Almost Just Friends

by Jill Shalvis

  “Guilty,” Brodie said easily. “Wasn’t cut out for the life. Or for walking about battle rattle when just trying to grab grub.”

  “Battle rattle?” Piper asked.

  “Yeah. When you, like, have fifteen minutes to get food, so you run into a takeout place with so many weapons and tools that you rattle. Get it? Battle rattle.” He smiled at the look on her face. “Yeah, you’re in the presence of two serious badasses.”

  She looked at Cam, who shook his head, like he was nothing but a sweet teddy bear.

  Uh-huh.

  “Your chariot awaits,” Brodie said, gesturing to the two . . . vehicles . . . off to the side on the sand. They were three-wheeled buggies that looked like they went really fast. She swallowed hard. “Um.”

  “They’re trikes,” Cam said. “Don’t worry, they stay on the sand.”

  “Well, unless you take a jump and get some air,” Brodie said. “Which I highly recommend.”

  Thirty minutes later, after a lesson and brief training about things like jumping and tacking—which supposedly was the art of slowing down by steering into the wind—Piper was in her own trike and doing a great job of pretending not to be terrified. Then she was flying along the beach while seated only a few inches off the ground, the wind in her face, whipping her ponytail, and she felt like she was going faster than she’d ever gone in anything ever before. Up and over the sand hills she went, no longer bothering to hide her whoops of sheer adrenaline-rush joy every time she got a bit of air beneath her tires.

  To her left, another trike came into her view. Cam. She glanced over and found him looking hot as hell in dark sunglasses and a wicked smile.

  She smiled back.

  He kept pace with her for a long moment, then pulled ahead to lead her into a series of hills. There was a gust of wind and she felt the trike hurtle forward. She heard a roar from the tires on the sand and the wind around her, and found herself grinning from ear to ear at the rush.

  When it was time to return to the shack, she pulled in next to Cam, who helped her out.

  “Well?” he asked.

  She grinned. “That was possibly the most thrilling ride of my life.”

  He pulled off her helmet, the look in his eyes saying that he knew he could give her an even more thrilling ride.

  She had no doubt. But she hadn’t managed to raise her siblings and give them all relatively decent lives by following a whim, sexy as that whim might be. She’d been afraid of commitment with Ryland because . . . well, she still wasn’t one hundred percent sure. But she thought it had something to do with the knowledge that committing to him would mean becoming something she wasn’t—a person capable of further dividing her heart, handing yet another chunk of it off to someone and in turn giving them power to hurt her.

  But looking into Cam’s gaze, she couldn’t see him ever trying to make her into something she wasn’t. Life with him would only get better.

  But they weren’t going to go there. And if that caused a little teeny, tiny spark of sadness, she shoved it aside. This wasn’t the time to dwell. She needed to live in the moment, which normally she could do only by writing a reminder in a journal. Easy enough to do, since her journal was ever present. Right now it was in her purse. “Do you have your keys to the truck?”

  “Yeah. What do you need? I’ll get it for you.”

  Okay, she had two options: admit her crazy or keep it to herself. But maybe to prove that this wouldn’t—couldn’t—last, she gave him the truth. “I need to write something in my journal.”

  “Sure,” he said without blinking an eye, and turned toward the stairs to get to the parking lot.

  She stared after him, dumbfounded. Just the fact that he’d go get it made it possible to stop him. “Actually, it’s okay. It can wait.” Then she stepped into him and pressed her face in the crook of his neck to just breathe him in for a moment, willing herself to remember.

  Live in the moment.

  After all, there was no sense in thinking about the future, because as she knew all too well, not everyone got one. So why ruin the here and now by running ahead of herself? Besides, she thought with a happy sigh as Cam’s arms came around her, the here and now was pretty damn amazing. “Thank you,” she whispered against his skin, and then, unable to resist, she kissed his throat.

  He took a deep breath, and his arms tightened a little. She thought he’d kiss her, but he didn’t, maybe because Brodie was suddenly there, taking their helmets, grinning, asking them how their ride was.

  “Great,” she said, stepping back from Cam. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. It was your man here. He dragged me in on my day off. Said I owed him.” His smile was lopsided and very genuine as he looked to Cam. “And I do. I owe him my life. Several times over.” And with another quick salute, this one not sarcastic, he turned and vanished into his shack.

  She looked at Cam, but he didn’t say anything, just took her hand and walked with her back to the truck.

  “Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked when they were on the highway.

  “Yes, in case you couldn’t tell by the grin on my face.” She squeezed his hand. “Thank you, for reminding me to take time to fly.”

  He brought her hand up to his mouth and brushed a kiss against her palm, which hit her heart. And also decidedly south of her heart. “What did Brodie mean, he owes you his life?”

  His eyes were on the road now, but she sensed a rare hesitation.

  “You can’t say,” she guessed.

  “There’s a lot of my military past that I can’t talk about.”

  There was something in his tone now. Wariness? “I understand,” she said.

  He glanced at her. “You do?”

  “Of course. Your missions are probably mostly classified.”

  “This one wasn’t. It’s just hard to talk about. He was on a training mission that went horribly wrong. His parachute didn’t open correctly. He got separated from his unit, landed in unfriendly waters, and then it became a rescue situation.”

  “And you were the one who rescued him,” she guessed.

  “My unit, yes.”

  “You’re a close-knit bunch?”

  “Very.” He shot her a smile. “A unit spends more time together than most families ever do. We get into, and out of, a lot of shit together.”

  “So what does a day as a Coastie look like?”

  “At the unit, or deployed?”

  “Both,” she said, giving in to her ridiculous curiosity about him since he seemed willing—somewhat—to answer her questions.

  “If we’re at the PSU—our Port Security Unit,” he clarified, “we start at 0500. It’s training, training, and then more training, most of it brutal. Muscle memory’s everything. We conduct muster, shoot guns, meet with the division, shoot more guns, clean boats, drive boats, and shoot even more guns. Then we go to the range to shoot again until we can’t hold our arms up.” He glanced over at her. “Sensing a trend?”

  “Definitely. When do you eat and sleep?”

  “Oh, all that’s just the first part of any given day. There’s also division-specific training and inspections. We eat or sleep whenever there’s a spare second. Then wake up and do a wash and repeat.”

  Hard life. “And when you’re deployed?” she asked.

  He rubbed a hand over his jaw. A rare tell, she’d discovered. He wasn’t uncomfortable often, but he definitely wasn’t a fan of talking about himself.

  “Sometimes it’s almost a relief, because there’re no inspections. Rule number one: keep weapons clean at all times. A dirty weapon’ll get you killed. There’s mission planning, equipment checks, reports. And then rule number two: sleep when you can and eat anything other than an MRE when you can. We take eight- to twelve-hour shifts, either driving boats, working in a TOC—tactical operation center—or manning an overwatch with mounted machine guns protecting high-value assets.”

  “High-value assets.”

  “Such as a navy ship, or G
uantánamo Bay, or even a liquefied natural gas ship if the US has intel that it might be used in a way that could be detrimental to a highly populated area.”

  She boggled and was in sheer awe at the core strength of this man and all the others like him. “Do you ever get downtime?”

  “Sometimes. We Skype home, chase any kind of ball we can get ahold of, and drink. In general, if there’s trouble or merriment to be had while we’re gone and left to our own devices, we will find it.”

  This she could believe. “Do you know what I think?”

  His expression went slightly wary, the equivalent of a normal man’s full-out wince. “Do I want to know?”

  “I think you’re incredible.” She saw his surprise, something she was pretty sure he didn’t normally experience. She smiled. “What?”

  He shook his head. “Let’s just say I’ve been in a few relationships where me not being able to talk about specifics was a huge issue, like I didn’t trust them enough.”

  “Were any of these serious relationships?”

  “I thought so once or twice,” he said. “But I was wrong. I know it’s hard for people to understand that it’s not about trust. Sometimes it’s literally my job not to tell.”

  “I get it,” she said softly.

  “That easy?”

  “For me, yes.” Then it was her turn to pause. “But I’m sorry if the people in your past weren’t able to understand it and you got hurt.”

  A very small smile touched his lips, but he kept his eyes on the road. “My mom used to say that the past was just building blocks to the future. That all regrets, mistakes, and miscalculations were the foundation, and as necessary as air.”

  She smiled. “I’d have liked your mom.”

  “She’d have liked you too.”

  CAM HAD JUST turned onto their street when Piper got a page calling her back in to work. He parked and walked her to her car, though he really wanted to feed her again and tuck her into bed because he knew she was tired. But he hated being babied, and he knew she’d hate it too. So he opened her door for her and said, “Be safe.”

  “I will. And thanks again.” She went up on tiptoe to kiss him, sliding a hand to the back of his neck, a touch he still felt as she drove away.

  “You’re still limping,” he said to his dad, as the man came up beside him.

  “Show-off. And I’m much better, thanks to that woman who just drove away.” He paused. “And you.”

  “Was that an actual, almost thank-you?” Cam asked, amused, because his dad rarely bothered with niceties such as please and thank you.

  “Maybe.” Emmitt’s gaze was still on the road, even though Piper was long gone. “I told you she’s had a rough go of it. But I never did tell you how or why.”

  “You said it was her story to tell.”

  “Yes,” Emmitt said. “And I still believe that. But I also know that she’s likely to shut you out instead of letting you in any closer. So I’m going to give you a leg up and tell you some of it. You’re welcome.”

  “Dad—”

  “She had to raise her siblings on her own. Well, she had her grandparents around at first, but by the time Piper was eighteen, she was on her own with them. And Gavin and Winnie did as kids do and put her through the wringer.”

  “Their parents were killed overseas.”

  “Yes. She told you that?” his dad asked in surprise. “She never talks about it. She works hard and sacrifices to take care of everyone else, even on the job. It’s not great pay, and she deals with a lot of people’s BS. It’s hard work, mentally and physically, something I’m sure you can relate to, given your own vocation. But for Piper, it goes on both at home and at work, and wears her down because she’s the sort to take everything on her shoulders, no matter the weight.”

  His dad was right; she hadn’t talked about any of this much, but he could read between the lines. She was resilient. Smart. Loving, though he had a feeling she’d deny that. And . . . well, amazing.

  “You were so self-sufficient and insistent that you were okay on the East Coast with your mom. I let myself believe it, because I felt like I was drowning raising Rowan,” his dad said. “But in hindsight, it was easier than I thought, and in fact, I might’ve been too easy on him.” His good humor faded. “I miss that kid like crazy.” With a long exhale, he turned to Cam. “I read the police report and the news, but you and I haven’t talked about it. The car accident.”

  Cam tried to swallow, but there was a sudden lump in his throat the size of a regulation football. So he shifted, turning so he could see down the hill, beyond the house, to the lake.

  “Sometimes I close my eyes at night,” his dad said, “and it’s all I can think about. Was he in pain? Did he . . . suffer?”

  Cam felt his heartbeat change, start a heavy thudding that he still woke up to in the middle of the night. Panic. Fear. Terror. He’d been trained by the military on how to deal with all of that, and he’d gotten good at shoving his feelings deep.

  Real good.

  But that one night . . . Hell, that one half hour with Rowan had ripped through his training like it was nothing, and he’d not been able to get back to that numb place since.

  His dad was still facing him, but Cam didn’t move or stop taking in the sight of the water, one of the only places he felt at peace.

  The car had T-boned them at sixty miles per hour. Rowan had taken the hit and he’d been bleeding . . . everywhere. Two major arteries severed. There hadn’t been time to do anything but crawl to where he lay and pull him close.

  “No, he wasn’t in pain, he promised me he wasn’t,” Cam managed to say. He could still see himself sitting in the middle of the dark street, the car horn going off and utter destruction all around them while he held his brother as he bled out faster than anyone should be able to. They’d had less than two minutes. That was it. “He made me promise him to look after Winnie and the baby they’d just found out she was carrying.”

  His dad remained quiet for a long moment. “And so you’re here, honoring that promise,” he finally said raggedly, and when Cam looked over at him, he saw tears on his cheeks.

  Twisting the knife.

  “Dad—”

  That was all he got out before his dad yanked him into a bear hug. “Thanks for not dying too,” he whispered thickly.

  Emmitt Hayes was thirty-three years older than Cam, but strong as hell. There was no escaping. So Cam wrapped his arms around his dad, and they both set their heads on each other’s shoulder.

  After another long minute, his dad finally released him and stepped back, swiping his eyes with his arm. “So . . . want to help me clean out the fish guts?”

  Chapter 11

  “When I say whatever, I really mean screw you.”

  After another sleepless night, Gavin found himself in the kitchen at the crack of dawn. In the old days, Piper had been the one to put together meals for their little Bad News Bears family of three. Simple stuff, like mac and cheese and hot dogs. Sometimes she’d chop up some broccoli and try to hide it in the cheese, but he and Winnie had always been good at sniffing out anything green, stomping all over Piper’s hope that they’d eat healthy.

  Truth was, he and Winnie had been blissfully ignorant, not understanding their precarious position, which was that Piper, a kid herself, was doing the best she could to keep them together. He hadn’t appreciated it then.

  Actually, he hadn’t appreciated it until he’d gotten out of rehab with a relatively clear head, if not a still-confused heart. Piper had single-handedly saved their lives and he hadn’t ever given her enough credit for it.

  He’d been such a dick back then, to everyone. He liked to think he’d changed, that he’d grown up, though it’d taken him a lot longer than it should have. But hey, better late than never.

  This time around, he wanted to be of value. Toward that goal, he made breakfast, the one thing he was good at. He whipped up southern eggs Benedict, with maple bacon on sourdough toast, only he comple
tely forgot about their shit toaster being broken.

  The thing was the devil incarnate. The last time he’d been here, Piper had threatened to throw it out, but he had fond memories of the thing from the early, early days when his grandparents had still been alive. Grandma had made him cinnamon-sugar toast every night until she died when he was fifteen, and he’d refused to let Piper ditch it. Instead, he’d promised a million times to fix it.

  Which, of course, he’d never done. And sure enough, the minute he turned his attention to the pan, the damn thing sparked, smoked, and then . . . burst into flames.

  The fire alarm went off, screaming at him in a decibel so loud he couldn’t hear himself think. He stared at it for a single beat, and Piper rushed past him with the fire extinguisher and . . . killed the toaster dead.

  “Seriously? You knew it was broken!” she said, or more accurately yelled to be heard over the still-wailing smoke alarm.

  In a big, faded T-shirt and boxers, she climbed up onto the counter and began waving a towel in front of the alarm.

  Feeling stupid, he climbed onto the counter as well, taking the towel. He was taller and had a better reach. “Get down, I’ve got this.”

  Jumping down, Piper opened the window and back door, then surveyed the disaster while he continued to wave air at the fire alarm until it stopped going off. This took a good ten minutes.

  “Dammit, Gavin,” she said in the blessed silence.

  “I’m sorry. I really was going to fix it.”

  “Gee, I’ve never heard that before.”

  Okay, he deserved that. But he really hated how she could make him feel like a stupid kid again. “So you were just standing in the hallway waiting for me to fuck up?”

  “Of course not! But when I smelled breakfast, I knew what would happen.”

  He let out a breath and nodded. “Because I always screw up.”

  Before she could react, there was a knock on the opened back door. Gavin turned and time stood still.

  CJ.

  He was in full cop gear, including utility belt with handcuffs and gun—the whole nine yards. “A fisherman called in,” he said, speaking directly to Piper without even glancing at Gavin. “Said he thought one of the empty cabins’ burglar alarms had gone off. I was in the area and followed the screaming alarm. Everything okay?”