“Yeah,” I say, sharper this time. “I’m sure.”
He holds my gaze for a second longer.
Then shrugs. “Alright, man. Relax.”
Carter isn’t as quick to let it go. “So what is it then? Long distance? Girl back home? Secret wife we don’t know about?”
I let out a dry laugh. “Yeah. Secret wife. You got me.”
“Would explain a lot,” he mutters.
The tension breaks just enough for them to start talking over each other again, the focus shifting away from me like it always does. I lean back against the wall, letting their voices blur into the background. But the silence inside my own head? That’s louder than anything.
Because they’re wrong. About all of it. It’s not a secret wife. It’s not long distance. It’s not some casual thing I can laugh off and forget. It’sWillow.And I’m screwed.
My jaw tightens as I stare at the ceiling, the faint hum of the lights buzzing overhead.
I can still feel it. That kiss. God, I can still feel it.
The way she looked at me before it happened. The way her hand rested against my chest like she belonged there. The way everything in me lit up the second her lips touched mine?—
Like something I didn’t even know I was missing finally clicked into place. It definitely wasn’t supposed to follow me here.
But it does. Every damn day.
“Yo, Garr.”
I blink, dragging myself back to the present. Carter’s looking at me again, eyebrow raised. “You spacing out on us?”
“Just tired.”
“Sure,” he says, clearly not buying it.
I don’t care.
Because I’m not about to explain this. Not to them. Not to anyone. Especially not the part that matters most. The part where I went back to David’s house the next morning. The partwhere he didn’t even let me step inside. The part where I stood on his front porch like a stranger while he looked at me like one.
“You’re done,” he’d said.
Just like that. Thirty years of friendship. Gone in a sentence.
“I didn’t—” I’d started.
“I don’t care,” he cut me off. “I don’t care what you think happened, what she thinks happened, or what you were about to do. It ends. Right now.”
My hands curl slightly at the memory.
“You stay away from her,” he said, voice low, deadly serious. “You don’t call. You don’t text. You don’t look at her. You don’t exist in her world anymore. You understand me?”
Yeah. I understood him. Because I would’ve said the same thing if I were him.
“Say it,” he demanded.
The words tasted like ash.
“I swear.”
And just like that—It was over. I close my eyes briefly now, back in the barracks, the noise of the guys still bouncing off the walls.
