Going Overboard

by L. A. Witt

  “What? Why?”

  “When did he ask?”

  “Maybe five minutes before you got here?”

  “Fucker.” Dalton exhaled. “I told him like an hour ago that I’m going up to Bremerton for a psych and TBI eval. He probably figured out I was going to ask you to come with me.”

  I clenched my jaw so hard my teeth hurt. “That fucker.”

  “Right?” Dalton rolled his eyes. “I’ll figure something out. I—”

  “No, I’ll tell him I can’t do the duty swap. I can—”

  “Chris.” He put a hand on my chest and shook his head. “It’s okay. I’m probably fine to drive myself, to be honest.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “It’s not that far, and I’ll just stay overnight at the Navy Lodge. No big deal.”

  I didn’t like the idea. Not at all. He was competent to drive, but how would the eval go? Would something set him off? Fuck with his PTSD? It wasn’t the drive to Bremerton that worried me—it was the drive back.

  As if he could read my thoughts—and hell, they were probably written all over my face—Dalton put a hand on my side. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”

  I studied him, then sighed and nodded. “Okay. Just be careful, all right?”

  A smirk played at his lips. “Yes, Dad.”

  “Shut up.” I chuckled and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “Don’t make me put you over my knee.”

  “Ooh. Kinky.” He winked, flashing a playful smile.

  “You’re a dork.”

  “Yeah, and you—”

  Someone cleared his throat.

  We jumped apart and turned, and fuck my life but Chief Lasby was standing in the doorway, arms folded across his blue digicams.

  My heart hit the floor. Lasby’s eyes flicked back and forth between us.

  Then, without saying a word, he headed downstairs.

  We were both silent for a long moment. Neither of us breathed. Even after the door opened and closed downstairs, we stayed still.

  Dalton released his breath first. “Shit.” He wiped a hand over his face. “So much for keeping this quiet at work.”

  I exhaled too and rested my hip against a desk. “Yeah. Damn. Why do I get the feeling he’s going to find a way to fuck us over?”

  “Because you’ve been working for him long enough to know that’s exactly the kind of asshole he is.”

  And wasn’t that the truth.

  We had the next couple of days off, and not a moment too soon. From the second we woke up after sleeping off our shift, we agreed to shut out work until we had to go back. Just us. Relaxing. Catching our breath. Getting out from under the black cloud of Lasby and the investigation.

  First things first—well, after a very long shared shower—was breakfast. It might be three in the afternoon, but for two guys who worked nights, it counted as breakfast. Fortunately, there were quite a few restaurants in town that served breakfast all day, and after maybe ten minutes of searching, we picked one a few blocks from the downtown pier. It was kind of like that one we’d gone to for lunch a while back—family run, no name, smelled amazing, and probably had recipes handed down from Grandma.

  As we chugged coffee and looked over the menus, I kept stealing glances at Dalton. We’d promised to leave work under the radar until our next shift, but it was hard to make all that stress magically go away. Especially after Lasby’s underhanded way of keeping me from going with Dalton to Bremerton. And the fact that Dalton needed to go to Bremerton in the first place. Not to mention Lasby busting us together.

  Mostly, I was worried about Dalton. I didn’t like that he had to wait two weeks for a psych eval he should have had ages ago. It worried me, and it pissed me off. Wasn’t the Navy supposed to take care of its own?

  I forgot about the menu and just stared at him. It had been several weeks now since the night he’d almost been killed, and it was still hard not to look at him and think about how close I’d come to losing him. It made me want to grab on to him and not let him go, like I could protect him from everything. Or like if he got out of my sight or out of my reach, something would snatch him up. Probably didn’t help that I was still having those stupid dreams. I wondered if he noticed how often I woke up during the night and wrapped him up in a bear hug before I went back to sleep. He never seemed to be bothered by it. Hell, he slept right through it almost every time.

  No wonder I was so worked up over Lasby screwing me out of going with Dalton. I needed to be with Dalton to make sure he was okay, and Lasby had pulled that stunt. Fucker.

  The waiter appeared by our table, and I shook myself out of my thoughts.

  “What can I get you, gentlemen?” he asked.

  Dalton ordered while I quickly skimmed over the menu and pretended I hadn’t been zoning out. I settled on the Southern-style skillet because anything with country gravy on it was always a winner.

  While the waiter was taking my order, Dalton took out his phone and frowned at the screen. When we were alone again, he was still eyeing it.

  “Work?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t.

  “No, no.” He typed something quickly, then pocketedhis phone. “Sorry. That was my dad asking me about some stuff. I’ll call him later.”

  “Ah, okay. Long as it isn’t work.” I paused. “You don’t talk about your family much.”

  He shrugged. “Neither do you.”

  “Okay. Fair. There isn’t really much to tell, though. You know I was a Navy brat.”

  “And you still enlisted,” he teased. “Slow learner?”

  “Yeah, kinda.” I chuckled. “My mom retired the year I enlisted, and my dad retired the year after. They tried to talk me into going to college, but . . . eh, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Figured four years would be enough time to figure it out. Plus I’d have the GI Bill.”

  “Four years, huh?” Dalton picked up his coffee. “Famous last words, am I right?”

  I clinked my coffee cup against his. “So right. That why you went in? College?” Beat. “Oh right, you said you were a fuckup as a kid.”

  “Yep.” He sipped his coffee. “I also needed to get the fuck out of Nebraska, and I figured the Navy would get me as far away as anything.”

  “You do know there’s a base there with a detachment of MAs, right?”

  Grimacing, he nodded. “Every time I’ve been up for orders, I’ve been scared shitless I’ll wind up at Offutt.” He shuddered. “No thanks.”

  “Nebraska’s really that bad?”

  “It’s flat and boring, and I spent my whole damn civilian life there. I didn’t join the Navy to go home.”

  “Fair enough.” I watched him for a moment, and it was kind of funny to realize I knew Dalton so well, and I was so intimate with him, but I didn’t know all that much about his pre-Navy life. “So, you’re from there?” It was a dumb question, but hopefully enough to keep the conversation moving.

  “Well, I grew up there,” he said. “I was born in Indiana, but we left when I was two. My dad was having such a hard time after my mom died, he moved us to Omaha so my grandpa and my uncle could help him with me and my brothers.” He laughed quietly, gazing out at the surf. “To this day, the whole family is convinced that’s why I’m gay.”

  “What?”

  “Because I was around nothing but men my whole life. My grandpa and my dad were both widowers, and my uncle never got married. I had three brothers and no sisters.” Dalton rolled his eyes. “I guess being surrounded by men made me gay or something.”

  I snorted. “They really believe that?”

  “Hey, they have to have some sort of explanation besides me being born like this.”

  “Isn’t it usually that there isn’t enough male influence or something?”

  “Well yeah.” He smirked. “Unless the guy from an all-male household turns out gay, and then it’s too much male influence.”

  “Of course it is.” I chuckled. We sipped our coffee in silence for a minute or so before
I spoke again. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  I held his gaze. “Why do you still live in the barracks?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I moved in when I transferred, and I totally planned on getting a place out in town, but I kind of like it, you know? My roommate’s a good guy, I don’t have a lot of stuff, and I don’t have to deal with gate traffic on the way to work.”

  “It’s not . . .” I wrinkled my nose. “Crowded? And loud?”

  “Eh. Thing is, I grew up in a house with a lot of people. We lived with my grandpa, and another uncle and his kids were there for a few years too. After that, it was boot camp, MA school, and a ship, which meant a lot of people coming and going at all hours. So it’s weird to live completely on my own. The barracks are never totally empty or totally quiet, and I guess I like that.”

  “To each their own, right?”

  “Pretty much.” He took another sip of coffee. “So you didn’t like the barracks?”

  “Nope. It wasn’t too bad in boot camp because I was always too tired to care, and I didn’t mind the berthings when I was on a ship, but living in the barracks when I could get an apartment?” I shook my head. “No way.”

  “I can understand that. And I’ve thought about renting a place, but . . .” He shrugged again. “Maybe I’m just too lazy to go look.”

  I laughed. “Hey, you’ve got a place to sleep and shower. Nothing wrong with keeping it.”

  “Even if I spend more of my sleeping and showering time at your apartment these days.” His cheeks colored. “Kind of feel like I should start helping you with the rent.”

  “Don’t worry about it. My housing allowance covers all but about fifty bucks of it anyway. I wouldn’t ask you to contribute unless we added your name to the lease.”

  His eyebrows flicked up slightly, and I realized what I’d implied.

  I cleared my throat. “I mean, if we get there, you know?”

  He smiled, a little bit of shyness in his gorgeous blue eyes. “Well, if we do, I’m happy to pull my weight.”

  “I know you are.” Even though we were in public, I reached across the table and put my hand on top of his. “Maybe we will get there.”

  He turned his hand over, clasping his fingers gently around my wrist. “It’s not something we need to rush into. We did just start dating a little while ago.”

  I had to stop and think about it, and damn, he was right. “Kind of feels like it’s been longer, right?”

  Dalton’s smile grew. “It really does.” His thumb ran alongside my wrist. “It’s weird, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  Before I could say anything, the waiter arrived with our food, and the moment was broken. Not that my mind strayed from it even as we dug into our breakfast.

  Dalton was right that it felt like we’d been doing this a lot longer than a few weeks. It almost seemed like the only thing that had changed was the sex. Like we’d been dating all this time and had only just started sleeping together.

  And it took almost losing you for us to take this to the next level.

  I tried not to visibly shudder. It scared me to imagine how long we might’ve gone without ever tipping our hands to each other if the accident hadn’t sped things along.

  If certain things had happened differently, I might’ve lost you.

  If certain things hadn’t happened at all, I might not have had you like this.

  Of course I wanted Dalton to be safe and sound above all else. If that meant the accident had never happened and we’d never hooked up, fine. Better than the alternative.

  But the accident had happened, and we had hooked up, and I was sure as shit not complaining about how things were now.

  I just hoped that even with all the bullshit going on at work, things between us stayed just like this.

  After we’d eaten, we wandered downtown for a while. The pier was pretty quiet, and would be until spring, so there wasn’t much to do here. There were some decent movies playing at the dilapidated old theater up the street from the pier, and we spent a couple of hours enjoying the hell out of the latest superhero comic book adaptation.

  By the time we came out of the theater, it was starting to get dark, but the night was still comfortable. Definitely comfortable enough for my favorite thing to do with Chris (with clothes on)—walking on the beach.

  As we walked along the tideline, my mind kept straying back to everything we’d talked about over breakfast. We’d only just touched on the subject of moving in together, but we had touched on it.

  And . . . I liked the idea.

  A lot.

  It was way too soon to take that step, but it didn’t feel like too soon. The thought of being with him all the time made my whole body warm. We were together almost all the time anyway. I hadn’t slept in my barracks room in a while—long enough my roommate had started using my bed to fold laundry—and we’d even started doing all the domestic stuff together. Grocery shopping. Cooking. Washing the dishes. I’d never lived with a boyfriend before, but it felt like I lived with Chris. Like the only thing that would change was my name on the lease and my contribution to the rent. Everything else would just keep going the way it already was.

  I stole a glance at him in the fading daylight. God, he was beautiful. His clothes hid his gorgeous body, but I’d memorized every inch of him. Smooth, dark skin over perfectly sculpted muscles. A thick cock that I loved to suck until neither of us could take anymore, especially when he got so turned on he threw me down and fucked me into the mattress. Chris was easily the sexiest man I’d ever encountered, and it still blew my mind that I kept winding up in his bed.

  It was so much more than that, though. More than any man I’d ever dated, I needed him. Not just his mouth or his dick or his powerful arms around me. He was my best friend in the world, and he had my back now when I needed him the most, and that was heady stuff.

  How the hell are you mine?

  “Hey.” He nudged my arm. “You still with me?”

  Probably more than you realize.

  I laughed and shook myself. “Yeah. Zoning out a bit, I guess.”

  He looked at me, alarm creasing his brow.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “It’s not the concussion. Just me.” And you. Very much you.

  “Okay. Long as you’re all right.”

  “I’m fine.”

  He didn’t press, and we kept walking. After a little while, he took in a deep breath and let it out. “Today’s been nice. Being out like a real couple.”

  “We are a real couple.”

  Chris didn’t respond, and my stomach twisted.

  I swallowed. “Aren’t we?”

  “We definitely are,” he said. “Guess it just still kind of blows my mind.”

  “Yeah. Me too. It’s . . .” I stopped. The daylight was fading fast, but when he turned to me, I could still see him well enough. “I fantasized about being with you for a long time, but I had no idea how amazing it would be when it actually happened.”

  “Me too.” He combed his fingers through my short hair. “I thought it might get weird, us fooling around, but . . .” He shook his head. “‘Weird’ isn’t the word I’d use.”

  “Neither would I.” Heart pounding, I looked into his eyes. “I love you, Chris.”

  His breath hitched, but he didn’t pull away. In fact, after a couple of nerve-racking seconds, a smile started to slowly form on his beautiful lips. “Really?”

  I nodded, pretending my face wasn’t so hot it was about to ignite. “Yeah. I . . . Hell, I think I already did even before I knew I had a shot with you.”

  The smile came completely to life. Caressing my cheek, he whispered, “I love you too.” Then he kissed me.

  The relief was almost enough to knock me flat, but Chris’s strong arms kept me upright. It was strange, realizing how easy it had been to say all those things. I’d never been sappy or romantic. My lack of romance had driven my last boyfriend up a wall. I’d tried, but it
had just never been me.

  Not until Chris. Before him, I’d felt silly and corny when I tried to say things like that. Now, it was almost like I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. Like I might miss the opportunity and Chris would slip through my fingers before I could tell him how I felt.

  Maybe that was a side effect of falling in love after a near-death experience. I was way too intimate with my own sense of mortality, and by extension, the mortality of everyone around me. The concept of “losing Chris” didn’t necessarily mean someone else winning him over before I had the chance.

  He drew back a bit and met my gaze. “I definitely should’ve come out to you sooner.”

  I laughed, touching my nose to his. “Just because you’re gay didn’t mean you were into me.”

  “No, but I was. And maybe one of us would’ve said something sooner. We could’ve been doing this months ago.”

  I considered it, then shrugged as I cradled the back of his head. “Maybe that would’ve been too soon. I don’t know.” I lifted my chin and brushed our lips together. “I think the timing worked out perfectly.”

  “Me too.” He touched his forehead to mine. “It was a fucked-up way to start, but I like where it’s going.”

  I smiled and went for another kiss. One that kept right on going. Arms around each other, lips moving gently and tongues teasing each other while my heart thumped against my ribs—it was perfect. It was always perfect when Chris kissed me, and now it just seemed like . . . like perfect didn’t even describe it anymore. The massive shit-storm still existed at work, and there was still that ball of stress that had taken root in my stomach, but right now, those didn’t matter. They barely even registered over the sweet man and his warm embrace and this long, indulgent kiss.

  I don’t think “I love you” even describes how I feel about you.

  Eventually, Chris broke the kiss, but only enough to murmur, “It’s a really nice night out. Would be a shame to miss any of it.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be missing anything if I’m in bed with you.”

  Chris laughed, the warm rush of breath tickling my chin. “No pressure, right?”

  “Nope.” I cupped his face in both hands. “No pressure at all.”