Tybee Island, Georgia June 2014

“I never would have taken you for a cookies and cream kind of guy,” I said, taking a lick of my two scoops of butter pecan as Nate and I wandered Tybee aimlessly. I’d tossed my hair up into a messy bun to combat the humidity, leaving my neck and shoulders bare to the June sun.

“Never would have taken you for an ‘ice cream at ten a.m.’ girl, but here we are,” he replied, flashing that damned dimple. And his eyes? Yeah, those were still just as heart stopping as I’d remembered.

We crossed the street, and his fingers skimmed my lower back as he switched places with me on the sidewalk, walking closer to the street. On a scale of one to ten, that was a freaking twelve on the sexiest things a guy could do that weren’t sexual, which wasn’t helping my pulse settle.

Something within me had shifted the second I’d recognized him last night, and as much as I wanted to go back to being who I was yesterday, I couldn’t, not when I had the inexplicable, chaotic, senseless feeling that I was somehow tethered to this man.

The man I’d called from the airport two hours ago, sitting on my suitcase outside the departures door while Margo watched on, worried that I’d end up stranded.

I hadn’t worried. Not for one second. He hadn’t left me in that airplane or abandoned me in the river. Nate had shown me everything I needed to know about his character two and a half years ago. Which also meant I was terrified my impetuousness had wrecked his day.

“You sure I didn’t ruin your plans for the day?” I looked up at him from behind my cone. “I wasn’t exactly thinking rationally when I changed my flight this morning. It was just that I was standing there, watching the other girls check their bags, and I couldn’t do it.” Oh God, I was babbling, and there was no stopping the flow of words. “I couldn’t leave if there was even the slightest chance I could spend five more minutes with you. And I know that sounds”—my nose scrunched—“creepy. And it’s worse because I didn’t even bother to ask if you were seeing anyone last night, and who knows? Maybe you have a girlfriend, and now I’ve just thrown an entire wrench into your plans—”

“Izzy,” he interrupted, lifting his brows under his Saint Louis Blues ball cap and cupping my bare shoulder with his hand. Crap, his touch felt nice. “I don’t have a girlfriend. If I did, I would have told you last night, and I wouldn’t be here with you now.” A corner of his mouth lifted into a smirk, and my thighs tightened. “Or at least I wouldn’t have a girlfriend anymore.”

Did that mean he felt whatever this pull was between us too? “So, I didn’t ruin your plans by upending mine?”

He shook his head. “There is nothing better I could possibly imagine than spending my last day stateside with you. As long as you stop mocking my cookies and cream, considering you have the ice cream tastes of an eighty-year-old woman.”

“Do not,” I scoffed in defense of my favorite flavor.

Last day stateside. He was leaving tomorrow. My stomach dropped. “It’s butter pecan,” he teased. “It’s been around since the late eighteen

hundreds. It’s like the grandmother of all other ice cream flavors.” He took a bite out of my own selection.

“It’s a classic.” I licked up the side of my cone, and his eyes flared, tracking the movement.

“I still can’t believe you’re here.” He shook his head, looking at me the same way I bet I was looking at him—with pure awe.

“Same.” I turned, and we continued to walk, meandering down the picturesque street.

“I’ve been here for a couple years now, so my presence isn’t that much of a surprise.” He took another bite. “You showing up, that’s some happenstance.”

Who did that? Actually bit their ice cream?

Someone who doesn’t have time to let it melt.

Then again, my eyes had been way bigger than my stomach when I’d ordered this. I threw away the cone and spotted a bookstore up ahead. “Are you still making your way through that list of books?”

“Slowly.” He took another bite, demolishing what was left. “It’s hard to find time to read between college classes and people shooting at you, but I’m making a dent.”

I halted, my eyes flying wide.

Nate turned, his brow furrowing. “Shit. I forget you’re probably not used to hearing stuff like that.”

“It’s fine.” I forced a smile. It wasn’t. Not even close. The thought of him being shot at was . . . incomprehensible.

“It’s not. Forget I said it.” He tossed what was left of his ice cream in the nearby trash and scanned the street around us. “I have an idea.” He held out his hand.

I took it. “Lead on.”

Two hours later, we sat on the wooden double swing on North Beach, Nate gently rocking us as my feet stretched over his lap to rest on the opposite railing. The one at my back dug in a little as I scoured the pages of Outlander, marking my favorite lines with neon-yellow highlighter as he did the same to Their Eyes Were Watching God, but I didn’t care.

I couldn’t remember ever having spent a more perfect moment in all twenty-one years of my life.

“I can’t believe that’s the book you chose,” he muttered, glancing my way before dragging the highlighter across one of his pages.

His idea had been . . . swoonworthy. He’d taken me into the bookstore and told me to pick one of my favorite books that I’d guess he hadn’t read yet, and he’d done the same, buying both and a two-pack of yellow highlighters.

“A little romance won’t hurt you.” A smile curved my mouth as the ocean breeze ruffled the pages of the thick paperback. “Besides, it’s being adapted right now. Comes out in August, I think. You’ll thank me then.”

“I’ll still be deployed in August.” The side of his hand skimmed my knee as he adjusted his hold on the book, and butterflies kissed the edge of

my stomach. I was hyperaware of everything about him, from the subtly sexy way he curved the bill of his hat to the care he took while spraying me down with sunscreen so I wouldn’t burn in my jean shorts and the bikini top I’d changed into when we thought of the beach. “And you’ll be starting up classes, right?” He flipped another page, skimming the contents.

“Yep, at Georgetown,” I answered, choosing only the most romantic of lines to highlight and imagining his face when he got to those parts. He’d be half a world away.

“You don’t sound happy about it.” His head tilted to the side as he looked at me from under his hat. “From what I know, that’s a pretty stellar school.”

“It is.” I shielded my eyes from the sun with my hand to see his face clearer. “And it’s not that I’m not grateful to have been accepted; it’s just

. . .” A sigh deflated my shoulders, and I looked out over the Sunday families playing on the beach.

He shifted, and his hands framed my face for a heartbeat when he set his hat on my head. “For the sun.”

“Thank you.” I smiled at the sweet gesture, my fingers skimming the brim. “I’ve never worn your sweatshirt,” I blurted. Shit, I should have taken my ADHD meds today, but it was a weekend, and I thought I’d just be flying, and they always killed my appetite, and sometimes I just wanted to snack for the fun of it, and now I was saying whatever came to mind.

“You should,” he said. “Wear it, I mean. You’ve had it longer than I did now, anyway. Same with the bag and the iPod. They’re pretty much yours.” His dimple made an appearance, and my pulse skittered. “In fact, I’m officially giving it all to you.”

“You don’t want me to ship it?” It was the only reason I’d come up with to ask for his address, since I didn’t think he’d be getting texts over the next year—the length of this deployment.

“No. I kind of like the idea of you wearing it. As long as it isn’t all messed up from the river.” He grimaced. “Is it gross?”

“No.” I laughed. “It’s surprisingly not gross, though the white parts aren’t exactly as bright as they once may have been. But anything else you had in there must have been destroyed, because that’s all that came back.”

“Did you ever get your purse?”

I nodded. “It showed up a month after your bag. I think having my ID in there helped.”

“I would guess so.” He looked back to the book, but his highlighter hovered over the page without moving. “Are you still afraid of flying?” he asked softly. “I’ve always wondered if the crash . . .”

“Screwed me up even more?” I offered, highlighting a particularly racy line.

“I wasn’t going to put it that way, but now that you mention it . . .” He shot me an apologetic look.

“I didn’t fly for eighteen months,” I admitted, skimming the next chapter to get to my favorite parts. “It took a lot of therapy. For that and the nightmares.” A chill tried its best to work its way up my spine despite the climbing heat. “But I have coping mechanisms for both now.”

“Coping mechanisms?”

“Well, yeah. It’s not like I can actually control the panic attacks. We were actually in a plane crash. And sure, we got the best of a worst-case scenario, but I’ll never be able to tell myself that the likelihood is next to zero again, because now the fear is grounded.” My eyes narrowed. “You never had an issue flying after what happened?”

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I was put on the next flight out of Saint Louis, so I just . . .” His throat worked as he swallowed. “Flew. I told myself that if the universe wanted me to die in a plane crash, I would have. I understand the nightmares, though. I do the whole ‘You aren’t there anymore; you’re home’ affirmations thing I saw on some therapist’s YouTube.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Some therapist’s YouTube?”

“Having your file marked up by a shrink isn’t exactly good in my line of work.” He highlighted another line and kept going. “I do what I have to in the moment and then I move on. Like you said,” he said, looking over at me. “Coping mechanism, I guess.”

“Is there anything you’re scared of? There has to be something, right?”

“Sure. Becoming anything like my father.” He reached to the right and pulled something out of his backpack. “Gum?”

“No, thanks.” Guess that topic wasn’t up for discussion.

He popped a piece in his mouth, and we spent another hour just like that, swinging on the beach, marking up our favorite books for each other.

By the time we finished, the sun was high in the sky and my skin was sticky with sweat. “Want to get in?” I asked him, nodding toward the beach.

“Sounds good to me.” We put the books in his backpack and walked toward the water, picking out a spot far from anyone else. He pulled out two towels from his bag, and I lifted my brows. “It’s the last of what has to be packed,” he said in answer to my unspoken question.

Then we stripped down. For me, it was a simple matter of shimmying out of my jean shorts and kicking off my sandals.

I tried to keep my eyes off his body as he pulled his shirt over his head. I failed. Miserably. But in my defense, Nathaniel Phelan had been created to be looked at, to be admired, to be flat out drooled over.

His stomach was cut out of an Abercrombie ad, roped with muscles that rippled and flexed, and the diagonal ridges that led to his board shorts had my mouth watering to trace those lines with my tongue. His chest was built, his arms strong, and every inch of his skin that I could see was tanned to a touchable bronze.

“You ready?” he asked, satisfaction curving my smile when he did a double take at me in my bikini. I wasn’t in his level of shape—I had curves that spoke to just how much time I’d spent studying this year—but the way his eyes heated made me feel . . . beautiful.

I took off his hat and shook out my hair. “Ready.”

We walked into the water, and I gasped as the first cold wave hit my sun-warmed stomach.

Nate laughed, then submerged completely with the confidence of someone who did this way more often than I did. When he stood, the water reached the elastic of his board shorts, and I stared, transfixed, as the water sluiced off him.

Then I blinked and stepped closer, my hand rising but not touching the silver lines that had almost faded into the upper ridges of his abs. “What happened?”

His jaw flexed, but then he quickly smiled. “I ruptured my spleen in Afghanistan last tour. Now we have matching scars.”

My gaze widened by the second as waves pushed by us. “Plane crash?” I tried to joke.

“IED.”

Suddenly my body was as cold as the water around us. “You were blown up?”

“The vehicle I was in was blown up.” He reached out, tucking my hair behind my ears with cool fingertips. “Don’t look at me like that, Izzy.”

“Like what?” It was barely a whisper as the next wave hit me a little higher. “Like I’m worried?”

“My mom worries enough for every other person on the planet. You don’t have to. I’m fine. See?” He put his arms out and turned slowly, but I didn’t savor the sight of his bare back and torso like I had just a few minutes ago. Now I saw every place he could be hurt. Every vulnerable inch.

“Do you like it?” I asked when he faced me again. “What you do?” “I’m good at it.” He shrugged.

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Says the woman who doesn’t seem too excited to be starting Georgetown at twenty-one years old.” He lifted a dark brow.

“No one’s trying to kill me,” I blurted.

“Which is why I don’t mind what I do.” He moved closer, his hand palming my waist to steady me when a bigger wave threatened to take me back to shore. “If no one’s trying to kill you here, then that means I’m doing my job over there. That’s how I choose to look at it, how I have to look at it.”

“And is that your dream?”

“I don’t follow.” His fingers flexed, and I fought to keep from leaning into his touch.

“Is this what you’re going to do for the rest of your life? Is this your career?” Say no. Say that you’re out after three years like you said on the plane.

“I’m really good at it, Iz,” he said softly. “I’m already a ranger. I’ll probably look at Special Forces selection once we get back. My friend Torres is a legacy—his dad was Delta, and I told him I’d think about going through the process with him.”

If he comes back.

“You going to tell me why you’re not wandering around with a megawatt smile over getting into Georgetown Law?” He changed subjects, and I got the point.

“It wasn’t my dream, that’s all.” Stepping back, I sank beneath the water, letting the power of the insistent waves remind me just how small we both were in relation to the world around us. Then I stood and pushed my hair out of my eyes.

“Whose dream was it?” His brow knit as we waded deeper, the water resting just beneath my breasts between waves.

I looked away from that penetrating blue gaze of his.

“You don’t have to tell me. I’ll never push you for something you don’t want to give.” He ripped his hands over his hair. “It’s not like I have the right to know, anyway. We’ve known each other for a total of what? Eighteen hours if you combine all our time together?”

That had me turning back toward him. “Two and a half years,” I said, correcting him. “We’ve known each other two and a half years. And I didn’t want to graduate early, but my boyfriend was a year older, and he said he wanted me to come with him.” A sour taste filled my mouth. “And my parents were so thrilled with the idea that I might marry a Covington—”

“You were engaged?” His gaze dropped to my hand like he’d missed something. “And what the hell is a Covington?”

“No.” I shook my head. “And who is a Covington.” A bitter laugh escaped at my own foolishness. “God, I love that you don’t know. Love that you can’t tell me every senator that’s come from his branch of the family, or what their net worth is, because believe me, my father could spit those details out like a computer. The idea of me marrying into a family like that made him practically salivate. It’s everything they want for themselves, though they’d say it’s for me, and it’s why he offered to pay for Georgetown if I graduated Syracuse early and went with—”

“Dickface,” Nate supplied. “I don’t want to know his name. If he was stupid enough to lose you, as the term ex implies, then he’s a dickface.”

This time my laughter was anything but bitter. “Yeah, we can go with that. Dickface got accepted to Georgetown, too, of course, so we started planning.” I sighed. “I can even admit that it felt nice to live up to my parents’ expectations for once. They came to graduation and even threw a giant party. We rented an apartment close to campus, put the deposit down and everything . . .” My forehead puckered. “I should have known the second Serena told me she didn’t like him. She’s a freakishly good judge of character.” I bobbed up and down with the next wave now that we were deeper. “Anyway, he was accepted off the wait list for Yale just before graduation, and now he’s in New Haven.”

“He left you for a school?”

“Yep.” I sputtered when the next wave got the best of me, and Nate pulled me against his rock-solid torso. My heart skipped a freaking beat, but

Nate’s was steady under the hand that I splayed over his chest. Concentrate. “And I tried the whole ‘let’s do long distance’ thing, because I’m naive. And he . . .” I searched for the right words. “He respectfully declined, seeing that there was a plethora of women who weren’t new money to choose from at Yale.”

“Dickface,” Nate muttered.

“Dickface,” I agreed. Yet, at that moment, with the cool water rushing around us and Nate’s warm skin under my fingers, I was overwhelmed with gratitude for my newly single status. Nate was the opposite of everything Dickface had been. He was open, brutally honest, brave to a fault, and remarkably careful with me. “My parents haven’t quite recovered from their crushing disappointment of nearly marrying into the Covington family. So now, I’m at Georgetown because I chased someone else’s dream, and I haven’t quite figured out what to do with that.”

“Find a way to make it your own,” he suggested, lifting me off my feet when the next wave came. “Find a way to make a difference.”

Emboldened by the way he held me, I reached up and ran my fingers through his wet hair. This time tomorrow, I’d be in DC, and he’d be on his way to a war zone. “If I could make a difference, I’d find a way to keep you here.”

An emotion I couldn’t define but that looked a lot like longing passed over his face. “That would pretty much take an act of Congress.” His gaze dropped to my mouth.

“Guess you’ll have to go then. I’ve never been particularly interested in politics,” I whispered as another wave pushed my body firmly against his.

“Me either.” His arm locked around my back. “Izzy?” “Nate?” God, I couldn’t stop looking at his mouth.

“I’m going to kiss you.” The certainty of his words made my skin flush.

“Oh yeah?” I ran my tongue over my lower lip, tasting salt.

“Yeah.” He lowered his head slowly, giving me more than enough time to object. “So, if that’s not what you want—”

“I want.” I tilted my face and arched up, brushing my mouth across his. It was nothing, a ghost of a kiss, but it brought every nerve ending in my body to life, and every single one of them wanted him.

His blue eyes flared with surprise, and then he brought his mouth to mine and kissed me senseless. His lips were cool, but his tongue warm as it slipped past my parted lips to slide along mine. Spearmint and salt consumed every thought. Electricity danced along my skin.

More. I needed more.

His fingers speared into my hair, and he tilted my head to kiss me even deeper. I was no stranger to sex, but I’d never been kissed like this. He took my mouth like I was the key to his next heartbeat, with equal parts mind- blowing finesse and dizzying need.

It was the best first kiss in the history of . . . everything.

I moaned, and he lifted me so our mouths were level, never breaking the kiss.

My legs wound around his waist like they belonged there, my ankles locking at the small of his back. Kissing Nate wasn’t just everything I’d dreamed of; it was better.

“Shit,” he swore, ripping his mouth from mine once we were both panting, and resting his forehead against mine.

“Not what you expected?” My fingers laced behind his neck as another wave crested over my heated skin, but didn’t even faze him.

“Just the opposite.” He pressed a kiss to my jaw, then my throat, before returning to my lips. “Everything I expected and so much more. I fucking knew it would be like this with you.”

“Chemistry,” I muttered, but that wasn’t the word tickling the edges of my mind. Fate. There was no other way to explain this, to explain us.

“It’s more than that, but I don’t think defining it would be fair to either one of us. Not when we only have a few hours before your flight.” He studied my face like he was committing it to memory.

“Our timing is pretty awful.” My thighs squeezed his waist as I feathered a kiss over his cheek.

“Our timing is shit.” His hand stroked down my spine but never went for my ass.

I wished he would. I wanted him in every possible way I could have him until the sun set. “Then give me the next few hours.”

Every line of his body drew tight against me, and his breaths grew ragged when I kissed a line down the side of his neck.

“Izzy,” he groaned, his grip tightening in my hair to gently pull me away. The lust in his eyes dimmed the sting of rejection. “I don’t want

hours. I want nights. Days. Weeks. I want to haul you into a room and lock us away until I know every inch of your body, taste everywhere you like to be kissed, explore every way to make you come, and then listen as your voice goes hoarse from screaming my name. That’s . . .” He shook his head.

“Yes. That’s a yes.” Everything he’d listed sounded fantastic.

“I was going to say madness.” He grinned, and I melted at that flash of dimple. “And I might kick the shit out of myself for saying this next week, when I have every second of this moment on constant replay in my head, but I want the one thing we don’t have, Izzy, and that’s time.”

“I know. Me too.” I wanted a chance, a real, unhurried chance at what we might be. “Does that mean you’re done kissing me?”

“Fuck no.” He kissed me long and slow, the tempo changing into an unhurried, thorough seduction. “I’ll kiss you whenever you ask, Isabeau Astor.”

“Promise?” I smiled against his mouth.

“Promise.” He made good on it, kissing me until our skin puckered in the water. He kissed me as we dried off, as we walked to his truck, and before and after our very late lunch.

He kissed me until my lips were swollen and I knew every line of his mouth with the same familiarity he did mine.

Then my bag was checked, the book he’d chosen was tucked into my carry-on, and my throat tightened with every step as he walked me to the security checkpoint at the airport.

What if the time we wanted never came? What if this was all we’d have?

What if—

“Stop.” He turned me in his arms and cradled my face. “Whatever you’re thinking, just stop.”

My eyes stung, and I knew it wasn’t from salt and sun. “What if you don’t come home?”

His brow knit and he leaned in slowly, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “I’ll come home.”

“You don’t know that.” The fabric of his shirt was soft in my fingers as my fists clenched against his chest.

“You don’t have to worry about me. I’m ridiculously hard to kill.” He hugged me tight, resting his chin on the top of my head.

“You say that like it’s going to stop me from worrying every day for the next year.”

“No.” He gripped my shoulders and leaned back, looking at me with such intensity that my breath caught. “Don’t do that either. Don’t you dare sit around and worry. Don’t waste your life waiting on me, Izzy.”

My lips parted, but there were no words for the way my heart teetered on the edge of his demand, ready to fall . . . or to break.

“I won’t do that to you.” He cradled the side of my face, stroking his thumb over my cheek. “You are worth so much more.”

“And if I want to do it to myself?” Shit, was that my voice breaking? “Don’t,” he begged, his voice fading to a whisper. “You just uprooted

your whole life for someone. Don’t wish away the months for someone else.” He lifted a brow. “And don’t think this has anything to do with me not wanting you, or some bullshit. God, what I would do for you if I just . . . could.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“We’re—” He swallowed and took a stuttered breath. “We’re us. Nate and Izzy.”

“Undefined,” I whispered, remembering his earlier words that it wouldn’t be fair to either of us to try and label the unexplainable.

“If you want to write, then I’ll do the same. If you don’t, then I won’t pressure you. I want you to have every single opportunity you want for yourself in DC.”

“Even if that opportunity means someone else?” I challenged. Maybe it was childish, but I didn’t care. Not when we were about to take the gift fate had given us and squander it over him not wanting me to wait.

He held my gaze with steady, unwavering eyes and nodded. “Even if that means someone else. Every second I’ve had with you is a gift I’ve never deserved, and I refuse to think of you back here, missing out on . . . anything because of me.”

“And in a year?” I leaned my cheek into his palm. “Could be less—I just like to prep for the long haul.” “What happens when you’re home?”

He sighed, then lowered his head and kissed me like we weren’t in the middle of the airport. He kissed me like there was no one watching, and nothing waiting for us on the other side of tomorrow. “You know the best part of not defining this?”

“My begrudging freedom?” I muttered.

He laughed. “No. The possibilities, Izzy. That’s what we are.

Possibility.”

Possibility. The same reason he loved the sunrise.

Everything in me screamed to hold on, but I let him go, because that’s what he wanted and, honestly, probably what I needed. I’d just gotten out of a two-year relationship. Jumping into another when I was bound to sabotage it with my unresolved baggage was the last thing I wanted to do to Nate. If there was ever a shot to be had when it came to us, he was right—it wasn’t now.

I kissed him one last time and stepped back. “Just . . . don’t die.” They were the last words I remembered from the crash, but they seemed to fit this occasion too. I wasn’t sure what that said about us.

“Not planning on it.” A corner of his mouth lifted, but it wasn’t a full smile.

I blinked. “That’s what you said—”

“I know.” He backed away, shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “I remember everything about you. Now get on that plane so I can remember this too.”

“Possibilities?” My chest ached so deeply that it hurt to breathe.

“The very best of them.” He gave me a grin, flashing that dimple, and disappeared into the crowd.