20

“I want to know about you,” Vivien told him as he laid their spread out on the blanket she was sitting on.

It was their last day at the beach and she was sad to see their time end. She’d seen both sides of Chase here. The caveman that fucked her into a coma and a softer, tenderer side that made love instead of fucked hard, that opened up and let his secrets slip out in the quiet stillness after lovemaking. And apparently, that side planned seaside picnics for two.

Chase eyed her skeptically. “Pretty sure you know me pretty well by now, sweetheart.”

She gave him a half smile. “I’m serious. I mean beyond what we do in the bedroom.”

“We did it in the kitchen and the bathroom and the living room too,” he pointed out. When she frowned, he lowered himself onto the blanket beside her. “What do you want to know?”

Vivien pulled her lower lip between her teeth while trying to prioritize the list of things she wanted to know about him.

“You already told me about your dad. That he was kind of a . . .”

“Dick,” Chase supplied for her. “There’s not much else to say about him.”

“And your mom? Was she around?”

She watched the knot in his throat work to swallow before he answered. “She died. I was little, only a few years old. Aneurysm in her brain burst one day when she was taking a nap. I don’t remember her but I grew up pretty certain that my dad blamed me for what happened.”

Vivien’s heart ached. “I’m so sorry.”

Chase didn’t look at her. “It’s fine. I survived. Strawberry?”

She nodded, kissing his fingertips gently when he fed her a ripe red berry.

“What about you?” he asked, expertly shifting the focus from him to her. “What’s your family like?”

Vivien nearly choked on the seeds. She wasn’t prepared to discuss this with him, and technically she wasn’t supposed to discuss it with anyone, which she supposed she should’ve considered before she opened the let’s-talk-about-our-families door.

“Um, well, I’m from Texas, which you already know from my file. My parents were . . .” She trailed off, searching for the right way to say “kidnapped by the Russian Mafia when I was a child.” It wasn’t exactly something she could just work into a conversation. “Not around,” she said instead. “So my grandparents raised me for the most part.”

Chase nodded. “And they were good? Good to you, I mean.”

She returned the nod. “Extremely. I was lucky to have them. My grandma passed when I was sixteen but my grandfather is still hanging in there. He has a home nurse though, and I suspect he doesn’t have a great deal of time left.”

“Is he sick?”

Vivien shook her head. “Not with anything specific. He’s eighty-six so for the past few years he’s just kind of had one ailment after another. He’s being forced to resign from his own company because he’s beginning to show signs of Alzheimer’s.”

Chase let out a sympathetic noise from the back of his throat. “Sorry to hear that.”

Vivien was quiet for a few moments, contemplating how strange life could be. Here she and Chase had grown so close, had come to mean a great deal to each other, and yet there was still so much they didn’t know and might never be able to share.

“So the tattoos,” she said, gesturing to his left arm and part of his bare chest. “There are a lot of them.”

One corner of Chase’s mouth lifted. “Yeah. I started in high school. Got some tribal nonsense I didn’t know the significance of because all my friends were doing it. Then when I enlisted, I got one for my unit.” He pointed to the symbol containing several numbers. “Added this one for my mom.” He touched the praying angel on his bicep. “This one for myself,” he said, sliding down toward an intricate portrayal of flames engulfing the entire scene. “There are a few representations of the tours I did and one for each of the guys we lost in our unit overseas.”

Vivien was fascinated. She’d never cared about ink either way. But seeing his through his own eyes, knowing how meaningful it was to him, made it pretty appealing. She skimmed her fingers across the intricate patterns. “You put a great deal of thought into it.”

Chase arched a brow. “Well it’s permanent, so . . .”

She smiled. “Good point.”

“You got any?” Chase grinned. “If you do, you’re damn good at hiding it.”

Vivien rolled her eyes. She doubted there was an inch of her flesh he hadn’t seen. “No. And I don’t suspect I’ll ever get any. I wanted to get two swallows on my wrist to represent my, um, family. But I chickened out at the last minute. Needles make me queasy. And like you said, they’re permanent. I can’t imagine anything I’d want on my body for the rest of my life. I change my mind about shoes and clothes every other season.”

“When it’s important enough, you will.”

Vivien lifted one shoulder. “Eh. Maybe. Maybe not.” She took a bite of the turkey sandwich he’d packed. It was surprisingly good. Perfect turkey to cheese to bread ratio. She appreciated a man who knew how to make a decent sandwich. “So the roommates . . .” she prompted after swallowing.

Chase looked relieved at the change of topic. “Aiden and Luke.”

“How did you meet?”

Chase polished off his own sandwich and emptied his bottle of beer in that two-gulp way guys always amazed her with. “They went to high school together. Aiden and his sister, Annalise, were raised by their mom, and she had issues . . . not quite as bad as my dad exactly but selfish to the point of neglect from what I’ve gathered in bits and pieces. Aiden isn’t much of a sharer.”

“Sounds like someone else I know,” Vivien broke in.

Chase didn’t disagree. “I guess they spent a lot of time at Luke’s family’s place growing up. This beach house we’re staying at belongs to his family so apparently they’re pretty well-off.”

“And you got tossed into the mix how?”

“We met at basic at Fort Benning. Bonded over college football shit talk. Continued on to the same unit for special ops training and completed a seven-month tour in Afghanistan together. Now we’re here.”

“The three amigos,” Vivien said over her wineglass. “I like it.”

Chase let out a light laugh. “If you say so.”

“Jen and Emerson are kind of like that for me.” Vivien smiled, remembering the night they’d met. “Except we were roommates before anything else. I answered their online ad and basically told them I was military trained so if they pulled any single white female crap, I’d break their legs.”

“Nice.”

She shrugged. “They’re both linguists and they requested to be assigned here so we could stay together, but their transfer came later and I already had a room in the barracks. They have a small apartment off base and I hang out there sometimes. They joke that I’m the badass of the group. But honestly, you couldn’t pay me to sit and decipher foreign languages all day. You were right when you called me out for trying to transfer. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

“So after this,” Chase gestured with his freshly opened bottle of beer, “after EOD certification, I mean—what’s next for Vivien Brooks?”

A pang of something strange and unfamiliar struck her in the chest. Was this his way of saying “Don’t get it twisted, girl. This is just for now”? She wasn’t sure. But it felt like that.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I guess I’ll see where my assignment is once I’m certified.”

Chase looked away from her, staring toward the current ebbing and flowing beside them.

He was like the ocean, Vivien decided. So much constantly happening beneath the surface even when everything appeared calm. Coming and going, pushing and pulling. Waging internal wars with himself, with his emotions. He wanted her, he’d proved that with his behavior when she’d shut him out. But the closer she came the more he seemed to pull away. He wanted her at a safe distance, she decided. Not too close but not out of reach.

She frowned. “So is this it for you? Fort Jackson? Training EOD techs?” When he didn’t answer she leaned closer to get his attention and continued. “I have to be honest—I picture you more as an in-the-field guy. They say those who can’t do, teach. But I suspect you can do very well, so my money says being an instructor is a temporary stop for you.”

Chase’s gaze was intense when he turned it on her. “Yeah? What else do you picture me as?”

Vivien grinned, hoping to lighten the mood. “I picture you huffing and puffing behind me in the sand this morning when I kicked your ass on our sunrise run.”

Before she even had time to appreciate the look on his face he sprung like a panther and tickled her around the rib cage.

Vivien broke into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. “Okay, okay. Naked. I picture you naked.”

Chase pinned her down, making a cage with his arms but propping himself above her so his weight didn’t crush her into the sand. “Better.”

He leaned down to kiss her but she felt something wet against her side. The wine had spilled on her and the blanket. “Oh no.”

“That’s fine,” Chase said evenly, continuing his descent but rerouting southward. “I’d rather drink it off you anyways.”

Vivien stared up at the cloudless blue sky as Chase brought her to orgasm with his expert mouth. Her hands raked into his thick, dark hair when he slid inside of her warm, willing body. She buried her face in his neck as she came again along with his release.

Their breaths matched pant for pant until it felt as if even their hearts were beating in time with each other.

“I love you,” she whispered quietly into his skin. Her body heated instantly and part of her wished an ocean breeze would blow, taking the words she’d uttered and carrying them far away before they reached his ears. But it was too late.

Chase stiffened in her arms, then maneuvered out of them completely.

“You should go inside and clean up.” He propped back on his knees and gestured to the crimson wine staining her white sundress. “I’ll take care of everything out here.”

Stung by his rejection but not surprised by it, Vivien swallowed the tangled knot of conflicting emotions wrestling in her throat and nodded. “See you inside.”