Brax woke wrapped around Mia. He’d lost track of how many times they’d turned to each other over the weekend. The ache in his balls said he might do permanent damage if he kept up this pace, but it seemed worth it to him. So many years to make up for. A glance at the clock told him it would be time to get up soon. They had to actually leave the house today and get to the job site. Back to the real world instead of the cocoon of her bed. More was the pity. He wished he could just lie here and watch her sleep. Beyond the sexual coma they’d been slipping in and out of all weekend, she’d finally relaxed into the unguarded deep sleep that only came with trust.
He pressed a soft kiss to her shoulder, over the pink camelia blossom she’d had tattooed there. She hadn’t had any ink when he’d last seen her, and he was curious about the things she’d chosen to commemorate. Something to talk about on one of those dates he planned to take her on. Trailing his lips up the back of her neck, he caught sight of a tiny semi-colon tattoo behind her ear. He’d missed that one in his inventory. It was so small and would ordinarily be hidden by her thick mass of hair. He wondered what it was for.
The alarm clock blared. On a curse, Mia’s arm shot out, slapping it off. “Why is it morning?”
“Because, sadly, day inevitably comes after night.” He dragged her back against him, wrapping his arms around her waist and snuggling against her back as big spoon. “I can make up for the insult.”
She stretched long and languid against him with a groan of regret. “We can’t possibly. We’re due at the job site in an hour, and I have to shower so I smell like something other than sex and you. I’m gonna be walking funny as it is.” She scooted away from him, and he grinned as he spotted the pin-up-style Rosie the Riveter tattoo on her ass. “I’m digging your ink.”
She glanced back at him, lips curved. “I like yours, too.” Something he knew after she’d paid special attention to the Saint George tattoo he’d gotten on his biceps during a stint in Germany.
“What do they mean?”
“Those are stories for another day. We’ve got to get to work.”
Rolling out of bed, he started to follow her into the bathroom.
Mia spun, poking him in the chest. “No. You should go home to shower and change.”
“But water conservation.”
“We’ve never conserved water during a joint shower in our lives. You are not showing up to the site wearing the same thing you had on Friday.” She rose to her toes and kissed him. “Shoo. I’ll see you at work.”
To settle the matter, she shut the bathroom door in his face.
He’d been dismissed. Chuckling to himself, he began gathering his clothes. Dressing quickly, he opened the bedroom door to find Leno dancing in the hall.
“I’m gonna let the dog out!”
“Thank you!” she called back.
As Leno bolted around the backyard to do his business, Brax set up the coffee. Mia had never been a morning person, and it wasn’t like she’d stuck to her normal bedtime routine with him here for the weekend. They’d have to see how he fit into her everyday moving forward. Moving in basically violated the whole giving her time thing he’d promised her. Not that she’d asked him to. And there was the matter of the short-term lease he’d signed with Holt and Jonah on a furnished house in town. They were due to move in this week.
Best go deal with that.
After letting Leno back inside, Brax strode out to his truck in the early morning sun. A blonde woman was driving by as he tugged open the door. Her jaw dropped, her eyes going wide. He didn’t look that bad, did he? Then again, with the bedhead and the untucked shirt, he probably looked exactly like what he was. A guy who’d just rolled out of Mia’s bed. He spotted a child in the backseat and presumed this must be Mia’s neighbor Cayla. He wiggled his fingers in a friendly wave. The woman waved back before continuing down the street. He wondered how long she’d wait before showing up with the wine to interrogate Mia.
On the drive across town to Jonah’s mom’s place, it occurred to him he probably should’ve texted or something. Not that he thought his friends would worry. They’d known he was going after Mia, and they were smart enough to put two and two together. But Rebecca had been feeding them since they’d arrived, so it probably would’ve been polite to let her know he wouldn’t be around. Then again, she was also more than smart enough to come to the same conclusion about where he’d been.
Feeling a little weird about that, he made an effort to flatten down his hair before he walked inside.
Holt turned from the stove, where he was making over-easy eggs. “Well, well. The prodigal returns.”
“Back in the same clothes he was wearing to work on Friday.” Jonah toasted him with his mug of coffee.
Brax caught himself hunching his shoulders and straightened. He was a grown-ass man who’d just spent the weekend with his wife. He had nothing to be ashamed of.
“Didn’t expect him to be doing the walk of shame while we were here.”
“Is it the walk of shame when he’s been gone for nearly three days?” Jonah angled his head in consideration. “That might be the walk of pride.”
“Do you need some frozen peas for your junk? That’s a long dry spell you just ended.”
Brax flipped them off. “You’re both assholes.”
Holt slid eggs onto two plates. “In all seriousness, I’m guessing you and Mia finally talked? Cleared the air? You want eggs?”
“Sure. If you’re cooking.” He crossed the room to grab his own cup of coffee. “We answered a lot of questions. Things were… a lot more complicated back then than I realized. She didn’t leave me. Not like I thought. I can’t really say more about it. It’s not my story to tell.” That was something else they ought to discuss. With her father dead, was she still in any kind of danger?
“Fair enough.” Jonah took his plate to the table. “So, after all that, y’all are—what? You look too damned relaxed for things to have gone badly.”
“We’re… dating. I’m dating my wife. We’re figuring the rest out as we go.”
Holt cracked two more eggs into the skillet. “That seems like the mature and responsible thing to do after all this time. You’re happy?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am.” It had been so long he hardly recognized the feeling.
Jonah stretched his arms in an expansive gesture. “You can thank me for dragging your ass down here when you get a free minute. Cured meat products are highly encouraged. As is good booze.”
Brax fixed him with a side eye. “You didn’t know she was here.”
“Nope. But fact remains, if I hadn’t dragged you down here, you’d never have sorted things out. So, I’m taking at least partial credit.”
“Leave it to the SEAL to act like it was all his idea.”
Holt smirked and dumped the eggs onto another plate. “Take the gift horse, man.”
They sat down with their breakfast and dug in.
“There’s just one more thing. Stuff at work might get a little… awkward.”
“Just don’t bang on the job and we’re good.”
Brax threw a piece of toast at Jonah. “Perv. No. I mean socially awkward. Luca’s not happy about this.”
“He got some kind of claim on her?” Holt asked.
“Mia says they’re just long-term friends. I think he wants to be more.”
Jonah spread butter over the toast he’d caught. “He’s had a hate on for you from the get-go. Kept it mostly to simmering glares up to now. You think he’s gonna cause problems?”
“I don’t know. Mia says she’ll handle it, and I’ve got to trust her to do that. Just thought y’all should be aware.”
Jonah clapped a hand to his shoulder. “We’ve got your back, brother. Always.”
“This all looks good.” Mia climbed down from the back of the truck. “Let’s get these replacements unloaded first thing. Brick will go over the security measures we’re taking to ensure we don’t have a repeat of last week’s theft. Once that’s done, we’re hitting it hard this week to make up for that lost day. There’s beer in it for all of you if we can get caught up by Wednesday.”
“We’ll catch up by tomorrow if you’ll promise to sing at the next karaoke night!” Brandon shouted.
Mia winced. “You better be buying me more than beer if you expect me to sing. I still haven’t gotten over ‘Love Shack’.” As they laughed at her expense, she shuddered. “Get on to work. You have your assignments.”
Brax strolled over, trailed by Jonah and Holt. One corner of his mouth twitched. “I feel like there’s a story there. You hate karaoke.”
“I do. Which is why they had to get me two steps from wasted to get me up there in the first place. It turns out, I only know the boy part to ‘Love Shack’. It wasn’t pretty.”
She cast a wary eye between his friends as they circled up, unsure what they thought about her and Brax being back together. They couldn’t possibly not know.
“You want somebody to kill it at karaoke, you get Holt up there.” Jonah jerked a thumb in his direction. “His nickname in the Army was Broadway.”
“You’re into show tunes?” Mia wouldn’t have expected that of a guy who was doing more than a half-decent impression of a Viking.
“Show tunes. Disney. Lotta old movie classics. I used to sing them to my baby sister when she was little.” He jerked a shoulder. “The lyrics stuck.”
“That’s really sweet.”
“Yeah, but you kept watching all those Disney movies even after Hadley wasn’t a kid anymore.”
Holt pinned Jonah with a flat stare. “They’re good movies, and I’m secure enough in my manhood to admit that.”
“He does a killer impression of the demigod dude from Moana,” Brax added.
“My neighbor’s daughter is five, and that is her current favorite movie. Her mom’s just glad she’s moved on from Frozen.”
“Yeah, a lot of people were really happy to let it go,” Holt deadpanned.
Jonah shook his head. “Dude, that is terrible.”
“What? It was right there. I couldn’t not say it.”
Mia laughed. Whatever opinions they had about her and Brax, they were keeping it light. She’d take it. Relaxing, she shoved a hand into the pocket of her fleece vest and sipped at the coffee Brax had so thoughtfully made before he’d left this morning. “Look, I wanted to talk to the three of you. I ran a bunch of numbers on Friday. Replacing the materials that were stolen put a pretty solid dent in the budget. But I had some notions about where we can make up for some of it.”
“We’re listening. Whatcha got?” Jonah asked.
“If we shifted to using some reclaimed materials, you’d get both character and a cost savings. In keeping with that kind of rustic industrial vibe we discussed, we could do walls in shiplap out of pallet boards. Either as an accent wall or for all the walls, if you’re really into it. There’s the labor cost of tearing the pallets apart and planing them, but the pallets themselves we can nab for free. I’ve got sources for that. In the end, it saves on the cost of materials, and avoids the extra time and labor for putting up sheetrock, mudding it, sanding it, painting it.”
“I dig it,” Brax said. “All that wood feels manly, but not in an animal-heads-hanging-on-the-wall kind of way.”
“I’m for the savings, for sure,” Holt added.
“It’d change the look of the place. And be sturdier than sheetrock. Not that I expect there to be brawls breaking out here like they did when it was a bar. I like it,” Jonah declared. “Let’s do it.”
“Great. I’ll put in a call to my source. We’ve got some high school kids working hourly who can do the tearing apart. That’ll be an additional savings on labor.”
The bad-tempered crash of pipe clattering to the concrete floor had them all turning around. Mia spotted Luca, swearing as he picked up and repositioned the materials on the stack. The process was hampered somewhat by the glares he kept shooting in their direction.
“Somebody’s having a tantrum,” Brax murmured.
Mia shot her own glare at him. “I’ll deal with it. You’ll only make it worse.”
He lifted his hands in surrender. “Your friend, your rules.”
“Excuse me, gentlemen.”
She strode directly over to Luca. “Take a walk with me.”
Without a word, he stalked out the front door and kept going, out past the myriad of work trucks filling the gravel parking lot. Understanding he needed to move to work off some of the frustration, she didn’t comment, just kept walking until he stopped and rounded on her.
“What the fuck are you doing, Mia?”
She sighed, reaching deep for some patience to try to take the whole situation down several notches. “I know you’re upset.”
“Upset? You think I’m upset?” Hands on hips, he paced a tight circle. “Right. The guy who completely left you behind, with no word, no income, no place to live. Nothing. Who broke your heart, trampled all over it for multiple years running when you tried to reach out. That guy just happens to show back up, and you decide to take him back into your bed. Because that’s a smart decision.”
Understanding that he was operating on an incomplete picture of the situation, Mia bit back her own temper at his interpretation. “It’s not like that.”
“Really? And what is it like?”
God. Was she ever going to be able to live her life in more than just pieces? Luca didn’t know about her past, either. He’d always known there were parts of her life that she couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about. He’d never pushed, and she’d been grateful. But how could she explain things with Brax without those details?
“It’s complicated. There were things he didn’t know when he left.”
“Like the fact that you were pregnant?”
The blood drained out of her face, and she lunged for him, hissing “Shhh!” even as she looked around for anyone who could overhear.
“Didn’t tell him that, did you?”
“I’m regretting ever getting drunk enough to tell you. Don’t you dare throw that in my face.”
Luca squeezed his eyes shut, his expression softening. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
She had to count to ten before she was calm enough to speak again. “Look, there are things you don’t know—that you can’t know—that impacted what happened between Brax and me back then. I finally got a chance to tell him and correct the world’s most monumental misunderstanding. I deserved the right to do that.”
“Yeah, you did. And he denied you that for ten years. What makes now different?”
“He’s my husband, Luca.”
“He walked away from that role years ago. Why does he deserve the chance to get close enough to hurt you again? What’s to stop him from doing that?”
Leave it to her best friend to cut right to the heart of her fears.
She met his gaze without flinching. “Nothing. Except his word. I know you think I’m a fool to trust him. But I need you to trust me. And that when I say the situation is more complicated, and has more pieces than you’re aware of, that I know what I’m talking about. I know what I’m doing.”
He made a visible effort to reel in his frustration, reaching out to skim his hands down her arms. “Honey, I just… don’t want to see you get hurt again. You almost didn’t survive it last time.”
That was the God’s honest truth. And she wouldn’t have survived if not for him. Because she understood that his temper tantrum all came down to concern, she cut him some slack. “I get that. And I appreciate you’re worried about me. But I’ve wondered for ten years if we could make things work after how things ended. We finally cleared the air, and he wants to try again. We both know we’re different people now, so we’re not just automatically picking things back up where we left off. We’re dating.” It felt just as ridiculous to say out loud to Luca as it had in her bedroom the day before.
“Dating?” He snorted. “Right. Because that’s a normal thing to do with the guy you’re in the process of divorcing. Or did you forget that part?”
Impatient now and itching to get back to work, she crossed her arms. “Luca, I have to do this. I need to do this, or I’ll wonder for the rest of my life, ‘what if?’ I need you to be supportive—if not of him, then of me. Can you do that?”
He sucked in a long breath and let it out. “Yeah. I can do that. I’ll behave. I promise. And when he lets you down—because I don’t for a minute think he won’t—I’ll still be here to help pick up the pieces. Just like last time.”
Figuring that was as good as it was gonna get, Mia nodded and turned back toward the job. She could only hope that he was still around when Brax proved him wrong.