Chapter 23

Pacey

 

 

I jolted awake when I realized there was someone in bed next to me. Waking up next to someone was a rarity for me since I made a point of leaving after random hookups. I usually stayed only the requisite amount of time to not be considered an asshole before I went home to pass out in exhaustion alone.

Sunlight was streaming through the windows, though it was still early from the looks of things. It kissed her skin, making her look radiant and beautiful, and I felt myself relaxing as I admired how beautiful she was. The swell of her lithe body covered by a light sheet, with one toned leg hooked on the outside of it. The curve of her breast was begging for my hand, her blonde hair—

I sat bolt upright when I realized it was Juliana’s skin that was enrapturing me, tempting me—not May’s. Dragging my palms over my next-day stubble, the consequences of what I’d done the night before came crashing into me, the slight sting of the blunt stubble doing nothing to distract me from the girl sleeping next to me.

The sleeping girl who I knew full well wanted a relationship with me, the one I’d not only fucked, but slept next to. And it hadn’t even felt all that much like a one-time thing. Her whispered words came back to me, making me feel like an absolute, first-class douche.

Make love to me, Pacey.

I should’ve bolted right then and there, but I hadn’t. What the hell had I done? Shit. I’d done exactly that, hadn’t I? Looked deep into her eyes as I entered her.

This was the kind of shit that happened when I put my dick in control. Though it’d never gotten me into a situation like this before. I’d known, standing there in her doorway, that I was about to get into trouble. But I wanted her so damn badly that I couldn’t help myself, not when she stood there and told me again that she wanted me to come inside.

That word had gone on repeat in my brain. Inside. Inside. Inside. Getting inside of her became all that mattered, and now what was I going to do about it?

You’re going to get the fuck out, that’s what.

I hated myself for having had the thought, but I couldn’t have helped it any more than I could’ve shut down the insane desire for her the night before. Careful not to wake her, I slid from the bed and was pulling on my jeans when I heard her soft voice.

“Pacey?”

I looked at her over my shoulder, when the sexy, sleepy smile that had been spreading on her face froze, then dropped when she saw that I was getting dressed. “Where are you going?”

Where indeed. “I’m sorry, babe. I’ve got plans with the guys to watch football today.”

I didn’t. From the look of hurt that crossed her eyes, even if she shrugged and tried to put on a brave face, she knew it. It tore me up that I was the cause of that look, but I was confused, and if I stayed in bed with her, I would only end up getting in deeper.

Which was entirely acceptable in my current state of mind. I gave her a smile that I hoped was at least a little reassuring and pulled my shirt over my head. When I was dressed, I walked over to her and placed a kiss on the tip of her nose.

“I’ll text you, okay?” I promised, and fuck my life, because I’d only just managed to get her to forgive me for my last broken promise. Even as I said the words, I didn’t know if I was going to keep it this time.

Juliana sighed, nodded and cleared her throat, with a look of resignation in her eyes that threatened to undo my resolve to get out of there. “Sure. Need me to give you a ride?”

“Nah, I’ll be fine. Sleep in; it’s Sunday.” She shot me an incredulous look, then fell back on her bed, raising her hand in a small wave.

A little less than an hour later, I was standing in my shower. The water had run cold, but I didn’t mind. Memories of Juliana’s moans and her pussy, hotter than the fucking sun and tighter than a fist, kept trying to derail my thoughts.

But I needed to think, as hellish as thinking may have been. It was the reason I’d skipped out on her in the first place, and I couldn’t afford not to get things figured out. My already fragile sleeping patterns wouldn’t be able to take it, and I wasn’t going back on the prescription sleeping pills I’d been on when I’d first gotten back.

The water droplets felt like shards of ice hitting my scalp and my back, but I stood there and took it. I wasn’t one of those stupid men who looked the obvious right in the eye and couldn’t see it. When I’d been with Juliana, I felt something growing between us. Something real.

She was more than a hookup, a fling, a bag, or any of the other names I could’ve attributed to what we’d done. I could admit that to myself. I knew what real looked like and I found it with Juliana, as much as I wasn’t looking for it, and as far as it made me want to run in the opposite direction.

The problem was that I wasn’t sure if I was ready for something real. I’d made a promise to May’s memory that I would remain single forever, and while I was on the verge of breaking my second promise to Juliana, I wasn’t usually in the business of breaking promises.

I prided myself on being a pretty reliable, trustworthy guy, but Juliana had gotten under my skin and sparked a war between my heart and mind. Unfortunately, that meant that she was also getting caught in the crossfire. She’d taken a pretty big hit this morning, and I already felt like shit because of it.

If I was going to see her again, and keep my promise to text her, I never wanted that to happen again. The whole situation was fucking with my head. Sighing, I turned off the tap, stepped out of the shower, and toweled off. Walking butt naked to my room, I thought of the lie I’d told Juliana to get out of there, and since I felt shitty enough about being the asshole who had ‘made love to her’ and ducked out a couple of hours later, I suddenly didn’t want to be a liar too.

I threw on a pair of shorts and a tee, then grabbed my phone and pulled up Tugger’s number while I headed to the kitchen to make some breakfast. He answered on the second ring.

“What’s up?” he asked, curiously.

I didn’t call him up over weekends too often anymore, usually preferring to keep my postcoital pity parties limited to me, myself, and I. “You busy today?”

“If by busy you mean doing as little as possible, for as long as possible, then yes,” he said.

“Wanna come over to watch the game later?” My voice was casual and steady, but I was silently urging him to say yes with everything I had.

Tugger hesitated, and I heard a muffled voice on his side, then he was back. “Sure. See you in a couple minutes.”

Victory! I hadn’t meant he had to come immediately, but his Spidey senses must have been tingling about how badly I needed to see my friend. I hated to admit it, but Tugger was my much-needed voice of reason more often than not.

True to his word, I was finishing up with my breakfast of dry cereal when I heard him letting himself in. “Honey, I’m home!”

“Kitchen,” I called out, walking over to my sink to drop the bowl and spoon I was using into it, then walked toward the fridge. It was probably too early in the day to start drinking, but what the hell. I grabbed two beers, uncapped them, and handed one to Tugger.

He took it with a raised eyebrow. “At 10:30 in the morning?”

I shrugged. “It’s Sunday, and there’s a game later. Men all over America are starting early.”

Laughing, he nodded and followed me out onto the patio. “So, what’s this all about?”

“What’s what about?” I should’ve known he would cut straight to the chase.

Tugger lowered himself into his favored lounger by the pool, stretched out his legs, and rested his beer on his flat stomach. “I haven’t seen much of you over the weekends for years now, but you spent Friday night with us, and now you’re calling about the game on a Sunday morning? Much as I’d like to believe that you’ve simply realized how much you miss my sorry ass, I know that’s not what this is about.”

A rush of guilt flooded my veins when I realized he was right, I’d been an incredibly shitty friend for years, and yet, there he was. “I’m sorry, Tug.”

His eyes narrowed, and both eyebrows shot toward the sky as he turned his head to me. “What for?”

“Being a self-involved dick for so long.”

The corners of his mouth hiked up. “Your dick is pretty self-involved, but you’re not. You’ve just been… grieving, I guess.”

“I guess.” I raised my beer to my lips, giving myself a second to think about what it was that I really wanted to talk to him about, or ordering my thoughts really. “Thanks for coming over, anyway.”

He tipped his beer to me. “Always, brother. You gonna tell me what’s up or are you going to keep stewing about it?”

“I think I’ve met someone,” I blurted out. “But even saying that makes me feel guilty as balls because I promised May there would never be anyone else.”

“You didn’t promise May shit, and you know it. You made a promise to a memory, and you know as well as I do that May would’ve kicked your ass for making a promise like that.”

“What?”

Tugger sighed, brushing his hand over his short hair. “May would have wanted you to be happy, Nelson. If she saw you moping around and fucking everything that moves to avoid the hole in your heart, she would’ve kicked your ass, think about it.”

I did, and couldn’t say he was wrong; I’d just never thought about it that way. “Maybe, but I don’t know how to let go of her. She was everything to me, man.”

“I’m going to say something that you’re not gonna want to hear, but I think it has to be said and I think this is the right time,” Tugger said. “Hear me out before you shove me in the pool or break my jaw or something, okay?”

Apprehension tightened my stomach, and my knuckles went white from how hard I was hanging onto the arm of my lounger with one hand and my beer with the other. I was determined to remain calm, however. I would not be breaking my best friend’s jaw today. No matter what he said, I owed him that much after he’d been putting up with me for all these years.

“You and May,” he trailed off, and I braced myself. He was right; I didn’t want to hear this. “I know that in your head she was everything to you, but are you really sure she was? I mean, are you sure that she was the only woman for you?”

“Yes,” I answered automatically. “Where is this coming from?”

He blew out a breath and sat upright, one leg jumping at the knee. “It’s just that I remember her too. I remember what things were like between you two. Be honest with me here: how much did you even know about May outside of the SEALs?”

My mind raced through my memories of her as I squinted into the sun, part of me wishing that it would burn that question right out of my brain. I didn’t want to think about her like that, because he’d asked me to be honest with him, and I didn’t even want to be honest with myself over this.

“Not all that much,” I finally admitted, seeing little black dots behind my eyelids when I let them fall closed to try to hide the pain this newfound knowledge caused.

“Exactly. Your relationship was pretty confined, my man. You fought the enemy together like demons and fucked like rabbits before and after, but you never lived with her out here in the world. You shopped for weapons, not groceries. All I ever heard you two talking about was missions, or guns, or something else related to the job.”

“So?”

“So you never argued about who was making what for dinner or about which way the toilet paper should go. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to diminish your relationship; I’m trying to tell you that I don’t know if she would’ve been the best-suited mate for you in civilian life.”

The air left my lungs are surely as if someone had punched me in the stomach, and I kind of wished that he’d done that instead, because as much as I wanted him to be, he wasn’t wrong. I stared at him stupidly as the realization hit and saw only empathy in his eyes. He allowed me to chew it over for a couple of minutes, both of us draining our beers.

I collapsed into the lounger and stared up at the cloudless sky, not caring that I was probably going to get sunburned if we stayed out here much longer. Tugger collected our empty bottles and came back with fresh ones and a bag of chips that he’d cut a hole in to make a bowl out of it.

“You gonna hit me?” he asked as he handed me my beer and set the chips down on the plastic table between the loungers.

“No.”

Tugger smiled and settled back in his lounger. “You letting go of the guilt yet?”

“Trying.”

“Ever going to say more than one word at a time again?” he asked after a while.

“Eventually, maybe. I don’t know.”

Tugger chuckled and slid on the sunglasses that had been hanging in the V of his shirt. “You should. In the meantime, why don’t you tell me about this girl you’ve met? It’s that same chick we cooked for, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I told him, then I took a deep breath and told him all about it. When I was done, Tugger’s smile could’ve lit up the sun.

“You know, I think you should give this one a real chance.”

I paused, letting his words sink in. “I don’t know what the standard operating procedure is here, Tug.”

He leaned back in his chair, taking a long sip of his beer as he tipped his face up to the sun. “That’s because there is no SOP for this, sorry bro.”