Back To You (21 page)

Chapter
Twenty-Two

Spencer

“I don’t know,
man. I honestly don’t care where they send me.” Mills finished off his bagel
and washed it down with some coffee.

I frowned. “Why
not?”

“Because now that
Olivia and I are married, she’s coming with me wherever I get stationed. So I
don’t need to be in San Diego anymore.”

I knew that one of
the main reasons they got married was so that she could go wherever he did, but
now that it was time to actually make that a reality, I was a bit jealous.
Mills and his girl were going to move into a new place somewhere and he was
just going to have to go to work and come home to a woman who loved him. I, on
the other hand, was going to be rooming with some random dude in the barracks,
surrounded by other Marines day and night.

“What’s up? You
look weird.”

“I’m just
thinking.” I answered.

“Like I said,
weird.”

I glared at him.
“Funny.”

“Seriously, what’s
up?”

“I just think that
I need to get stationed in San Diego. If I don’t, I have absolutely no chance
of making things work with Ellie.”

Mills took some
time to think about that for a moment. “Look, we worked our
asses
off in these classes so that we’d have the best chance of getting the orders we
want.”

I thought about
the whole process of how orders were chosen. Everyone puts their preferences in
order of where they’d like to be stationed. Mills and I had both put West
Coast, and then East Coast, with Overseas last. Mills was right, the guys at
the top of the class had the best chance of getting what they wanted, but there
was still no guarantee.

“What about those
guys who said their whole class wound up with East Coast orders?” I argued.

Mills shook his
head and clapped me on the shoulder. “You need to relax, Hawk. Just roll with
whatever happens. If you wind up getting East Coast, it’ll only be for a few
years and then maybe you can transfer or something.”

I narrowed my eyes
at him in response.

“Okay,” he
allowed, “not the best thing to make you feel better. But you can’t control it,
so stop stressing about it.”

“All I know is, I
better get West Coast.”

***

“You’ve got to be
fucking kidding me.” I breathed, staring down at the printout of my orders.
“MCAS Miramar, San Diego. Thank God. What’d you get?”

Mills grinned and
turned his paper around. “Same.”

The relief I felt
at being stationed close to Ellie was only made better by finding out that my
best friend had received the same orders. “What unit?”

He glanced down at
the paper. “VMFA 303, the Red Snakes.”

I looked at my own
orders and frowned. “Mine says it’s a training squadron. VMFAT 111. What the
Hell?”

Mills shrugged.
“At least you won’t have to deploy.”

“That’s bullshit.
I actually wanted to deploy.”

“Quit your
whining, jackass. We’re both stationed in San Diego. Life is good.” Mills gave
me a lopsided grin. “I’m going to go call Olivia and tell her the good news.
You should call Ellie.”

I nodded.
“Alright, I’ll see you later for chow.”

I watched as Mills
walked toward the smoke pit to call his girl. I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted
to call Ellie. The way we’d left things at the end of winter break was kind of
delicate. We’d been talking a little bit here and there, but mostly over text
messages. What if in the last month and a half she had gotten even closer to
Eric? If there was even the slightest hint of disappointment in her voice when
she found out that I was getting stationed in San Diego, I didn’t want to hear
it. Besides, Olivia was probably going to call her as soon as she got off the
phone with Mills anyway, so it’s not like she wouldn’t find out.

Later that night,
I felt my cell phone buzz in my pocket just as I was about to fall asleep. I
pulled it out, not bothering to check the caller I.D. “Hello?”

“What the Hell?”
Ellie’s greeting was less than pleasant.

I sat up and rubbed
my eyes. “What time is it?”

She paused. “Oh,
shit. I forgot about the time difference. It’s like midnight your time.”

I glanced over at
Mills. He was sleeping soundly. “What’s wrong?”

“I just talked to
Olivia.” She answered with a huff. If this conversation were happening in
person, I could just picture how she’d look. She’d be standing in front of me
and tapping her foot, with one hand on her hip and one finger pointed at my
chest. God, I missed her.

“Okay.”

“Okay? She told me
that you found out you were getting stationed here.”

“Okay.”

“You found out you
were getting stationed here and you didn’t call me.”

I sighed. “Okay.”

“Spencer!” She all
but yelled.

“Well, you found
out didn’t you?”

Ellie made an
exasperated noise, and I could picture her throwing her hands up in
frustration. “It would have been nice to hear it from you.”

“E, we’ve barely
talked since I left.” Before Ellie and I had hooked up, we’d never had any
reason not to be completely honest with one another. If I had any shot of being
with her, I needed to get back into that habit. “I was kind of avoiding your
reaction.”

“What do you
mean?” She sounded genuinely confused.

“I don’t know.” I
scrubbed a hand over my face to wake myself up a bit. “I just figured that if
you and Eric were doing really well, me coming back to San Diego might be kind
of awkward for you.”

She didn’t say
anything for a long moment. Finally, she sniffed. “Spence, the only thing I
care about is that you kept your promise. You’re coming back to me.”

Now it was my turn
to be speechless for a moment. “I always will, E.”

“I’ll let you get
back to sleep. We’ll talk soon.” I could hear the smile in her voice, and it
made me smile in return as I hung up the phone.

I lay there awake
for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling. There was something about that
conversation that had me really hopeful for the future. Now the only thing I
had to figure out was how to get her away from her boyfriend.

Mills stirred on
his side of the room, then propped himself up on one elbow. “Were you just on
the phone?”

I nodded in the
dark, but then remembered that he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, Ellie forgot about
the time difference.”

“It was probably a
call you wanted to take anyway, huh? I’m sure you’re pretty stoked about her
and Eric breaking up.”

I jerked back up
into a seated position and turned on the light at my bedside. “What did you
just say?”

Mills cringed away
from the light and pulled his blanket over his face. He started to mumble out a
reply, but I bent to pick up my shower shoe and threw it at him. “I can’t
understand you!”

He removed the
covers from his face. “Olivia told me earlier. You were already sleeping, so I
didn’t tell you. I figured that’s what Ellie was calling about.”

I shook my head.
“She didn’t mention it.”

“Dude, they
haven’t been together since the day after my wedding.”

My jaw dropped.
“What?”

“Yeah,” Mills
yawned. “Olivia was keeping it from me because she figured I’d tell you. She
let it slip tonight, though. I figured that Ellie might have called to tell you
since she knows that I know.”

I shut the light
and flopped back down on my pillow. If Ellie and Eric were over, why wouldn’t
she tell me? Wasn’t he the only thing that was standing between us getting
together? Apparently there was more in the way than I’d thought. I heard Mills
snoring again, and for the second time in one day I was jealous of him. There
was no way in Hell I’d be getting any sleep tonight.

Chapter
Twenty-Three

Ellie

After a long day
at work, I was anxious to get home and take off my horribly uncomfortable but
absolutely fabulous heels. One of the best parts about working for my dad was
the awesome new professional wardrobe that I had purchased, but by the end of
the day I was cursing my impractical choices. Plus, if I was being honest,
wanting to look classy – yet sexy – for Eric had once had a huge
impact in my purchases.

As I made my final
turn and my house came into view, I was shocked by what I saw. A Marine in
olive green service Alphas was sitting on my porch. Not just any Marine,
however. It was Spencer, and he was holding a sizeable arrangement of
sunflowers. My heart hammered against my chest as I pulled into my driveway.
For a long moment, he just stood there on the porch and stared at me through
the windshield. I didn’t move to get out of the car. I just stared back. I
occurred to me then that when you can pinpoint the exact reasons why you like
someone, it’s a crush. But when the very sight of them after time apart has you
frozen in place with a muddled mind, it must be more.

He cracked a sideways
smile and tilted his head. I realized that he was questioning why I was still
sitting in the car, so I took a deep breath and got out. I smoothed my hands
down my grey slacks and buttoned my matching blazer. I suddenly wished that I
had worn something a little bit more feminine that day. After all, seeing him
in that classic and old-timey uniform holding my favorite flowers was like a
scene out of a Nicholas Sparks book.

“Hi,” he said.

I took the hand
that he extended to me from the top of the porch steps. “Hi.”

“These are for
you.”

The bouquet
smelled wonderful as he passed them over to me and I took a long whiff. Leave
it to my oldest friend to buy me my favorite flowers. Every other guy had just
assumed that I preferred roses. It was much more romantic when a guy actually
listened to what you liked, rather than what was most expected.

“Thank you.” I
smiled up at him, suddenly nervous. “When did you get in?”

“Late last night.
I spent the day on base checking in with my new command.”

I gestured to his
uniform. “Is that why you’re all dressed up?”

“Yeah, it
definitely makes it obvious that I’m the new guy since everyone else is walking
around in
cammies
and I’m all suited up.” He adjusted
the tie at his neck.

I laughed. “Oh,
stop. It looks good.”

He swallowed and I
could tell that he was glad for the compliment. I gestured to the steps. We
sat, both staring out into the street in front of us. Neither one of us were
sure where to start. The cat was out of the bag about Eric. Olivia had already
apologized to me about how she’d let it slip to Matt and he’d blabbed to
Spencer. It wasn’t that I was keeping it from him for any malicious reason; it
was just that I needed to figure out how I felt before Spencer knew that I was
single. He hadn’t said anything to me about it yet, but I knew it was coming.

“So,” I stalled,
“are you sad that your days of rooming with Matt are over?”

He chuckled. “That
lucky bastard. He has a townhome with his woman off base and isn’t surrounded
by stinky ass dudes all the time. At least he said that I
can
crash there whenever I want.”

“Well, there you
go! The
bromance
isn’t dead after all.”

He bumped my
shoulder with a grin.

“I’ve been helping
Olivia set everything up. She wanted it to look nice for the first time Matt
saw it. I’m so happy for them.”

“Yeah, me too. You
know, they have a great relationship. They tell each other everything.”

I closed my eyes.
Here we go.

“In fact,” he
continued, “Olivia told Mills about a little secret that you’ve been keeping.”

“And Mills told
you, because of your
bromance
.”

He nodded. “Why
didn’t you tell me when I came to say goodbye?”

“Because I needed
time to figure everything out. It had been a pretty confusing couple of days
before you left, and I wasn’t ready for you to just be like, ‘Oh, you’re not with
Eric anymore, let’s try again!’”

He scoffed at my
terrible impression of him. “Seriously? I have more game than that and you know
it.”

“That’s my point.
I wanted you and your game to just take a chill pill for a little bit while I
figured things out.”

“So, you were
playing your own game then? By letting me think that you were still with Eric,
you were playing a game, too.”

I had no response
for him. He was right. I had been playing a game. It wasn’t fair of me to let
him believe that I was still with Eric when I wasn’t. What was that old saying
about a lie by omission still being a lie?
Guilty, party of one.

“Look, I’m not
bringing it up to make you feel weird.”

“Well, I do. I’m
sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“It’s fine. But
don’t forget about where we were before all of this other stuff started. We
don’t keep secrets.”

I smiled, and did
a silly version of a salute. “Yes, sir!”

Spencer rolled his
eyes. “Just so you know, in the Marine Corps I wouldn’t be a sir. I’m just a
lowly private. Officers are called ‘sir.’”

Rolling my eyes, I
did my salute again. “Yes, Private!”

“You’re a dork.”

“That’s what you
love about me.” As soon as I said the words, I realized that we were a bit passed
the point of joking about love. The heaviness of the word hung in the air.

“Listen, while
we’re asking the hard questions, why did you kiss me after the wedding when you
knew I was with Eric still? You’ve always said that you wouldn’t put the moves
on another guy’s girl, no matter what.”

Spencer stared at
his shoes and didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Honestly, I kept thinking
about how the last time I kissed you at Camp Pendleton was just a short peck.
If we weren’t going to have another chance, I couldn’t let that be our last
kiss. So, I kissed you again. And I made sure that it was going to be a
memorable kiss, just in case.”

I flushed, not
sure how to respond. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting him to say, but the
sweetness of his reply had completely blown me away.

“Listen, you said
you needed to figure things out. Did you figure it out?”

I nodded, not
meeting his eyes.

“Alright, then.”
Abruptly, he kissed me on the cheek and stood.

“Where are you
going?” I jumped up and stood two steps above him so we were eye-to-eye.

He grinned
mischievously. “You’ll see. Dinner Saturday night?”

I nodded again,
feeling like a bobble head.

With a wink and
one last smile, he turned and walked toward his house.

***

“Hey, I love
roses!” Olivia scowled playfully. “Matt always gets me roses.”

“Well, if you
genuinely love roses and that’s what Matt buys you, then that’s a good thing!
But if you don’t even like roses and a guy just buys them because it’s what
you’re supposed to buy for a girl, that’s just dumb.”

She chuckled. “I
guess you’re right. It’s cute that he bought your favorite flowers. Where do
you think he’s taking you on Saturday?”

“I have no idea.
That whole last part of the conversation was really strange. Hell,
who
am I kidding? The entire conversation was strange. I
don’t know what to make of it all.”

Olivia stood from
the barstool at the counter and helped herself to some more lemonade from the
pitcher in the fridge. “All I know is, when Matt left the house this morning in
those service Alphas I about died.”

I giggled as she
wagged her eyebrows. “I had the same reaction when I saw Spence. I’m sure he
could have easily changed before he came over. That man was
trying
to kill me.”

“He’s tricky
alright. How could you turn down a dinner date with him looking like that?”

“Anyway, he didn’t
seem too pissed that I didn’t tell him about Eric. But, I definitely know that
it wasn’t the most mature way to have handled it.”

Olivia looked at
me as if to say,
duh.

I narrowed my eyes
at her. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were right. But when we go out on Saturday, I’m
going to tell him exactly how I feel.”

“’Bout time! Ever
since they left after Christmas you’ve been like a lovesick puppy. And
according to Matt, Spencer’s been the same way. You guys just need to stop
fighting your feelings and do it already.”

“And by ‘it,’ I’m
assuming you mean,
it.
”

She rolled her eyes.
“Yes. For the love of God!”

I took a long
drink of my lemonade. I used to wonder what would have happened if Spencer and
I had been truly alone that night at the hotel. Matt and Olivia being there was
definitely the only thing that had stopped us from taking things any further.
Later in the weekend, Spencer had made a joke about how we should just ask them
to take a walk for us to be alone like we did for them. At the time, I think we
were both just being cautious and trying not to ruin a good thing. Looking back
on it afterward, I found myself wishing on multiple occasions that we had just
done it. Nothing might have changed, but it probably would have been amazing.

“Hello?” Olivia
waved her hand in front of my face.

I jumped. “Sorry.”

She groaned.
“Please tell me you heard at least a little bit of what I just said.”

“Nope.”

“Holy cow, Ellie.
You are so screwed.”

I smiled to myself
at her choice of words, given what I’d been daydreaming about. “What were you
saying?”

“I was going on
and on about the barbeque next weekend. We still have to go get the
decorations.”

I perked up. There
was one thing that I knew how to throw my energy into, and that was party
planning. Olivia was having a housewarming barbeque at her new place the next
weekend, and we’d been getting the house ready for the last week.

“Okay,” I said,
thinking about my schedule. “We can go on Saturday before my date if you want.”

“Absolutely not.
You’re going to be no good to me until
after
you and Spencer figure out your shit. In fact, we should just spend the day
getting pampered. Manicures, pedicures, and a bikini wax for you.”

I choked on the
sip of lemonade I had just taken. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, shoot, I got
mine done a few days before Matt came home. Never mind, it’ll be too fresh.”

“Too fresh for
what?” My eyes bulged.

“Haven’t you ever
gotten a bikini wax?”

I shook my head,
eyes still wide. That sounded like a whole lot of pain in a very delicate area.

“Well, like I
said, you might not want to do it the day of your date. It could be red or
swollen.”

I cringed.

“Don’t worry, next
time they leave we’ll get go together to get it done.” Olivia promised with a
wave of her hand. She had no idea that I had cringed because the whole idea
sounded terrifying. She actually thought I was upset that I’d missed my chance!
I made a mental note to stress about
that
later.

***

“Good morning,
Elizabeth,” Eric said as he approached my desk the next day.

“Good morning.”

“How are you?”

He seemed more
chipper than usual, so I raised a brow at him. “I’m well, thanks. Why are you
in such a good mood?”

Eric smiled. “Any
messages?”

I reached for the
pile, remembering a message that I had taken that morning from a young sounding
woman. “Does your mood have anything to do with Briana?”

“You don’t miss a
thing.” He looked through the short stack of messages and then tucked them into
his pocket. “I met her at the gym. She’s a law student.”

“Ooh,” I crooned.
“Good for you. Takes care of her body and has a brain! That’s a lot better than
the last girl.”

I really enjoyed
the way that Eric and I had slipped into a natural friendship. Things hadn’t
gotten too complicated or messy, so we had just continued to joke around and
talk like we always had. He’d gone on a few dates in the last six weeks since
we’d ended things, and I could honestly say that it wasn’t weird at all for us
to talk about them. That was how I knew that Eric had never been right for me.
I’d spent even less time dating Spencer than I had Eric, but him hooking up
with those two girls in Florida had all but crushed me.

“Yeah, that last
one was better in the body area than the brains, but she was a nice girl.” He
allowed, always the gentleman. “So, have you got any big plans this weekend?
That barbeque for your friends, right?”

I shook my head.
“No, that’s next weekend. I actually have a date of my own.”

Eric tilted his
head. “With Spencer? He’s back?”

“Had his first day
with his unit at Miramar yesterday.” I confirmed.

Eric let out a
whistle. “Are you nervous?”

“No, should I be?”

“You’ll be fine. I
hope it goes well. But don’t forget what I said about not doing anything rash.
Spencer is the kind of guy that doesn’t think about consequences. I just don’t
want to see you get hurt again.”

I was touched that
he cared, but he was wrong about Spencer. “I appreciate that. There’s more to him
than you think, though.”

Eric adopts his
usual stance with his arms folded on my ledge. “Look, I know that you guys have
a long history, and your friendship is a big deal. But don’t let that history
make this new part of your relationship more serious than it needs to be. Give
yourself some time to adjust, you know?”

“I get what you’re
saying. I think that’s why he freaked out and pulled away from me in the first
place. It was too serious really quickly. And honestly, that’s why I never told
him that you and I broke up. I didn’t want to just jump back into his arms.”