He squeezed my fingers as we approached a group clustered near the bar. “Oh, I like this,” Will said, rubbing his hand over a man’s head. “Keeping it high and tight for the big day?”
“Halsted,” he roared, swallowing Will into a back-slapping bear hug. “Always good to see your ugly mug.” A slow smile broke across his face when he spotted me behind Will. When Will noticed, he stepped away and tucked his hand into my back pocket. “Gus Granovsky. The pleasure is all mine.”
“Shannon Walsh,” I said, meeting his outstretched palm.
Gus glanced to Will, his hand still clasping mine. “Are you blackmailing her? There’s no reason why a nice lady like this would have any use for a frogman,” he said. “What’s he got on you, honey?”
“A little bit of everything,” I said, laughing as Will placed his free hand on Gus’s chest and pushed him away. “He’s always catching me in weak moments.”
At that, Will gazed down at me, smiling, and mouthed, “Showerhead.”
“Don’t go there,” I laughed.
“Where’s Viv?” Will asked. He craned his neck around, and it was then that I noticed the bar was packed with men just like him: big, chiseled, and with little more than posture and gaze, quietly broadcasting that they were the baddest of the badass motherfuckers.
“With her sister. You know, doing chick shit because you’re not supposed to see the bride the night before the wedding,” Gus said. He pointed at me. “Can I get you something to drink, Miss Walsh? Halsted has the manners of a dumb goat, and I hear he fucks like one, too, butIam a gentleman.”
“Is that what your mother said about me?” Will asked. He brushed his hand down my back with an eye roll. “What’ll it be, peanut?”
“I’ll go,” I said, nodding toward the bar. “You play with your friends.”
The bar was a true SEAL haven. Black and white photos lined the walls, all featuring sailors engaged in beach drills or standing in formation, and there were cartoonish murals with frogs holding machine guns. A handful of men were gathered around a dartboard where they were talking an exceptional amount of trash, and the others were standing together, offering Will the same hearty greeting he received from Gus.
There were plenty of women, too. Some were in the wife or girlfriend category, and they were easily identifiable as they usually had one of those huge motherfuckers pawing at them. The rest were what Will liked to call tag chasers, and the decidedly predatory look in their eyes—plus their tiny scraps of clothing in spite of the damp chill rolling off the ocean tonight—made them equally easy to spot.
Also: three of them were leering at Will like they hadn’t seen fresh meat in months.
“So you’re Will’s Shannon? I’ve heard a lot about you.”
I turned, narrowing my eyes at the man seated two stools down. “Is that so?”
He wore a baseball cap pulled low and offered a lopsided smile. “Yes, ma’am. Lucas Quadros, but you can call me Quad.”
I looked back at Will. He was deep in conversation with two men while his fan club engaged in all manner of hair twirling and come-hither glancing. He didn’t seem to notice. “And what have you heard, Quad? Anything good?”
He nodded to the empty stool beside him, and I sat. “I heard about you for three days straight. If Halsted hadn’t been talking my ear off, I probably wouldn’t have made it out of that godforsaken desert.”
My smile flattened. “I don’t know that I follow you.”
He pivoted, extending his leg out in front of him. A quick yank pulled the leg of his jeans up, exposing a thin metal pole where a skin and bone should have been.
“Lost my leg in our last go-round. Helicopter went down.”
I didn’t know what to say, and whatcouldI say?
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, and it was possible that words had never been as inadequate as they were right now.
“We lost nine guys in that crash. Halsted got us out. The hostage and me. He ripped nine inches of shrapnel out of his shoulder with a pair of pliers, rubbed some dirt in the wound like a beast, and then dragged us through the desert for three days. Bitched and moaned about my lacking survival skills, and how he’d kick my ass out of the teams if I died.” He laughed—that was some gallows humor right there—and I could only respond with a nod. “He was due home after that mission, and he made sure I knew it.”
I leaned forward, my arms folded on the bar, and studied him. He was young, probably no older than Riley was, and blessed with a soft baby face. He saw it as a curse, I was sure, and was growing a thick, dark beard to prove that plenty of testosterone flowed through his veins.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. I didn’t want to seem flippant or disinterested, but I didn’t know how to handle this information.
“Halsted and I made a deal in that desert. I wasn’t going to bleed out, and he was going to introduce me to the woman he wouldn’t stop talking about.”
I scanned the room for Will, and when I found him leaning against a booth, his eyes flickered to me, steady and unsmiling.
Why didn’t you tell me?
