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“Holy… shit. Jonah. I thought it was something along the lines of an injury, but a gunshot wound to the head? You’re a fucking warrior. I had so much respect for you before, and now it’s off the charts.”
“I don’t know about all that, man,” he said. I reached out and squeezed his shoulder.
“Jonah, that’s hero status. A lot of people give up when faced with a situation like that. You persevered.”
“Doctors said I had a twenty percent chance to walk again.”
I wanted to pick Jonah up, carry him into a bedroom, encase that bedroom in an impenetrable bubble, and never let him out. I wanted to keep him safe, shelter him from the cruel, cruel world, and I wanted to do that with him in my arms.
Even though this tragedy already happened, there was no protecting him. He’d forever bear the scar, the pain, the traumatic memory.
“So yeah.” He drank more of the beer and looked out at the dark ocean. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
“You did good tonight. Breaking up with Wendy. I don’t know her, but I do know that anyone with a heart would have been by your hospital bed and never left your side. I wouldn’t have left your bedside, that’s for sure. She doesn’t deserve you, Jonah. She doesn’t deserve even a glance from you.”
His lips twitched into a smile before collapsing. “It’s scary, Fox. I’ve been with her for the last four years. Even though it felt like it was more of a business relationship than a real relationship toward the end, I still… I don’t know, I was comfortable, ya know, man? And there’s something to say about comfort.”
“Yeah, that it’s useless.”
He scoffed at that. “I don’t know… I don’t mind being comfortable.”
“If you’re talking about wearing comfortable silk pajamas and cuddling up under a weighted and heated blanket, then yes, that type of comfortable is great. But the other type, the one that keeps you locked in a situation you don’t like, only because you’re ‘comfortable’? Well, that kind of comfortable can go suck my left nut.” We laughed, something far ahead of us leaping out of the water like a living shadow and splashing back down. “I think everyone needs to be comfortable stepping out of their comfort zone. That’s when the best part of life tends to happen.”
He seemed to digest what I was saying for a moment, the sound of the ocean filling up the silence.
“You’re right,” he said. “Totally right. I was comfortable with Wendy but at what cost? I can make it in this world without her. And I can be okay doing it.”
“You survived a gunshot to the head, Jonah—you can survive a woman who treated you like a piece of gum stuck to her frizzy hair.” It may have sounded harsh, but it was what Jonah needed to hear. My military background was beginning to kick in; my next instinct was to tell him to drop and give me twenty.
That was underneath the instinct that was currently lighting a fire in my balls.
“Sorry, I don’t know if she has frizzy hair or not,” I admitted. “But if you can’t tell, I really don’t like her. I’m picturing her with frizzy hair and warts and a big-ass pointy hat.”
“So… a witch?”
“Yeah, basically. Am I close?”
We cracked up, our bond hardening. “You’re absolutely right. She’s a witch.” He nodded, smiling, the moonlight catching the blue in his eyes in a way that made my breath hitch.
Fuck. Since when has that happened?
That’s never happened.
My breath has never fucking hitched… what the absolute Nora Roberts kinda bullshit is this?
Jonah wasn’t the only one who liked reading romances. I had read a few on the long plane rides I had to endure. Having a Kindle meant I could hide the covers which helped avoid any ribbing from the other guys, especially the ones who weren’t that close to me. I still picked some up every now and then, but I tended more toward mysteries lately.
Go figure.
“You okay?” Jonah asked, cocking his head.
No. Frankly, I wasn’t at all okay. This shit didn’t happen to me. I didn’t fall for anyone. I knew what that kind of crap does to people, and I didn’t want it for myself. Ever. I saw it in the way it destroyed my parents, a love that burned them out and left a pile of ash in its wake. I never felt my breath hitch or my knees buckle or my fucking butterfly farm flare to life inside my gut, but here, sitting next to Jonah, all of that was happening and more.
And it was happening for a man who I was about a hundred percent sure was straight. Someone so totally out of limits for me that a wet dream over him would be a waste of come.
