mind. I can’t change the past.” Nick shook his head and lurched forward, struggling out of Ty’s grasp and getting to his hands and knees before he was able to push himself to stand. He wavered, shaking his head as he went to the end of the bar, where a broom and dustpan were propped against the wall.
Digger shoved away from the bar and went to him, trying to convince Nick to let them clean up the mess. Kelly got to his feet, but then he realized he was stuck there, staring at Nick, lost in a sea of emotions he couldn’t begin to navigate.
“I’ll take him to bed,” Ty whispered to him as he squeezed past Kelly. He patted his shoulder, nodding encouragingly. “You two can do this better when he’s sober tomorrow, right?”
Kelly didn’t respond as Ty moved away. He just watched as Ty took Nick’s arm and convinced him to let Digger have the broom, then pulled him toward the door. They were almost at the end of the bar when Nick stopped and turned around, and he locked eyes with Kelly as Kelly held his breath, waiting.
“I’ve spent so much of my life trying to keep that look off your face,” Nick said, waving a hand unsteadily at Kelly. “But I can’t change the past.”
Kelly breathed out his name, but Nick was turning away from him before Kelly could speak more, letting Ty lead him out. Kelly grasped at the bar in front of him, trying to steady his head and his heart and his body. Jesus, he felt like he’d been hit by a truck.
“Doc,” Zane said, and Kelly’s head shot up. Zane was looking at him as if he’d called him several times before Kelly heard him. “Come with me. Get some rest. It’ll be okay in the morning.”
Kelly glanced at Owen and Digger, and they both nodded for him to go. “I’ll get us another room, give him some space,” Owen told them.
“Ain’t the first time you two gone ’round,” Digger told Kelly as he swept up the bottle Nick had broken. “You’ll be all right, Doc.”
“Is he right?” Kelly asked them without moving. He was met with uncomfortable silence.
Kelly’s stomach churned the entire way to the room, going over every word they’d said to each other, and every word they hadn’t.
When Zane got the door unlocked and pushed it open, Kelly grabbed for his arm, stopping him from entering. “Was he right?”
Zane winced and looked into the darkened room like he just wanted to slink into it and disappear. He sighed and met Kelly’s eyes again. “I think you both are.”
He turned and headed into the room, and Kelly followed him, scowling as Zane flipped the lamps on. Zane shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it at a chair in the corner.
“I don’t know the whole story. I mean, you two, you’ve got twenty years behind you, I’ll never know the whole story. That’s just you and him.”
Kelly glanced up, meeting Zane’s eyes with a little bit of difficulty.
“You think Nick’s a monster?” Zane asked neutrally.
Kelly’s response got stuck in his throat. He had to struggle to find it again as Zane watched him. “I don’t know. The thing is, I don’t care.”
Zane raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms.
“I don’t care if he is,” Kelly said again, voice stronger this time. “Monster or not. All I know is he’s mine.”
Zane nodded minutely, chewing on his lip. “I’d bet he feels the same way about you. No matter what you think of yourself. And if I were him? I’d want to hear that tonight.”
Nick sprawled on the king-sized bed, a hand tossed over his eyes. The room was spinning on him, and he was afraid to open his eyes in case it wasn’t just him going in circles.
“Irish?”
“I’m okay,” Nick grunted.
Ty sat on the edge of the bed, the covers rustling as he moved next to Nick. “Not used to your tolerance being so low. You still on those painkillers?”
“Yeah,” Nick answered, knowing Ty would be giving him that disapproving scowl of his and not caring.
“Maybe we avoid the bars until you’re off ’em, huh?”
“Don’t mother me, Tyler, you’re not very good at it.” A tiny mew answered Nick’s words. He raised his head, scowling. “The hell was that?”
“Kittens,” Ty answered, and then he was murmuring under his breath, which started more excited meowing.
Nick groaned. “I forgot you had them with you. What’d you do with them at Yellowstone?”
“Kept them locked in the tent until Johns killed me.”
Four tiny paws landed on Nick’s belly, complete with needle-sharp claws. The kitten balanced on Nick’s abdominal muscles, using its claws as it got its footing. Nick groaned louder.
Ty stretched out on the bed beside him, and Nick finally risked a peek at the ceiling. It wasn’t going quite as fast as he thought it would be. He took in a deep breath. At least he didn’t feel sick. That was the last thing he needed tonight, to spend the rest of it with his head in the toilet and a curious kitten on his shoulder.
“That’s Jiminy,” Ty told him.
Nick groped around and patted the kitten distractedly. “Bad kitty.” He meowed in response, and the purring that started up was like a damn tractor engine as it vibrated Nick’s belly. “No.”
“He likes you.”
“No,” Nick drew out with more feeling. The kitten began stalking its way up his body and plopped its tiny butt down on his chest, purring delightedly. The other one, Cricket, joined her brother on Nick’s chest, kneading him with claws so tiny and sharp they had to belong to something evil. “I hate you,” Nick claimed, not sure if he was talking to Ty or the kittens that were happily making their beds on Nick’s body.
Ty plucked them off Nick’s chest, and Nick could still hear them purring as they settled wherever Ty had relocated them.
“I’d be kind of upset too,” Ty said after a while. Nick sighed as he draped his arm over his eyes. “I wouldn’t even want to think about Zane with someone else, much less see it. You got to know that, dude. Where he’s coming from.”
“I know,” Nick murmured. “It’s not that he’s upset. It’s . . . he thinks it was his fault that the team split up. He asked me if I blamed it when it happened, and I said yes. He’s got to know I don’t blame him now. He has to know that. And to use that as an excuse to push me away, to tie it into that fucking video he found, I just . . . it’s cruel. I’ve never seen him cruel before.”
“Maybe just give it time. It’s a knee-jerk, you know? He’ll figure it out soon enough.”
Nick nodded, his eyes losing focus as he stared at the wall behind Ty. “When he found that video, and he told me he thought I might have cheated on him? I didn’t want him to know it hurt me,” he admitted. “I knew he had the right to be upset, I didn’t want him to feel bad about his reaction. But it just hurt more and more. I kept dreaming about that kid, about Kelly’s face after I took the shot. Same face I saw when I walked in on him watching that video. And I started realizing, some part of him still thinks I’m a monster.”
Ty turned onto his side so he was facing Nick, and reached for Nick’s hand, holding it in both of his. There was sorrow in his eyes, and his brow was furrowed as he met Nick’s eyes.
Nick turned onto his side to mirror his friend, clutching to his fingers. “What are we, Ty?”
Ty shrugged one shoulder. Two tiny orange ears popped up from behind Ty’s neck, the purring getting louder. Ty was obviously fighting a smile, but before he spoke he was solemn again, his brow furrowed. “We might be monsters,” he said. “But that don’t make us bad.”
Nick fought to swallow against the tightness in his throat. He closed his eyes as Ty scooted closer to him and pressed their foreheads together. Just as Nick had known would happen, warm paws landed on his face, and Jiminy circled around and around until he settled in Nick’s hair.
“Why do they always like me,” Nick groaned.
“Same reason I do,” Ty whispered fondly. “Sleep. What was it you used to tell me? When I was losing hope? About the sun rising on a new day?”
Nick squeezed his eyes tighter, his heart hammering and Ty’s breath warm on his face. He pulled their hands up between them, clasping them between their chests as if they were at prayer. “Only thing I ever told you was to shut the fuck up and go to sleep,” he said. “Don’t fucking wake me until the sun’s up.”
Ty was chuckling softly, and Nick found himself smiling along with him.
“I must have heard it wrong,” Ty teased. “I remember you more eloquent.”
“Shut up, Tyler.”
Nick wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep when the knocking at the door woke him. He was instantly tense and alert, his eyes wide in the darkness. He could feel Ty close to him, his breaths hard against Nick’s face. The kittens both complained when he moved.
“It’s okay,” Ty whispered. “I got it.”
Nick rolled to his back as Ty got out of bed, rubbing the heels of his palms against his eyes until he saw stars.
“Hey, Doc,” he heard Ty greet when the door opened.
Nick’s stomach flipped. He lay there another moment, trying to get his nerves under control before sitting up in bed. Light streamed into the hotel room from the hallway, and he squinted against it as a shadow fell across the end of the bed.
Nick raised his head.
“I can’t sleep,” Kelly said when their eyes met. The door closed with a quiet snick as Ty left the room, throwing them into darkness once more.
Nick stared until his eyes had adjusted, until he could almost make out Kelly’s features. Nick glanced back at the bed. He and Ty had been sleeping on top of the comforter. He reached back and tugged the blanket down, exposing the sheets and pillows next to him.
“Some things are easier to say in the dark,” he mumbled as he looked back at Kelly.
Kelly waited a few heartbeats before crawling into the bed. He laid himself out next to Nick, sliding under the covers and resting his head on his arm. Nick shoved the blanket down further, trying to get under it and stretch back out on his side. He stared at Kelly across the expanse of the bed, his heartbeat thundering in his ears.
“I lost my temper,” he said when he finally decided Kelly wasn’t going to speak first.
“Me too.”
Nick shook his head. Kelly’s hand found his, grasping through the dark. Nick gripped him hard, tugging at him to come closer.
“Can’t fix it overnight,” Kelly said with a sigh. “Any of it. But it can be fixed. I was wrong, I was . . . so wrong, babe. It’s not us that’s falling apart, it’s me. But I’m with you. And I don’t think you’re a monster, but I wouldn’t care even if you were. I love you. And I’m with you. You just have to stay with me.”
Nick pulled Kelly’s hand up to his mouth, pressing his lips to Kelly’s fingers. Kelly scooted closer, bringing the warmth of his body to Nick’s as he wrapped around him. He took his hand back, sliding it over Nick to hold him.
“I love you, Nicko,” he whispered against Nick’s lips.
Nick couldn’t answer. He just dug his fingers into Kelly’s shirt as Kelly pulled him closer. He rested his head against Kelly’s chest, clinging to him. Kelly kissed his temple, squeezing him.
“God, I love you.” Kelly said quietly. “Just stay with me.”
Nick pressed his face against Kelly, like he could burrow into him. He held on to him gratefully, just breathing in his scent.
“What the fuck is touching my foot?” Kelly demanded in a panicked whisper.
Nick raised his head, snorting. “Ty’s kittens.”
“You’ve been in here cuddling with sweet, fuzzy little kitties?” Kelly asked, his voice going higher. “How is that fair?”
Nick rested his head against Kelly’s chest again and made a sound like air being let out of a tire. Both kittens responded happily, clambering up his and Kelly’s bodies to nudge at Nick’s face and under his chin. Kelly was laughing softly, jostling Nick’s head as the kittens tried to snuggle between them.
Nick hid his face in Kelly’s neck so he wouldn’t get another cold nose shoved against his cheek, and he sighed in relief as he was surrounded by Kelly’s warmth. Even the high-pitched purring of the kittens as Kelly rubbed them both was comforting.
“Can we get a boat cat?” Kelly asked after a few minutes of snuggling with the beasts, his voice wavering with laughter.
“Absolutely not.”
They drove for about four hours before they stopped for a rest and to let the kittens get out of the car. The others walked around and stretched, but Kelly couldn’t resist when Ty got down onto the grass to let the kittens romp over him; he joined them.
They were still little enough that they had a hard time running full throttle without tripping over themselves, and watching them play, watching them enjoy the hell out of a tiny patch of grass at a rest stop off the highway, started clarifying things in Kelly’s mind.
Life wasn’t complicated. Life was a patch of grass and a butterfly to chase.
He hefted himself to his feet and searched around for Nick, but he wasn’t nearby. He picked up Cricket instead, carrying her over to the picnic tables to sit and wait. She purred so hard she was vibrating as she curled up in his arms, and Kelly grinned as he cradled her.
He sat staring off at the Rockies in the distance. They weren’t far from where he’d grown up, in a tiny town perched on the edge of the state. It was just as flat as the prairies to the east, but in the distance Kelly had always been able to see those mountains’ peaks touching the sky. He’d grown up in the shadow of those peaks, and he’d always sworn he would live among them one day.
He’d been ten years old when his parents had died in a car crash one stormy night, and he’d been sent to live with his grandparents in Colorado Springs. Those mountain trails had been everything he’d always hoped they’d be, and they’d helped begin to heal the broken heart of a ten-year-old boy. At the age of twelve, when his grandparents had become too old and ill to care for him, he’d been put into the foster system. But he’d been lucky. He’d known even when he was a kid that he was lucky. His foster family had been good and kind, and he’d been able to stay near the last members of his family until they both had passed when he was seventeen. A year later, he’d joined the Navy, searching for adventure and purpose. Searching for home.
He’d found it, and realizing that made all the turmoil in his mind the last few months seem petty and useless.
Sitting here, though, on the border of Colorado and Wyoming, Kelly remembered the hope and longing he’d always felt when he’d looked out the windows of his parents’ home and gazed at those mountain peaks.
“Hey,” Nick whispered, yanking Kelly’s mind back from the past and making him jump. Kelly turned to blink at him. “You want to go see them?”
“What?” Kelly asked, dumbfounded. How the hell could Nick have possibly known what he’d been thinking about?
“Your parents. We’re no more than an hour away. We can take the time if you want to go see them,” Nick said gently.
Kelly’s mind swirled, cycling through a myriad of emotions as he stared into Nick’s eyes. He slowly became aware of a tickle at his kneecap, of warmth just above his calf. He looked down with a frown to find Nick’s hands both there, one on each of Kelly’s legs as Nick sat opposite him at another table, his fingers curled behind Kelly’s legs, his thumbs rubbing gentle circles against Kelly’s knees.
Nick glanced down with a frown, and his thumbs stopped moving. He raised his gaze to meet Kelly’s, and his eyes were wide. “Sorry,” he whispered, spreading his fingers as he lifted them. “Had no idea I was doing that.”
Kelly grabbed for one of his hands, keeping it where it had been. “You’ve always done that,” he told Nick, squeezing his hand harder. “Even before you and me started. We’ve sat like this before.”
Nick was silent, the pads of his fingers pressing into Kelly’s skin, their knees almost touching as he bent close enough to speak quietly. “We have,” he said.
“I think we fucked up,” Kelly whispered harshly.
Nick looked up quickly, his eyes wide.
“Saying we shouldn’t touch,” Kelly added quickly. “That’s our language. It’s always been our language. Like you said last night. Years and years before I ever asked you to kiss me, touching was the way we talked.”
Nick’s hands were gentle as he leaned closer, his fingers gliding behind Kelly’s knees. “Maybe that’s why I’ve felt like we can’t hear each other this trip,” he said, wincing as he met Kelly’s eyes again.
Kelly’s shoulders slumped in relief. “You too?”
Nick’s grip tightened and he inadvertently pulled Kelly closer. Kelly licked his lips, his body flushing with heat. They stared at each other, neither of them even breathing.
“Do we need the bad-kitty spritzer?” Digger asked, jerking both Nick and Kelly out of their trance. They broke eye contact, and Nick cleared his throat, glaring at Digger. “Hey, you told me no touchy,” Digger said with an unapologetic shrug before turning away. “We’re gearing up.”
Nick glared after him for a few seconds as Kelly stared at Nick. “Babe,” Kelly grunted. Nick looked back at him with a sigh and a tired smile. “We can still follow the rules and end the moratorium on touching.”
Nick was nodding as he gazed raptly into Kelly’s eyes. “Good.”
Kelly slid one hand up Nick’s forearm, squeezing his biceps. “Maybe even give me a snuggle tonight instead of sneaking off to sleep with Ty’s kittens?”
Cricket complained in Kelly’s lap, as if she knew she was about to be denied her second-favorite sleep buddy.
Nick chuckled and pushed out of his seat to press his lips to Kelly’s. Kelly grinned through the kiss, and then another one.
“Oh my God, stop!” Ty called from the parking lot of the rest area.
Nick and Kelly both snickered, taking one last, longer kiss before Nick pulled Kelly to his feet.
“You never answered me,” Nick said as they turned to head toward the car. He slid his hand into Kelly’s.
“Remind me what the question was.”
“Do you want to see your parents?”
Kelly’s eyes focused on the mountains in the distance beyond Nick, and he smiled serenely. “I already did,” he said quietly.
Nick was scowling when Kelly turned his attention back on him. “We talking symbolically, or like Eli in my iPhone type of seeing them?”
Kelly barked a laugh and shook his head, letting Nick continue to grumble as they joined the others.
I hope you’re standing in Doc’s front yard. If not, then you better be as close as your Marine asses can get.
This is where we dropped Kelly off when he said it was time to go home. This is the moment where Sidewinder officially breathed its last breath as a team of Marines. But Doc, this ain’t where Sidewinder died. I know you think you killed the team, you been carrying that with you since you got married. But we ain’t dead, son. I guess I am if you’re reading this, but that’s semantics. The team, the team we made, it can’t die. They didn’t take that away from us when we were discharged.
So I want you start here and go on an adventure. Go see all those places we couldn’t find the first time. Take Seymour to the Grand Canyon. And then go to each place where we dropped someone off on that road trip, and I want each of you to tell the man we left there why he didn’t actually leave us.
And before you start bitching, yes, after you’re done in Las Vegas, you can fly to the other locations. You got lives to get back to.
Nick lowered the letter after reading it, and glanced around at the others. Kelly stood facing his cabin, his shoulders slumped and his head bowed.
“Kelly?” Nick said softly.
“How’d he know that?” Kelly asked as he turned toward them. His eyes were almost watering, but he was also smiling. “How the hell did he know that?”
“You didn’t exactly hide it well,” Owen offered under his breath.
Nick gently folded the letter. He moved toward Kelly and took a hold of his shirt, meeting his eyes as he slid the letter into his breast pocket and patted Kelly’s chest. “We should have told you it was okay,” he said. “We all knew you blamed yourself. After your wedding. After you settled here. We should have done something more to let you know it wasn’t true.”
Kelly frowned as he fought to swallow. “You told me you blamed me,” he whispered.
“I did. I did, at the time. I blamed everything under the sun, including you.” Nick stepped closer and took Kelly’s face in both hands. “I was wrong. Kels, look at this place.”
He forced Kelly to turn his head and look behind them at his cabin. It was on the smaller side, less than a thousand square feet total. The sloped roof hid the little loft bedroom, and the balcony over the wide deck sat nestled amongst flower pots and rustic greenery. The deck and its rockers were weathered by nearly ten years of living, and the old Jeep sitting under a little carport off to the side had hosted many of their forays into the mountains.
Kelly stared at the cabin, and Nick wrapped his arm around Kelly’s shoulder. “This is home,” Nick whispered. “You found it. We all did, and none of us would have been able to do that if you hadn’t been brave enough to try it first.”
Kelly lowered his head, then glanced sideways at Nick and over his shoulder at the others. Nick couldn’t see the way they were reacting, but judging by the light in Kelly’s eyes, they were all backing Nick up.
“Doc,” Owen said slowly, almost like he wasn’t sure if he should interject in the moment. Nick and Kelly both turned to him. “I wouldn’t have stayed in San Diego if you hadn’t stopped here. If we’d all still been together? I . . . I wouldn’t have had the nerve. And I’ve found my life there. That’s because of you.”
Digger hummed and nodded. “I’d never have gone back. I’d have stuck with y’all. I still would, if you needed me. But I never would have gone back to Louisiana, and I’m happy there. I’m with Ozone—that’s only ’cause you had the balls to do it first.”
Kelly snorted, and when Nick glanced at him he was smiling.
“I blamed you too,” Ty admitted. “For a while, after you left. But it was always me. We all know it was me.”
“That’s not true either,” Kelly practically snarled. “Six, you been blaming yourself way too long for all that. You did the best you could. The NIA wanted us, and you didn’t let them have us. What they did to Nick, that would have been all of us. You were looking out for us, you saved us all.”
Nick watched wistfully as Ty’s shoulders seemed to square a little, like he was shaking off a weight he’d been carrying for too long. Nick leaned closer to Kelly and touched his hand to the small of Kelly’s back, then pressed his lips to Kelly’s cheek so his words would be for Kelly’s ears only. “That’s why we need you,” he said with a tilt of his head toward Ty. “That’s why Sidewinder never died. ’Cause you’re the heart of it.”
He pulled back and cocked his head at Kelly, meeting his eyes and nodding. Kelly was chewing on his lip as he met Nick’s eyes, and then he began to smile when he looked back at Ty.
“Okay,” he said with a curt nod. He smiled a little wider, that sparkle coming back into his eyes as he glanced around at them all. “Okay.”
Nick couldn’t help himself as Kelly seemed to simply blossom right in front of his eyes. He grabbed Kelly by his shirtfront and pulled him closer to kiss him. They were met with a variety of groans, teasing whistles, and threats about getting the bad-kitty spritzer from the car.
Nick could feel Kelly smiling against his lips, and he hummed when he forced himself to step away. His hand was still cradling Kelly’s face, though, and Kelly was still grinning.
“Who wants a meal that didn’t come out of a gas station?” Nick asked the others without looking away from Kelly’s eyes.
“I’ll get the kitties,” Ty said, heading for the car.
Digger grunted and stomped after him. “I ain’t eatin’ those cats, Grady!”