Page 17 of Long Shot

He shrugs and sets the bottle on the desk. He grabs three glasses, which I note just as Marco arrives. “Workday is done. Time for some fun. We haven’t had one of our adventure outings for a while.”

“That’s because you two are all married off and busy being whipped.”

Beck shakes his head, pouring shots into the glasses, making chiding noises. “That sounds sadly like sour grapes, dude.”

“It does,” Marco agrees, reaching for a glass.

“Fuck off.” I pick up a glass, too, and sniff then sip the tequila. “Ah.”

“So where should we go?” Beck asks. “Go-kart racing? We haven’t been for a while.”

“Sure.” I shrug. “I like racing. As long as it’s not a trampoline park, I’m good with pretty much anything.”

Beck and Marco exchange a glance. “The trampoline park was fun. You were only interested in picking up chicks, though.”

I roll my eyes. “Okay, it was fun, but kinda tame.”

“Rock-climbing?”

“Hey, I know . . . base-jumping!”

I grimace. “Yeah, maybe not. I like an adrenaline rush as much as you guys, but that’s a bit much.”

Beck sits back and lifts his feet to the desk, crossing them at the ankles. “How about mountain-biking?”

The air in the room goes flat. I narrow my eyes at my two buddies. “Assholes.”

“Come on, man. You have to get back in the saddle. So to speak.”

I hate thinking about the bike accident I had months ago.

“Do we need to lecture you about facing your fears?” Marco asks. “Didn’t you just tell each of us off about that recently?”

“That was about women.” I lift a shoulder. “You were both being pussies.”

“And you’re not?”

I want to deny it, but it’s probably true.

“Speaking of pussy, who was that woman who came in?” Marco asks.

“Carlotta.” I wave a hand. “One night, I told her.”

“You gotta stop this,” Beck says. “It’s getting out of hand.” He gives Cade a long, stern look. “No more women. And you’re getting back on a bike.”

I examine my fingernails. “Can’t. I have PTSD.”

Beck snorts.

“Fuck that.” Marco leans forward with an ominous expression on his face. “You can make a joke about that after the things we’ve seen? The teammates we’ve seen affected by that? Jesus Christ.”

Shame rolls through me. It’s true. We’ve all been impacted by our experiences, and we all have different ways of handling it. Some of us got through it okay, and some of us . . . didn’t. I can name more than a handful of men whose lives were changed by PTSD, and a couple whose lives were tragically ended because of it.

I bend my head and rub the back of my neck. “You’re right. I’m an asshole. Sorry.”

Marco sighs. “Look, I’m not making light of what happened. But you know as well as I do what PTSD is like. Not that you have that.” Then his gaze sharpens. “Or do you?”

I stare at him.

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