Into the Blue (A Wild Aces Romance) Read Free

Seriously, fine. Got that sexy librarian thing going on. If I’d seen her first . . .”
    I glared, all too familiar with Easy’s warped sense of humor and uncanny ability to get under everyone’s skin. “Fuck off.”
    He flashed me a cocky grin. “I’m just saying, if you don’t get in there, someone else will.”
    The idea had occurred to me approximately one million times in the last decade. It wasn’t like I didn’t want her to be happy, but at the same time, the idea of Becca with someone else, hearing about it . . . yeah, I wasn’t sure I was ready for that one. Another reason why I hadn’t exactly been eager to go back to the place where I’d grown up. I figured one day I would return and I’d see her walking down the street, or going into the grocery store, a baby on her hip and a ring on her finger, and I’d know unequivocally that I’d lost the best thing that had ever happened to me. But she’d been out tonight and I hadn’t seen a ring . . .
    “You saw how she acted. She hates me.”
    “Come on. You said it yourself—it’s been a decade. She doesn’t know you. Are you the same guy you were ten years ago?”
    If I’d been any drunker, I’d have fallen off my bar stool. Apparently, Easy was doing deep.
    “No.”
    Ten years ago I’d been struggling to scrape together a future for myself, trying to become the kind of man who deserved someone like Becca, only to fuck everything up spectacularly beyond repair. Now I didn’t know what I was.
    “I chose F-16s over her. Ended our engagement. Decade or not, I don’t think she’s going to forgive or forget that easily.”
    “If you had the choice to make all over again, would you still choose flying?”
    Had it all been worth it? I’d wanted to serve my country,wanted to do something with my life, to make a difference, and I’d thought I’d find all of that behind the stick of a jet. And now that I looked at the scales of what I’d given up and lost, and what I’d achieved, I didn’t know which one won out.
    I’d gone to combat; I’d done my part, had supported the guys on the ground, but I couldn’t ignore the doubt inside me that recognized that we left one place just to return years later under a different operation name, a different spin, even when the mission sure felt like the fucking same. It was a rinse cycle—go to the desert, come back from the desert, go to the desert again. It was losing good guys, guys like Joker, and for what? We were called to fight, to risk our lives to defend our country, to fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves. And we did it. But it never felt like we got anywhere, like we actually made things better. And in exchange . . .
    It was dangerous to let the losses consume me, but when the stakes were as high as they were with our job, the ramifications of fucking up were catastrophic.
    I’d been on his wing.
    That night in Alaska, the night we’d lost Joker, I’d been number two in the formation—Easy and our buddy Burn, who’d since moved on to Korea with his new wife, Jordan, rounding out the four-ship. I’d been Joker’s wingman when the spatial D hit, when he became disoriented and crashed his plane into the cold ground. I’d heard the radio call, that last sound of his voice that I’d never forget, and then nothing. He’d just fallen from the sky.
    I’d hugged his widow, Dani, when we all returned from the TDY to Alaska, minus the most important member, had sat through his memorial service, had presided over the piano burn where we marked his sacrifice, and still, through all of it, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that hewas gone, couldn’t quiet the questions and doubts that kept me up at night, wondering if I’d fucked up somehow, if I’d failed him—
I was on his wing—
if I should have noticed his spatial D, if I could have saved him. The accident investigation board had cleared all of us, but I couldn’t quite manage to clear myself.
    I wished