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“I talk to you every day?” If he was trying to avoid them, he would have been a bit sneakier than that. There were plenty of places to hide on base if he’d wanted to play hide-and-go-seek with them.

“You talk to us about work and about that fucking bird that’s got a bee up your bonnet and that I’m fuckingsick of looking at.”

“There’s something wrong with it.” Lake was still sure of it, and he was frustrated as fuck that no one could find anything. They’d hadsixengineers look at it, including Zach… a few times. A few more times than a few times.

There wasn’t anything there, and Lake needed to move on. Especially since he was pretty sure the engineers had put his face on a dartboard and were using it to practice on. If he asked again, they might think about using his actual face, and he happened to like his face.

“Lake.”

The tone was severe, and Lake kept his gaze ahead, not turning to look at the face he knew Zach was making at him.

“Stop deflecting.”

Lake pulled into the closest park to the canteen. He turned off the Rover but didn’t get out. “You’ve wanted this for a really long time, and I didn’t want to get in the way.”

“That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard you say, and I still remember the time in eighth grade, when you told the teacher that it was the war with the apes that wiped out the dinosaurs. And argued with her for a whole hour because you’d seen it in a movie. Which, by the way, was not even the movie; you’d fallen asleep halfway through and dreamed up the rest of it.”

“You needed to bond and whatever,” Lake said adamantly. There was no evidence to say his theory waswrong. Maybe a little bit, but not enough that there wasn’t some wiggle room. And she was the one who’d gotten so riled up that she’d spent the entire period trying to convince him that he was wrong. She should have known better, after having him in class all year.

“We’ve been doing plenty of bonding, trust me.”

“Eww.” If they were moving into sex territory, Lake wasn’t going to participate, because one third of his triad was Lake’sbrother,and just no. It was one thing to accidentally walk in on your two best friends getting it on because they were horndogs who couldn’t keep it in their pants—sometimes on purpose if he wanted something and they were taking too long—but it was another entirely for it to be his brother in the mix. Nope. Not a thought he was ever going anywhere near. Whatever they did behind closed doors was not his business, and he did not want to know about it.

“That’s separate from our friendship, Lake. We’ve been friends for way too fucking long for you to pull this bullshit. You’re important to me and to Felix. And to Avery, I guess, if you like your siblings. Weird, but you do you.”

“I’m telling Tyler you don’t like him,” Lake said, mentioning Zach’s older brotherandfellow soldier. Scary fellow soldier.

“His husband likes me, so I’m safe.”

Tyler, said scary fellow soldier, had married Peyton and Danny’s brother, Lucas, a sunshine firefighter, which sounded strange until the two of them were in the same room, and then it made complete sense.

“One day that won’t work for you,” Lake warned him.

“You and Felix will protect me,” Zach said cheekily. Then his face turned serious. “I don’t know why you thought you had to put distance between us, or why you thought we needed to be left alone—okay, when we’re getting naked, I get that—but we miss you, man.”

“All right, I’m sorry. Can we do Thursday night tonight?” Lake asked hopefully.

“If Tuesday is actually before Friday, and Thursday is after Monday, then what day are we actually re-doing?”

“Don’t hurt my brain like that, nerd. Go break that code on your own time,” Lake said, shoving him playfully.

Zach wrapped an arm around Lake’s shoulders and squeezed. “I’ll bring in a chart tomorrow.”

God, he probably would. Lake knew better than to give him fuel to geek out.

“Tonight?” Lake asked, pushing open the canteen door and moving into the lovely air-conditioned room.

“Sounds good to me. You can bring the food since it was your fault that we missed it.”

That was both a fair and unfair statement. Getting takeout on a Friday night was a nightmare because everyone was lazy on a Friday. Cooking would be a disaster for everyone involved even if maybe he’d gained some basic-ish skills from Grady, who refused to allow him to just sit and watch and instead forced him to actively participate in the making of all the food they ate.

“So, what have you been doing? You’re not good on your own.”

Lake fell into step beside the soldiers in line and scowled at Zach. “You don’t have to say it like that.” He shrugged, tugging on the hem of his camo jacket. “I’ve been hanging out with Grady.”

Zach smirked. “The cop that rescued you from the date from hell? Is that the same guy you spent the night with on New Year’s Eve?”

“You made that sound dirty on purpose.”