Page 24 of Part & Parcel

“After. Like, right after. Like, still naked after.”

“There goes the euphemism.” Owen pushed his bowl away, scrubbing his hands over his face.

“Sorry. I can’t really tell this story without the sex part.”

Owen was smiling crookedly when he looked back at the screen. “It’s okay. I’m getting used to it. What kind of fight was it?”

“Well, the entire time, I mean it was a good night, okay? I’ll leave it at that for details. But after, I couldn’t shake this feeling that something was just off. Like, I should have been thrilled with what happened, you know? But something . . .”

“Just hit me with the dick talk, I can take it,” Owen groaned.

“You can take the dick?” Kelly deadpanned.

Owen stared at the camera, and Kelly fought hard not to grin. He finally lost and snorted, unable to pull a straight face to match Owen’s.

“Okay, see, Nick is usually the one doing the fucking.”

Kelly waited for Owen to tell him to keep going before he went into more detail. Owen had been the one with the most issues to work through when he’d found out that not one, butthreeof his former Force Recon teammates were bisexual. He waved his finger through the air, nodding.

Kelly took a deep breath. “But that night, he asked me do it. First time ever. That’s just not like him, you know?”

“I can imagine, man. Lucky doesn’t strike me as the type to let someone fuck him.”

“Yeah. So I did, and it was . . . it wasgood. But after . . .”

Owen was still nodding, waiting for Kelly to work through it on his own. Kelly sighed and slumped his shoulders, taking another deep drag of his cigarette.

“After, we were in bed, and he told me he loved me. And . . . I thought . . .” Kelly’s eyes began to lose focus as he stared off into the woods over the top of his computer. He snapped his attention back and sighed. “We were laying there with each other, and I could tell that something was wrong. He was holding his breath, you know? Like he was waiting for something. And when I asked him what was wrong, he gave me that . . . you know that smile Nick has? Where he knows he’s about to take a hit, or he’s about to lose something that he loves, but he still tries to give you that smile so you’ll think everything’s going to be okay?”

“I know exactly what you’re talking about.”

“He gave me that smile. And then he said . . . he said, ‘Someday I hope you’ll say it back again.’ Like . . .”

“Say what?” Owen asked, scowling.

“I love you!” Kelly shouted, growing frustrated all over again, just like he had that night in Nick’s arms. “I hadn’t said ‘I love you’ back to him!”

Owen’s eyebrows jumped, and he sat back a little. “Oh.”

“I would have put money on it, thinking I had. I mean, heknowsI love him, okay? And when I asked him what the hell he was talking about, he said I hadn’t told him I loved him since before Miami happened. Since the last time we’d had sex, which was before I left for that last adventure trek I was on when Liam Bell showed up and shit hit the fan.”

Owen winced, and Kelly could tell he was trying hard to remain neutral. “Was he right?” he asked carefully.

Kelly blushed hotly and ducked his head, running his finger over his toes as he adjusted in his chair. He pulled his knee closer to his chest, holding his foot in his hand and placing his cigarette in his mouth again. “That’s what we argued about,” he said around the cigarette. “I realized hewasright, though. I hadn’t said it back in a long time. At first, when all the secrets came out and we were in the middle of the cartel bullshit with Ty and Zane, I was so fucking angry at him. And it’s hard to say I love you when you’re pissed, okay. But he knows I love him. And when I asked him why the fuck he hadn’t said something to me about it, he said he thought he had to earn it back. He thought I wasn’t saying it because I was still angry with him for keeping secrets.”

“Well . . . you are,” Owen pointed out.

“I know I am,” Kelly snapped. “He was keeping some pretty big fucking secrets from me, okay?”

“I know, Doc.”

Kelly barely heard him through the creeping anger, though. “He promised me I’d be his partner in crime, okay? But then I find out he’s pretending he doesn’t even remember proposing to me because he’s being blackmailed by some dumbass rogue NSA agent. Fucking Liam Bell.”

“I know, Doc.”

“And! And then he tells me that he’d performed a government-sanctioned hit on Ty’s favorite creepy uncle—straight up murdered the dude right under my nose—all because creepy uncle was a little too creepy for Uncle Sam.”

Owen seemed to know that Kelly wasn’t paying any attention to him now, but he kept trying. “Doc. Kelly.”

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