Nine #3
“Fuck off,” I say.
Collins leans in. “He’s the one from the briefing, yeah? The one with the eyebrows and the war-crime smirk?”
“Collins,” Mason groans, “you think anyone with a bone structure is flirting with you.”
“I didn’t say with me, fucking weirdo,” Collins says. “I meant in general.”
“He’s just Russian,” I say, which is apparently my new favourite non-explanation. “They all look like they’re about to either kiss you or stab you.”
“Some ladies like that,” Collins says. “Keeps things interesting.”
I stab my food harder. “You’re all deranged.”
Collins shrugs. “Joint exercises will do that to you.”
Niko appears at the end of our table a little while later, his tray in hand, and my pulse does its old familiar little jump, the one it used to do when he walked into a room. The one that meant — safe, competent, handsome idiot with the big smile and the effortless charm.
My crush feels different now. Muted, off-key. Like someone changed the instrument. “Move up,” he says, nudging Collins with his tray. “You’re in my spot.”
“I’ve never seen you sit here before, sir,” Collins says, but he moves anyway.
“I sit where the best gossip is,” Niko says, his eyes flicking to me. “Well done today, Caiden. That carry was clean.”
“Thanks,” I say, because that’s easier than thinking about what that actually did to my head.
“Are you and Ari getting along?” he asks casually, digging into his food, as if he’s asking whether I’m happy with my bunk allocation.
I nearly choke on whatever the hell this meat is. “We’re working,” I say. “He’s engaged.”
“You’ll get used to him,” he says. “He’s a pain in the ass, but good at what he does.”
“That’s... one way of putting it,” I mutter.
“What’s the other way?” Niko asks, eyes glinting.
I shake my head. “Not saying that in the mess hall, sir.”
“Ah. So there is another way.” He points his fork at me. “Just remember, he bites harder when you rise to it.”
I push food around my plate and let the conversation swirl around me.
Collins makes a joke about my accent — which earns a middle finger from me — and Mason complains about the cold.
Niko tells a story about Ari falling off a roof as a teenager and refusing to admit he was hurt until their mother threatened to throw away his cigarettes.
I listen, and I laugh in the right places.
I do all the normal things, but underneath, there’s a tautness that doesn’t ease.
Whenever someone says Ari’s name, I have to stop myself from reacting. Every time the door opens, some part of me tenses, waiting to see if he’ll walk through it. The entire time we eat, he doesn’t show, and the stupidest part is that it bothers me too.
Lights-out finds me lying on my bunk, staring at the slats above me. My body aches in a good way from the course, which should be the kind of exhaustion that knocks me into dreamless sleep.
Instead, I lie there and think about things I’ve spent years of my life trying not to think about.
Crushes that came and went in private, stuffed into the corners of my brain and ignored.
But then there was Niko with his big laugh, easy kindness, and his stupid heroic energy.
Niko, who checked on the lad’s other officers forgot, who stayed late to go through drills one more time because “you’ll sleep better if you know it’s right.
” I admired him, that slid sideways into fancying him.
Nothing was ever going to happen, of course. He has a fiancée back home, a baby on the way, and is as straight as a fucking ruler. That was fine. Crushes don’t have to go anywhere; you just let them sit and hope they don’t leak.
Then Ari showed up.
You’d think a younger brother would make that situation worse — and he did — just not in the way I expected. I hadn’t meant to notice him at all, let alone take note of every way he moved and provoked.
I definitely didn’t mean to lie awake thinking about water running down his body. I throw an arm over my eyes and exhale hard. “I don’t want him,” I whisper into my sleeve. It sounds weak even to me.
He’s arrogant, he flirts with danger, and he’s in a position that if anything happened, there would be consequences — for him and for me.
And yet, here I am, thinking about his voice in the shower, his laugh, and the way my hand caught the back of his thigh and he tensed, just for a second. He felt it too, I’m sure of it.
My stomach twists. I’m making it easy for him. Every time I blush, stammer, and avoid looking directly at him, then fail five seconds later, I’m feeding whatever game he’s playing. Part of me wants to prove him wrong, but the other part of me wants to prove him right.
I roll onto my side, tug the blanket up over my shoulder, and stare at the thin strip of light under the door.
Working with Ari is dangerous, wanting Ari is suicidal, and acting on any of it is out of the question. So, I won’t. Simple. I won’t touch him or let him see this.
I can fight this. I’ve fought worse.
I’m good at self-denial.
I joined the bloody army.