Falling for my boyfriend's Navy brother Chapter 50

I scrub a towel over the back of my neck like it owes me money.

Water beads down my spine, steam still fogging the mirror, but I can’t remember whether I actually washed my hair or just stood under the shower like some kind of malfunctioning robot.

I tried.

I really tried not to think about her.

Tried to let the heat scald her out of my head —

that ballet tank top clinging to her like it was designed with evil intent,

her back flexing under my hand as she bent forward like it was nothing,

like I didn’t have a thousand violently inappropriate thoughts at that exact moment,

like she wasn’t pressing every single one of my buttons just by existing.

And then she looked up at me and said,

“Please,” in that voice like honey and defiance and God help me, I felt it.

Right down my spine.

She asked me the other day if I was scared of the dark.

She was half-joking, eyes dancing, like she didn’t know the dark had names and smells and faces for me. Like she didn’t know I’ve seen things that rewired the way my brain responds to silence.

She asks things like that.

Random. Stupid. Pure.

She asked me if Navy guys eat real food or just chew protein bars like emotionless drones.

She asked me if I could kill someone with one hand.

She asked me if I’d ever eaten sand.

She said it with a straight face, like she’s lived her whole life in her head and just happened to stumble into the real world and now she’s trying to make sense of it.

And now I can’t stop thinking about the shape of her mouth when she talks.

When she bends.

When she smiles and doesn’t mean it. Or worse, when she smiles and means it with her whole heart.

I finish dressing — dark jeans, gray long sleeve that clings to my chest more than I’d like — and step out of the bathroom before I get any worse ideas. My jaw is already clenched so hard it aches.

Downstairs, Tyler’s flopped on the couch like he’s rehearsing for a mattress commercial.

Jeans, his football shirt, hair still damp.

He’s scrolling something mindless and laughing at his own phone like it told a good joke.

“Dude,” he says without looking up, “how long does it take to shower? You in there filing your taxes?”

I grunt and drop into the chair across from him. My body is still tight —

like all that water did was soak into my skin and weigh me down.

He tosses a chip at me. It bounces off my chest.

“You’re in a mood.”

“You’re annoying.”

“Both true,” he says brightly.

We sit like that for a few minutes.

He starts playing a football highlight reel on mute and narrates over it like he’s a sports announcer with a Red Bull addiction. I let the noise wash over me — Tyler being Tyler, loose and loud and oblivious.

He’s everything I’m not.

Always has been.

After a while, he stops the video and tosses his phone on the table.

“Hey,” he says, tone shifting. “Can I ask you something?”

I raise an eyebrow.

He doesn’t wait.

“That scar on your neck… where’d you get it?”

The room tilts a little.

My spine straightens.

It’s not the first time someone’s asked —

but coming from him, it lands different.

I meet his eyes.

“Not the kind of story you should hear.”

He holds my gaze for a beat longer than expected.

Then he nods once and leans back.

“Cool. Just… looked like it hurt.”

It did.

It still does sometimes.

I don’t say that.

Instead, I look past him, out the window. The storm left water streaks on the glass like claw marks.

He shifts again.

“What about the one on your eyebrow?”

I lift a hand and brush over it. The skin there is rougher, a permanent ridge.

“A breach gone wrong,” I say simply. “Door was rigged. We didn’t check fast enough. Shrapnel from the frame clipped me.”

“Shit,” he murmurs.

“I didn’t feel it at first. Just the heat. Then someone said I was bleeding. Whole left side of my face was red.”

I deliver it flat. No drama. Just facts.

The way I’ve trained myself to.

“Were you scared?”

I glance at him.

His expression is weirdly serious.

“No,” I say. “But I was pissed. We should’ve caught it. We got lucky.”

He looks away, chewing on that.

Then, quietly: “You always talk like everything’s a checklist.”

I stare at him.

He shrugs, not apologizing.

“It’s just—every time I ask something real, you give me the skeleton of an answer. Like the bare minimum a person needs to understand without feeling anything about it.”

I open my mouth, close it again.

Because he’s not wrong.

It’s how I stay functional.

You don’t make it through warzones and firestorms by giving feelings a seat at the table.

You lock them up. You focus. You get out alive.

He changes the subject before I can say anything else.

“You think Penny’s coming soon?”

Her name lands in my chest like a punch.

My fingers twitch.

“She said she’d meet us here,” I manage.

He grins and leans back again, relaxed and happy, like we haven’t just talked about blood and shrapnel and emotional detachment.

“You know, I think she likes you,” he says suddenly.

The words send a shockwave through me.

I freeze.

Heart stops, kicks back up again in my throat.

“What?”

“Not like *likes* likes,” he says quickly, laughing. “I mean like—you two get along. You talk more than I expected. I thought you’d hate each other.”

I say nothing.

Because I’m afraid that if I open my mouth, something dangerous will fall out.

Like:

I think about her too much.

I notice everything.

I’m obsessed with the way she stands, the way she smells, the sound of her laugh when she thinks no one’s listening.

I think I’d burn down whole cities for her if she asked.

But I just grunt again.

Tyler pulls out his phone. “Anyway. I’m texting her. Remind her to wear that dress Mom likes.”

He’s already gone in his head, talking about food and parents and dinner.

I close my eyes, trying to breathe.

And the image that fills the black behind my eyelids is Penny again.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor.

Laughing.

Telling me she’s unbeatable at Monopoly and asking if I’d rather eat gravel once or cereal for the rest of my life.

Her questions are always ridiculous.

And somehow, they’re the only thing keeping me from slipping under.