We’ve never discussed his past dating life. Not like we have mine. He usually avoids the topic when I bring it up.
And usually, I let him get away with it.
Which is why I almost fall off the bed when he replies. “Pretty much the same reason as you. I was engaged at one point. I was in love with her and believed the feeling was mutual. I was already a Navy SEAL when we got engaged, and she understood what the job entailed: that I would be away on missions and putting my life at risk for my country. She told me she didn’t care. I was fighting for the right to freedom, and she was proud of me because of that.
“I came home after one mission to discover she had been sleeping with a friend of mine from high school. Not only that, she had decided she would rather not be with a man who might die on the job tomorrow, and who was never around when she needed him. The last two points I could understand. What pissed me off was that she couldn’t wait for me to come home and tell me that to my face before she screwed around with my friend.”
I cringe at how similar our stories are, minus the part about me risking my life for my job.
The only thing I was at risk of dying from back when Richard and I were dating was an infected paper cut, which I got while studying for finals.
“So you never met anyone after that who changed your mind?” I ask.
“Nope. Quite the opposite. Because of the nature of my job, I tend to tell the women I date that I’m a sales representative for a hospital software company. It’s a good cover for why I’m frequently away, and then I don’t have to deal with women getting upset by the dangerous nature of my job. The team can be called on short notice to go on a mission, and a lot of women don’t appreciate that. Especially when it means canceling a date at the last minute, and then they don’t hear from me for a few days or weeks.
“I even had girlfriend slap me in the face, positive I was cheating on her, and that’s why I was away a lot. Apparently, her father was a lot like yours, so she automatically thought the worst of me. She was my last girlfriend. I decided afterward that remaining single was a better idea.”
“So you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater,”I say. It’s not a question. It’s a statement of fact.
“Yep. Just like you’re doing the same. A cheating father and ex-boyfriend have you swearing off long-term relationships.”
I flop onto my back. “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we? Maybe that’s why we’re friends. We get it.”
“So now that we’ve bared our souls,” he says with a deep chuckle that gets my lady bits tingling again,“we need to figure out our next steps when it comes to the mission.”
“Do you usually discuss your cases while lying naked in bed with the guys?”
He laughs harder this time. “Is this your way of saying my nakedness is distracting you from doing the job?”
“Not at all. I’m assuming that once I join the team, these meetings in bed will be a thing of the past.”
I roll back onto my side in time to see him visibly cringe, as if he just sat his naked ass on a porcupine. And the porcupine isn’t happy about it.
A knock on the door stops me from saying anything more on the subject.
“I’ll get it,” I say, twisting around to climb out of bed.
“You can’t do that. You’re naked.”
“So we’re not going to answer the door and hope they go away?” I lower my feet to the floor.
But not fast enough.
Jayden is already up and walking to the door.
“Hello, you’re naked, too,” I call after him. He pauses, grabs his swim trunks from the floor, and quickly pulls them on, despite only being able to use one arm.
I walk to the dresser, reassured that whoever is at the door won’t see me once Jayden opens it because of the room’s layout.
I hear the door click open. Jayden says something I can’t make out.
“What the hell?” he says rather irritably as I pull open the top drawer.
“Well, it’s about fucking time.”
Only the voice doesn’t belong to Jayden.
It belongs to Landon.
