But Carly goes to him, placing a steadying hand on his arm. “We’ll figure it out. I promise.”
The tension in the room has changed, and after a few steadying breaths, Nathan stands up, moving slowly toward the bar in the corner, pouring four generous glasses of scotch. “Drink? Seems we could all use one.”
Kyle comes over and takes one of the glasses, tilting it back in one gulp.
Nathan nods and simply pours him another. “You were a merc too?”
Kyle nods. “I’d faintly heard of you before this. You liked to play in the sand, mostly.”
“I did. You?”
“Southeast Asia, for the most part. Little bit of Africa.”
The two men seem to study each other for a moment and reach a temporary truce. Taking a glass apiece, Nathan brings me a scotch while Kyle offers one to Carly, and we all sit on the leather couches facing one another warily.
Carly, with all her wild weirdness, laughs and says, “Well, this is awkward. Sorry for pulling the guns on you doesn’t sound right on a Hallmark card, and I don’t think there’s an emoji for this. Uhm, would an ‘oopsie’ suffice?” She shrugs, sipping her scotch as she looks off to the left.
In her look, I realize that it’s up to me and her to get this derailed train back on the tracks. These two men are soldiers, used to working alone, being alone, not depending on anyone or anything.
But they’re both learning to lean on us, me and Carly.
“Hey, Carly, remember that double-date we went on with Max and Ben?”
She looks at me, her eyebrows almost touching her hairline. “Uh, yeah. Not really a forgettable evening, ya know. Why?”
I can see the guys’ muscles ratcheting up when I mention other guys, the opposite of what I want to happen, but I’m going for a progressive plan.
“Remember how we were so excited to go out with them? Thought we were so grown up.”
Kyle interrupts, looking to Carly. “This before or after Gunze?”
It’s my turn to raise my brows, and I sip my scotch. “You told him about Gunze?”
She blushes, and it’s the cutest and most innocent thing I’ve seen on her face in ages. Her blush alone is enough to give me pause, but her next words make me reevaluate Kyle altogether. Looking at him with total devotion, a look I’ve caught in my own mirror recently, she says, “Before.”
She turns to me. “He knows everything, my parents, Gunze, Europe. All of it. He beat the shit out of Robert at the Broadway gala for taking unwelcome liberties.”
Kyle rumbles dangerously, obviously not liking Carly’s reminder about the party.
But I smile at Kyle, a genuine one, silently telling him thank you for getting into her heart enough that she’d share that way. She needs that, needs him, apparently.
And he jumps up a notch in my estimation. Gun ambush aside, he looked out for my girl. Besides, this wasn’t my first gun ambush . . . although I would like to make this the last, I think with a barely suppressed eye roll.
Whose life is this?
“So Max and Ben. What a clusterfuck that party was. Broken mirrors, a smashed TV, and two guys who make you two seem like choir boys.”
I look around at the blood and the gun and think maybe that’s taking it a bit too far.
“Well, in a way. Just roll with me here. We worked together and got out of there. And no one was any the wiser about what happened and we didn’t get in any trouble.”
The party is insane. Kids going upstairs to bedrooms and drinks are flowing like water. It’s probably par for the course for a lot of our classmates, but not for Carly and me. We’re fish out of water and virtually gasping for air at the new and scary environment we’ve been thrust into.
We’d been so excited when Max and Ben asked us out on a double-date, spending hours on outfits and deciding who likes who better. But now that we’re actually at the party, the boys are handsy and obviously trying to get us drunk.
I keep sipping on the same trashcan Kool-aid punch cup for over an hour, and Carly poured most of hers into a potted plant when no one was looking, so at least we have our wits about us. But the aggressive touching and repeated requests to go upstairs are just too much.
“I need to freshen up first,” Carly says finally, giving