Nick’s voice wavered when he continued. “I was ready to tell them everything. I would have. Anything they asked, I would have given it to them. Everything Ty and I had stood for and fought for, I was ready to hand it over just like that.” His eyes welled and he closed them, possibly ashamed at the memory, but that just forced the tears out, and a pair tracked down his handsome face without him seeming to notice. “But Ty….”
Zane knew without a doubt what Ty would have said, and he closed his eyes against the pain of it.
“He told me to do it.” Nick nodded as he said it, as if affirming what Zane had already guessed. “He ordered me. Fucking pulled rank, like I cared at that point. He was still a Marine, and that’s all he cared about. I couldn’t process what they were going to make me do, what Ty was ordering me to do. I was standing next to this table, my best friend strapped down on it, a gun at my head, trying to decide whether I was a Marine with brass balls like Ty or a coward. And Ty told me to kiss him.” He laughed suddenly, the sound oddly incongruous with the story he told. “He had to tell me twice. And when I did he slipped a key into my mouth.”
Zane’s heart seemed to lurch back into beating.
Nick hummed deep in his throat, the sound both content and somehow ominous. “We didn’t leave anyone in our path alive.”
Zane could barely get in a breath to speak. “So you didn’t have to—” His voice broke off, and he didn’t try to continue. He didn’t want to know, and yet he had to.
Nick’s green eyes focused in on Zane again, as if he was just remembering that he’d been telling Zane the story instead of reliving it by himself. His eyes flickered away, and he shook his head. “No. I don’t think either of us would have come back from that.”
The relief almost knocked Zane over. He gripped the edge of the table with one hand to stay balanced. After what seemed like a silent forever, he spoke in a hoarse voice. “That explains a lot about you two.”
Nick nodded and swallowed hard. “I was in love with him. I’d already made up my mind to tell him after our tour was over. Consequences be damned, I just needed him to know. But after that….” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “There are some friends you don’t risk for your own peace of mind. Some things… at the time it wasn’t worth the risk of losing him.”
“Last month when you….”
“I knew I’d already lost him.”
Zane nodded. “And now?”
“Now what?” Nick asked. He leaned against the counter, body relaxed again as if he’d taken a weight off his shoulders and handed it to Zane to carry. It struck Zane as singularly unfair. “Am I still in love with him?”
“I know you still love him,” Zane said. “I know he loves you. Maybe not the kind of love you want, but…. What I want to know is what you plan to do about it.”
Nick sighed sharply, as if the question annoyed him. “I’ve known Ty for twenty years, Garrett. I was enthralled with him after the first week.” He shrugged. “But time blunts these things. If you want us to stop caring about each other, you’re shit out of luck. We did three tours in Hell, and that kind of thing bonds you to a person for life. But if you’re asking if I intend to make another move on him, the answer’s no. I’ve regretted what I did every day since.” He was still meeting Zane’s eyes, unwavering, and somewhere deep down, Zane could feel the warrior in him, feel the dangerous, capable, upstanding person he could be if he wanted. He was like Ty in so many ways.
He didn’t know Nick, but he knew Ty. He trusted Ty, and he knew Ty wouldn’t do anything to hurt him. But hearing the words from Nick, receiving the promise that he wouldn’t make another advance, that he regretted doing it in the first place, it did ease some of the worry in Zane’s mind.
“Garrett. He’s never looked at me like he looks at you,” Nick said in a soft voice. “He’s never looked at anything the way he looks at you. Besides. He hates the Sox. We’d never work.”
Zane huffed and shook his head. “You’re kind of a dick, you know that?”
Nick shrugged.
“Thank you.”
“Least I could do,” Nick whispered.
Zane stared at him for another minute, trying to wrap his mind around all the things Nick had told him, and telling himself that this man was and would always be a huge part of Ty’s life.
“I think I’m going to try to sleep.”
“Probably a good idea,” Nick said. “I’ve got your back tonight.”
Zane stood and carefully didn’t examine the feeling those words gave him as he pushed his glass toward Nick. “Thanks,” he murmured as he turned away. He made his way back down the steps to the cabin where Ty lay asleep, but Zane knew he wouldn’t be sleeping easily tonight, not after learning what he had.
He crawled into bed, seeing his lover with new eyes as he pulled the covers up around their shoulders.
Ty muttered something in the foreign language Zane was becoming used to, and rolled away from him, pushing back at him so Zane would hold him. Zane scooted up behind him, wrapping him up and pressing against his warm body.
“Are you awake?” Zane asked, barely letting the words come out.
Ty hummed and pushed closer to Zane. “No.”
Zane smiled, letting his fingers drag against Ty’s skin. As conducive to romance as the setting may have been, all Zane wanted to do was hold Ty close and sleep with him in his arms.
Ty turned his head. “Did you hear what you needed to hear?”
Zane pulled him closer. “I think so. Yeah.”
THE next morning, Nick was guiding the yacht toward Washington, DC, and the rest of them were huddled in the booth where Zane had sat last night, trying to come up with a plan.
“Look, I don’t care if you’re the big bad assassin, and I’m not intimidated when you glower at me. You’re not coming with me,” Ty was saying to Julian as the two men went in verbal circles.
“I refuse to be dragged along any longer. We will have a say in our next move, or I will leave you bound and gagged during the night for the Coast Guard to find,” Julian growled.
Ty slammed his hand against the table and pointed a finger in Julian’s face. “Why can’t you talk like a normal person?” he shouted in frustration.
Julian snorted in disdain and crossed his arms.
“Fine! When we make port, you come with me to headquarters, Cam stays somewhere safe with Garrett, and you start using contractions when you talk to me or I swear to God—”