“The six of you?” Zane asked.
Ty grinned and nodded. “We had two days. And we all thought we were going to die on our next deployment, so we went all out.”
“I remember that,” Deuce said. “You told Ma and Dad you were going through extra training or some shit.”
“Yeah, and if you tell them different, I’ll ruin your wedding.”
“Hey!” Livi cried.
Ty shrugged, completely unapologetic. “Nick went on this craps run. I’ve never seen anything like it. Just roll after roll of winners. He won over five hundred thousand dollars in like three hours.”
“At craps?” Zane asked, impressed.
Nick nodded and took a long drink. “Pure luck, no skill.”
“Casino security frisked him three times looking for loaded dice,” Kelly added.
“The next morning we all woke up in the honeymoon suite with six women we didn’t remember meeting,” Nick said. “Heart-shaped bed, champagne, confetti everywhere. Digger was wearing this powder-blue tux with tails, and Johns had nothing on but a cummerbund and a fuzzy tiara that said ‘bride’ on it.”
Ty began to giggle uncontrollably. “It was instant mass panic.”
Nick tried to add something, but he was laughing too hard to speak. Zane was shaking beside Ty, and Ty could barely breathe as he remembered the scene of that morning. Each man had been trained to deal with life-or-death situations; they were all cool as could be when on the battlefield. But faced with the prospect of one of them having married someone the night before, they had all panicked like a bunch of new recruits tossed into a hot zone.
Ty and Nick were both laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe. Kelly had to continue the story for them. “We started checking our fingers for rings. It was like the scariest game of drawing straws ever.”
“And I had this beautiful engraved gold ring on my finger,” Nick said bitterly. He held up his hand to look at his ring finger as if the memory lingered with him. Knowing his fear of commitment like Ty did, he could imagine Nick literally having nightmares about that morning.
“He started cussing and kicking things,” Kelly wheezed. “I mean, just months before this, he’d helped me salvage all my shit from my crazy ex-wife, so it was doubly traumatic for him.”
“Hey,” Nick grunted. “Marriage is just a word for some people, but for others it’s a fucking sentence, okay?”
Zane was holding his side. “Oh my God, marriage puns! Oh my God . . .”
Nick was trying not to grin, but he finally couldn’t help himself. “Once we established I was the victim, then we had to find a girl with a ring on her finger to figure out which one I’d fucking married.”
Ty leaned against Zane’s arm, laughing so hard he could no longer sit up straight. “The look on his face!”
“He made a marriage pun,” Zane gasped.
“So we’re mostly sober,” Nick continued, getting more agitated the harder the others laughed at him. “And I tell the girl, look, we need to get this thing annulled fast. Clock’s ticking.” He tapped his watch. “And the chick said no!”
Ty and Kelly both howled, and Nick glanced at each of them with renewed indignation.
“She wouldn’t give you an annulment?” Livi asked.
“No! She refused, said she liked soldiers. I told her we were Marines, and she said, ‘Same thing!’”
Ty snorted. “We had to hold Digger back.”
“Never call a Marine a soldier,” Kelly said seriously.
“Then she fucking asked me what her new last name was.”
“So wait, did you have to get a divorce?” Zane asked.
“No, I gave her half of what was left of my winnings from the night before, and carried her ass down to the courthouse to sign the annulment.”
“You paid a woman not to be married to you?” Deuce asked.
Nick nodded solemnly. “Worth every penny.” He raised his champagne glass to Livi. “No offense.”
She giggled and shook her head.
Zane hid his face behind his hand as Ty finally wound down from his fit. “How much did freedom end up costing you?” Zane asked.
Nick threw back the rest of his champagne. “Close to fifty thousand dollars.”
The rest of them howled with laughter, but Deuce was shaking his head. “Wow,” he finally said. “Those are some impressive commitment issues you have going.”
“Please.”
“We’ll talk,” Deuce promised.
The blunt was gone and the night was growing colder. Deuce wrapped his coat around Livi’s shoulders, and they both stood. Livi slid her arm around Deuce’s waist as they said their good-nights and headed inside. He leaned on her, his arm around her. Ty smiled at them. They made a good pair, and his brother was happy. That was all that mattered to him.