"Is it working? Are you two back together?"
"Hell, no."
"Gotta be tough working in the same place, watching each other move on."
"Like hell," Jack muttered. "She won't be moving on anytime soon."
The plane's rumble filled the silence for a five count before Rodeo said, "Run that by me again."
"Nothing."
"Not gonna wash, man."
Finally, Jack let three and a half months of hell out. "A divorce takes time."
"Divorce?" Rodeo snapped the binder closed. "Good God, Korba, that 'wife' thing back at the Warrior Inn in Nevada was true? Holy crap. You weren't just holding out details on a little argument here. You two eloped and then... What?"
Monica would have his ass if she found out he told, but damn it, he needed a sounding board and his crew mentality rebelled at the whole solo act. A guy had a wingman for a reason. He trusted Rodeo with his life on a regular basis. Why not on this, too? "We didn't exactly elope."
"Exactly what, then?"
His memory of the surroundings might be hazy, but his determination that night to tie himself to Monica before she slipped away remained clear as water. "Downed a bottle of tequila and ended up shit-faced in an Elvis chapel."
Rodeo's cheeks twitched with restrained laughter.
"Go ahead and laugh. Hell, I've laughed at my own dumb-ass self often enough the past three and a half months."
"Three and a half months? You've held out telling me that long?'' Rodeo slapped a hand over his heart. "Man, I think I'm hurt."
"It's easier to talk about crap that doesn't matter."
The copilot's hand slid from his chest along with the humor from his eyes. "That it is, my friend. That it is."
Engines droned. The radio chatter crackled in his helmet. The night sky scrolled ahead and for all the confiding, nothing had changed. No answers, and he couldn't dodge the feeling he'd betrayed Monica.
He switched back to work mentality, instructor mode. Training never ended. Fewer land mines waited there, anyway. "Hey, Rodeo, time for a little training. If we got hit right now, where would we land?"
Thank God Rodeo took the hint, not that he really had a choice as the junior crew member. He twisted in his seat, reaching for a chart. "I'll have the answer for ya in a second."
"A second isn't good enough. You should already know at any given time." He always needed a lock on the best place to land and evade until pickup. Even in "safe" Rubistan, local tribes could still nab them first. "And, Rodeo, the answer is Thumrait. We'd land there."
If only the answers with Monica were as easy to calculate.
Yet hadn't she kissed him? Waited for him? Her clean aloe scent teased into his memory along with the taste of her when they'd kissed. Progress? Maybe, but then he'd realized how much more he wanted for her, all or nothing. Win or lose, no in between, in what promised to be a tough-as-hell battle without much of a foundation to withstand the storm in the making.
No trust either way. He realized now that it hadn't been there to start with or they would have told each other more.
Easier to tell crap that didn 't matter.
In a splash of further realization as blinding as a floodlight for a guy wearing NVGs, it hit him why she hadn't told him about Yasmine. Because it mattered. It hurt too damned much.
Exactly the same reason he hadn't told her about Tina.
He would have sworn he was over losing her. God, it was fifteen years ago. Yet right now he could almost feel the pinch of a bandage being ripped from an old wound only to find the whole damned thing had festered under the protective covering.
Froot Loops. Things from the past dogged a person no matter what. He wasn't over Tina's death. The cut-off-at-the-knees pain of it burned all over again from being exposed, leaving him in need of somewhere to hide out alone to lick his wounds until he could put himself back together again.
And in that one-second flash, his problems doubled to a pair of women in his head. And no one in his bed.