Amber Leigh Williams - Navy Seal Promise

“Not true.” When she arched a brow, he digressed. “Not entirely true. Not on my part.”

She smiled at bit over the admission. “Have you seen him? Gavin? He hasn’t called in a while. I know he’s all right. Dad tells me. He gets emails. I know y’all are on separate teams and you take turns on the hopper, but I was hoping, in the crossover, you might’ve seen one another.”

“I haven’t seen him,” Kyle said shortly, that frown pulling at his mouth again.

Harmony licked her lips. “I know the new job in DC has kept him tied up when he’s stateside. Still, it’d be nice to have him visit.”

A line burrowed between Kyle’s brows. “Job?”

“He didn’t tell you?” Harmony crossed her arms, oddly chilled. She knew things hadn’t been the same between Kyle and Gavin since Benji’s death. Their business was their own, and, when it came to the details of service, they kept it that way. Harmony understood even as she bristled at the not knowing what had gone amiss between her brother and the friend he’d once claimed was like a brother to him.

“No, he didn’t,” Kyle stated. The frown deepened. “Harm, when was the last time you talked to him?”

“A while.”

“What’s a while?”

She thought about it. “Must be six months now. Maybe seven.”

“Seven...” He trailed off, perturbed. “Did he visit then?”

“No. He rarely does.” At Kyle’s curse, she added quickly, “There’s been the job. And I know he has a life. From the sound of it, there might have been a girl at one point...” When Kyle only shook his head, she trailed off.

“So you spoke on the phone,” he surmised. “What about?”

She crawled back into her memory. The conversation had been brief, stilted. Yawning absences did that to the tightest of siblings. “He talked about work. He asked after Bea, made sure Dad was telling him the truth and all’s well with him and Mom and the inn...”

“Nothing else?” Kyle asked.

What was he waiting for her to say? She took herself back over the conversation with Gavin but couldn’t think of anything more. “Don’t think so. Why?” she asked. Though nothing changed on the surface, she could all but hear the hum of Kyle’s indignation building. “Do you know something I don’t?”

He seemed to hesitate. His outer shell was as good as a bullet casing. He kept tight to that casing. “He should be here.”

“If you’re here,” she calculated, “then isn’t his team rotating to active?”

“The team is,” he said and nothing more.

Harmony was growing irritated, too. “He’s my brother. If you know something, tell me.”

“It’s not my place,” he said shortly. “He should be the one talking to you about this. When was the last he came home?”

Harmony sighed. “I don’t know. Last summer sometime.”

“For how long?”

“He stayed overnight at the inn and left the next evening. Mom and Dad both wanted him to stay longer. We all did.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“He said he had training.”

“You believe that?”

She rolled her eyes heavenward, tired of the third degree. “I don’t know.”

“He visits once a year and is hardly around for twenty-four hours when he does. That’s bullshit, Harmony. I know it. You know it. Everybody knows it.”

“Maybe it’s hard for him to be here,” Harmony suggested. “You ever think of that?”

“Why should it be?” Kyle asked, finally turning his face to hers. There was anger there, and he opened up just enough for her to see the genuine mystification behind it.

“Because it’s a reminder,” Harmony replied. “The town, the inn, The Farm... They’re all reminders of Benji. Because Bea... She’s all that’s left of her father. She looks like him. She acts like him. God, Kyle, look at her. She even walks like him. Sometimes it’s difficult to process. Even for me.”

Kyle shrugged. “I’m here. Right?”

She measured the breadth of his stance, the realness of him.

“Why shouldn’t Gavin be?” he challenged. When she kept walking, his voice gentled. “Bea’s his niece. Flesh and blood. That’s no simple matter.”

Harmony licked her lips. “No. It’s not. But since Benji died, Gavin’s driven straight back into that big tough lone wolf mentality. He always had it, deep down. But then Benji...” She shrugged. “You know he was there, don’t you? The night Benji was killed? When Benji was shot. He was there when he—” she licked her lips again and made herself say it “—when he bled out. He carried him out on his back.”

Kyle nodded, eyes forward.

“It’s hard to say,” Harmony noted, “still. It’s hard to think about. It never won’t be. But to have been there...” She let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know how he carries that around with him. And part of me doesn’t blame him for being the lone wolf. I don’t even blame him for not being here. Because maybe that’s his way of coping.”

Kyle fell into thoughtful silence. The surly bent of his mouth was back.

Harmony had the absurd notion to feather her fingertips across it to soften it once more. She rolled her eyes, moving her shoulders back to loosen them. “We do appreciate it.” When he turned to her, she added, “You being here. You always show up, hard times or no. That’s big. Don’t think I don’t notice.”

He searched, eyes roving from one of hers to the next. His mouth curved at the end. Acknowledgment. Gratitude.

On the wind, a honeysuckle blossom skittered across her face. It danced into her hair and tangled. She reached up to pry it loose.

Kyle beat her to it, tugging it free.

“Thanks,” she said, tossing her hair back.

Methodical, he used ginger fingers to extract the long green stem where the nectar lived. He pinched off the petals, discarded them. “You know what honeysuckle makes me think of?”

“No,” she admitted, watching how he handled the fragile parts of the minuscule flower with infinite care.

“Springtime at Hanna’s. I knew it was spring when the honeysuckle vines burst on the trellises. You could smell them a block away.”

“I used to hide there,” she said. “Whenever I did something I shouldn’t have.”

“A frequent occurrence,” he remembered, smiling at her sideways.

“Yes,” she said with a nod. “Poor Mom. I gave her more hell than she deserved.”

“Growing up’ll do that to you.” Holding the stem up, he offered her the small bead of nectar dripping from the end in a motion that was as natural as the wordless shift from spring to summertime.

Harmony tipped her head back without thinking, accepting. It felt natural, sure. But she was very aware of his eyes on her face and the momentary brush with his laser focus. And she felt hot.

She frowned. She could blame it on June or the tropics. But she’d had these brushes with him since she was a girl. A girl with a crush so boundless and hopeless, it had nearly cracked her in two.

Before Benji, before womanhood, there had been only Kyle. Her daughter wasn’t the only young’un who’d ever been enamored with K.Z.B.

Turning her eyes to his, she closed her mouth around the drop. It was barely enough to taste. When his gaze held hers, she swallowed because her pulse began to work in double time. His beard drew her attention. “You need a shave.”

As she walked on, she breathed carefully. She was burning hot beneath the skin. It’d stopped being a problem for so long, she’d forgotten how difficult it was to cool. Go big or go home had always been her go-to phrase. It was typically her body’s response to everything, as well.

Sometimes that was nothing short of hell.

Kyle was still off-limits. Military. She could not under any circumstances love another military man like she’d loved Benjamin Zaccoe. And, frankly, she’d thought she was done with this hot mess she’d developed for Kyle. Before she’d moved out West and thrown herself into school and piloting.