Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145823 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145823 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
“That you made plans without consulting me?” I adjusted the weight, adding twenty pounds.
“That you made plans without consulting me. What the hell is so important that you’d blow me off on a non-Finley weekend?” He stared down at me with a mix of real and mock outrage. “You know we only have a few months before we deploy! You’re supposed to be mine!”
“A few months before you deploy, remember? I’m on rear D for this one.” Command had taken mercy on me since I was Finley’s only parent. Yes, I had a care plan, but it had been a relief when they told me I wasn’t going to have to use it. I hated sending my guys without me, though.
He grabbed his chest in indignation. “We’re supposed to be spending every moment we can together so our bromance survives the separation!”
“All three months of it.” I laughed. “Now seriously, I’m taking Morgan out.” I slid into the machine.
“I’m sorry. Morgan as in your extremely hot, way unavailable neighbor?” Sawyer asked, his expression changing to a shit-eating grin.
“Yes.” I started my reps and hoped the conversation would end there.
“Do you even know how to actually date anymore?” Sawyer dropped down so we were at the same level.
Of course he couldn’t let it end there.
“Pretty sure it all works the same as the last time I did it,” I snapped, breathing through the reps.
“You mean back in the eighteen hundreds?” Sawyer laughed.
“Seriously, leave him alone,” Garrett told Sawyer, dropping after his last pull-up. “Jax, I like her. She might be gorgeous, but she doesn’t act like she knows it, and she ate your burnt-ass cheeseburger.”
“Thanks for your approval.” I grunted as I reached the end of the set.
“I didn’t say I didn’t like her!” Sawyer threw his hands up in the air. “I’m here for this, Montgomery. What can I do to help you? Do you need tips? Advice? Date ideas? You know that Myspace isn’t a thing anymore, right?”
I finished the last rep, then climbed from the machine and put my hand on Sawyer’s shoulder. “Sawyer, you know I love you like a brother, but you are the last person in the world I would ever ask dating advice from.”
Garrett burst into laughter as I hauled my ass to the shower. I wasn’t letting Sawyer get to me, not when I’d gotten Morgan to say yes—even if it was a friend-zone date. I’d take what I could get when it came to her.
My phone rang as I zipped up my flight suit post-shower.
“Fuck,” I muttered, but I still answered. “Do you know what time it is, Claire?”
“Ten thirty,” she snapped.
“It’s one thirty in the morning here.” I sat down on the bench in front of my locker and put on my boots.
“Well, you answered, so you must still be awake.”
“But you didn’t know that when you called—” I sat up and rubbed the skin between my eyes. “Okay, let’s start over. To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”
“We have a giant fucking issue,” she seethed.
“Which would be?”
“Did you seriously send my daughter to her kindergarten orientation wearing a damned Easter dress and Converse?” Her voice was pitched high enough to be called a shriek.
I bit back an instinctual reply, which would have been to tell her to fuck off and hang up. She’s Finley’s mother. I repeated the thought four times before I spoke.
“Not that I know of.” I leaned down to lace my boots, holding the phone between my ear and shoulder.
“So this picture Brie sent me isn’t Finley’s orientation? I just sent it.”
My phone vibrated, and I pulled it back long enough to see the picture Brie had taken yesterday appear in our text thread. “That’s Finley right before orientation,” I confirmed.
“Jax!”
“What?” I finished tying the first boot and started on the second. “She’s not wearing an Easter dress because it doesn’t have a thousand bunnies on it, or eggs, or a giant cross. It’s a party dress. And those aren’t Converse; they’re her favorite pair of Vans.”
“And you let her wear that? Do you know what the teacher must have thought? What the other kids must think about her?”
“That’s their problem,” I retorted, taking a page out of Morgan’s book as I tied the second boot. “Look, Claire, she wore whatever made her feel good about herself. If you have a problem with it, then I guess you should have been here to tell her that what people think is more important than how she feels.”
“I cannot believe that you just—”
The alarm went off, and I jolted from the bench, racing for the hallway.
“We’ve got a mayday!” Sawyer called out, running my way, where all of our flight gear was stored.
It was go time.
“Claire, I’m going to have to call you back. There are people who need me to save them from an actual issue.” I hung up and pocketed my phone without another thought about Claire as I ran back to the locker room. Sawyer and Garrett both came through the door as I grabbed my flight bag, then pressed a kiss to my fingers and touched the picture of Finley I kept taped on the inside of my locker door.