I stopped, unable to hide my concern. It was like she’d put a spell on him. “You really like this chick. How much time have you spent with her?”

He didn’t stop with me, instead strolling by as if I wasn’t calling him out. “Like, none. It’s the stupidest fucking thing ever.”

I shrugged. “You can’t control chemistry, T-Rex. You can’t explain it. Hell, Matt was a cowboy. Quiet. I could have a conversation with an inanimate object as easily as I could with him. He wasn’t funny. Wasn’t particularly interesting or a show-off. Not my type at all.”

“So why’d you fall for him?”

I felt that familiar tingle in my lips, the smile only Matt could trigger. “Because he was a good man, humble, he didn’t play games…and he had a nice ass.”

Trex chuckled. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. I mean, yeah, it was nice that he knew his way around a rifle and he wasn’t intimidated by me at all. We had a few things in common. But he had his moments. Occasionally, he was charming. It really came down to him being interested in me, the way he treated me, and something else I can’t explain. Has to be chemistry. Or maybe we were meant to be.”

“You were definitely meant to be. I’ve never seen a man love a woman the way Matt loved you, Nomes.”

I looked up. “He’s up there somewhere, still loving me, just like I’m down here, still loving him.” Trex didn’t say anything, so I changed the subject. I didn’t like to stay in my feelings too long. It was as painful as it was comforting. “It doesn’t have to be anything specific, Trex. You can like her for no reason. You can even like her a lot for no reason. Maybe it’s just that you don’t know the reason yet.”

“Thanks, Nomes. I knew you’d help me figure it out.”

I didn’t want Trex to get stuck in a bad situation, but I also hadn’t seen that look on his face before. I’d seen it on the faces of my cousins, fellow Marines when they’d come back from leave, and Matt a few weeks before he proposed. Love did weird things to people—it even began too soon for our own damn good.

We reached a T and turned right. Something didn’t feel right, and I held my rifle closer to my torso. It bothered me even more that I couldn’t pinpoint why I felt so on edge.

“I think it’s those experiments they were talking about,” Trex said. “I’d always heard it was a bunch of space and missile nerds here.”

“I think we can safely dismiss that theory.”