Chapter 12

Gabe backedthe tow truck out of the driveway, barely missing the trash cans on the sidewalk.

Lightning leaned out of the passenger side window and chuckled. “You sure you don’t want me to drive?”

“Nope.”

“Seems like your mind might be elsewhere,” Lightning said. “Anything you want to share with me before I put my life in your hands on the interstate?”

Gabe put the truck in park. “If you don’t feel safe, you’re welcome to swap out. You know Solo wanted to ride shotgun. I could give her a call and see if she’s free.”

Lightning gestured for Gabe to move on. “Solo always wants to ride shotgun alongside you. I thought that marrying Janie might’ve curbed that hero worship thing she’s got going on with you, but so far, I’ve been disappointed.”

“It’s not hero worship, it’s just respect,” she said and glanced sideways. “Like everyone apart from you gives me.”

Lightning winked. “You wouldn’t want me any other way.”

“I guess not.” Gabe shrugged and headed up the street. Lightning wasn’t wrong, and that’s what had made her Gabe’s best friend for nearly twenty years. She’d always kept Gabe’s ego in check, especially early on, when Gabe thought she was invincible. One tour in Afghanistan had disabused her of that notion, and she wouldn’t have made it through if it hadn’t been for Lightning.

“No GPS?” Lightning asked after they’d grabbed coffee from a drive-thru and gotten back on the road. “You’ve already memorized the route?”

“It’s signposted off the I-90. Even Woodchuck would be able to find it.” Gabe didn’t need to take her eyes off the road to know that Lightning had arched her brow high enough to touch her braids. She’d been gently probing since Saturday when Gabe had come home late after a night out alone. Gabe had been too drunk to know what she’d said to Lightning, but Lightning’s interest had been piqued, and she wasn’t about to give it up, apparently. In hindsight, Gabe should’ve brought Solo if she didn’t want to be interrogated.

Maybe she did want to talk it through.

“Okay,” Lightning said in the tone she used when she was done pussyfooting around. “You’ve been off since Saturday night, and it got worse when you came home from visiting Max on Sunday. What’s going on?”

Gabe took the on-ramp to the freeway and gunned the truck to the speed limit before she answered. “Cynthia’s come back to haunt me.”

“What? I thought you said she was still in Germany with Nelson?”

“She’s not here physically. I mean the situation is a problem again.”

Lightning shifted and sat sideways in her seat to face Gabe. “How can it be? You got your punishment for that, and you’re out. Nelson can’t touch you now that you’re a civilian.”

Gabe twitched at the return of that unwanted memory. For a relatively small guy, he packed a vicious right hook. And every other boxing strike there was. “It’s about Lori.”

“She knows the Nelsons? You’re not making any sense.”

Gabe gripped the steering wheel hard. “If you’ll let me get it out without all the questions, maybe it will make sense.”

Lightning sucked her teeth. “Easy, sergeant. Remember who the real enemy is.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just tense.” Gabe had often used that phrase to calm Lightning when they were serving, and its repetition did its job. She stretched out her hands and tried to relax.

“I know that,” Lightning said. “That’s why we’re having this conversation. Spill, and don’t leave out any details if you don’t want me to ask questions.”

“I told you that Lori had just gotten a divorce and that she wasn’t ready to start dating,” Gabe said. “And you know that we’d agreed to be friends.” She picked at a stray thread on the leather wrap around the steering wheel and kept her eyes on the road. “What I didn’t say, but I think you probably knew, was that I hadn’t given up on the possibility that she might change her mind as time passed and her pain faded.”

Gabe briefly looked at Lightning, who simply nodded. Of course she’d know Gabe was still interested. She was the only other person on the planet who’d known her longer than her parents, and they’d never really wanted to know her.

“When we met on Saturday to talk about the restoration project, we also talked about friendship and trust. And that ended up with Lori telling me the whole story about the ex-wife.” Gabe shared a shortened version then said, “So, that’s it. I’ve been so cranky because I’ve fucked it up before it even had the chance to start.”

“You don’t know that for sure unless you tell her about Cynthia.”

Gabe frowned and shook her head. “You’re kidding, right? I already know she won’t be able to trust me as a lover, but if I tell her about what I did, she won’t want me even as a friend.”

“The circumstances around what happened with Cynthia and you were totally different,” Lightning said. “She mounted a consistent and frankly very impressive campaign to get you into bed. I’m surprised you held out as long as you did. And there were other issues at play.”

Gabe gave a rueful laugh; neither of them wanted to revisit those issues. “I don’t remember you saying you were impressed when it was happening.”

“I wasn’t impressed with you, no. But you have to give Cynthia props for persistence. She knew you were the way to get back at the sergeant major, and she didn’t give up until she got what she wanted. You’re not the first hot woman to succumb to the wiles of a femme fatale, even if it was for revenge.”

Gabe half-smiled at the “hot woman” reference, but now wasn’t the time for their usual banter. It was the no bullshit aspect of their friendship she needed now. “I shouldn’t have let her use me as a pawn in her scheme.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. But it worked both ways, and you owned it. And with three cracked ribs, for damn certain, you paid for it.”

“And now I’m paying for it again.”

“That’s not clear though, is it?”

Gabe shook her head. “If I can’t be her lover, I want to be her friend, and I can’t risk losing that.”

“How long have you known her, Gabe?”

“Just over two weeks. Why?”

When Lightning didn’t answer, Gabe glanced at her questioningly.

“And how much time have you spent together?”

“I don’t know exac?—”

“Try to work it out.”

Gabe bumped her head back against the headrest and clenched her jaw. “I’ve seen her three times… I guess, maybe ten or twelve hours.”

“You’ve talked on the phone? Texted each other?”

“Sure, yeah. Why?”

“I’m trying to figure out how she’s become so important to you in such a short space of time,” Lightning said. “Do you know? Because it’s not like you’ve got a track record for letting new people into your life, is it? You were in the Army twenty years, and you’ve got four friends. And let’s be honest, I’m the only one you’ve told everything about yourself and your history.”

She swallowed her instinct to rage at Lightning, knowing it would be useless. No matter how many times Gabe had done that in the past, it had never discouraged her. Mainly, it’d had the opposite effect. “What’re you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything. I’m asking if you know what’s going on. What’s so special about this woman that you haven’t seen in the hundreds before her?”

Gabe tsked. “It hasn’t been hundreds.”

“The exact number that preceded Lori isn’t important, though I’m sure my estimate is dead on. It’s the why and the what I’m asking about.”

Lightning didn’t press any further, and Gabe didn’t give an instant answer. It didn’t escape her attention that she felt different when she thought about Lori, and that there was more than a physical attraction. To be honest, she’d never much thought about her previous encounters beyond the immediate connection. But here, emotions had gotten involved. Emotions Gabe didn’t have a basis to understand nor the language to express. But she did know that she wanted more of all of it, and she wasn’t prepared to have that opportunity taken away from her by her past.

Like Lightning had bluntly pointed out, Gabe didn’t make connections easily and she didn’t have a lot of friends, let alone people close to her. She was a hundred percent certain there was no chance of a sexual relationship, but Lori had offered her friendship and maybe that was better. Gabe had real intimacy with Lightning; they’d never muddied the waters with sex, and their friendship was solid. In reality, it was the most real, honest, and long-lasting relationship she’d ever had. Gabe had room for more of that. And she could get the sex in the city whenever she needed it. Compartmentalizing the whole thing seemed like a no-risk win-win, and she liked her odds.

“I guess I’ve connected to her on a similar level to the way you and I connected,” Gabe said. “And now that I’m out of the service, I’ve got more time for that.”

“Okay, but our friendship has never been sexual.”

Gabe grinned. “Maybe not from your side because you’re into the same kind of women as me, but I thought you were hot when we first met.”

“I’m still hot, and I know that, but that disappeared almost instantly, right?”

Gabe shrugged. “More or less.”

“And why was that?”

“Because we hit it off as friends.”

“Maybe the same thing will happen here, and you have nothing to worry about then.”

“I’m not worried about the sex stuff,” Gabe said. “I can handle that. I’m worried that she won’t even want to be friends if she finds out about what went down with Nelson and his wife.”

“So don’t tell her. As far as you know, she has no connection to anyone in the Army, does she?”

“She’s friends with Toni James.”

Lightning waved her hand. “Toni is a civilian, and she hasn’t been embedded with the British Army for over a year. She wasn’t even in the same country as you for longer than a week, was she? Nelson kept it very quiet, and when they moved him to the Dagger Complex because of what happened, they kept it hush-hush, so there’s no way she could find anything out to pass on to Lori.”

“I don’t know much about relationships, but I know that a friendship based on lies isn’t a solid one.”

Lightning shook her head. “You’re not lying. You’re simply holding back something that you think, but don’t know, would hurt her. And friends do things like that. How many times do you think I’ve withheld my opinion on your choice of women?”

“Probably not as many times as you’ve wished it was you taking them back to your barracks.” Gabe laughed, and the tension ebbed away a little.

“Fair. You certainly had a lot more opportunities than I ever did.”

“Maybe you need to start looking at younger women. They don’t seem as caught up in the whole butch/femme dynamic as us Gen-Xers.”

Lightning looked like she was about to slap Gabe with a pithy comeback when she tapped on the windshield repeatedly and bounced on her seat. “That’s an Aston Martin DBS Superleggera convertible!”

“God damn, she’s beautiful.” Gabe opened her window. “Listen to that V12 engine,” she said as it roared past them and zoomed out of sight. “You know, they only made?—”

“Less than two hundred of the convertibles and only three hundred coupes. Yeah, I know. Who do you suppose is behind the wheel? A movie star or a football player?”

“Damn sure not an average Jo like us.” Gabe whistled then returned her focus to their conversation. “You really think it’s okay not to tell Lori about the affair? I trust your judgment, you know that. I just don’t want to screw this up.”

“Look, Gabe, it’s clear this woman is important to you, and that you want to be in her life. With Max and the restoration project, you’ve pretty much got that wrapped up, so don’t rock the boat. You’ve decided not to push things beyond a friendship, so I think that your past is irrelevant. Who you are as a friend is different from who you are when sex gets involved, and since she’s not going down that road, it really shouldn’t matter.”

Gabe nodded. “Okay, that makes sense.”

“Of course it does,” Lightning said. “Besides, I do know how you are with women, and I still want to be your friend.”

She glanced at Lightning and smiled. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Seriously? You’re fishing for compliments right now?”

“Uh-huh. Like you said, you know my history; you know my ego needs plenty of love—friend love,” she added quickly.

Lightning rolled her eyes and tsked loudly. “Because you’re a lot of fun, and we get each other. That’s all I’m giving you; don’t be so needy.”

Gabe grinned as she took exit 17 onto East 15th and pointed to the brown sign for the Sanctuary. “See? I don’t need to memorize it.”

“Don’t need to, but you have anyway.”

Gabe sighed. “One of the worst things about our friendship is the way you always have to have the last word.”

“One of the worst things?” Lightning asked, clasping her hand over her chest. “There can’t be more than one.”

Gabe shook her head and continued to navigate to Lori’s place. The low-level hum in her stomach became more pronounced the closer they got, and she realized she was eager to get there. In fact, she could hardly wait. She’d become aware of the feeling the second time she’d visited Max and had attributed it to getting to see him. But it had been there again while she’d waited to meet Lori for lunch on Saturday and again the next day when she was visiting Max. Whatever it was, it was a good thing. The cut grass smelled sweeter, the sun shone brighter, and?—

Gabe stopped before she made herself nauseous with sickly sweet sentiments and concentrated on counting the number of green cars instead. That game was one of her few good childhood memories. The remainder of the journey zipped by fast enough, and she turned at the final signpost to the Sanctuary. She headed up the long driveway and pointed to the workshop on her left. “That’s where the Brewster is, but the main buildings are still a half-mile away.”

“I feel like a little kid at Christmas,” Lightning said. “I can’t wait to pull the tarp back and see exactly what we’re dealing with.”

“Me too,” she said, glad that Lightning already shared her enthusiasm for the project. Gabe had hoped she would since they’d talked about restoring cars on so many long patrols back in Syria. She’d wondered if that would just turn out to be idle chatter when she eventually left the Army, but Lightning had been her first call and the first one to get on board with actually making it happen.

As they approached the rambling house that dominated the landscape, the door opened, and Lori stepped out.

Lightning took one look at her and punched Gabe’s arm. “Since you’ve decided you’re not going there, what’s your policy on letting your best friend date your new best friend?” She pulled the scrunchie from her ebony hair and shook out her braids.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“Too late,” Lightning said and popped a button on her shirt to reveal her cleavage.

“Put those away, or I’m not even stopping the truck. I’ll pull straight out and dump you up the road so you can go visit Janet Jackson’s house.”

Lightning arched her eyebrow. “You assume I’d want to go there because I’m Black?”

Gabe nodded as she pulled up. “Of course. Or it could be that I assumed you’d want to go there because you’re always singing her songs, and because you said you’d be going to Vegas as soon as she launched her new residency.”

Lightning laughed. “All right then,” she said and hopped out of the truck.

“Hey, wait.” Gabe’s seatbelt locked in her hurry to yank it off. “God damn it.” She looked up to see Lightning was already meeting Lori. “Shit.” When the thing wouldn’t budge after multiple attempts, Gabe considered slicing it off with the emergency escape tool.

“What’s keeping you?” Lightning shouted and wiggled her eyebrows.

Gabe gave the belt one last try, and it released as if it hadn’t just been a total bastard. She caught her foot in her hurry to get out of the cab and stumbled out, smacking her head on the door’s window.

“Oh, goodness,” Lori said and was by her side within seconds. “Are you okay?”

Gabe touched her head and detected a tiny bump, but there was no blood on her fingers. “I’m fine. No sense, no feeling,” she said and grinned.

Lori touched her cool fingers to Gabe’s forehead and sucked in a breath. “There’s a lump there already. Let’s go inside and get an ice pack on it. Are you sure you’re okay?” She hooked her arm into Gabe’s and led her into the house. “You don’t feel dizzy or lightheaded?”

“No, ma’am.” Gabe registered Lightning shaking her head and laughing.

“Extreme measures,” Lightning muttered as Gabe walked past her.

Gabe glanced at her and winked then flicked her gaze to Lightning’s unbuttoned shirt. “Gotta use what God gave you,” she whispered.

“Did you say something, Gabe?” Lori asked.

“Uh, no. I don’t think so. Did I?” Gabe gave Lori a goofy smile. “Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought.”

“You sneeze harder than that,” Lightning said.

“Best to be safe,” Lori said to Lightning. “It’s lovely to meet you, by the way. I didn’t get the chance to say that before Gabe fell out of her truck.”

“And I’m very pleased to meet you too, Lori. I’ve heard such a lot about you.”

Gabe recognized the difference in Lightning’s voice and rolled her eyes.

“Oh…really?”

Gabe liked Lori’s surprise. “Really,” she said. “I hope that’s okay.”

Lori’s shy smile was wildly cute. “I hope it was all good.”

“I haven’t experienced anything other than good. Great, as a matter of fact. You’re great.” Gabe squeezed her eyes shut briefly. Maybe she had hit her head harder than she’d thought.

Lori took Gabe to the dining room table, where cookies, brownies, and fresh lemonade were laid out along with two piles of legal paper about a half-inch thick.

She pulled out a chair and guided Gabe into it. “Wait there while I get a cold compress from the kitchen.”

When Lori had left the room, Lightning smacked Gabe upside the head.

“Hey, don’t make my concussion worse.” Gabe pushed Lightning’s hand away then held the back of her head as if she’d been battered with a rifle butt. “And, ow.”

Lightning narrowed her eyes and somehow managed to frown at the same time. “You haven’t been out long enough to go that soft.” She sat in the chair beside Gabe and leaned in. “She is beautiful.”

“She’s out of bounds.”

Lightning clapped Gabe on the shoulder. “I know that, you idiot. I was just messing with you, like I have a thousand times before. Interesting that you took me seriously this time…”

Gabe glanced toward the hallway to make sure Lori wasn’t coming back. “I was messing too,” she said, sounding as false as her claim.

“Yeah, okay, Captain Panic Pants.” Lightning tapped her short, manicured fingernail on one of the stacks of paper. “Is this the contract?”

“I think so. I read an electronic version, so I don’t know how many pages it was. I do know that it took me half a day to read it and barely any of it made sense.”

“Knucklehead. It’s good that we’ve got a lawyer in the family then, huh?”

“Janie was a sweetheart to go through it all so quickly.”

“Janie as in Hannah’s wife?” Lori asked as she came back into the room. “Sorry, I just can’t call her Solo.”

“That’s right,” Lightning said. “And Janie would thank you for not calling her Solo.”

Gabe hadn’t responded because she was too busy being impressed that Lori had remembered her friends’ names and one of their nicknames. “Uh, yeah. Janie is a lawyer for one of the top firms in the city.” She saw the instant but brief change in Lori’s expression. “She’s one of the few good attorneys out there,” she said, hoping to rescue the mood.

Lori looked like she’d stopped herself from asking a follow-up question or maybe from saying something mean. Although being mean would seem out of character from what Gabe knew of Lori, she also knew that broken relationships were complicated things that made people do and say things that they usually wouldn’t. She’d learned that useful life nugget firsthand from Cynthia and the sergeant major.

Lori approached Gabe and gently placed the ice pack on her forehead. “I’ve wrapped it in a dish towel so it doesn’t burn your skin.”

She held it there for a moment longer than was necessary while her other hand rested on Gabe’s shoulder. Gabe didn’t miss the quiet sound that escaped Lori’s mouth when she touched her, and she tensed her muscles in response.

Lori pulled her hand away instantly and didn’t make eye contact. “Help yourself to something sweet,” she said.

Gabe couldn’t look at Lightning or she’d almost certainly laugh. Both of them would’ve liked to help themselves to the sweetness of Lori, and Gabe knew Lightning would have that mischievous expression she got when she was on the hunt.

Instead, she snagged one of the gooey-looking brownies and took a bite before she moaned appreciatively. “These would tempt Amenadiel to this earthly plain,” she said after swallowing the delicious treat.

Lightning gave her signature WTF expression but didn’t say anything.

“I thought you said you didn’t believe in God?” Lori handed her a glass of lemonade.

“I don’t. I just grew up in a very religious environment, and it’s kind of stayed with me.” Gabe clenched her jaw, and she saw the flash of concern in Lightning’s expression. “Do you have one of those special photographic memories?” she asked, steering the conversation onto a safer track.

“An eidetic memory, no. Hyperthymesia syndrome? Yep. I remember absolutely everything.”

“So I was dead on when I said that you had a memory like an elephant?” Gabe asked.

“In essence, yes. But I really can’t forget anything even if I tried.”

Gabe caught the sadness in Lori’s words and wanted to reach out and hold her. Because friends were allowed to hug, weren’t they? Maybe she and Lightning didn’t do it all that often, but they were Army, and that kind of emotional expression wasn’t encouraged. She looked at Lightning and wondered if it’d be weird to embrace her.

“Would it be okay to say hi to Max?” Lightning asked just before the silence became awkward.

Gabe took the ice pack from her forehead and placed it on the table. “Not unless you’re going to visit him every week.”

“Actually—and I’m using the word in a good way,” Lori said, “I think it would be great for Max to see another familiar face.”

“Oh, I get it.” Gabe tsked though she smiled at yet another impressive recall from Lori. “I looked like an Army mutt, and you couldn’t risk Max being exposed to me, but she’s got pretty long hair and looks like a model, so she gets preferential treatment.” She held up her hand and shook her head when Lori opened her mouth to protest. “It’s okay. No need to come up with any half-ass excuses. I’m used to it.”

Lori laughed. “Actually, I was going to say that your visits seem to be making a big difference to Max’s progress, so seeing someone else from a time when he was happy might be helpful.” She checked her watch. “Beth will be over there preparing lunches, then she’ll be taking each of them out for walks. Do you have time to take him out? Or are you in a rush to get out of here?”

The question was directed at Lightning, but Lori looked at Gabe, who could’ve sworn that Lori’s expression was hopeful, like she wanted them to stay longer. Lightning eyeballed Gabe too, though her expression was one of wry amusement.

“We’ve got all day,” Lightning said. “Picking up the Brewster is the only thing I have on my schedule for today. What about you, Gabriella?”

Gabe cocked her head and glared at Lightning. “I’d cleared my day too, Shanae.”

Lori looked between them, clearly not quite understanding what was happening. “That’s a beautiful name. Is that your Army nickname or your real one?”

“My Army nickname is Lightning.” She put her hand to her shoulder, like she always did whenever she was reminded of how she got that moniker. “That’s a story for another time. Right now, I want to go see Gabe’s other best friend.”

Lori’s eyebrow quirked almost imperceptibly. Maybe she’d thought there was something else between them.

She unclipped the radio from her belt and hit the talk button. “Beth. Can you head to the house? I’m sending…” She depressed the button and looked across at Lightning. “What should I call you?”

“My non-Army friends call me Shay.”

Lori smiled widely as if she liked the idea of being Lightning’s friend. She pressed the talk button again. “I’m sending Shay your way. She’d like to come with you when you take Max for a walk, okay?”

“Sure thing, boss. I’ve just finished chowtime, so I’ll head over right now.”

“Thanks, Beth.” Lori replaced the radio back on her hip and headed toward the front door. “Shay?” she said, beckoning her to follow.

Lightning got up from her chair and gripped Gabe’s shoulder as she passed by. “You’re welcome. Have fun.”

“We’re just friends,” Gabe whispered.

“Then have fun getting to know your new friend without me in the way,” Lightning said and wandered away.

Lori opened the door and stepped out. “Head straight up that way toward those big buildings on the right.”

“Excellent. Thanks, Lori.”

“My pleasure, Shay,” she said and smiled again. “She’s lovely,” Lori said after she’d closed the door and was walking back to rejoin Gabe. “Is it okay to say she wasn’t what I expected when you told me you were in business with a group of Army friends?”

“That depends on what you mean,” Gabe said, hoping that Lori didn’t hold any racial bias.

“I imagined a whole band of big, butch Army types,” Lori said. “But Shay…isn’t that. God, I just assumed she was gay. Is she straight? Lucky I didn’t say anything to her. You won’t tell her, will you?”

“Whoa, relax.” Gabe laughed lightly at Lori’s sudden verbal outburst; she was more than a little relieved that Lori’s focus was on Lightning’s perceived gayness. “Shay gets pretty pissed when people assume she’s straight, so she’ll be happy to find out that you assumed the opposite.” She poured herself another glass of lemonade to busy her hands, which wanted to reach out for Lori. This friend thing was going to take some serious self-control and self-talk. “And of course I’ll tell her about your cute little meltdown because she’s my best friend, and I actually do tell her everything.”

Lightning’s reminder that she was the only person Gabe told everything to poked her brain and prompted her to think about opening up to Lori now.

“Have you always been just friends?”

“God, yeah. She likes the same type of women I do,” Gabe said. Women like you, she thought, though why Lori had asked that question was interesting. Unless she was interested in Lightning and working up to asking Gabe about going on a date with her.

“Good to know people still have types.” Lori sat in the chair Lightning had vacated and dragged it closer to the table to snag a cookie. “I feel like we’re a dying breed.”

“What do you mean?” Gabe kept her eyes fixed firmly on Lori and willed her gaze not to drift to Lori’s legs.

“Young people seem so much more fluid with their sexualities these days,” Lori said. “And there are a lot more gay women with long hair than there ever used to be.”

Gabe smiled and nodded. “I used to have long hair.”

Lori tapped Gabe’s leg. “You did not!”

“I really did.” Her hair style seemed like a good place to gently work her way into a deeper conversation.

Lori narrowed her eyes, her expression disbelieving. “I can’t imagine you with long hair. Do you have photographic proof?”

Gabe laughed. “Why don’t you believe me?”

“Someone with your confidence? Feels like you were the kind of kid who knew exactly who they were from a young age and didn’t let anyone hold you back.”

She sighed at the description, but it was exactly the persona Gabe had cultivated to disguise the truth. “I like that you think that, but I have to disappoint you and tell you that I was not that kid. I wasn’t even that adult until a few years after joining the Army.”

“When I told you that I’d talked to my mom and how it always brightened my day, you said, ‘That must be nice.’ Does that have anything to do with the kind of kid you were?”

Gabe took a long swallow of lemonade, hoping it would give her the time to steel herself to open the door Lori was knocking on. “You remember that too?”

“Word for word.” Lori pressed her lips together and looked rueful. “It can be as much of a curse as a blessing. I really can’t forget anything…even the unpleasant things. And I can recall every detail: the phrasing, the words, the time, the place. All of it.”

She seemed to shake it off as she tapped the tabletop with her fingernail, and Gabe thought about dust storms in Syria instead of imagining Lori’s nails raking across her back.

“But I won’t be put off a second time,” Lori said. “Are you going to quid pro quo me on my emotional info dump last Saturday? Or are you keeping your family trauma to yourself?”

“You’re assuming trauma?” Gabe pointed to the plates of goodies. “Is that why you always break out the sugary treats? Comfort food for world-weary guests?”

“As a matter of fact, those brownies are made with protein powder and almond butter, so they’re quite good for you.” Lori waved her hand in Gabe’s general area. “I figured that I should find some recipes to suit your eating plan given everything that you’re doing for me.”

Gabe grinned. “That’s sweet of you, thanks. Because I couldn’t keep eating your real treats and keep these.” She flexed her arms and caught the flash of appreciation in Lori’s gaze. Maybe they could have one of those safe flirty friendships where both parties knew it would go nowhere. That might be easier and more fun than keeping her own appreciation of Lori’s charms quiet.

“So, for the third time,” Lori said, with a knowing look, “I’ve shared some of my suffering, and the laws of friendship dictate reciprocation in order to maintain a relationship that’s balanced and equal.”

Gabe frowned. “Am I going to need a copy of those laws to make sure I don’t fail in my duties as your friend?”

Lori raised both her eyebrows, indicating an unwillingness to respond without something from Gabe.

She held up her hands. “Okay, I’ll try sharing. You should know that talking about my past isn’t something that comes naturally. Shay had to use a crowbar and a case of Jack D.” Gabe took a big bite from a brownie. “I guess this will have to do.”

Lori placed her hand on Gabe’s forearm. “If talking about your family is too much, maybe you can tell me something else. Like why you joined the Army. I don’t want to push if it’s too painful.”

“Thank you, But you’re right; the trust has to go both ways.” Gabe looked at Lori’s small hand resting on the center of her Metatron cube tattoo. Balance, harmony, and connection. Maybe she’d find all those things in this friendship. “And why I joined the Army is kind of caught up with my family shit.”

Lori squeezed Gabe’s arm, then she released her and sat back in her chair. “If you’re sure.”

Gabe remembered saying those same words to Lori when she was about to share part of her story. She had to show Lori the same trust that Lori had given her. But God damn, she wished she had three fingers of Jack in a glass instead of homemade lemonade.

“I guess your family life wasn’t a Disney movie then.”

Gabe looked up following Lori’s prompt. She must’ve drifted off into her not-so-happy place. “I don’t know about that. Don’t all Disney movies begin with a family tragedy? Although my parents didn’t die; I think they just wished that I would.”

“Oh, Gabe, is that really true?”

Gabe shrugged. “They certainly made me feel like that’s what they wanted. You said that I was probably the kid who was confident and didn’t let anyone stop me. I was the complete opposite. I figured out that I liked girls when I was about eight, but I didn’t know anything about being gay. For a while I thought that I should be a boy. As I got older, I wanted to be like all the heroes in the TV shows. When I used to play with my friends, I’d always get the role of the good guy, and I always took my shirt off. I never did need a bra, even back then.” She motioned to her chest and flexed it, making her pec muscles bounce.

Lori giggled. “That’s just like the Rock does it.”

The adorable sound made Gabe do it again to get the same reaction, and she was rewarded with an even bigger giggle, which served to relieve her tension a little.

“Sorry,” Lori said. “Please keep going.”

“It wasn’t until I started watching Buffy when I was ten, and things started falling into?—”

“Is it okay to interrupt and say that Amber Benson was amazing?” Lori asked.

“Of course.”

“They made history being the first same-sex couple on TV,” she said, as if Gabe wouldn’t know everything there was to know about the series. “When I realized who I was and I found out about that show, I bought every season on DVD and watched each episode ten times. I went on a total stalky internet search too. I discovered the stuff about how she’d kicked ass when she’d been trolled because Willow chose her instead of the guy, and that was so inspiring to me as a young kid. She said, ‘being a beautiful, heavy, lesbian witch rocks,’ and that made me feel good about my weight and size. I loved that.”

“You didn’t watch them when they first came out?” Gabe asked. Any little lesbian with access to a TV made sure they soaked up every episode as soon as it came out. She took the opportunity to finish the brownie, which did taste pretty damn good.

“I was four. So no.”

Gabe half-choked on the brownie and had to sputter some of it out onto a napkin. “Sorry,” she said when she’d washed down the rest with a mouthful of lemonade. “I didn’t know you were…what does that make you? Thirty?”

Lori nodded. “Thirty-one next month. You thought I was older?”

Thatwas a trick question, and she wasn’t falling for it. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about it.” Which was true. She’d just assumed Lori was in her mid-thirties because of the way she came across, educated and full of life experience from traveling the world.

“Do you have a reverse ageist thing going on? Don’t you want to be my friend now that you know how young I am?”

Gabe shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. You’re old enough to go drinking with, and that’s all I have to worry about.” She smiled as she thought about their difference in age; seven years wasn’t that much. Hell, it didn’t even qualify as an official age-gap. And since they weren’t ever going to date, it was really a non-issue.

Lori made a dramatic show of wiping her brow. “Phew. I thought you might use it as a reason to stop telling me your story just as I was getting used to the idea of having a super soldier as a friend.”

Gabe grinned widely. “You think of me as a super soldier?”

She nodded. “I do, actually. I’ve been doing my research. The Medal of Honor and a Purple Heart. You’ve been blazing quite the trail for women in the forces.”

Gabe narrowed her eyes. “You’ve been stalking me?”

Lori fluttered her eyelashes. “No,” she said firmly. “I’ve been googling you. There’s a difference. But one day, I’d like your version of events if you wouldn’t mind telling me.”

“We’re going to have to spend a lot more time together if you want all my war stories.”

Lori smiled. “That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? That’s what friends do.”

“So Shay tells me.”

“Well, we’re together now, so maybe you could finish this story.”

Gabe laughed and shook her head. “I haven’t finished because you keep interrupting me.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” Lori said and pretended to zip her lips closed.

“Anyway, it took a couple of years until I realized that I didn’t have to be a guy to kiss a girl.” She gestured to herself once again. “But the way I present is often wrongly judged as wanting to be a guy, and my parents were very traditional and super religious in a very narrow-minded way. They wanted me to wear dresses and little heels, wear pink and play tennis. They wanted me to be everything I wasn’t, and everything I could never be.”

Lori had pressed her lips tightly together and looked fit to burst with either questions or comments.

Gabe laughed and shook her head. “I don’t have photos of any of those things, no.” It seemed strange though because, for the first time, she was able to see how her past might be amusing to someone who only knew her as she was now.

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Lori said then covered her mouth.

“Then what do you want to say?”

Lori dropped her hand. “That I’m sorry. And that I’ve got an unusual anger building inside me at the thought of your parents trying to mold you into their idea of a perfect daughter instead of letting you define and discover yourself. It’s just…it’s incredibly sad, and I’m sorry.”

Lori’s emotional reaction to her story and the invisible connection of solidarity and support surprised Gabe. And it was also strangely comforting to be understood without condition and judgment. “I’m guessing that’s not behavior you recognize in your parents.”

“I consider myself very lucky when I say definitely not,” Lori said. “But that’s a topic for another day.”

“With everything we want to talk about, I feel like we’re not going to have time for anything else.”

Lori crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair. “There’s no rush though, is there?”

“Nope,” she said but thought the opposite. She had a desire to know all there was to know about Lori and to know it yesterday, though she had a feeling that the more she found out, the more her attraction would deepen. Let the chips fall. The only way to stop that freight train now would be for one of them to move away, and that clearly wasn’t going to happen. But she was an adult, and she could handle those feelings. It couldn’t be that hard, especially when physical connections with other women would take the edge off. “Back to this story. I kept trying to be the daughter they wanted, but nothing was ever good enough. So when I was seventeen and a girl named Liliana came into my life on a foreign exchange trip and gave me my first lesbian kiss, I realized that I’d never be able to make them happy, so I’d try to be happy instead.”

“You came out?”

Gabe nodded. “And predictably, they kicked me out. School had never really been my thing, and I had no job prospects and no other family members who would go against my parents and take me in. There’d been a career day the week before, and the Army seemed like the only place to go to keep me off the streets. The last thing, and the best thing, my dad did for me was give his consent for me to join early. I never looked back.”

“Have you seen them since?” Lori asked.

“No. No, I haven’t.” She swallowed around the unexpected ball of…something as she thought about not having seen a single member of her family for twenty years.

“They didn’t even reach out when you were awarded your medals?”

Whatever Lori’s childhood had been like, it was obviously a far cry from Gabe’s, because her look of complete shock and disbelief was undiluted. “No, but I never told them either.”

“No, please don’t do that.” Lori pulled her chair even closer to Gabe and took her hands. “Don’t make excuses for them or lay any blame at your own feet. They failed you, Gabe, and now they’re missing out because they don’t get to see the amazingly kind and generous person you’ve become.”

The cold rush from the A/C vent almost directly above Gabe did nothing to cool the fire rising up her spine and into her face. Shay was a great friend. She was her ride or die and had been for nearly two decades, but this felt like a completely different kind of friendship, one that Gabe was almost too embarrassed to accept.

Lori was so close now that Gabe became aware of the subtle, citrusy-fresh scent of her perfume, and of the soft bounce of her curls, and most distracting of all, how full her lips were. So damned kissable. Gabe wanted to crush her mouth against Lori’s and not come up for air. She wanted to wrap her hand in Lori’s hair and press their bodies together, to feel the sexy softness of Lori’s curves against the hardness of her own. Everything else in her peripheral vision faded out of focus, and all Gabe could imagine was taking Lori in her arms and carrying her to the couch so she could drag her fingers along Lori’s thighs and make her way, slow and hard, inside her.

And then there was nothing but cold air between them as Lori pulled back and jerked her chair away.

“Thank you for sharing that with me, Gabe,” Lori said. “I can’t imagine how hard it was.”

That’s not the only thing that’s hard. Gabe squeezed her thighs together in an effort to stave off the swelling in her boxers. She drew in a deep breath and finished her second glass of lemonade, hoping the ice-cold liquid would work against the incessant heat in every cell of her body. She pulled on the memory of Cynthia and Sergeant Major Nelson to remind her why she and Lori could never be. Gabe was beginning to let Lori in, to let her see who she was, but she’d never be able to show or share everything. The kind and generous Gabe that Lori was so quick to praise had to be all Gabe ever revealed. Because if she told Lori what she’d done, the trust they were building as friends would be destroyed faster than a missile could turn a mountain range to rubble.

And she couldn’t risk that happening because this friendship was already turning into something too precious to lose.

Gabe tapped one of the paper piles on the table and noted all the colored tabs sticking out. “These are the contracts for me to sign?” She glanced at her watch. “I told the rest of the gang we’d probably get to the garage around four, and I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get the Brewster out of the building and safely onto the flatbed without damaging the wheels.”

Lori nodded, though she obviously hadn’t forgotten that Gabe had said she’d cleared her schedule and was in no rush. With that memory thing she had, she couldn’t forget.

“Of course, and don’t forget all the tools.” Lori unclipped her radio and checked in on Shay and Max.

“Shay says to tell Gabe she’ll meet her at the workshop. I’m taking her there now, and then I’ll walk Max and Junker back,” Beth said. “It’s okay to leave her there, right?”

“Yes, of course,” Lori said. “We’ll—Gabe will be over in about ten minutes when we’ve completed all the paperwork.”

“Ten-four, boss,” Beth said and clicked off the line.

“You’re not coming to oversee the operation?” Gabe asked, wanting every minute she could get with Lori. And she didn’t want that awkward moment to be what they parted on.

Lori huffed and shook her head. “If I didn’t have to see that car again, I would be a very happy woman.” She was silent for a moment before she glanced at Gabe and sighed. “But I’ve told my therapist that this whole project is symbolic of me getting the final piece of the lawyer out of my life, so I suppose I should come with you.”

Gabe smiled, her mood brightened considerably by the small concession. “Well, if you’ve told your therapist, then it has to happen, right? Accountability or something, I think.”

“Indeed.” Lori pulled one of the paper stacks toward her and flipped it open to the first colored tab. “And you’re definitely happy with everything in the contract?”

Gabe laughed. “Honestly, I only skimmed it. But Janie has read it, and that’s good enough for me. The gist of it is that we’re both promising not to screw each other over, right?”

Lori nodded. “That’s a great way of condensing about fifty-thousand words of legal language, yeah.”

Gabe picked up one of the pens on the table. “Then let’s get this out of the way because I can’t wait to get that car back to the garage to show the team.”

“And I can’t wait to get it off my property.”

Gabe put her squiggle alongside the first tab. “Here’s to the beginning of a great partnership.”

Lori’s hand moved elegantly across the paper, caressing it with the pen to create a beautifully flowing signature. What Gabe would give to be underneath Lori’s hand instead of that damn contract.

She grabbed another brownie to distract herself from the unhelpful train of thought. Maybe with more exposure to Lori, Gabe could become immune to her unassuming charms.

Yeah, and maybe tomorrow we’ll have world peace.