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Honestly, I was more used to people staring.
It was kind of refreshing to have someone come right out and ask if it hurt instead of staring and whispering about me as if I couldn’t hear every single word they’d said.
“Baby,” I said. “I’m fucked up. I know it. Everyone else knows it. You just need to be prepared because this won’t be the last time it happens.”
She made a disgusted sound underneath her breath.
I laughed and squeezed her hand. “Come on. I want to get the best spot I can.”
***
“Hey, Frankie!” Ashley cried. “Come take a picture with us!”
She grabbed my hand and led me to where her group of fellow residents had gathered.
My hand tightened on hers.
I most certainly did not want to be in a picture with her friends.
Which, she must’ve sensed, because she slowed.
But, then Chen held up his hand. “Not him, just us!”
Frankie narrowed her eyes.
“Garrett is in the photo, and he’s not ‘us.’” Frankie stiffened.
Chen opened his mouth to say something, but it was the asshole that I fucking hated without a shadow of a doubt that opened his jerk mouth.
“Yeah, but we actually want to be able to post the picture on social media,” Victor, Nina’s doctor husband, countered. “If he’s in it…”
He left the thought hanging.
But I didn’t need him to finish his sentence to understand.
He thought that I’d ruin the picture.
And maybe he was right.
I squeezed Frankie’s hand, telling her without words that it was all right.
But she didn’t think it was all right.
Not even a little bit.
And I’d barely gotten her calmed down after what Ashley and Jessica had done before dinner.
“Baby…”
She was already shaking her head.
“No,” she said. “It’s not okay. Even if you say it is, it isn’t.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
“Let’s go,” she said. “They can take their picture without us.”
The boat ride hadn’t happened today.
That’d mostly been because the majority of the people that’d come out to dinner with us had been drunk off their asses and hadn’t wanted to take a break from drinking long enough to get on a boat.
Which was why they’d ended up at the bar, and then on the beach where there was a continuation of the bar.
“Where are we going?” I wondered.
She veered off the beach and led us to the other side where they were loading people onto the boat that we’d been supposed to ride.
She waved at the man. “Hey, are we too late?”
The tanned man with bright white teeth and bleach-blond hair shook his head.
“Nope, just on time, actually,” he said as he held out his hand for Frankie to take.
Frankie did, then climbed up into the back of the boat before smiling at the captain who handed her a lei.
I nodded at the man that was watching me stoically.
“You military?” he asked when I climbed up and took my first step up onto the boat.
“Yes,” I said simply.
The man looked indifferent for a few long seconds before saying, “Thank you for your service.”
I nodded once and kept walking down the length of the boat, making my way to where Frankie was grabbing a mug of beer.
I picked up one on my way, too, grinning at the bar attendant.
“Thanks,” I said, taking a sip of the lukewarm, watered-down beer.
“Welcome,” the man said cheerfully.
He was scarred like me, but looked like he’d sustained his wounds many, many years ago.
“You by yourself, man?” he asked conversationally.
I shook my head and indicated Frankie who was watching a couple of seagulls fight over a piece of bread that a kid had just thrown.
“That’s my girl,” I said, gesturing with my head only.
“Ahh,” he said as he started filling up another beer, then handed it to me. “She’s a cute one. Did good, man.”
I did.
I didn’t know how I did, but shit. I was so thankful for her.
I hadn’t realized how jealous I was over a dead man until that dead man turned out to be me.
The sheer amount of yearning that I’d felt for Frankie, day in and day out, had been overwhelming.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I did.”
“You get those in the war?” he asked curiously.
I nodded once.
“Me, too,” he said. “I was one of the first men to step on the ground over there. Our unit was the first.”
That had my heart picking up.
“You were?” I asked.
He nodded once.
“I’m glad you made it home,” I said. “Being out in the sun… that doesn’t fuck with your scars?”
That’d been one of the things that I’d been told to be wary of—the sun. That they were still healing and to always, always put on sunscreen and make sure that I didn’t give them a chance to burn.
“Not anymore,” he said, taking a sip of the beer that he’d just poured. “I…” He trailed off when the man that’d helped Frankie into the boat came up to his side. “Everybody ready, Brady?”
