“She doesn’t want to fall in love.”
Romeo blinked a couple more times, turning each word over in his mind to make certain he’d heard correctly. “She doesn’t want to fall in love withyouor with anyone?”
“Anyone.”
More blinks. More confusion. “Like, she thinks she has control over that or something?”
Wolf launched into an invective-filled explanation about how Chrissy perceived a difference betweenfallingin love andbeingin love.
After he was finished, Romeo asked cautiously, “What’s that mean for you?”
“Haven’t figured that out yet.” Wolf ran a hand over his face, looking bone-tired.
Romeo mulled things over and finally ventured, “Ever thought of simply manning up and telling her how you feel anyway?”
Wolf gave him a look that said he’d left half his brain behind on Wayfarer Island. “Since when hasmannin’ upever involved tellin’ folks how we feel? Think of Ryan Reynolds. The most you ever get out of him is a glimpse of melancholy before he diffuses the emotional gravity of the situation with a joke and a smirk. And healwaysgets the girl in the end.”
“Sure.” Romeo nodded. “And that manly cliché perpetuated by Hollywood is undoubtedly why there’s so much toxic masculinity and ingrained misogyny in the world.”
“Which brings up another point.” Wolf lifted a finger. “What’s the difference between a good guy and a nice guy?”
Romeo blinked.
“You got somethin’ in your eye or what? You’re doin’ an awful lot of blinkin’.”
“I’m just trying to keep up with everything that’s coming out of your mouth without getting conversational whiplash. Now, good guy versus nice guy, there’s a difference?”
Wolf shrugged. “Accordin’ to Chrissy.”
Romeo was beginning to suspect Chrissy was completely full of shit. “If there’s a difference, I have no idea what it is. So back to my point about you telling Chrissy how you feel. She can wax poetic all she wants about falling in love versus being in love, but my guess is, once she’s confronted with the actual, factual real deal, she’ll realize she can’t have one without the other.”
Wolf shook his head and said something under his breath that made it clear he wanted to drop the subject. Since Romeo was a good friend—and also because he knewexactlyhow it felt to want to ignore the potential emotional time bomb ticking in the corner—he obliged, snagging instead on what had brought him around to Chrissy’s house in the first place.
“Mia and I had to go to five different shops, but we were able to get our hands on thirteen metal detectors.”
“Right.” Wolf nodded. “We still have the mother lode to find. With everything that’s happened, I forgot what we came here for.”
“Well let me remind you.” Romeo’s tone was gloomy. It matched the sky to the west, which was beginning to boil with gray storm clouds. “We came here because this is our last chance to stay out of the poor house.”
If he and his former SEAL brothers had chosen any other profession, their long list of accomplishments would’ve meant they were set for life. But because they’d chosen the military, they’d barely had enough to get the salvage business up and running.
If they didn’t find theSanta Cristina’sbounty?
Not to put it too bluntly, but we’re all screwed.
They fell into silence, each lost in their own thoughts as they watched a colorful lizard skirt along the rail of the porch and then freeze in place when a fly alighted on a nearby bush.
Wolf’s voice was contemplative, as if he was talking to himself, when he finally spoke. “When you’ve spent years turnin’ yourself into the best of the best, there are times you begin to wonder if you should be doin’ anything other than what you were trained to do.”
Romeo rubbed a finger over the tattooed words on the inside of his forearm, feeling the shadow of Rusty’s loss fall over him. More than once since they’d failed to find the mother lode, he’d had that exact same thought. That maybe they shouldn’t have made that deathbed promise. That maybe they all should’ve stayed working for Uncle Sam.
But instead of voicing that aloud—the last thing either of them needed was to throw a pity party—he fell back on that old SEAL truism that said every situation was made better when you were giving your buddy shit. “Well, you’re in the clear, my friend. ’Cause you’re nowhere near the best of the best.”
“Fuck you, Romeo,” was Wolf’s reply, but one corner of his mouth curled up.
“In your dreams.” He winked as a welcome breeze from the approaching storm cut through the humidity of the day.
And lit a fire under his ass.
