The relief that swept through me at his arrival seemed out of proportion with the circumstances. I smiled at him. “I’m good. I was enjoying the nice weather.”
“Us too.” He pointed to a group of people farther into the park. “The team had a rough week, so we decided to have a picnic. They sent me over to get you to join us.”
Warmth filled my chest, and I couldn’t hold back my smile. It was so different from my reactions in the past when I’d been invited to join the group of friends. Then, I’d been nervous, afraid they wouldn’t like me or would think I was weird. Over the past few weeks, since the dinner at Jeremy’s place, they’d gone out of their way to include me whenever possible. I’d met Gabe, who was dating Cody’s dad Nico, and Dante, another member of the team. They’d done everything they could to make me feel comfortable without overwhelming me. I turned to Frisbee Guy to tell him I was leaving, but he was already gone. I shrugged and said to Tony, “Let’s go.”
“Who was that guy?” Tony asked as we walked toward his team.
“No idea,” I replied. “He accidentally hit me with a frisbee and came over to apologize.”
“It didn’t look accidental to me,” he murmured.
I stopped walking to face him. “What do you mean?”
His brows drew together in a frown. “He wasn’t throwing ittoanyone. There was no one anywhere near you for him to throw it to. It looked to me like he was trying to hit you.”
“But why would he do that?” I asked, genuinely puzzled. “I don’t even know him.”
Tony sighed heavily. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s just weird and throwing frisbees at people is his way of trying to make friends.”
I chuckled. “Well, he did ask me to get a coffee with him.”
He rolled his eyes. “Figures. I have to say, it’s a shitty way to meet a potential date, if that’s what it was.”
I shrugged. “It certainly didn’t work with me.” I pointed at the group waiting for us. “They’re waving like lunatics. I think they want us over there.”
Tony shook his head and said with a fond smile, “Idiots.”
We were about five feet away when I stopped short, my mouth agape. Marco had a black eye and a split lip, Gabe was wearing an orthopedic boot on his right foot, and Dante had his left arm in a sling and thick bandages covering his forearm and hand. “What happened?”
The three men looked at each other, smirks on their faces. Pete and Andrea both rolled their eyes. “Here it comes,” Pete said.
“You see,” Gabe began, “there was this tiger.”
“Yeah,” Dante added, “it came out of nowhere.”
Marco lifted his hands questioningly. “Who knew tigers could hold AK-47s?”
“Jesus Christ,” Tony muttered.
Liam rose to his feet. “Ignore them. Have a seat and grab some food. There’s plenty to go around.”
“Thanks,” I murmured.
“Hey, are you okay?” Liam asked. “We saw you get hit with that frisbee.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” I replied. I smirked. “I guess you missed the tiger though.”
There was a brief moment of silence, and then they all burst out laughing. Tony sighed. “Great. You’ve corrupted him.”
Nico, Gabe’s boyfriend, handed me a bottle of water and a plate loaded with fried chicken and macaroni salad. I listened while Marco and his team recounted how their personnel extraction mission had gone sideways, resulting in the injuries they were sporting. They did manage to get the executive away from his captors, but he’d suffered serious injuries before theteam had gotten there, and had to be flown to a hospital in a nearby country to recover before he could return to the US.
I blew out a breath after they finished their tale. “Wow. That’s something.”
Liam leaned against Marco. “At least Marco wasn’t shot this time. Dante gets the prize for worst injury.”
“That is not a prize I ever want to get again,” Dante grumbled.
Dante’s arm had gone through a window, shredding the skin all the way up to the elbow. The worst part was that a random shard of glass had nicked his brachial artery, and he had been in danger of bleeding out. Luckily, both Gabe, Marco, and Liam knew what to do to keep him alive until they could get him patched up. He’d had to stay in the hospital overnight to make sure he was stable, which was why Tony had been close to his phone all week.
