Jay’s eyes opened slowly. The first thing he saw were lazy dust motes slow dancing through a shaft of early morning sunlight.

His body stretched just a tiny bit, stretching the limits of sleep. He ached in some places and buzzed in others. He thought of her frantic, grasping fingers. Her teeth on his skin. The way she’d yanked and gripped at him. He felt like a man well used. That thought put an unstoppable grin on his face. If Mari had been there, had seen that grin, the whole chess game they were playing would have been called off. There was no way in hell any woman could have resisted the playful, satisfied happiness that washed across Jay’s face right then.

But Mari wasn’t there, she didn’t see the grin. And she definitely didn’t see the way the grin dissolved into a downright scowl as Jay sat up in the bed.

She was gone. He knew without even looking in his adjoining bathroom that she’d gone back to her own space. Had she waited for him to fall asleep? Had she slept beside him? Or was she gone the second she was able to sneak out?

Those thoughts had Jay dropping his forehead to his knee and tugging at his hair. He should have known it wouldn’t be so easy as reminding her what it was like when they were together. When it came to he and Mari, there were always obstacles.

It was that thought that had him kicking the covers off and sliding out of bed. This was nothing new. There were always obstacles. For five years, the obstacles had been damn near insurmountable. This was nothing compared to that.

Foregoing a shower, Jay just slipped some swim trunks on and grabbed a t-shirt from his stack of things.

He was surprised when he opened the door to his room and found both Eli and Marcus sitting at the breakfast table out on the balcony. And a gorgeous black-haired woman wearing an oversized t-shirt had her feet propped up on the balcony railing, her face tipped toward the sun and a slice of mango between her fingers.

Jay’s mouth dropped open. She’d…stayed. Well, sort of. She’d fled from his room, but she hadn’t left the suite. And she was sitting there with his two best friends, wearing his t-shirt. Those bastards were enjoying the morning after that he’d battled for.

Torn halfway between jumping for joy and scowling, Jay opened the screen door and stepped out onto the balcony, his shirt still in one hand. Three faces turned to him. Mari’s face went pink and Marcus and Eli’s mouths dropped right open.

“Holy shit,” Marcus murmured, his eyebrows in his hairline.

“What?” Jay scowled.

“Jay,” Mari said, hiding her eyes behind her hand. “Put your shirt on.”

Eli just looked gleefully back and forth between Mari and Jay.

Jay dropped his eyes to his own chest, wondering what they were all staring at, and couldn’t help but grin in astonishment.

He was a wreck. He looked like he’d gotten jumped last night. Just from what he could see on his chest there were bruises from Mari’s fingertips, at least two sets of bite marks, and a line of hickeys across one of his pecs. Curious, he looked over his own shoulder, turning in a circle, trying to see what the damage was like back there.

“Holy shit,” Marcus murmured again.

From what Jay could see, he was completely scratched to pieces back there. Her fingernails had really done a number on him.

“You’re a wildcat, chica!” Marcus crowed, laughing and grinning at Mari.

She just dropped her face even further into her hands. “I don’t embarrass easily, but damn!”

Jay couldn’t help but grin at his two friends. Eli flashed Jay a thumbs up and Marcus continued to look back and forth between the two of them. Jay slid his shirt on, not because he was ashamed, but because he wanted her to stop hiding her face.

He skirted around the table, over to where she was sitting. Without hesitating, he slipped his hands under her knees and hips and picked her up easily. Mari squeaked, her head popping up at the unexpected motion. But she didn’t protest when he resettled her directly on his lap, his arms around her waist.

“Morning,” he grinned into her eyes.

“Morning,” she muttered, pink still staining her cheeks. “Sorry you look like roadkill.”

Jay laughed, utterly delighted. “That is something you literally never have to apologize for.”

Jay reached forward to grab the cup of coffee she’d been sipping on and downed half of it in two big chugs. Next he started in on the fruit on her plate.

Eli stretched his shoulders and his neck. “Any chance you guys would be into a beach day? Or snorkeling? Or something a little less intense than surfing? My muscles could use a break over here.”

“Aren’t you a professional athlete?” Marcus scoffed, reclining in his chair and lifting his face to the sun.

“Not anymore, son.” Eli grinned. He’d thought it would take a lot longer to get used to being retired from the one thing he knew he was born to do. He wondered if he’d have some sort of identity crisis after retiring. But here he was, ten days out and happy as a clam. He figured the Superbowl ring was easing the sting of the life transition.

“Snorkeling sounds good,” Mari piped up. She shifted forward to grab some more fruit from her plate and Jay tightened his grip around her waist. She frowned down at his hands, at the way it made her stomach flip to have him holding her so tight. So proprietarily, like they belonged to one another. “I know a good spot.”

Marcus’s phone beeped and he rose to take the phone call in the other room. Eli and Jay exchanged frowns as they eyed the tight set of their best friend’s shoulders.

“What?” Mari asked, looking between them. She knew it might be rude to pry, but she was starting to grow rather fond of Marcus and if something was the matter with him, she wanted to know.

“That’s the ringtone he uses for work,” Jay answered, absently smoothing one hand over her thigh. “He’s on leave right now. And it’s not a good sign if they’re bothering him.”

“Oh,” Mari frowned. She didn’t like the sound of that. Their obvious concern for Marcus both unsettled and warmed her. These three men were family. They’d cobbled together and become blood. She could see how easy it had been for them. For one horrible second, Mari yearned for that from them. She watched these three men together and wanted a family again so badly she could barely breathe. But everything was temporary, she reminded herself. Everything had an expiration date. And her life was painful evidence of that. There was no forever. She could deal with breakups. But she didn’t think she could deal with losing any more family. It was time to set some boundaries in place. With Jay and with his two friends.

Mari rose from Jay’s lap. “I’m gonna get head back to my airBnB, I’ll meet you guys back here in a half an hour and we can go to the snorkeling spot together, okay?”

She skittered away from the table, avoiding Jay’s eyes and heading toward his bedroom where her clothes from last night waited.

She should have known that she wouldn’t have been able to even close the door without his hand stopping it. He shouldered his way into his own room and latched the door. Suddenly she was exactly where she’d been trying to avoid being. Alone with Jay.

“So,” he said, his hands in the pockets of his swim trunks and his back casually leaned against the bedroom door. He watched her as she wandered the room, gathering her clothing up. “You’re not running away from me, per se. But you’re doing something. I can’t quite tell. An evasive dance of some kind? You’re bent on keeping some sort of distance?”

“What are you talking about?” she asked automatically, and then winced. She knew exactly what he was talking about. She was just buying time in the worst way possible. “Sorry. I know what you’re talking about. And yes, that’s what I’m doing. Is that a problem?”

She stripped his shirt off over her head and stepped into her underwear and then her bra. Jay said absolutely nothing and Mari got a jolt of feminine pride when she realized that was due to his brain being scrambled by her state of undress. He looked at her like he wanted to lap her up like an ice cream cone.

He shook his head once and then cleared his throat. “Of course it’s alright, Mari. I’m not trying to pressure you or push you.”

Mari tossed her hands in the air and rolled her eyes. “Of course you’re not. You never do. You never push or pull. All you do is lure!”

“Is that a problem?” he repeated her words, calmly enough that it had Mari’s eyes narrowing with temper.

Mari slid her dress from last night over her head and wiggled into it. “Yes, it’s a problem! Half of me wants to get the hell away from here, just be all safe and on my own. And the other half just keeps getting lured back into your handsome, sweet as hell web. I can’t do both! I’m trying to straddle this line here and it’s exhausting. So yeah, I’m not running away from you. Because I don’t even think that’s possible. But if you think I’m gonna wake up spooning you and then play footsie all morning, you’re nuts. I don’t have a death wish, Jay!”

She knew she was raging, only partly making sense, and revealing way too much all at the same time. But she was all out of sorts, struggling to zip up her dress and she couldn’t get the sight of his naked, ravaged chest out of her mind. She’d absolutely torn him to shreds.

Jay crossed the room, zipped her dress for her and then roughly took her by the shoulders, sat her down on the bed. He crouched in front of her.

“Let me get this straight. You want me to stop ‘luring’ you?” He made air quotes.

“Yes!” Mari nodded resolutely. Then her face blurred, confused and crumpling. “Wait. No. I don’t know.”

“Okay.” He rose and paced away from her a second. “Let’s try something new. I’m just going to tell you exactly what I want.”

Mari’s stomach flipped. “Okay.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at her from a few feet away. “I want to go with you to your AirBnB right now. I wanna get your things and bring you back here. I want you to sleep in my bed for the rest of vacation.”

She blinked. God, that sounded good. Mari swallowed hard, the word vacation echoing in her head. “And then what?” she challenged him.

His eyes shuttered. He knew what she was saying. She was asking him what happened after vacation was over. He knew a trap when he saw one. She was daring him to make the decision for her. And Jay knew, without a doubt, that she’d scratch and claw at any answer he gave her.

So he shrugged. “You tell me.”

Mari opened her mouth, fire in her eyes, and Jay immediately lifted a hand, stopped her from talking. “At the end of the vacation, you tell me what happens next, okay?”

Mari clapped her mouth shut, her eyes narrowing as if she were trying to figure out the angle on his secretly sneaky plan.

Jay took a deep breath and let a small smile flirt over his face. “I’m not trying to trick you or lure you or trap you, Mari. I’m trying to make you feel good. Let me make you feel good for the next four days on vacation and then we’ll talk about the rest of it all. The real life stuff. Let’s just be together for four days, okay?”

The wind went out of Mari’s sails. She had no idea what he meant. She could see it being one of two things. Either he was saying that he only wanted to be with her for the next four days. Vacation fuck buddies. Or he was saying that he wanted to take these four days to help them figure out how to be together on the other side, back home. Mari wasn’t sure which one terrified her more. But unfortunately, she knew which one she wanted.

She flopped back onto the bed and eyed the perfectly white ceiling of the hotel room for a minute. She was stuck in a cloud of confusion. She was rattled over losing Linc, losing the life she’d thought she was going to have. The life she’d been comfortable with. She was freaked out about getting closer to Jay, only to lose him as well, which she viewed as an inevitability at this point, things like this just didn’t last in her life. She’d had too much ripped away from her to see it any differently. But also, the biggest feeling she had, so big it almost suffocated her, was her desire for Jay. Her need to be close and closer. Now that she’d allowed herself to touch him again, it was all she wanted to do.

“Fine,” she heard herself mutter, unable to be completely happy about surrendering this part of herself to him. “We can just be happy for the next four days. Together.”

His smile could have powered an entire city.

***

The day passed quickly for all of them. Jay had gathered Mari’s things immediately after she’d agreed to it and moved her into his room. But they hadn’t spent any time at the hotel since then. The four of them had snorkeled for hours, out on the beach with a picnic lunch.                                           Afterwards they’d hiked back the long way to the hotel and gone straight into a happy hour by the pool. Even Jay had had two drinks. His ease and joy at an all-time high as he sipped whatever fruity crap Mari had ordered for him. He’d watched her float on a raft on the pool, splashing with Marcus and kicking her feet.

They’d eaten dinner beside the pool and an hour after that had retired to the shade and air conditioning of their hotel room. They all looked a little sun woozy and no one had complained when Eli had turned on some action movie on the big screen in the living room.

When Mari fell asleep, her back to Jay’s side on one wing of the sectional couch, he’d decided they were done with the movie. He nodded to his friends and carried her back to his room. Their room.

The thought put a flip in his stomach. He didn’t know what this girl was thinking. All he knew was that she was tangled up in a million ways. She kept expecting the rug to get pulled out from under her. And Jay had to admit, she had good reason to. First she’d lost her parents, and then she’d lost Jay, and now she was reeling from losing the douche in a suit. Jay was beyond overjoyed that douche wasn’t in her life anymore. But he was pained for her at how much of a tailspin she was in over it. She didn’t allow herself to get comfortable in any life anymore. And that’s all Jay desperately wanted. Was for her to get comfortable with him.

So he pulled back the covers and laid her on the bed, slipping her clothes gently off of her. She shivered once in the air conditioning so he grabbed a t-shirt from his bag and slid it onto her, tucking her under the covers. He watched her sleeping form as he brushed his teeth.

She looked so gorgeous, so unbelievably, perfectly out of place in his bed. Her black hair against his pillow, her mauve lips, parted with sleep. His bed was always so lonely, and yet here she was. It was like strolling through a lawn of grass and stumbling upon a humongous winking ruby. Unexpected and painfully beautiful.

When he pulled back the covers and slid in next to her, he didn’t go to the empty side of the bed, instead he just crowded into her occupied side, wanting any excuse to be touching her, ankle to neck.

Mari sighed and turned over so that they were face to face. She absently threw a leg over his hip and settled her forehead into his neck. The move aligned them in a very sensitive area but Jay held perfectly still. The only thing that moved was the breath in his chest. She’d snuggled up to him so naturally, without any hesitation, and the ease of it had been like ice in his heart.

Part of him was reasonably certain that she thought he was Linc.

“Jay,” she whispered, and his heart started beating again.

“Yeah?”

She looked up at him with sleepy eyes. “You’re so warm, it’s like there’s a sun inside you.”

He wasn’t sure if she was still dreaming, but he smiled at her words.

“I watched you today,” she whispered. “While you were swimming. And you’re so beautiful. Like a god or something. All those muscles and gold skin. All the women were watching you. And you’re mine.”

Jay’s breath caught as a certain part of himself started waking up. Was she doing this on purpose? He wasn’t sure.              

“During the hurricane, I couldn’t believe that you were the one there with me. One of the most gorgeous men I’d ever seen and I got to be trapped in a hurricane with you.”

Jay huffed out a little edgy laugh as one of her hands dipped just under the waist of his boxer briefs. She drew a line on his skin. Her touch burned him, made him raw in every way.

“You didn’t care that I was good looking. You treated me like I was a serial killer.”

She didn’t laugh, but she did open her mouth against his neck, she did taste him. Jay felt paralyzed. He didn’t want to do anything that might break this spell. “I didn’t trust you because you were a stranger, but also because I wanted you so badly. Right from the beginning. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know how you were doing it to me. I’d never felt like that about anyone before. Like I wanted to swallow every last drop of you.”

Jay let out a ragged breath, swallowed hard. “I felt the same way. You were like a…” he searched for the right words with a brain that was heavy and slow with desire for her. “A piece of exotic fruit that I’d never tasted before. I wanted you to let me take a bite so badly.”

“I did,” she whispered, her hand dipping all the way into his boxers, circling him. “I gave you a taste. First I gave you just a little. And then I gave you everything.”

It was the memory of that night on the roof, the improbable hail stones all around them, that had Jay thrusting forward into her hand.

Her leg was still thrown over his hip and she drew him closer to her core with a muscular flex of her foot.

“I need you,” she whispered, her lips almost against his lips.

Jay flicked his briefs down a few inches and popped free. He batted her hand away from him and grabbed her behind, sliding her toward him. He rolled so that she straddled him and Mari took him inside in one fluid, breathtaking motion.

They both held perfectly still, struck with the glory of it. And then when she fell forward onto her hands, when her hair curtained around them, did they start to move.

Jay let out a low, long groan at the perfect, sliding feel of her. Mari’s breath was choppy and bursting over his face before she let out a needy whimper. It was a sound he’d never heard her make before and it broke him. He tangled his hands in her hair and swallowed down her breath with his mouth on hers. He pushed up into her from below and was undone when she made the sound again, directly into his mouth.

Jay’s hands gripped at her, too tight and everywhere. There was nothing soft about the way he held her and Mari couldn’t get enough of it. She felt like he was holding her together. That without the rough grasp of his hands, she might just fly to pieces. Their pace was slow and intense, each stroke affecting them, changing them. And when they exploded against one another, Mari first, and then Jay, they were holding on so tight it was like they were all the other had left in the entire world.

When their breaths became even again, they lay in the same position, still connected even as their heart rates slowed and matched one another.

Jay wondered if she’d fallen asleep in that position and found he wouldn’t have minded at all. But then she spoke.

“Did you have any girlfriends?” Mari asked suddenly, into the darkness. Jay knew exactly what she was asking. If he’d been with anyone since her.

He cleared his throat. “I’ve been with women. But no one more than once. Definitely no girlfriends.”              

She was quiet, tracing a pattern over his damp skin. She seemed different in the dark for some reason. Less combative, more willing to do this the way he’d hoped they would. With open hearts and real steps forward. He didn’t want to break the spell.

“Wasn’t that lonely?” she finally asked.

“Yes.”

She didn’t say more. But he had to ask.

“Were you with anyone besides Linc?” He thought he deserved a medal of honor for not sneering the douche’s name.

“Yeah.” It was her turn to clear her throat. “I was with some guy a few months after the hurricane. We hooked up and then I scared the shit out of him when I had a nightmare. And then I cried my eyes out because he wasn’t you.”

Jay’s arms tightened around her and he couldn’t help but kiss any part of her he could reach. Her ear, her hair, the hot skin on her forehead.

“But it wasn’t like that with Linc?” His heart raced to ask the question.

She shook her head. “No. I never once let myself compare Linc to you. I knew that was suicide. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want what I had with Linc. I did.”

Jay was acutely aware of the fact that he was still inside her right that very second. He moved his hips just a tiny bit, in case she needed reminding as well.

Her eyes widened. “I’m sorry, am I being insensitive?”

“No,” he smiled gently at her. “You’re being brutally honest. Mari-style. I’d never want you to be different.”

She made a little noise that he couldn’t begin to interpret and settled her head back on his neck.

“Mari,” he started, needing to say something. “I’m not sorry that you’re not with Linc anymore. But I am sorry that your life keeps getting turned upside down. Even—” his throat closed for a second. “Even if it’s not with me, I want you to have stability in your life. I really do. And I’m sorry if my presence made your life worse. Messed it up.”

Mari was quiet, deeply quiet. She sat up, words in her eyes, a resolute expression on her face like she was about to make a proclamation of some kind. But the movement of her hips pushed Jay further inside her and it distracted both of them. She pushed down experimentally and they both gasped. Jay lifted his hands to her breasts, her head fell back in ecstasy, and they were lost in one another again.

***

The days went past in a lazy, loping pace that somehow flew by with them barely noticing. As much as Mari and Jay relished being alone together, they spent their days as a group. The four of them would go surfing or sailing or snorkeling. In the evenings they’d head back to the hotel, get cleaned up and find dinner together.

And each night, Mari and Jay found themselves panting, exhausted and exhilarated in one another’s arms. Every moment that passed felt like sand through Mari’s fingers.

Soon there was just a day, a handful of hours really, before she was on a plane back to Ocean City. Her vacation would be over, she’d have no place to live, a job that had piled up in her absence and no one to go home to.

The reality of it was crippling for her. She had no idea what Jay was thinking would happen when this vacation was over, but he’d asked to make her happy while they were here, in Hawaii. And he had. He’d shown up for that task. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d been happier. But they were about to go back to reality and she dreaded what things would be like for them anywhere but vacation.

They were on borrowed time, Mari knew it. There was no way this thing they had could translate back into real life. And that was not something Mari was happy to come to terms with. Especially because she barely had a real life to return to. Would she even stay in Ocean City? Where she could run into Jay at any moment? Probably not. It didn’t even occur to her that she hadn’t thought of running into Linc. It hadn’t occurred to her that a handful of days in Jay’s arms had begun to erase Linc from her thoughts and worries. She missed Linc, but he was so far down on her radar right now, she was barely thinking about him at all.

Jay watched Mari as she skirted around the edge of the saltwater pool they were eating lunch beside. They’d gone surfing that morning and the four of them had tacitly agreed to head back to the hotel for a relaxing last afternoon on vacation. They were flying out tomorrow.

A waiter with a tray full of drinks turned his head to watch Mari pass, his eyes landing on her bathing suit bottoms. She wore a tight little t-shirt over her bikini top but hadn’t bothered to put shorts or pants on.

God, Jay was so into her. She was just so herself at all moments. There was no one else like her. He felt as if they were building something here in Hawaii. He’d spent the last few days showing her what it could be like when they got home, and he hoped she was getting the message. He wanted her to feel relaxed and cared for. He wanted her to get into bed at night and know that he saw her, he knew her, he wanted her. He wanted her to get out of bed in the morning and know that he would give her space if she wanted it and be by her side if she wanted that.

She disappeared into the shade of the hotel and Jay finally tore his eyes away from the direction she’d gone. He tipped his head back onto his chair and closed his eyes into the sun. It was gonna be hard to go back to winter in Maryland after this.

“Are you gonna tell her?” Eli asked, quasi casually, sipping a Corona and crossing his sandy ankles one over the other.

Jay’s head snapped up. “Tell her what?”

Marcus and Eli rolled their eyes at one another.

“What you’re feeling. What you’re hoping for when you get back to Ocean City.”

“Oh,” Jay said as his stomach flipped for reasons he didn’t quite understand. “She knows. She knows how I feel about all that.”

Marcus raised a skeptical brow. “Don’t be a dumb shit.”

Jay raised his hands up over his head in a quick, impatient move. “What?”

“I’m just saying,” Marcus shrugged a shoulder. “That girl, cool as she is, is like a long-tailed cat in a rocking chair convention.

Now it was Jay and Eli’s turn to roll their eyes at one another. “I’m sorry,” Jay said, a wry grin on his face. “When did you switch places with my Great Aunt Bev?”

Marcus laughed, just a little. “I’m telling you man, as much as she’s enjoying vacation with you, that girl is nervous. Whenever any of us have mentioned Ocean City she’s gone stiff as a board.”

Jay frowned. He’d noticed that too. Nobody liked talking about their real life when they were on vacation, but Mari’s aversion to it did seem a little extreme. Jay’s stomach dropped as he watched her come back out of the hotel, a beautiful little frown on her perfect mauve mouth.

“Anyone up for a swim?” Mari asked, picking up Jay’s half full water glass and chugging the rest of it right down. The gesture warmed him.

“Yeah.” Jay rose instantly and followed her toward the humongous, deep blue pool they all sat around.

Marcus and Eli watched them go. Eli kicked Marcus’s knee with a sandy foot. “How’re you doing, man?”

Marcus dusted off the sand that Eli’s foot had left behind and frowned. “You mean with my recuperation leave?”

“I mean with everything that happened.” Neither of them could bring themselves to say the words. That Marcus had killed someone. It still blew Eli’s mind that his friend was capable of it. That Marcus had chosen a line of work where he’d had to take measures that extreme before and would probably have to again.

Marcus shrugged, either vacation had really relaxed him or he was faking. Eli couldn’t tell. “I mean, it doesn’t feel good. But it’s not eating me alive. The therapist they pinned me with this time is a good guy. And,” Marcus brushed a hand over his dark hair, “I’m really trying this time. You know how everything fell apart last time. When I just said fuck it and didn’t try at therapy or recuperation.”

Eli tried not to shudder at the memory of that time. It was like Marcus’s evil twin had come out to play. He was angry, erratic, drunk more often than not. And it had gone on for months. It was Eli’s dad that had finally slapped some sense into him. Actually, Ryan had bought Marcus out of his lease and moved him in with him. Eli still wasn’t sure what had transpired in the months that had followed, but Marcus had come out the other side as himself again.

Needless to say, Eli was beyond relieved to hear that his friend was taking all precautions to not let that happen again. “I’m glad to hear it. What’re things gonna look like for you when you get back? You still have a couple months of leave, right?”

Marcus pursed his lips. “Technically, if I want it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, apparently they’ve got an assignment for me if I want it. But it’s not what I usually do. And it sounds boring as hell. I don’t know if I’ll take it or not.”

Marcus frowned as he thought back to the conversation with his superior he’d had on the phone a few days ago. It’s better than riding a desk, Marinos. Which is what you’re looking at until you’re approved to end your medical leave.

It was probably better than riding a desk. But it was babysitting more than anything. Babysitting some chick who was too important to put into witness protection. Marcus hadn’t been briefed yet on who she was or why she deserved her own personal federal agent as a bodyguard. And he wasn’t curious. He’d been curious as hell about every single one of his cases since he could remember.

Honestly, that was a lot of what was bothering him about the way his last case had ended. He’d watched the man he’d been hunting for years fall backwards, out of the air, already dead, and Marcus knew that all those questions he’d needed the answers to were never going to be answered. Those answers died right along with that man. And now Marcus was just supposed to move right on. From all of it.

He scowled and raked a hand over his chin. Jesus, he needed a release. The days of surfing and sipping beer poolside had helped lower his blood pressure. And time with his two best friends went a long way toward patching up his raw feelings about his job. But there was also this rough, racing animal inside of him that raged against the bars of its cage.

It had been a year now since Marcus had imposed celibacy on himself and he knew he was nearing a breaking point. It wasn’t the celibacy that bothered him so much as it was the lack of any hope. He was celibate with no game plan on how to not be. All he knew was that he was too intense for women. And he didn’t want to get wrapped up and tangled with them anymore. He just ended up devastating good women who deserved better than him. So until he could figure his shit out, he was abstaining. But the problem was that he sure as fuck didn’t feel like abstaining anymore.

He shifted in his seat.

“What’s that all about?” Eli asked, tipping his beer toward the look of pent-up tension on Marcus’s face.

Marcus shrugged, trying to wipe his face clean.

Eli sighed, stretched his feet out on front of him and tipped his head back to watch the sky. “When the hell did my two best friends become such closed fucking vaults?”

“What?”

“I mean, here’s Jay keeping the love of his life secret for five flipping years. And then there’s you, all tortured and tense over some secret that I’m guessing has to do with women, and you won’t give it up either. What the hell is this? I tell you guys everything. And I have since I was a kid. I don’t get it.”

Marcus couldn’t help but roll his eyes and smile at his best friend. “I’m sorry. Would you like to trade these beers for chocolate milk? You could braid my hair. And then we’ll just go ahead and have ourselves a pillow fight.”

Eli raised his eyes to the heavens. “I’m not asking for gossip, Marcus. I’m asking about you, man. Your fucking feelings or whatever. And I’m telling you that I’m willing to bet whatever it is would be better off out here.” Eli gestured to the space between them. “Where I can help you get a little perspective on your critical ass.”

Marcus looked at the ground immediately, cleared his throat. Eli wasn’t wrong. Even when they were kids, Eli always had been able to make things better. He could find the bright side out of any issue. Marcus opened his mouth. Could he tell him? If there was anyone in the world, it would be Eli.

Marcus cleared his throat. “I’m getting frustrated with my celibacy thing.”

Eli blinked. It was the first time Marcus had admitted out loud that this was an actual thing. Eli and Jay had noticed it a long time ago, but Marcus hadn’t said a word to explain it. “Yeah, well, celibacy sounds deeply frustrating. What parts are getting to you?”

Marcus laughed. “The not having sex part.”

Eli laughed too. “Alright then, so break the fast.”

“Nah,” Marcus frowned at his beer. “It’s not that simple.”

Eli signaled to the waiter for another round of beers. “Explain,” he said simply.

Marcus sighed. “I’m abstaining because I’m not good for the women I mess around with.”

Eli stayed quiet, tipping his head onto his knuckles and watching Marcus. He knew that too many questions or too much prodding would make his friend clam up.

“What I want from them is just… too much. They can’t give it. And then I get bored. And I leave. And then they get all hurt and sad and I hate it.”

“What do you mean what you want from them?”

Something dark crossed Marcus’s face as he looked at his best friend. This was Eli, he had to remind himself. He’d already told the guy that he’d killed people, for god sakes. How much worse could this be? “I’ve been told I’m really, ah, intense in the sack.”

Eli stilled for a second, tumblers falling into place. “I mean, at the risk of TMI, what do you mean?”

Marcus said nothing.

So Eli pushed a little. “Like, what, Fifty Shades-type of shit?”

Marcus laughed. “Nah, man. Not like that. I mean, who isn’t partial to some handcuffs every now and then, but nah.”

Eli paused, bit his lip for a second. But curiosity got the best of him. “Then what the hell is it? You have some weird kink or something?”

Marcus scrubbed a hand over his face. Part of him couldn’t believe he was finally talking about this. “Honestly, I don’t know what it is. But every single person I’ve slept with, at some point or another, said it was too much. That I was too much. One chick said it was like I was trying to burn down her forest.”

Eli squinted in confusion, opened his mouth to ask another question.

But Marcus held his hands up. “Seriously, dude, I don’t get it either. Apparently I do it different than other dudes. And for a while I can just like phone it in and try to do whatever I think I should be doing. And I get rave reviews for all that. But then, you know, once you’re with a chick for a while and you start to get comfortable, well that’s when it all goes downhill. Apparently I’m too intense.”

Eli clapped his mouth shut. It still didn’t make sense, but there wasn’t a whole lot more information he could get from Marcus that wasn’t graphic and explicit. And though their friendship could handle a lot, there were definitely some lines. “So you don’t want to get with girls because eventually they end up trying to change the way you get freaky?”

Marcus laughed at how ridiculous that sounded and shook his head. “I don’t know, man. All I know is that I’m sick of making women sad. Because none of them want to break up, you know?”

Eli shook his head. “None of them want to break up with you, even though whatever you’re doing in the bedroom is too much for them?”

He shrugged. “For whatever reason, they wanna work through it. But I can’t do that. I don’t wanna compromise who I am, or make them get used to something that’s too intense for them. Either way it doesn’t seem fair.”

Eli nodded, understanding a little bit. “But dude, there’s no endgame to this celibacy thing, then.”

“I know. That’s what’s bothering me.”

Eli took the beers that the waiter had brought over and shoved one into Marcus’s hand. “Well, you just need to find a girl that wants whatever it is you’re, uh, bringing to the table.”

Marcus raised his eyes at his friend, endeared that Eli was trying so hard to have this awkward-ass conversation.

“Easier said than done.”

“Yeah,” Eli said as he squinted into the distance. “I’m sure. What about like an internet ad or something?”

Marcus blinked slowly. “You want me to take out an internet sex ad for myself? Mid-30s FBI agent with shitty parents and no life outside of his job is seeking a woman who doesn’t mind getting her forest burned down.”

They both burst out laughing. “Yeah. Nah. Maybe you’re right.” Eli tipped his head back. “But then what are you gonna do? Just keep not meeting anyone or sleeping with anyone? That sounds terrible. Really lonely.”

Marcus shrugged. “I can occupy myself with work. Like I have been for a long time.”

Eli nodded. He didn’t say that he wanted Marcus to find a line of work where he didn’t occasionally have to murder someone.

“Plus I have you guys,” Marcus continued. “So it’s not like I’m actually lonely.”

Eli thought about his life before Tia. He hadn’t thought of it as particularly lonely either. And then he’d met the love of his life and he couldn’t imagine going back to a world without her. With casual relationships with women who he didn’t connect with. God. It didn’t even bear thinking about. Tia saw Eli for who he really was, inside and out. And she chose him every day. She filled him. He would never turn away from her. Not in a million years. Again, these were things he didn’t say to his friend.

“I mean, I guess it’s kind of like how I felt about football for a long time, you know?”

“What’s that?”

Eli turned to Marcus. “You do it for as long as you can, and then you retire.”

“Yeah, dude. That’s how most people feel about their jobs.”

“No,” Eli shook his head. “I don’t mean about your job, I mean about the celibacy thing. At some point, it’s gonna just be enough, and you’re gonna find your way out of it. No matter what you have to do. Internet ad or not.”

“Alright, alright. I’m gonna go join the lovebirds.” Marcus rose up and stretched, tossing his t-shirt on the chair behind him. He didn’t look back, but he did squeeze Eli’s shoulder before he went and cannonballed into the pool.

Eli sat, cold beer in hand, and watched them splash around in the pool. Vacation was good, necessary, perfect. But God, he couldn’t wait to get home to Tia.