A/N: Big time jump. I'll openly admit I find the military boring as hell, so writing it is a struggle for me and may be evident in this chapter. I got much of my information about the Rangers from the Danger Ranger Youtube channel.

August 26, 2008

I never liked to admit it due to the risk of sounding immature, but jumping out of planes was my favorite part of being a Ranger. There was nothing like the adrenaline rush of falling out of the sky towards the ground and praying that your parachute opened. I preferred HALO jumps—high altitude, low opening to the others, but I had to do whatever was called for in the situation. HAHO (high altitude, high opening) jumps allowed us to leave the plane miles away from our target, which kept the plane was being the target of anti-aircraft missiles and allowed a more covert entrance. We would frequently travel twenty to thirty miles before landing, guided by GPS to our destination. Flying with just some nylon keeping you from certain death for half an hour or more wasn't exactly the most fun you could have. I preferred the HALO jumps because we stayed in freefall until we were usually less than a thousand feet from the ground. This allowed us to get to our destination quicker, and there was no adrenaline rush like free-falling at 120 mph. You never got up to that speed on a low altitude jump.

Tonight, we were jumping from an altitude of 30,000 feet into a remote village to infiltrate a house where a high-ranking Taliban member had been hiding. Looking around at the five other men in the plane with me, we looked like some sort of monsters from a children's book. Goggles covered our eyes, an oxygen mask over our mouth and nose, protective clothing kept us from freezing to death, and we were loaded down with our weapons and supplies. We would be in freefall until we opened our parachutes a few hundred feet from the ground. There was a helicopter on standby ready to take us and the Taliban guy to wherever the CIA was interrogating him. The man was so arrogant in his assumption that he wouldn't be found that we'd only have two guards to kill and would drag the incapacitated terrorist to the helicopter within minutes of arriving at the house. We spent five times as long getting ready for the attack than it took to complete.

Even with our advanced communication systems, trying to hear each other over the loud plane and rushing wind was nearly impossible. We mostly communicated through hand signals until we got out of freefall. After everyone tripled checked each other's gear and straps, we gave them thumbs up and lined up for our jumps. The jumpmaster in the back of the plane consulted the pilots one more time before giving us the countdown signs. Once he hit zero, we started pouring out of the open hatch. I was the second to last to jump and watched as the four men ahead of me disappeared into the dark. I leapt out of the plane and worked to find my bearings as I fell towards the earth. The icy wind howled around me as I plummeted in freefall. I would stay in freefall for almost two minutes before finally opening my parachute. This allowed us to get into the village quickly without being seen. The last thing we wanted was to be shot out of the sky.

"I thought Tom-Tom was a goner there for a minute," Alejandro Estes said once we were all together on the ground a few minutes later. "What happened with your chute?"

PFC Thomas Thompson, who hated being called Tom-Tom, gave Estes the finger. "There was nothing wrong with my chute. You're imagining things."

"No, I saw it too," Sergeant Brice Humphrey chimed in. "What the hell happened? I couldn't see much just the one side started jerking around and I thought it was giving out on you."

It was hard to see Thompson's expression in the dark under our gear, but I knew from his body language he was pissed.

"My hand slipped, okay?" he replied defensively. "It slipped and got tangled in the cords. I fixed it, didn't I? I'm not a splotch on the ground."

I kept my thoughts to myself and focused on getting out of my parachute rigging and prepping for the next stage. Thompson surprised me and not in a good way. How he became a Ranger amazed me. He was forgetful, clumsy, and an overall idiot. Unfortunately for the rest of us, these forgetful/clumsy/idiotic episodes seemed to only happen when we were in the field and not under the scrutiny of more superior officers. Humphrey was our Sergeant and in charge of the team. He had reported Thompson's ineptitude more than once, but it fell on deaf ears. Unfortunately, Thompson's incompetence would come to the surface next year, but at the expense of another member of our team, Specialist Noah Abel. I would do my best to save Abel's life this time around while making sure Thompson was seen for what he was. Abel's death had been what led to our team being changed. It was what led me to pursue a change from the 1st Battalion to the RSTB, where I would be placed in my black ops team. I still planned to follow that career path, but hopefully wouldn't be doing so after the death of a colleague.

"Don't let your hand slip on your trigger," Abel said as he got his own weapon prepared. "We're supposed to be shooting bad guys, not each other."

I thought I heard Thompson mutter under his breath, but not loud enough for anyone else to hear. Abel outranked him and even though we weren't as formal in the field, he still wouldn't be allowed to show blatant disrespect without getting his ass handed to him when the mission was over.

We checked on our coordinates and confirmed our plan one last time. We had a two-mile walk to the large house where Salam Khalil was sleeping beside his third wife. Wife number one was back in Kabul with four children. Wife number two was on the opposite side of the village with two children and pregnant with a third. Wife number three was only sixteen and had been married to Khalil a month earlier.

We crept around the perimeter of the dark village to the house where Khalil and his third wife were staying. It belonged to a friend of the girl's father, which Khalil assumed would not be connected to him. Two young Afghan men were guarding the property, which was enclosed by a six-foot cement wall topped with barbed wire. We split up and came at the men from both sides. I was leading one group and Corporal Lucas Lombardi was leading the other. We were the best shooters and were most likely to hit the guards with the fewest shots. It only took me one shot to subdue the guard closest to me. Lombardi got his man in two. We rushed through to the gate, which was easily accessed because of the rusty lock that broke under the right amount of force. Khalil and his wife were on the second floor in a large bedroom at the back of the house. Khalil had almost gotten away from us in my last life because he had slipped down a secret staircase in the house. Estes had only caught him because he had been looking out the window and saw Khalil making a run for the gate. Estes had shot out the window and hit Khalil in the lower back, which ultimately paralyzed him. He would die a few weeks later, after several attempts at interrogation that had produced little result. Khalil hadn't been a threat any longer, but the information he could have provided us would have been more helpful had he lived. Had Estes not shot him, he would have escaped, and our mission would have failed. This time I wanted to make sure Khalil stayed alive. I wanted the CIA to get information out of him that would help save lives in the future.

I swept the main living area in a wider path than I had the last time, giving me a couple of extra seconds to linger downstairs. The group headed for the stairs once we had cleared the first floor, and I hung back so I was the last in the line. I went up three steps before stopping and listened for sounds on the ground floor. I heard the girl scream as Abel and Humphrey entered the bedroom.

"I think I heard something downstairs," I whispered into my comms. "I'm going to check it out."

"I'm coming," Lombardi replied, and I saw his dark figure start down the stairs. I had him wait and pointed toward the kitchen. The secret staircase was hidden inside a closet, and I listened for the sound of the wall sliding away. I motioned for Lombardi to follow me, and we ambushed Khalil as he made it out of the closet and towards the front door. Khalil was forty-six and around five-seven. Not an imposing guy by any definition. He was so startled by us he dropped his weapon and tripped over it as he tried to run towards the backdoor. We had him pinned on the floor and his hands secured behind his back before he knew what hit him.

"Target secured," I told the team. Estes, Humphrey, Abel, and Thompson joined us in the kitchen a minute later.

"House is clear except for the wife," Estes said.

Humphrey examined the closet, where a panel in the back had opened to reveal the hidden staircase. He shook his head in disgust, and I knew he would rant about the captured Taliban fighter who had told us about the layout of the house, convinced the man was trying to help Khalil get away. He was unwilling to consider the possibility the informant was unaware of the staircase. We waited inside the house while Humphrey called for the helicopter. Estes, Abel, and Lombardi went out to secure the perimeter of the house and clear our path to the chopper while Humphrey and Thompson searched for anything of importance, and I guarded Khalil. We got the call that the helicopter was two minutes out and we walked Khalil out. The helicopter could land almost directly behind the house and we were out of the area within ten minutes of the capture.

"That dumb fucker!" Humphrey complained once Khalil had been taken off our hands. "That fucking terrorist almost helped him get away! Son of a bitch. If you hadn't heard him, Manoso, we might have lost him, and the entire mission would have been a bust."

I leaned back in my seat and listened to his ongoing rants. Lombardi and Abel tried to get him to consider other options, but Estes and I made eye contact and kept our mouths shut. Thompson didn't care enough to take part in the debate. Humphrey's rant lasted the entire trip back to the forward operating base where we were staying. A week earlier it had come under attack from Taliban fighters who tried to gain access during a two-day period of car bombs, shooting, and suicide bombers. The Afghan soldiers who served as security had done an amazing job at containing the situation and prevented it from being worse.

One of the fighters had been taken in for interrogation. After what was likely an intense torture session at the hands of the CIA, we had learned that Khalil had set up the plan to attack the FOB. He had told us where to find Khalil, who had been laying low for the last few weeks, and our team had been tasked with bringing him in with forty-eight hours planning. I could sympathize with Humphrey's frustrations—the attack could have been significantly worse, but I also knew that it didn't matter now what the informant had told us. We had Khalil in custody. Mission complete.

We climbed out of the helicopter, unloaded our gear, did our debriefings, and headed back to our rooms by 0925. We operated on a reverse schedule, meaning we were awake at night for missions and got our sleep in during the day.

Estes and I were sharing a room, which worked well because neither of us could go to sleep directly after a mission. We didn't talk as we took to our respective sides of the room. Estes was working on a degree in political science and took advantage of the downtime during deployment to get through his classes. The ironic part of deployment for Rangers was that it was actually easier than being stateside. When we were home, we operated on a grueling three-week cycle comprising a prep week, a training week, and a recovery week. We had to work out during deployment and we had tasks planning and preparing for our missions, but beyond that we had it pretty easy. As Rangers we weren't required to do a lot of the grunt work other soldiers did unless we just fucked up and were being taught a lesson.

I usually spent my downtime working out, emailing or calling my family, or working on my plans for my business. But today was different. I laid in bed and stared at my watch as time ticked by. When the time on my watched finally reached 1345, I closed my eyes and thought about Julie. It was 5:15 in Miami, which was when Julie would have been born if she had been conceived. Julie Elizabeth Martine would never exist in this timeline because I had made the conscious decision to not befriend Kevin Hutchins during my Ranger training, thus ending any possibility of meeting Rachel. It was the right thing to do, but I still sent an apology to Julie. She still existed in another universe, where she was turning twenty today. I hoped she knew I loved her, even if I hadn't been a big part of her life.

I fell asleep once I made my peace with Julie's nonexistence and woke up to the alarm I'd set for 1800. We didn't have a mission that night, but we still tried to keep the same schedule. I would grab dinner, work out, check my email, and do some reading. Wi-fi was available, but it wasn't great and it was expensive at faster tiers. Most of the men took laptops to the communications building where we could plug into the network and use the internet at a speed that was still slow, but fast enough to keep you from hurling your computer out a window and wouldn't constantly kick you off and reconnect. I opened my email and found several from my family. Mariana and my mother both made it a point to email me daily, even if I couldn't respond right away. My siblings usually emailed every week or two, and often sent pictures of their children or pets. In my last life, there had been an email from Rachel's mother telling me that Julie had been born at 5:15 AM weighing seven pounds ten ounces, had been twenty inches long, and that both she and Rachel were doing well. I had forwarded the news and attached photo onto my family and spent the rest of the day coming to terms with the fact that I had a daughter.

I was so distracted by Jeanine Hutchins' missing email that I almost missed the fact that there was an email in my inbox that hadn't been there the last time. It was from Julio, and it said it had come in at 1345 local time. What did it mean that my best friend had reached out for the first time in almost four years at the exact moment Julie would have been born?

You can't find out if you don't open the damn email, I told myself. I clicked on it and held my breath as the words filled my screen.

Carlos,

I've been trying to write this damn email for a while now and decided today I needed to quit being a pussy and just do it. I know I said I couldn't handle being around you after everything that happened, but I've gotten past it. I can accept things for what they are. I miss my best friend too much.

I heard you got into the Rangers, you fucking show-off. Good for you. Don't do any stupid macho shit and get yourself killed. And don't forget us losers who just serve in the regular old Army. I'm in Iraq right now and Mariana said you're deployed too, so maybe once we're both back stateside, we can talk. My number is the same, that is if you haven't had to get rid of it to make room in your brain for all the Ranger shit like jumping out of planes or killing a guy with a plastic spoon. I still remember yours just in case.

Julio

I had to read the email three times before I could believe it wasn't in my imagination. Julio had finally reached out to Mariana and Eduardo again about six months after he joined the Army. He told them he had put off being in contact with anyone because he didn't want to get homesick while he was adjusting to military life. It had been a relief to know he was talking to them again. I had missed Julio more than anyone else in my life except for Stephanie after she died. I knew his absence had weighed on me but didn't realize just how much until now. The pressure in my chest that I had lived with and grown used to feeling was gone. The return of Julio also eased the ache of Julie's absence in my life. I knew there was more he probably wanted to say but couldn't put it in writing. The Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was in place for another three years, so no one could know about the relationship we once had. It was absolute bullshit and while plenty of soldiers were gay and no one reported it because we were decent people, there were plenty of assholes who did.

I read Julio's email about twelve times before I finally found the words to reply.

Julio,

I'm glad to hear from you. I have some things I need to tell you about, but that's a face-to-face conversation. We'll figure out a time to have it. I still remember your number. I keep it in my brain between how to tie my shoes and how to kill a man with a dirty look. Mariana told me you changed your MOS to physical therapy (68F?). I'm sure you're as good at it as any loser in the regular old Army can be at anything. The next time I fuck up my knee or shoulder doing macho shit, I'll call you. Keep in touch. I'll write when I can in my spare time between jumping out of planes and kicking in doors.

I've missed you too.

Carlos

Hearing from Julio had been a boost I hadn't realized I needed. I analyzed his email over the next few days as we completed two more missions. He hadn't said he was over me. He couldn't have said it directly, but even the implications had said he wasn't over me. He said he could accept things for what they are. That told me he still had feelings for me but accepted that I didn't reciprocate them and wanted to be friends again. It was a relief to be friends again, but for some reason my grandmother's words kept popping into my head whenever I thought about him.

I believe you believe you aren't in love with him. But what you believe to be true and what is true might not be the same thing.

I had thought a lot about her words in the last four years. Was I in love with him, or at least, had I been at one time? I spent an inordinate amount of the next few weeks revisiting my past life. I thought back to high school and when we first met.

It had been the second day of school and Julio hadn't known anyone there. His cousins were all either significantly older or younger, so he hadn't been as lucky as me to have built-in friends at school. Eduardo had met Julio in math class and brought him to sit at our table at lunch. Mariana had a different lunch period that year and she hadn't started to date Paolo yet, so it had just been the three of us boys at the table. Eduardo had started conversation about how we'd both just moved to Miami. Julio had smiled at me, and my stomach did an uncomfortable flip. I hadn't felt that way since I'd had a crush on Tiffany Vina in sixth grade. I hadn't understood why I felt that way about Julio, but it was something I had absolutely wanted to ignore. The feeling continued most of freshman year any time I saw him or knew I would see him. My fifteen-year-old self had chalked it up to being excited to have a real friend that wasn't a relative and to the reckless activities we engaged in that year. The flips had eventually gone away, and I hadn't thought about them again. Dreams about being with him had started a couple of months before we had sex for the first time. And as much as I tried to forget them, there had been many times over the next twenty years when I had fantasized about being with him again. I noticed it happened more during times of stress or when I hadn't been intimate with anyone for a while. There had been a noticeable uptick in his appearance in my masturbatory fantasies after his confession at his wedding, but I had dismissed it as just me processing his confession and had thrown my emotions back into my relationship with Stephanie.

Attempts at moving away from those images in the last four years had failed. I tried to keep Stephanie in mind as I stroked myself, but often times my mind drifted to Julio, and I came thinking of him. He had been front and center in my fantasies more often than Stephanie in the past year, and it had led to me spending a significant amount of time in my room when Estes wasn't around.

Julio and I continued to email each other multiple times a week over the remaining few months, catching up on each other's lives and discussing military life in general. His deployment in Iraq was over in mid- September and my own would come to an end two weeks later. We each had leave after returning stateside, which thankfully had a two-day overlap in Miami. Mariana was planning to have everyone to her house one of those days, which left one more day for us to spend together before he had to go back to Fort Bliss in Texas. During this leave in my last life, I had seen Julie in person for the first time. I was glad to have Julio to focus on this time. I struggled with feelings of guilt about her nonexistence, but reminded myself that it wasn't a productive feeling and I needed to focus on what was, not what had been.

I had known after reading Julio's first email that I needed to tell him everything. His life trajectory had been greatly impacted by my trip back in time and I owed him the truth. I hoped it would help him understand why I had ended our relationship. Deep down I worried that it might make things worse. I had a pattern of believing I knew what was right, only to have it blow up in my face. Grandma told me that no matter how good my intentions might be, I couldn't control everything. This was a risk, and I was hoping it paid off.

October 12, 2008

I woke up in my old bedroom in Miami that morning thinking about Stephanie. It was her twenty-third birthday today, which was also the day she would get engaged to Dickie Orr. The unoriginal asshole had proposed to her on her birthday in the middle of a crowded restaurant. Even without her telling me, I knew Stephanie would have hated every aspect of it. He had combined her birthday and engagement into one event, saying her one-carat diamond engagement ring was her birthday present. Despite her frequent presence in the limelight, Stephanie preferred to not be the center of attention. She wouldn't have wanted to be proposed to even in front of her own family, let alone a bunch of strangers. She said they had fought about it later that evening when she had expressed her discomfort over the situation, and that it should have been her sign to bail. I had considered whether I should try to intervene in the situation, but knew it was one of those circumstances that I had to let play out. Stephanie's marriage from beginning to end had been a transformative moment in her life. If she wasn't allowed to experience that, she wouldn't grow to become the person she would be when we saw each other again in 2016.

Thoughts of Stephanie were pushed aside by the knowledge that I would get to see Julio again for the first time in four years. We hadn't bothered trying to talk on the phone since we knew we'd be seeing each other in person soon enough, so the last communication had been a quick email exchange confirming I was stateside again and that I'd see him on the twelfth at my grandmother's. She was as excited to see him as I was.

"I've missed Julio so much," Grandma said as she looked in the oven at what would be our lunch. "And you, of course."

I snorted and kissed my grandmother on top of the head. "It's okay, Grandma. You can admit you like Julio more than me."

She swatted me with a spatula and shooed me out of her kitchen. "He'll be here any minute. You need to go put on some cologne and a different shirt."

I was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt. "What's wrong with what I'm wearing?"

"Put in some more effort. You haven't seen him in four years."

"He isn't coming here for fashion advice. We're just hanging out and catching up."

Grandma made a vague gesture at me while she stirred something on the stove. "You can still look nice for him."

I took a beat to consider the situation. "It isn't a date, Grandma. We're just friends."

She gave me a disbelieving look. "Carlos, do you really think you'll be able to go back to the way things used to be after what you had with him?"

"Yes. He said he can accept things for what they are. It'll be fine."

"I wasn't talking about Julio," she said.

A knock at the door announced Julio's arrival and interrupted any reply I had for her. It was probably best to let the conversation drop anyway.

My heart rate picked up as I walked through the house. I was excited to see my best friend after so long. That was all.

Julio was standing on the stoop wearing a tight blue t-shirt and jeans. His hair was buzzed short and he was heavier and more muscular than I had ever seen him in any lifetime. The smile he gave me sent a jolt through my system.

He didn't say anything as he hugged me. I wrapped my arms around him and breathed in his scent, which was combined with some cologne that smelled amazing.

"I've missed you," I said, my mouth against his ear.

"Me too," he said, finally pulling away. There was a moment where we stood looking at each other and it felt like it could get awkward, but thankfully my grandmother had come out of the kitchen to fuss over him.

I stood back and watched as she hugged him, told him how handsome he was, informed him of all his favorite foods that she had made for the day, and asked him about his life. He told us about his career path in the Army. He had gone down the supply of medical logistics while waiting to get into the physical therapy program. His first station had been in Fort Leavenworth where he had worked in medical supply until his spot opened up in the PT program. He spent almost a year in Fort Sam Houston before getting a change of station to Fort Lewis in Washington to start in his new role. His deployment to Iraq had been his first overseas deployment and he informed us that he had signed another four-year contract which would keep him enlisted until 2012.

"I still can't believe you joined the Army," I commented as we sat in the backyard. "I didn't see that one coming."

Julio gave a sheepish smile and rubbed the back of his neck. "It was a pretty impulsive choice, but I'm glad I did it. It's been real good for me."

I watched Julio as the conversation turned away from the military to his family. He had been right that the military had been good for him. There was a confidence in him that I hadn't seen before, maybe not even in his late thirties. What surprised me most was how calm he seemed to be. Even when Julio had been happy, there had always been an air about him that reminded you there was something heavy brewing beneath the surface. Now he struck me as a man who had managed to find genuine contentment in life. I had no doubt he could still get angry and had plenty of baggage left to sort through, but it no longer controlled him. It helped to alleviate some of my worries that this change in his life path might backfire.

"I need to check on our lunch," Grandma said as she stood. "I thought we could have wine with lunch since we are just staying here today. What kind do you like Julio?"

"You pick whatever you want," Julio replied. "I don't drink anymore."

"Oh, I didn't realize," she said, clearly as surprised by the news as I was.

Julio looked slightly embarrassed and rubbed his index finger over his top lip. "Yeah, I, uh, had some issues with alcohol. I've been sober for two years, one month, and twelve days."

"I'm proud of you," Grandma said after a beat of shocked silence on my end. "That's quite an accomplishment. We'll just have water with lunch."

"How bad was it?" I asked once Grandma was back in the house.

"When I wasn't on duty, I was black-out drunk. I don't know how many times my buddies were dragging my ass out of parties. It almost cost me my position in the PT program. My sergeant recognized the signs and sat me down. He had gone through it and had barely avoided trouble. He didn't want me to end up there. He kept me accountable and got me help. I owe him a lot. He could have easily gotten me kicked out of the program before sending me off to an Article 15 hearing. The only thing he asked of me was to help out someone else in my position if I ever can."

"Damn," I said. "I'm glad he was looking out for you." I debated whether to ask my next question, but figured if he didn't want to answer, he would simply say so. "Why were you drinking so much?"

Julio held my gaze for a minute before answering. "It wasn't you."

I glanced back at the house to see if my grandmother was close to returning. "I'll admit I was worried about you when I heard you joined the Army. I hoped you were in the right headspace for it."

"You thought I might have joined so I could get myself killed?" Julio asked.

"Maybe not intentionally, but either through carelessness or lack of a will to live," I admitted. "I kept thinking about that day senior year."

Julio closed his eyes and grimaced. "Yeah, I'm sorry about that. My therapist told me I'd manipulated you into being with me, even though I hadn't meant to. I didn't know I was doing it back then."

My eyebrows shot up before I could stop them. "What are you talking about? You didn't manipulate me into being with you."

"I was going to kill myself because I'd lost you. I didn't because you came over and stopped me and said you'd be with me."

"Yeah, but you didn't know I would be coming over," I reminded him. "I only put it together when Jasmine came by to talk to Mariana."

"But you ended up being with me so I wouldn't do it," he said. "It was a shitty thing to do to you."

I stared at him in disbelief for what felt like an eternity. "Julio, I never felt manipulated into being with you. Did I stop to consider whether things would hurt you enough to send you back to that place again? Yes, but I didn't feel manipulated. Just worried about you."

Relief flooded Julio's face. "Really?" he asked.

"Really."

I considered the best way to tell Julio about my second chance at life while we ate lunch. I had debated having Grandma there to back me up since I would be sounding like a lunatic but didn't want to expose her own history if she wasn't comfortable with it and there may be discussions that we would avoid if she was around.

"I'm going to tell him about coming back," I told Grandma quietly as I helped her clean up from lunch. "Any advice for helping him believe me?"

"He'll believe you because he knows you," Grandma reassured me. "He knows you would never make up something like this."

Once the kitchen was cleared, Grandma told us she needed to go into the bakery for a while but would see us later. I was grateful for the space to do this without worrying if she was nearby and might overhear something uncomfortable.

"Do you remember me telling you in that first email that I had some stuff to tell you, but it needed to be in person?" I asked once we were alone. Julio was slouched on one end of the couch and I took the other.

"Yeah, I remember. You finally gonna tell me?"

I nodded and leaned forward to rest my elbows on my legs. "It's going to sound insane, but I promise you I'm not crazy and I'm not making it up."

Julio rolled his eyes. "I know you aren't crazy. Just tell me."

I spent the next twenty minutes telling him everything. He didn't try to interrupt, but I could tell what surprised him most by his reactions. I watched him carefully for any signs that he started to think I'd lost my mind and was about to call for a straight jacket. He held onto every word and would stare off into the distance when something was particularly surprising.

"Holy shit," he said once I'd finished telling him everything. He rubbed his hands over his face and shook his head in disbelief. "I don't know what to say. I mean, some of it makes sense. You were so different after Christmas break senior year we all wondered what had happened. Of course, none of us would have thought of something like that."

"So you believe me?"

"Of course. I told you I would."

Relief washed over me at his words. Even though I'd been pretty sure he believed me, hearing him say it still took a weight off me. I patted him on the shoulder.

"Thanks," I said. "I'm sorry for changing your life so much."

"Are you kidding? This is a lot better than whatever shit you just told me about," Julio said, leaning back against the couch. "Marrying Jasmine? Fuck that."

"You two seemed happy," I told him. "Even if you had feelings for me."

Julio shuddered. "No way. I'm glad that won't be happening." He stopped to consider a thought and I saw a flash of pain cross his face.

"So what will happen with Stephanie?" he asked, his tone and expression unusually neutral.

"I won't meet her again until 2016. I'll be working for her cousin and she'll start working there too," I said. "I think it'll stay that way. The only thing that should be different is she will know me from the past."

Julio nodded and fidgeted with a nonexistent speck of something on his jeans. "Yeah, yeah. I'm glad you get to have another chance with her."

Clearly the biggest lie he'd ever told me. I wanted to say something in response, but couldn't figure out what to say.

"I guess we'll have to use you to win Super Bowl bets," Julio joked. "Who wins next year?"

"The Steelers. It was a close game."

Julio clapped me on the shoulder. "Thanks. I'll give you ten percent of my earnings."

We spent the next few hours talking more about my previous life. I told him about Rangeman and some of the guys who had worked for me. He nearly pissed himself laughing at some of the stories I shared from Stephanie's disasters in bounty hunting. Being there with him was the most relaxed I'd felt in years. It hadn't escaped my notice that the longer we were talking, the closer we'd gotten on the couch. After three hours, we were close enough to kiss. And God was I tempted.

"I promised my dad I'd be back for dinner. He wants me to meet his new girlfriend," Julio said once five-thirty rolled around. "Like she'll stick around any longer than the last dozen."

I walked him to the door. "What time are you coming to Mariana's tomorrow?"

"As soon as the doors open," he replied. "She said be there by ten."

"I have to be there by nine," I said with a scowl. "She must be giving me a job to do."

He reached out to hug me again and we held each other far longer than socially acceptable for just friends. I had my face turned into his cheek, where his stubble prickled against my own. We pulled away, but still held onto each other. We maintained eye contact, clearly both of us considering our next words. My mouth was dry and I could feel the beginnings of an erection. Grandma had been right. It would be difficult for me to go back to being just friends.

Julio finally stepped back and I tried not to sigh. Relief and disappointment washed over me simultaneously. I'd wanted nothing more than to take him upstairs but was glad he'd had the strength to pull away.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he said softly. He gave a wave goodbye and left the house, where I stood motionless in the entryway for several minutes.

Who was I kidding? I was in love with him.