Chapter 37

Pacey

 

 

“It’s Sunday, babe,” I told Juliana. “We have a ritual.”

We didn’t, but I needed to talk to Tugger, and since neither Juliana nor myself had left the house since Wednesday, I’d invited him here. The Sunday Game Ritual was an excuse that I was starting to appreciate, though I’d come clean to her about it one day in the very near future. I just needed this one last time.

“Okay,” she said, shrugging. “Who am I to argue with ritual?”

I leaned over to kiss her, loving that I was able to do that whenever I wanted to now. We were in the kitchen making breakfast, and the domesticity of the moment wasn’t lost on me. I thought once that it would scare me to have this. It didn’t.

It rocked. I fucking loved every second of it, and if I could do it forever, I would die a very happy man indeed.

Juliana broke the kiss, pushing at my chest with a laugh as she flipped eggs in a pan. “Don’t make me mess up the only thing I can cook.”

“I’d have you for breakfast instead,” I told her, though I’d already had her for breakfast.

“You’re insatiable! A fiend!” she cried, giggling and leaning up to give me a quick kiss. She was the one deepening it when a pop from the pan drew her attention. “Crap. Those are ruined.”

I glanced at the eggs. They looked fine to me, only slightly bubbled around the edges. “Crispy eggs, then. It’ll be our new thing.”

She rolled her eyes but dished up the eggs with a bright smile. “Our first thing.”

Her tone was wondrous, and the way she was devouring me with eyes even better. “It’s not our first thing. Our first thing was this insane chemistry that neither of us stood a chance at resisting.”

Juliana nodded and smiled. “And now you love me.”

“Fuck yeah I do.” I kissed her again, on the verge of losing myself in her when the doorbell buzzed. Tugger. He didn’t just breeze in anymore. I appreciated that.

“And I love you, Pacey,” Juliana said, cupping my cheek in her palm.

“You do,” I grinned, planting a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll be right back.”

“You should be happy we’re not in a horror movie, else you’d be dead in the next few minutes,” she called to my retreating back.

I let Tugger in, dished up breakfast for us all, and we ate, chatting about nothing. Tugger and Juliana took an instant liking to one another as soon as they met and though they’d only spent a couple of hours together so far, they loved ribbing me.

“He still all alpha caveman?” Tugger asked Juliana, who glanced at me with a small smile before she answered.

“Totally. I’m afraid he’s going to keep me here forever as his sex slave,” she joked.

I couldn’t not interject something there. “If anyone is anyone’s sex slave around here, I’m yours, love. I wasn’t the one who seduced you the other night, was I?”

Juliana’s ears and cheeks grew pink, and Tugger laughed when she answered me. “You were the one who kept us in bed until this morning.”

“Wait,” Tugger said. “Until this morning from when?”

“Friday night,” Juliana admitted sheepishly.

Tugger gaped at me and laughingly shook his head. “At our age?”

“Juliana brings it out in me,” I shrugged. She was also the first woman ever to keep up with me. In fact, she fueled me. Hot and ready. Every. Single. Fucking. Time. I didn’t blame myself for keeping her in bed all weekend. No one could.

“Okay, well, I’m ducking out now,” Juliana said, blushing. “You boys enjoy Sunday Game Day.”

Thankfully, she didn’t notice the puzzled look on Tugger’s face. Or she chose to ignore it. Either way was fine with me.

“I’m just gonna make sure that she’s comfortable,” I told him. Juliana tried waving me off, but I carried her Kindle, sunglasses, and a bottle of water out to a hammock I’d set up for her in the garden.

“You sure you’re gonna be okay?”

Juliana laughed and swatted at me with her Kindle. “I’m sure. Go. Watch football with your friend. I’m fine; I know that you were freaked out, and I love you all the more for it, but that man has been picking up your slack at work for days. Go fetch him a beer and have fun watching the game. I’ll be right here.”

“Fine,” I grunted, performing a perfunctory sweep of my own garden that had Juliana breaking into a fit of giggles.

“I’m fine, Pacey. Really. There’s no one hiding behind a tree,” she said, then grew more somber. “You got them all, baby. I’m safe, thanks to you. So, game. Now.”

Pressing a last kiss to her lips and grumbling all the way to my living room, I hated leaving her alone. Even though it’d been my idea, and even though I needed to talk to Tugger without her, leaving her unprotected so soon didn’t sit well with me.

While I’d been outside, Tugger had gotten the game going, but was scrolling on his phone, looking up when he heard me enter. He pointed to a seat he usually occupied, but which had a clear view of the hammock and Juliana relaxing in it. “Have at it, caveman.”

“Is this normal?” I asked. He knew me well enough that I didn’t need to clarify.

Instead, he fixed me with a knowing smile and scratched at the label of his beer. “Let me put it to you this way. Once, when we got back from deployment, Jess wasn’t at the airport. I tried to get hold of her, but her phone was off. Turns out she got held up at work, and her battery died, she wasn’t even in any danger, and I kept her in sight for a week. Just the thought of any alternative where she wasn’t at that airport because something had happened to her—”

He broke off, swallowed, and shrugged.

“So I’m not going crazy?”

His lips quirked into a grin. “Oh, no. You’re already crazy as fuck, but it comes with the territory.”

Neither Tugger nor I watched the game. It was on, sure. But it wasn’t a ritual for a reason. Neither of us were hardcore, diehard fans.

“Sunday Game Day?” Tugger asked then. I watched Juliana in my peripheral vision, lying in the hammock, reading in the shade of the trees.

“Long story,” I told him.

“Okay, but what’s really going on then?” He really did know me too well.

I struggled to find the words, finally just blurting them out. “I can’t live without her, man. I just fucking can’t. I keep having these nightmares about losing her, same as I did May, and it kills me.”

“We didn’t lose though, bud. Weren’t gonna.”

“But what if we did? We lost May, but she was a trained soldier. She put herself in that position; she was there of her own free will. Juliana wasn’t. She was a fucking innocent. A civilian. May put herself at risk, but Juliana did not. If I lost her—” I dropped off, not even wanting to consider the possibility.

“You never woulda come back,” Tugger said. “You’da been lost forever.”

The way that Tugger got me still surprised me sometimes. “Exactly. I don’t know if I would’ve been able to come back from that.”

“So what’re you going to do about it?” he asked, taking a long sip of beer. “I know you’re allergic to relationships or anything resembling them nowadays, but don’t you think some kind of commitment with her would settle you?”

“I do. She needs to be mine. Officially and properly. Forever.”

Tugger’s eyebrows hiked up, and he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What exactly are you saying, Pacey?”

“I’m saying that I need a ring. It doesn’t matter if she wants to wait a while before we get married, but I want to pop the question,” I admitted. “I need her in my life, I need to know she’s not going anywhere, and I need her to know what I feel about her.”

“And what exactly is that?”

“She’s the one, Tug. She’s the only one I want to spend the rest of my life with. May and I talked about it in vague terms, but there wasn’t time. I don’t want to waste time with Juliana.”

“You sure about this?” he asked, but he was already grinning.

“I am. I need a ring, Johnson.”

“So go get one,” he said. “I’ll help you. I’ve had a bit of experience with the whole search of the perfect diamond.”

Wincing, I met his eyes again. “That’s the thing. I can’t leave her. Not yet. I need to make her mine and get that ring, but I also can’t leave her or go shopping for a ring with her watching me, so I’m fucked. I get all anxious just from the thought of leaving her by herself. I can’t do it.”

“You’re not fucked. Not by a long shot,” Tugger smiled. “You have friends, Pacey. You’re not used to leaning on people, and I get that, but lean on me now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s this great thing called the internet. Go on it, choose your ring, and I’ll go pick it up and bring it to you. It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal?” I asked.

“You know what I mean,” Tugger shrugged. “It’s running to a store. You don’t want to leave her yet; you don’t have to. If you can’t bring Mohammed to the mountain.”

“You’re bringing the mountain to me,” I finished for Tugger, taking another a sip of his beer.

“Well, yeah,” his brow furrowed. “Going to the jewelers, more accurately. No mountains involved. Hopefully.”

“No mountains,” I assured him. “Even so, I cannot thank you enough, T.J.”

I only called him T.J. when shit got real. Thomas ‘Tugger’ Johnson preferred his last name or his nickname, but he allowed the shortening when people got serious. He smiled at me.

“Tighten your towel, Nelson. You’re about to jump out of the frying pan straight into the fire. You sure this is what you want?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, let’s fire up your laptop then. You’ve got shopping to do.” He nodded at my computer lying on the coffee table and scooted in beside me.

“Just so you know,” I said, starting to type the names of local jewelry designers into the search engine, “I wasn’t only saying thank you for this. I was saying thank you for everything.”

“I know,” he said. “SEALs are comrades for life; you know that. Now, are we shopping for a ring or browsing sites with girly shit on them for no reason?