Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Kenny
B y Friday evening, I’d lost my cool.
Not that, if we’re being honest, I ever had much to begin with, especially not with Liz. But at this point, I was a goner for her and every second we spent together made it worse.
Or better, depending on your perspective.
We hadn’t even gotten much time together, and I was basically living for the interactions with her. It was bad and I knew it, but I couldn’t seem to rein it in.
“She said she’s coming, man. Give it a rest.”
Cookie’s hand clamped down on my shoulder and shook me, jarring my vision from where I’d pinned my gaze on the entrance to Craic.
“I know. I’m just…” In too deep?
“Obsessed with a woman you’re barely dating?” he asked, and Doc, Bruce, and Beast all snickered .
I glared at them. Hard.
But also, they weren’t wrong. I’d dived full into enjoying this while it lasted, and I didn’t want to be away from her. If we only had a limited amount of time left, I wanted as much of it with her as I could get.
“Oh, watch out. Barbie’s got his mean face on,” Beast grumbled.
“Why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be at home with your woman?” I snapped.
He glowered. “She made me come.”
I instantly laughed at this, as did everyone else at the table.
“Not funny,” he growled.
“It’s actually amazing. I bet you’re driving her insane,” I said, beaming at my friend. His super badass wife hadn’t wanted to be doted on and wanted him to have some social interaction outside of work and home—for that, I’d always love Jess. She was trying to take care of him just like he was her.
“Maybe,” he admitted.
I moved to him and gave him a big old hug. Odds were fifty-fifty he’d shove me away, but something drove me to it. When his giant paws wrapped around me and squeezed just briefly, something in me settled.
He’d needed it, but I had, too.
“You okay?” he asked quietly, the rest of the table talking about something else.
“Yeah, I’m?—”
Liz stepped inside the pub and my heart leapt. She wore jeans, boots, and a waist-length puffy jacket. She pulled off a knit cap and a chilly breeze rustled the long, loose strands of hair around her face as someone came in behind her .
“Noted.”
Beast’s tone held something—amusement, based on the soft crinkles at his eyes. Apparently, trailing off mid-sentence when you see the girl you like is a bit of a hint.
“Yeah,” I said, knowing he’d get it. Confirming his observations, admitting my own feelings… really however he wanted to take it, he was likely right.
“I think we need a nickname for you,” Cookie suggested as Liz walked up to the table.
“Do they give nicknames where you are?” Doc asked.
She shrugged. “If I told you, I’d have to?—”
“Kill you.” Everyone echoed, then laughed.
While all of us had served in the EMU, Eddie and Liz served in an agency within the CIA. Where the missions we’d done were top secret and compartmentalized, often covert, much of what she did didn’t exist, nor did her unit. People had heard of the EMU. They knew we paired with the Tier 1 SEAL teams, and we were black ops. Her organization wasn’t like that, entirely clandestine.
So we all appreciated the joke, even though we all understood exactly where she came from. I wondered if that made being here in the civilian world easier. She didn’t have to pretend she worked for State in diplomacy or that she was an analyst for something. She could show up here and we knew she had skills.
So many skills…
“Well, do you want a nickname?” Bruce asked, more than willing to bestow one on her if she so desired, no doubt.
“I’m fine with going by name for now. Maybe something’ll come up that will inspire a good one.” She smiled, and then her eyes hooked into mine.
My stomach fell down a flight of stairs.
She wasn’t a smiley person. She didn’t toss out grins like currency like, well, me. These weren’t the keys to her interactions with people like they were mine, and yet when she did it, or maybe because she more rarely did it, she was devastating.
“Hey, so… you good to go?” I asked, not trying to pull every person at the table’s attention, but successfully doing just that.
Her brows lifted just a touch, but she responded right away. “Let me go say hi to the girls and then yes, sure.” She slipped past us and moved to the table where Jo, Dove, Catherine, Nikki, and Winnie stood.
“Very subtle, man,” Cookie said, snickering.
“You better hope she doesn’t mind you announcing that to everyone,” Doc said.
Of course he’d be more paranoid I’d done something wrong—he was perpetually trying to make sure he stayed on her good side.
But after getting to know her, I knew there was no bad side. She might seem severe and intense but underneath it she was just… lovely. Beautiful and funny and smart and sincere.
“I guess Elise couldn’t make it?” I asked, hoping to move on from commentary about my very unsmooth announcement.
Cookie’s gaze dropped to his beer as though any of us didn’t know he was absolutely tuned in to what the woman was or wasn’t doing.
“Haven’t seen her. Nik said she had to cancel a lunch earlier this week, too,” Bruce said, sending a wink in the direction of the table, no doubt toward his fiancée.
“Huh,” I said, as though I cared. I mean, I liked Elise and all, but I wasn’t tracking her attendance at the weekly happy hour.
Our beloved Jean-Luc Doux, however?
Mais oui , he absolutely was.
“Anybody seen Stone this week?” Doc asked.
“I stopped by Wednesday, but he’s been checking on Kit for me during the day,” I said, resisting the pull to look for Liz. She would come back to the table when she was done saying hi to the girls. It was also a great thing for her to have friends here.
If there was any hope she’d come back, the more people here she liked, the better. The more at home, the better. So this was all good.
I’d been having more of these kinds of thoughts lately. More hopes she might return to Silverton for another extended leave, or perhaps suddenly retire from the CIA, even though I was fairly sure agents couldn’t access full retirement benefits until a full five years after military personnel usually could at twenty.
Whatever the case, I was slipping into delusions and we hadn’t even gone on a real date.
“Ready?”
I turned, instantly settling my hand against the curve of her lower back and beginning to move. “Have a good night, guys,” I said to whoever was still at the table because I didn’t care about any of them but Liz.
Obviously, I did care about them in a global sense, but in this moment? When I was about to have her to myself for the first time in days?
Yeah, no.
“Hungry?” she asked, a smile in her tone as I held the door for her to exit Craic .
She glanced over her shoulder as I followed her out and caught her dark gaze. “Starved.”
For her. And yes, sure, I had eaten an early lunch and was quite ready to eat dinner, but I’d passed the point of being subtle. If we only had a few weeks left, I didn’t want to spend them at separate ends of the couch and I’d resolved to confirm she felt the same and then… sit next to her.
Wow, real hero shit there, man.
“Where are we going?” she asked, accepting the hand I held out and weaving our fingers together.
I must’ve been hungrier than I realized because I couldn’t think of the name of the restaurant. I couldn’t think of anything other than how much I wanted to ask her that very question.
Where were we going? Where could we possibly go?
Thankfully, logic hadn’t abandoned me entirely, so I told her the name and promised myself to enjoy the moment, the evening, the time with her, and not worry so much about those questions.
And whatever voice would normally shout at me to stop this because it simply couldn’t last? That voice had been choked out by whatever dream we’d walked into together and until it ended, I’d have to embrace it.