by Christi Snow
Guilt plagued Gage. “I’m sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have come, but I needed to see her in person to make sure she was okay.”
Steven stopped, and looked off into the distance, blew out a breath, and then ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I get that. I do. I get that maybe once upon a time you cared for her. But dammit, Colonel, she’s my future, and you showing up is screwing all that up.”
Gage respected the fact that Steven laid it all out there, but there was just one major flaw in what he’d just said. “Let’s get something straight, I may not have been in her life for the last few years, but I never stopped caring for her.”
At this, Steven turned the full force of his fury on Gage. “You. Hurt. Her. That’s not what someone does when they care for someone.”
“You’re right. I made some serious mistakes. Mistakes I’ve paid for ever since, but that doesn’t change the fact that I want what’s best for her.”
“And you think that’s you?” Steven’s eyes narrowed on him.
“No.” Gage shook his head. “Not necessarily. Yes, I’d like another chance with her, because she’s just as incredible as she ever was, but if she chooses you, I won’t stand in the way of that.” Even if it would kill him to step away.
Her getting hurt today had driven home that against all odds, they were in the same vicinity of each other. They had another chance. He’d be stupid to pass on that. He wouldn’t pass on it.
“So, you are going to pursue her?” Steven asked, glaring at him.
“Yes, I am. I plan to show her that I’m a better man than the guy who threw away what we had before.”
“I’m not going to just step aside,” Steven said.
“I wouldn’t expect you to, but that doesn’t change the fact that I still have feelings for her.”
Steven stepped right up to Gage, using all of his intimidating size to posture over Gage. Even though Gage wasn’t a small guy, Steven had him on height by an inch or so and easily another fifty pounds of pure muscle. “Well, that’s the difference between you and I. I don’t just have feelings for her. I know I love her and want to spend the rest of my life with her. If you hadn’t shown up with your sick dog, she would already know that, too, and we’d be engaged. But don’t you worry, I won’t be silent about it much longer.”
Gage clenched his fist. The thought of Felicia and Steven married...no, that couldn’t happen.
Fate.
Once upon a time, Felicia had convinced him that fate had brought them together. He’d lost faith in that since then, but now... Had fate brought him here just in time to keep her from marrying the wrong man?
He had to think so.
“While normally I’m all for two gorgeous men hanging around where I can ogle them...” Billy said as he ran over from the back of the vet clinic.
Gage hadn’t even heard him approach.
Steven hissed in a surprised breath and looked thoroughly embarrassed. After throwing another dark glare at Gage, he turned to Billy.
“I’m thinking,” Billy continued, “that standing out here like y’all are seconds away from coming to blows isn’t exactly what Fe needs right now. Don’t you two think she’s had enough violence for one day?”
“Yes, she has,” Gage agreed. “She asked us both to leave. Can you stick around and make sure she’s okay?”
Billy rolled his eyes. “Of course I will, but I think you both need to do a deep, internal gut check, because this alpha posturing thing you have going on isn’t helping the situation.”
“Noted,” Gage said with a nod. “Stop acting like we’re in eighth grade.” He gave Steven a bit of a side-glance before blowing out a breath. “I think we can probably handle that. Please apologize for us. She has my number if she wants to talk about...well, anything.”
“Same here,” Steven said. His voice lowered as he focused on Billy. “And thank you, Billy, I know you have responsibilities on your ranch that you’re shuffling off on someone else so you can be here for her.”
Billy shrugged. “Well, yeah, but that’s what friends do. You guys can take off. Don’t worry. I’ve got her.”
Gage nodded and got into Austin’s truck. Billy was right. None of this helped Felicia. He had to figure out another way to approach her. It wasn’t fair to her or Steven to push against him, especially considering that technically Gage was Steven’s commander. This was a disaster in the making.
But the fact that Steven inferred he’d been on the verge of asking Felicia to marry him... That just brought up the awful memory of the night Gage had planned to do the same...ask Felicia to marry him.
18 YEARS AGO
Gage set the unlit silver candlestick on the table and stepped back to see if it looked okay. His palms were sweaty and his stomach a knotted mess. He still had seven hours before Felicia’s plane landed. He had to calm the fuck down or he’d have a heart attack before he even left for the airport.
For the hundredth time that day, he pulled the small box out of his jeans pocket and flipped it open. The diamond solitaire flashed in the light.
She’d say yes, right? Things had been weird between them lately, but hell, they were both under a lot of stress from their jobs. She was on her last leg of her internship. Then she’d take her licensing exam, they could get married, and she could move with him wherever the Air Force took them. Once they were living together, things would get better. He knew it. They just had to have patience until then.
He checked the clock on the wall. Felicia should be heading to the airport soon.
His phone rang, and Felicia’s name showed up on the caller I.D. “Hey, beautiful,” he answered. “I can’t wait to hold you tonight. Are you about to leave for the airport?”
“Gage...” He could tell from the tone of her voice that he wasn’t going to like what she said next. “I can’t come tonight. There’s a countywide emergency. They found a huge puppy mill, and Dr. Hernandez needs me here...”
Everything else she said was drowned out by the sound of the blood rushing in his ears. He had no idea if he’d even told her goodbye when he hung up the phone. But several hours later when one of his fellow pilots, Brush, called to invite him to a New Year’s Eve party just off base, he agreed. Getting shitfaced sounded like the best idea ever.
He was never able to look at that engagement ring again.
Chapter Nine
Felicia had been hiding behind her blinds and watching Gage and Steven in the courtyard like some sort of creepy stalker. She told herself it was just to make sure they didn’t come to blows and hurt one another.
So when they drove off and Billy headed toward the direction of the house, she opened the door before he could even knock.
He cocked a brow at her. “Those men are fine. Aren’t you the lucky one?” He entered the house and took in the two large—but very different from one another—bouquets of flowers.
He turned back and placed both hands on his hips. “I think you may have an admirer problem.”
She choked out a laugh and shook her head. “No, I have a single admirer...Steven. Gage just feels responsible for me for old times sake and because it looks like some of the soldiers from the base were involved with the break-in last night. That’s all it is.”
Billy made a sound of disbelief as he pointedly looked at the bouquets of flowers. But then he tugged her toward her living room. “Come on. Come sit down. You still look pale. Let me make you one of those sickeningly sweet caramel lattes in your fancy coffeemaker, and then, we can talk. I think I need to know more about what exactly happened between you and Gage way back when, because you never told me the details.”
Five minutes later, Billy had tucked her onto one end of the couch with a lightweight blanket and steaming mug, and he sat on the other end with her bare feet in his lap. And she didn’t even know where to start.
Billy fixed that for her. “I know you broke up with Gage a few months before Whit’s accident. She was doing everything she could back then to try to
pull you out of your funk. Then she died, and we both kind of fell apart. But looking back on it now, I’m not sure...how much of your heartbreak was over him, and how much of it was her?”
“Oh, god, Billy.” Her throat closed up. “It was both of them. They were the two most important people in my life, and I lost them both so close together. You were having your own issues dealing, so I tried not to let you know...” A stone sat heavy on top of her chest making it hard to breathe. “There were days I wasn’t sure I could go on.”
His eyes darkened and his voice lowered. “Wait, you were suicidal?”
Nausea churned low in her belly. She’d never planned to tell him this, but he needed to know how much he’d saved her. “Yeah. One night...it had been just an awful week. It was about a month after Whit’s funeral. I snuck out a large dose of horse sedative from the clinic...it was easily enough to kill me. I was ready to do it.” She had been so close, and that would have been the worst thing she could have done. Her eyes filled with tears. “But you saved my life.”
He frowned at her in confusion. “I did? How?”
“Yeah, you probably don’t even remember the night, because you were dealing with your own demons then. I got a call from that shithole bar, The Liquoring Hole, that you’d gotten in a fight, and if I didn’t get you out of there within fifteen minutes, they were calling the cops.”
Billy fingered a scar just above his left eyebrow. “That was the night I got this, wasn’t it?”
She nodded and gave him a sad smile. “I sat with you in the ER that night, waiting for you to get stitches. While you were slowly sobering up and so sick, I realized that I couldn’t do it. If I died, no one would be there to help pick you up. You were just as sad as I was. I realized that if I killed myself, there’d be no one around to stop you from doing the same. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Damn.” Billy squeezed her foot, and tears filled his eyes. “I had no idea that it was so hard for you. I should have been a better friend and realized.”
She shook her head. “No, we were both in a really bad place. But you got me through it. We both made it through, and now we’re almost fully functioning adults.”
He laughed. “Just almost?”
“Well, you’re probably closer than me. I feel like I’m in the middle of a junior high love triangle.”
“Which brings us back to Colonel Sexy. Tell me what happened between you two.”
“The main thing you need to know is that for the almost two years we dated, we never lived in the same town. That was so, so hard. I was going to vet school, and he was establishing himself as a fighter pilot. Neither one of those things were low-stress life choices, but we were doing it. Kind of. I think the longest we got to spend together at a time was a week over spring break one year.”
It had made their time together magical...maybe too magical. She had wondered if it had been so good because they had known they had to appreciate every single moment of it
“As it got closer to the end of my internship, things began to get tense between us. I knew Gage wanted a future with us in the same town, but he never once mentioned getting out of the Air Force. At the same time, Whitney and I were making tentative plans for us to take over Valley View and buy it from Dr. Hernandez so he could retire. I never did work up the courage to tell Gage about that, but he must have known that something was up, because the tension between us had grown tighter and tighter.”
She looked at the pitcher filled with white daisies and pink carnations. He had almost always brought her flowers when he’d come to visit. After the third time he’d brought her roses, she had confessed to him that she preferred daisies and carnations. They lasted longer and had such pretty fragrances to them...and were so much cheaper for a young Air Force officer.
“What happened?” Billy asked.
She tore her gaze from the daisies. “I was supposed to go to Georgia for New Year’s. I had a whole week planned and was supposed to be off, starting on New Year’s Eve. But the night before, the county sheriffs busted a massive puppy and kitten mill. There were hundreds of frozen, dying puppies and kittens to get triaged. Every vet in the county was called in to help, and it was still too much for us all to handle.”
That had been the single worst night of her entire veterinary career. The conditions they found the animals in had been atrocious. So many of them had been too miserable and sick to even cry. They had died by the dozens. It had been horrific.
She shook her head. “It was bad, and I couldn’t just say I had to get on a plane to fly to go see my boyfriend. I called Gage to let him know, and then stayed and worked.”
Billy frowned like he didn’t understand where the issue had come from.
“Gage definitely wasn’t thrilled when I called him, but I had thought he understood. I managed to make it out on a flight despite still needing to be here. Dr. Hernandez was always awesome about stuff like that. He had known how much I hated living so far from Gage, so he made sure I got out on a red-eye so I’d at least be there by New Year’s Day.”
She’d been so exhausted, but somehow that had made the memory imprint on her brain like it had happened yesterday instead of eighteen years ago.
18 YEARS AGO
Felicia got out of the taxi and glanced down at her jeans with a grimace. If she’d had more time, she would have planned better so she had a change of clothes in her carry-on. Then she could have shown up in something nicer than jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt. As it was, she had barely made it to the airport in El Paso in time for her flight. Hopefully, Gage would be so excited that she was here that he wouldn’t even notice what she wore.
She paid the cab driver. This early, the neighborhood filled with 1920s era small bungalows was quiet. The sun had just started peeking over the horizon but was hidden by a light, early-morning winter fog. Her sweatshirt wasn’t warm enough for this cold.
A strange car was parked in front Gage’s rental, but it could belong to one of his pilot buddies or one of the neighbors. With the night before being New Year’s Eve, there was no telling. There were probably strange cars parked all over town as drinkers decided to take a taxi home rather than drive.
She let herself into the house with the key Gage had given her a year ago when he’d moved into the little rental house. When she stepped inside, floral perfume assaulted her senses. Why would Gage have gotten such a floral-scented candle?
Felicia shrugged her shoulders. Maybe his mom had bought it for him for Christmas. She left her bags by the front door and toed off her shoes so she could creep silently down the hall to surprise Gage while he still slept.
The perfume grew stronger the closer she got to Gage’s bedroom, and a low, sick feeling began to swirl in the bottom of her stomach.
For a moment, she stopped in the hall just outside his bedroom and considered turning right back around and calling him from outside, but she had to know. Then she heard a low grunt that sounded like Gage.
She stepped over the threshold and gasped. Gage lay flat on his bed, completely naked, his hands buried in a blonde woman’s hair. He thrust into her mouth from where she lay in between his spread thighs. She was also naked and obviously not worried about the fact. All the sheets and bedding had been ripped off the bed and scattered over the floor.
Neither of them realized she was there.
His back arched as Gage yelled, “Doc!”
Then he yanked the girl up, quickly rolled her onto her back, and plunged deep inside her pussy. Gage’s back was covered with scores of nail scratches, proving what he’d been up to all night.
Felicia must have made a sound, because he glanced at the door. For a split second, their eyes met, his widening in shock.
A tortured yell ripped out of Gage, and she turned and ran.
Behind her, a woman squealed, and Gage yelled, “Felicia!” Feet pounded after her as she sprinted down the hall to his living room.
Her socks slid on the wood floors. She reached and grabbed her
shoes and her suitcases just as Gage reached her and grabbed her by the arm.
His eyes were wild, and his hair had a well-fucked, screwed up look about it. The line of hickeys from his neck down his chest made her stomach heave.
“How could you?” she cried as she swung wildly at him, trying to get him to let loose of her arm. “You bastard. Oh, god.” She sobbed. “Let. Me. Go.” She had to get out of there before she crumpled into a humiliating little ball of pain on the floor.
“Felicia. No.” His voice sounded wrecked. Broken. “It’s not what it looks like.”
At that obvious lie, she stilled with a bark of horrible laughter. She let her eyes drop to his cock, still half-hard and wet...from being inside her. Oh, god, he’d been fucking another woman.
“You had your dick inside another woman. I saw you,” she growled through clenched teeth. “There’s no other way to explain that.”
He let go of her arm and mumbled, “I don’t understand.” He clutched at his head. “I don’t remember.”
It felt like her heart was trying to claw its way out of her chest with barbed wire. She shook her head as the tears began again. “I loved you.”
His eyes held so much pain that it hurt to look at him.
She hurt. The tearing pain inside her was so bad she thought it might rip her in half. In the past two years, he’d been the one to comfort those hurts. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to bury herself into his strong arms for the comfort he could give, which was so fucked up.
She realized that as the skank that had been in his bed slunk past the two of them in a tiny, sparkling-silver club dress, carrying her shoes, and looking pretty well-fucked, too.
That was it. Felicia had to get out of there. She followed the girl out the door. Gage trailed behind, pleading with her and completely ignoring that he was still naked. “Felicia, please, let me explain.”