Wheels Up (Out of Uniform 4)

“I felt a lot of things.” He couldn’t bring himself to lie completely and say he’d felt nothing. “But none of them are worth you even thinking about giving up your commission. You can’t do that for me.”

“Guess not.” Dustin studied his nails. “It was just a thought.”

“A fucking terrible one.” A beautiful, awful, terrible, wonderful thought. One Wes couldn’t let him have.

“This is it, isn’t it?” Dustin’s voice was soft, eyes red and wide. “Nothing left to say.”

“Thank you,” Wes said, because he couldn’t not say that. “Thank you for being there when I needed a friend. But yeah, this has to end today. No more chatting. No more visits. No more long looks. We wipe our memories and move forward.”

“I’m not sure I know how to do that. How to forget.” Dustin’s head tipped back, exposing his throat, all the places Wes loved to nuzzle and lick and would never get another chance to do so.

“You move forward,” Wes ordered. “You get over yourself. Stop the hermit routine. Go to a bar. Find a kinky, bossy guy or girl, and you get a life and all of sudden, all this will seem stupid.”

“That’s what you want? Me to get someone else?”

Fuck no. Wes’s chest cracked open, heart exposed and vulnerable. He could see the future—two, maybe three months max, and there would a rumor that the XO was seeing someone, some good-natured ribbing. And he’d have to listen and smile and pretend that he wasn’t bleeding out.

“Yes. I do.” His voice sounded like tumbling rocks, pain as sharp as gravel in a wound ripping through him. “I want you to go out there and be happy. Forget me. Forget this.”

“Because it was just sex.” Dustin still didn’t sound convinced.

“Exactly.” Wes swallowed hard, fighting the urge to blink. “That’s all it was. So you stop talking crazy. And you get on with your life. You find a way to be happy, you hear?”

Dustin nodded. “I’m gonna have to delete the chat app. Remove temptation.”

“Exactly,” Wes lied, knowing that he’d keep that stupid icon of Dustin’s on his contact list as long as possible, same as he’d keep the memories close, take them out, even when they made him ache with what could have been, if only. “Y’all do that.”

“Okay.” Dustin’s voice was small and far away. “I guess this is goodbye.”

“Yup. Bye. And take care. I mean that.” God, did he ever. It would kill him, that future of Dustin’s—the one with someone new, someone who would know every kinky secret that had been all Wes’s, someone who would get everything Wes never could. But he wanted that for Dustin. Wanted to hear he was happy. In love. Sharing a life. All the things he could never get from Wes. If only.

And someday, they’d be on different teams. Dustin would be commander of his own group, the leadership position he’d been born to take. He’d have that person Wes wanted for him. And Wes would know that he’d done the right thing. And maybe that would be the point when it hurt a little less. But today was not that day—today it fucking killed him, knowing that future was coming. So he hit End and threw himself across the room, onto his bed. Cursing, he pummeled the pillow. He’d done the right thing, no doubt about that, but he wasn’t sure his soul would ever recover from everything he’d just let go, from the dream he’d let die along with the call.

Chapter Twenty

The hot sun of a country where they wouldn’t be welcome and weren’t officially supposed to be in beat down on Dustin’s face. But even the sun wasn’t as harsh as the regret coursing through him, even still. They’d been called wheels up on a mission mere hours after his last conversation with Wes, and here they were, out in the field, trying to act like nothing was out of the ordinary. Or maybe that last piece was all him—Wes had been his usual self the whole mission, maybe a little more reserved, but nothing too outside his ordinary. Either the man was the world’s best actor or he hadn’t been lying when he’d said this was simply sex for him and that they both had to move on.

“That should do it.” Wes applied the last bit of det cord to bridge girder they were about to blow up.

“You take the hell box,” Dustin ordered, voice level, eyes focused on scanning the horizon for threats, not on plumbing the depths of Wes’s blue eyes for clues as to how he was coping. Only thing that mattered was this mission, getting everyone out in one piece. They’d been in the field a few weeks now, which should have been enough time for Dustin to stop having these moments when he only wished for a few minutes to talk with Wes, really talk.