Page 19 of Dangle

“Fuck. Never do that again. It looked freaky as hell.”

“Then, respectfully, quit sharing the stuff I tell you with everyone.”

“You can go fuck yourself with the respectfully crap. Because no, I won’t. I won’t ever quit watching your six because you’ll never stop watching mine, brother.”

Staring at him, my request, I realized was idiotic. The men in that group chat were all Marines. We’d served with all of them but Walker. Our group’s bond with him was…weird…to put it mildly.

Ewen, Cam, Priest, and I all served with Hayden. All of us enlisted together over the course of a few years. All of us were promoted to enlisted non-commissioned officers together.

Taz, who’d been our Gunnery Sergeant, served under Walker.

Then Hayden married Walker’s cousin, Declan. And we were there at the start of it, the shitstorm that followed, and them finally figuring their shit out.

All very normal for a bunch of trauma-bonded vets determined to make it in the civilian world.

And then there was the bond the rest of us forged with Walker. That one required lots and lots of alcohol—the good shit that put you on your ass and made you think you saw deities of all kinds. It read like a blockbuster movie—a superstar singer, a crazy ass fucking psychopath, death threats, jealous brawls, shootings, kidnappings, trips to the jungles, and two people who fell hopelessly in love at first sight. And that just skimmed the surface.

Through it all, we did what we’d always done: watched each other’s back.

“Point made. I appreciate it. And you’re right. I won’t.”

HOLT ENTERPRISES stretcheddown the side of a sleek black private jet waiting on the tarmac, visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the small private airport outside Manchester. I’d only flown private a few times, so it still struck me funny how different it was to flying commercial. Hell, I’d never even flown first class.

But this was what happened when two of your buddies settled down with fucking billionaires from the same damn family.

Bumping shoulders with Ewen, I whispered, “You think we’ll ever get used to this shit?”

“What shit is that?”

I pointed out the windows toward the plane Bauer Holt sent for the two of us. “That. And that two of our best friends are married to billionaires.”

“Millionaires. Charlotte is the billionaire in the filthy as fuck rich side of this weird ass amalgamation of a family.”

Yeah, right? Millionaires, my ass. They were considered one of the country’s wealthiest and most powerful families.

“Big word, man. You finally ripping off pages in that word of the day calendar Ollie got you two years ago?”

“Fuck you. I’m smart.” His face turned pink as hell.

I cracked the fuck up. “Lies from a lying liar. Should I look for the extinguisher?”

He shoved me hard enough that I hopped a few feet across the lounge; the airport staff told us to wait inside while they did…something to the plane.

And that’s when I saw him—the sexy fucking hockey player Ewen swore flirted with me from the ice a few weeks ago. Even out of all the hockey gear, I would recognize him from all the banners the school had strung up both inside and outside the arena. His gorgeous face, stoic in the pictures, but some commercials they put out showed him smiling, like he was now, surrounded by several other big, broad guys in their early twenties. They strode across the shiny floors of the airport as if they owned the place.

Fucking hell. The kid got more damn beautiful the closer he got to us. Unlike the guys around him, he moved with a hip-rolling grace that made it look like he glided across the floor as if it were made of ice. Long legs encased in denim with a Henley stretched snugly around his torso and down his arms. The visual might as well be pornographic, considering the reaction taking place in my pants.

They stopped at the desk, all of them fishing out their wallets, as the object of my sudden renewed interest in menother than my best friend—because I had needs that made me fucking cranky—smiled at the woman behind the counter.

He held out his ID and said, “Hi, we’re on the manifest for a flight to Nashville. My name’s Trey Malachek.”

I’d known his name, of course. You couldn’t live in fucking Manchester, Minnesota and not know the kid’s name, but hearing it come out of his mouth turned the low-key party in my pants into a fucking kegger. The low, growly sound somehow came out lyrical as hell.

“Oh, look. It’s the boy you swear you’re not absolutely obsessed with,” Ewen whispered from behind me.

His sternum suffered from me ramming the point of my elbow into it to shut his fucking mouth because what hethoughtwas a whisper to normal humans was a regular speaking voice. Too many deployments on loud-ass boats or too many blasts with shitty ear protection. It was a toss-up as to the cause, but I couldn’t take the chance he would out me to what looked like the first line of the Manchester Maulers.

The pretty blond behind the counter preened, smiled, tucked her hair behind her ears, her gaze only leaving Trey’s handsome face to give the other guys a courtesy glance at him and their travel documents. After checking them all in, she simpered some more, but none of the guys were falling for her flirtatiousness.