Page 75 of Part & Parcel

Nick looked up quickly, his eyes wide.

“Saying we shouldn’t touch,” Kelly added quickly. “That’s our language. It’s always been our language. Like you said last night. Years and years before I ever asked you to kiss me, touching was the way we talked.”

Nick’s hands were gentle as he leaned closer, his fingers gliding behind Kelly’s knees. “Maybe that’s why I’ve felt like we can’t hear each other this trip,” he said, wincing as he met Kelly’s eyes again.

Kelly’s shoulders slumped in relief. “You too?”

Nick’s grip tightened and he inadvertently pulled Kelly closer. Kelly licked his lips, his body flushing with heat. They stared at each other, neither of them even breathing.

“Do we need the bad-kitty spritzer?” Digger asked, jerking both Nick and Kelly out of their trance. They broke eye contact, and Nick cleared his throat, glaring at Digger. “Hey, you told me no touchy,” Digger said with an unapologetic shrug before turning away. “We’re gearing up.”

Nick glared after him for a few seconds as Kelly stared at Nick. “Babe,” Kelly grunted. Nick looked back at him with a sigh and a tired smile. “We can still follow the rules and end the moratorium on touching.”

Nick was nodding as he gazed raptly into Kelly’s eyes. “Good.”

Kelly slid one hand up Nick’s forearm, squeezing his biceps. “Maybe even give me a snuggle tonight instead of sneaking off to sleep with Ty’s kittens?”

Cricket complained in Kelly’s lap, as if she knew she was about to be denied her second-favorite sleep buddy.

Nick chuckled and pushed out of his seat to press his lips to Kelly’s. Kelly grinned through the kiss, and then another one.

“Oh my God, stop!” Ty called from the parking lot of the rest area.

Nick and Kelly both snickered, taking one last, longer kiss before Nick pulled Kelly to his feet.

“You never answered me,” Nick said as they turned to head toward the car. He slid his hand into Kelly’s.

“Remind me what the question was.”

“Do you want to see your parents?”

Kelly’s eyes focused on the mountains in the distance beyond Nick, and he smiled serenely. “I already did,” he said quietly.

Nick was scowling when Kelly turned his attention back on him. “We talking symbolically, or like Eli in my iPhone type of seeing them?”

Kelly barked a laugh and shook his head, letting Nick continue to grumble as they joined the others.

I hope you’re standing in Doc’s front yard. If not, then you better be as close as your Marine asses can get.

This is where we dropped Kelly off when he said it was time to go home. This is the moment where Sidewinder officially breathed its last breath as a team of Marines. But Doc, this ain’t where Sidewinder died. I know you think you killed the team, you been carrying that with you since you got married. But we ain’t dead, son. I guess I am if you’re reading this, but that’s semantics. The team, the team we made, it can’t die. They didn’t take that away from us when we were discharged.

So I want you start here and go on an adventure. Go see all those places we couldn’t find the first time. Take Seymour to the Grand Canyon. And then go to each place where we dropped someone off on that road trip, and I want each of you to tell the man we left there why he didn’t actually leave us.

And before you start bitching, yes, after you’re done in Las Vegas, you can fly to the other locations. You got lives to get back to.

Nick lowered the letter after reading it, and glanced around at the others. Kelly stood facing his cabin, his shoulders slumped and his head bowed.

“Kelly?” Nick said softly.

“How’d he know that?” Kelly asked as he turned toward them. His eyes were almost watering, but he was also smiling. “How the hell did he know that?”

“You didn’t exactly hide it well,” Owen offered under his breath.

Nick gently folded the letter. He moved toward Kelly and took a hold of his shirt, meeting his eyes as he slid the letter into his breast pocket and patted Kelly’s chest. “We should have told you it was okay,” he said. “We all knew you blamed yourself. After your wedding. After you settled here. We should have done something more to let you know it wasn’t true.”

Kelly frowned as he fought to swallow. “You told me you blamed me,” he whispered.

“I did. I did, at the time. I blamed everything under the sun, including you.” Nick stepped closer and took Kelly’s face in both hands. “I was wrong. Kels, look at this place.”

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