Page 138 of Forged By Sacrifice

More than that, though, I wasn’t going to do anything that would get in the way of the life I saw for myself. Nothing.

“Not that I plan on sleeping with any of you, so y’all can pick your chins up off the floor,” she said.

“What exactly did you mean by running away then?” Truck asked.

She looked at our supplies.

“Is that Corona?”

She leaped over the back of the couch, snagged one from the bags I’d dropped, and headed to the kitchen before any of us could really register that she’d even moved. Or that she’d ignored Truck’s question.

It was evident that we were still in shock, because we just let her take the beer. At nineteen. Beer that we’d bought. That was a hell of a lot higher on the list of to-not-be-dones than sleeping with a professor’s daughter. Aiding and abetting the delinquency of a minor. No. Not minor, but underage? All my knowledge of the law was stuck in a no-man's-land that was called Ava.

She turned back, the Corona open at her lips. “Do you have any limes in there?”

“Duh,” Truck said. He was the first of us to move. He dropped his bags on the kitchen counter and started unloading them. When he found the bag of limes, he handed them to her.

She smiled at him, that gorgeous smile with lifted corners twitching, and I almost wanted to slam my best friend into the cabinets—for getting the smile, and for handing her the limes instead of taking the drink back.

Mac exchanged a look with me before shrugging and taking his bags into the kitchen. I was the last to follow. I was still lost in curled lips and a sexy voice and the threat to my unstarted career in the U.S. Coast Guard that was going to have me reaching for her beer and pulling it from those gorgeous lips.

Ava

FLY

“The road's been long and lonely

and you feel like giving up

There’s more to this

than just the breath you're breathing.”

—Performed by Maddie & Tae

—Written by Dye / Marlow / Vartanyan

I pulled a knife from the drawer and sliced the lime apart into wedges, squeezing and then stuffing one into the top of the Corona bottle.

I could feel them watching me. Mostly the tall, dark one. The man in charge. I hadn’t even needed them to speak to know that he was exactly that. I’d been around my dad’s corps of cadets enough to be able to spot the leader easily.

The leader was always the one in front. The one with an almost casual stride and stance that hid the coiled strength underneath it.

The blond followed me into the kitchen first. After he’d opened his own beer and stuffed a lime inside, he put out his hand. “I’m Truck, that’s Mac, and the attitude over there is Eli.”

I couldn’t help but bust out laughing. They all gave me that is-this-girl-really-crazy look, but I didn’t care. “Mac Truck, really?”

Truck grinned and pulled Mac to him with a muscled arm.

“No one messes with the Mac Truck. We’re like the superheroes of the cadet world.”

“That’s like saying you’re the world’s greatest sidekicks.”

Truck faked a wounded grimace.

“Are you two…like…you know?” I asked, because who gave themselves a shared nickname in today's day and age unless they were a couple.

Mac pulled out of Truck’s hold and said curtly, “No.”

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