“He’s a huge part of your life then? Why didn’t we know about him until now?”

“Because he was. Was. Our families were the Capulets and Montagues.”

“Who?”

“Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet?”

Sloan shrugged, clueless.

“Our dads were enemies. They went toe to toe a lot, being government and militia.”

Sloan’s face screwed into disgust. “You’d think they’d work together.”

“Nope.” I sighed. “We snuck around to be together. Peter is my childhood.”

“So it just never worked out?”

“When he called to tell me that he was engaged to Paige … all to make his dad happy. To further his career. Not even he wanted to do it, but he still did. It crushed me. Every part of me that Peter brought out shut down.”

“So that’s why you’re such a hard ass.”

“He doesn’t get all the credit,” I said.

“Touché. Well, you ended up with Matt, so it worked out.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Oh, I didn’t mean … shit, Naomi…”

“It’s fine. See you tomorrow.”

“Naomi…”

I backed out and headed home, fighting the urge to turn toward McCormack’s every half mile. The only thing I wanted less than facing the quiet at home was to need a crutch to make it through every tough moment. There was never an answer at the bottom of the bottle anyway.

chapter four

oblivion

Zeke

“I

t’s fine,” I said, wincing when Jubal held an ice pack against my eye. His silver hair was mashed on one side, a tell-tale sign that my shenanigans had woken my captain up—again.

“You’re lucky the Maddox boys were elsewhere, Zeke. We could’ve been a quarter of a crew down because you were all in jail.”

“But we’re not.”

“All over a girl.”

I glared up at him. “There were two.”

“But you weren’t trying to impress Reese.”

“That’s not it. It was just the right thing to do.”

“Explain that to the brass and see how far that gets ya,” Jubal said, putting my hand on the ice pack and walking away. “We’re on the mountain in twelve hours. Get some rest.”

“Yep,” I said, swinging my legs onto the mattress. “Wait,” I said, sitting up. “It’s our turn already? I thought we were like fifth in line?”

“Just a day job, cleaning up.”

I let my head fall to the pillow. “Damn it, Jubal, we’ve got ground crew for that.”

“Wind’s being a bitch. They need us there for pop ups.”

I nodded. “Can you hit the light?”

The room went black, and I tried to imagine anything else but Naomi, the woman who fought like Rocky and looked like Mila Kunis and Michelle Rodriguez had a baby.

***

Five a.m. came quick, and Jubal was as unhappy as the chief to see my eye still swollen.