Into the Blue (A Wild Aces Romance) Read Free Page A

I had an answer to Easy’s question, but right now it sure as fuck felt like our losses outweighed our successes, and despite the heroic spin of my job, I wasn’t sure I could point to one instance where I’d actually made a fucking difference, especially in the face of the glaring loss of my friend.
    I turned and held Easy’s gaze, flinching a bit as the bleakness in his eyes hit uncomfortably close to home. I definitely wasn’t the only one trying to outrun my troubles tonight at the bottom of a glass. We’d never spoken of it, but I’d seen the despair in his eyes enough times to realize that losing Joker hit close to home for Easy—after all, he had the added guilt of being in love with Joker’s wife.
    “Do you ever regret being a pilot?” I asked him.
    “Not for a fucking second.”
    There were guys who flew F-16s and guys who were fighter pilots. Easy was a fighter pilot through and through. He lived and breathed the lifestyle, pissed jet fuel, and got off on the high of pulling G’s. He bedded women, partied hard, and sucked every inch of life. He was a throwback to what it had meant to be a fighter pilot in the olden days, a dying breed of men who looked up to Robin Olds as their own personal hero and were happiest on the edge. And he was a fucking killer with the stick. One of the best pilots I’d ever known.
    I was good, damned good, but I still didn’t know which I was. If flying the 16 was what I did or who I was.
    I was just drunk enough to ask—
    “If you had to choose between flying or a woman . . .” My voice trailed off.
    Easy looked away, staring off into the distance. “Hell if I know.” His jaw clenched. “Let’s just say, I didn’t exactly have a choice. But if it came down to a choice between the Viper and . . .” He took another swig of his beer. “Yeah, no contest.”
    There was no need to fill in the blanks; his feelings for Dani were quickly and dangerously becoming an open secret in the squadron. I imagined most men would agree with him. There weren’t many women like Dani. Or Becca.
    Easy got a lot of shit in the squadron for being a bit of a whore. The stereotype of the love ’em and leave ’em fighter pilot was slowly becoming eclipsed by the carpool brigade, guys who were more about family than pussy. Easy saw more action than any guy I knew, and he never made a secret of it, so it wasn’t like his reputation was undeserved. But at the same time, as someone who’d had
the girl
, the one you’d turn yourself inside out for and work yourself to the bone to please, and been so fucking stupid as to blow it, I knew that sometimes it wasn’t about not caring who you were with as much as it was not caring who you were with because for some guys, once they’d met the one, there wouldn’t be anyone else who mattered.
    I pushed back from the bar. “I’m going to go.”
    Easy’s brow rose. “You sure? You fucked it away with the blonde back at Liberty, but this place is full of hot undergrads.”
    “You don’t think a ten-year age difference is too much? Even for you?”
    “What the fuck else am I going to do?”
    I opened my mouth to speak and then closed it again, figuring I was the last person who should give anyone romantic advice. It’d be overstating the obvious to admit that we’d been living on the edge before, neither one of us the poster child for healthy decision making, but at the same time, it was also impossible to ignore the feeling that Joker’s death had killed a part of us that night and we were both hurtling through life, trying to hold on to anything that would make it bearable, anything that would make us okay—
    If we ever found it at all.

BECCA
    The cursor hovered over the “Add Friend” button. I swallowed. I moved the cursor away like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
    Fuck me.
    I took a sip of merlot, questioning my sanity for the four hundred and fifty thousandth time since I’d fled Liberty.
    I hadn’t been