“And you’re a disaster.”
He kissed her again. “And you like that.”
She didn’t deny it.
The memory faded as she gripped the edge of the sink with white-knuckles. It had been fifteen years, and she was never supposed to see Bobby Jenkins again. She had been gone for fifteen years. Surely, he had forgotten all about her by now.
She looked at her reflection, knowing she had never forgotten about him because not only was he her first kiss, he was her last as well.
CHAPTER THREE
ELVIS HAD SURVIVED JUNGLE firefights, high-value hostage extractions, and a mission in Caracas that involved jumping out of a burning helicopter. None of it—not one damn second of that adrenaline-soaked chaos—had ever made his knees shake the way they were at that moment. His stomach was a churning mess while his hands shook slightly, which is why he had them tucked under his arms as he stared out at the sleek casino floor. The lights were too bright, and the colors too sharp, and he could have sworn the floor itself was about to lunge up and bite him. He couldn’t stop the way his heart thudded like a war drum behind his ribs, and his fingers wouldn’t stop twitching.
And no matter how many times he replayed it in his head, he still couldn’t believe it. But it was her. It had to have been.
At least he thought it was her. It looked like her from what he could remember. It had been fifteen years, after all, and they were just teenagers back then. He was sure she had changed over the years. Hell, he had, but there was no way he would ever forget Julia Moretti, the woman he had been ready to marry, even as teenagers.
No. No way. It had to be a trick of the lights, some glitch in his brain after too many shots of tequila last night. The womanhe saw along the last row of slots was long gone. Fifteen years gone as a matter of fact. No trace. No goodbye. Just gone.
And yet…
He reached up and touched the promise ring under his shirt, pressing it to his chest. He hadn’t thought about Julia in years, and it had taken the Navy and even the SEALs to get her out of his head finally. So why did he think she was in a flashy casino in Biloxi instead of wherever she had disappeared to?
He had never found her once she had vanished with her family. He had tried, but he was only seventeen, so resources were kind of slim back then. After a few years, he simply gave up, realizing she would’ve found him if she had wanted.
He chuckled. “But I have better resources now.”
“What did you say?” Hawk asked.
Elvis held up his hand, holding the man off, as he yanked his cell phone out of his pocket. He scrolled until he found Blaze’s contact number and then hit CALL as he blew out a breath.
“Yo,” came the reply, upbeat and caffeinated as always. “I thought you were busy with Sage’s brothers. How they doing?”
“They’re doing great,” he said. “Hawk and I will head back to join them soon. Look, I need a favor, and it’s going to sound pretty strange.”
Blaze chuckled. “Won’t be the first time someone from this team’s asked something strange of me. Shoot.”
“I need you to run a name for me. Julia Moretti. She’d be thirty-one now. I need you to find anything you can on her. Current address, social media, DMV records. Hell, think outside the box if you have to. She was born in Tupelo. Went to the same high school as me until she was sixteen. Parents are Vincent and Carmela Moretti. An Italian-American family.”
There was a long pause. “All right… wow. You weren’t kidding. Mind giving me some context?”
“I think I just saw a ghost,” Elvis replied as he glanced back to where he thought he had seen her.
“All right. I’ll see if this ghost exists somewhere. Give me a few minutes. I’ll call you right back.”
Elvis nodded as he ended the call and slid his phone back into his pocket. Hawk stared at him with questions all over his face, but Elvis simply shook his head. He wasn’t sure what to tell the man yet.
Hawk nodded as he moved to step to the side. “All right. I’ll give Levi a call and check in while you wait for your phone call.”
Elvis simply nodded as he leaned back against the wall next to a fake jade planter and tried to steady his breathing. He hadn’t thought about her in years; at least not the way he used to. He remembered everything about her, though. Her birthday, that stupid song she liked that she just had to belt out when it came on the radio, the way she smiled at him when the lights were low. He remembered how much they were in love and talked about a future together. He had even bought her an engagement ring.
However, the sharpness of that pain, the gaping wound she left behind when she simply walked out in the middle of the night without so much as a note or a phone call, had dulled into scar tissue. At least he thought it had.
But seeing her now? If that was her he saw, that is. It was like pressing a thumb into that scar and finding out it still bled.
The woman had haunted him for years, especially with the way she had left. She wasn’t just his high school sweetheart. She was the plan. The future. His future. The ring had been in his sock drawer, wrapped in a blue velvet pouch. He was going to ask her after graduation, take her to New York for pizza and that Broadway show she loved. He was going to build a life with her.
He reached under his shirt and pulled out the small white-gold promise ring she gave him a few weeks before she had disappeared, wondering if she had kept the one he gave her.
