Read Up in Flames (Crash and Burn, Book Two) (A Military Romance) for Free Online

that I didn’t desperately want to have sex with Lauren, oh, fifty times a day.
    I take the bottle from her and swallow a large gulp. The sweet drink slides down my throat. An unpleasant thought niggles at the back of my head, one I don’t want to think about right now. That the only reason Lauren’s even into me is because I look different, more muscled than I ever used to be.
    That we’ll never have anything beyond sexual because she doesn’t see me as serious boyfriend—or husband—material.
    “So what happened?” Lauren asks me, kicking her legs out as she clings to the thick metal chain of the swing. She rocks back and forth, stretching back until her body is a plank and she’s staring at the star-speckled sky. “With your dad, I mean.”
    I’m glad for the distraction, even if I kinda don’t want to think about or talk about my dad. I dig my heels into the sand and keep my feet on the ground as I rock in the swing. “He was fucking loaded on the phone. I’ve never heard him like that. Drunk and…sad. He was rambling and didn’t make a lot of sense, but I can see he misses my mom.”
    She’s silent for a moment. “Has he thought about talking to someone about this? Like a counselor?”
    “I can’t even get him to come home, or tell me where he is.” I take another drink. It’s gonna take several chugs for this light wine to even get me on the road to buzzed, but I’m not here to get drunk, so that’s fine.
    Lauren straightens and stops swinging, her feet stomping to the ground. She reaches over and cups my fingers over the chain. “God, I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard this all has been on you.” Her face is so sad as she stares at me, the moonlight glinting off the whites of her eyes. She squeezes my hand.
    “I’m not worried about me,” I say. “I’m worried about him.”
    “Then I’ll worry about you, because someone needs to.” Her voice is near tears now, her words sounding like she’s pushing them past a tight throat. “Cole, I’ve been so concerned the last few years. Knowing you were thousands of miles away from me, and I couldn’t do a thing to help you feel better. It was awful.”
    I get out of the swing, dropping the almost-full bottle onto the sand, and kneel between her legs, peer up into her face, and cup her cool cheeks. “You’re kidding, right? You don’t think you helped me?”
    She sucks in a breath. “Can I ask you a question?” she says, and she’s so quiet I almost don’t hear the whispered words.
    “What?” I shift my knees so they’re resting more comfortably in the sand.
    “Why didn’t you…” Lauren clears her throat and her gaze skitters away from mine. “Why did you decide to live somewhere else after you left the army instead of coming back here?”
    I slide my hands down to hers, which are now clenched in her lap, and debate what to tell her. She’s never asked me this question before. What’s making her wonder it right now? Does it relate to the topic of her being there for me?
    She doesn’t know that I debated the move for months, wondering if I should go home and try to pursue her, or spend more time on my own becoming the man I want to be. Not just for her, but for myself. The army taught me many lessons about strength and endurance, but sometimes I think I still need to be more, be better, to be worthy of her.
    I was afraid if I came back here right after serving, I’d lose the ground I gained. So I made the hard decision to go to Charleston and sort shit out there. Though it killed me to know I was stateside and yet still so far from her side, where I desperately wanted to be.
    “It was never meant to be a permanent situation,” I say slowly, weighing my words. “But…I needed time to figure everything out.” A generic answer, but she’s not ready for me to be brutally honest.
    A long moment of silence passes. Her lips thin, and she gives a quick nod. “Yeah, I get it. It’s fine.”
    “Kitten—”
    “It