Chapter 8 Brutus
brUTUS
She stared at my smile.
Not sure why, not like it’s anything special. Lopsided. A bit scarred. Got a scar that cut right through the corner of my upper lip from bashing my head around in the cockpit after being hit with a missile during one of my deployments.
I liked it when she stared, though.
Most people stared in horror. Or fear. But Anna? She stared for another reason. Wasn’t sure what that reason was, but I knew fear and horror.
The look on her face wasn’t it.
Every time I felt her eyes on me, I peeked over at her.
She’d quickly avert her stare, and it would give me a chance to do the same.
Her hair fell into her face every once in a while, and every time she tucked it back behind her ear, it showcased the side of that tattoo she had climbing up her neck.
“What’s the tattoo?” I asked.
She snickered as she chewed and swallowed. “Vines.”
I crooked an eyebrow. “Vines?”
She nodded and reached for her drink, looking over at me. “Mhm. Vines. I’ve got them crawling around everywhere, with different flowers on them and such.”
I never noticed the beauty mark off to the side of her lips. It sat on the right side, just above the corner of her upper lip.
How did I never notice it before?
“Nice,” I said as I cleared my throat and forced myself to look back down.
There was a moment of silence before her voice filled the room again. “Do you have tattoos?”
I just shook my head.
“Why not?” she asked. “Not a fan of needles?”
I took a sip of my drink. “Not a fan of sitting for so long.”
She barked with laughter, and the sound wrapped itself around my ears and held on for dear life. It echoed off the corners of my mind, and I felt my lips ticking upward again.
Which made her stop and stare.
Again.
“You have a nice laugh,” she said.
I’d never heard her voice so sheepish before. “Not much to laugh at nowadays.”
“Ah, I can fix that.”
When she bent forward to take another bite of her food, I saw something else. She had a birthmark that ran up the length of her spine along her neck. I saw that it disappeared beneath her shirt, and I wondered how long the darkened strip of skin ran for.
My tongue tingled with a need I couldn’t put words to.
“Why flowers?” I asked.
“Hmmm?”
I looked down at my food just so I wouldn’t feel like a goddamn creep. “Why different kinds of flowers on the vine? Are they your favorites or something?”
“Or something.”
I flickered my eyes at her, but she didn’t elaborate. “How many kinds of flowers?”
She answered without hesitation. “Fourteen.”
“That’s a pretty specific number.”
She looked at me with a cheeky grin. “It’s a pretty specific question.”
There was something in her gaze that told me to stop pressing, but I didn’t want to. I mean, I wouldn’t press. If she didn’t want me to, then that was fine. I wanted to know, though.
I wanted to know what they all meant.
“I do have my favorite flower on there, though,” she said before she went back to eating. “Lilies. I’ve always loved them. They come in all sorts of colors, and they all smell amazing. I get them for myself every once in a while. Get them delivered, and all that.”
I hated the fact that she ordered flowers for herself.
Someone should order them for her.
“Have you always liked lilies?” I asked as I took another bite of food. I swallowed quickly. “Or was there something that happened that made you like them so much?”
She just shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re just…
pretty. I’ve always been drawn to them for as long as I can remember.
Back in high school when I went to prom?
King was insistent about buying my corsage.
Said that ‘no teenage boy without his dick grown in is gonna buy you what you’re worth.
’” She giggled and took a sip of her drink.
I watched her mouth carefully. “And he bought me a corsage with lilies. It was beautiful. Most beautiful thing I ever owned by far.”
“Have you and your brother always been close?”
She barked with laughter again and shot me a look. “No. There was a point growing up where we couldn’t stand each other. He always got to do shit I couldn’t because I’m the younger one, and I always made his life hell while he was gone because I was pissed I couldn’t go with him.”
“I bet your parents loved it,” I said flatly.
She giggled with delight. “It was definitely something. But we’re close now. At least, I’d like to think so.”
I used to think she talked too much. The more time I spent around her, however, the more I realized that she probably just had no one to talk to. So I stayed silent while I watched her draw in a deep breath.
She kept going.
Because the least I could do was protect her words while she wanted to say them.
“I think you should get a tattoo,” she said.
“Even if it’s just one. I think everyone should have a tattoo.
It’s a form of expression, sure, but they’re also just…
awesome. You can customize the colors. We could get you an all-black tattoo with shading, since really all you wear is black.
It could be, like, your personality or some shit. ”
The corner of my mouth twitched up. “What tattoo do you think I should get?”
“A plane, one hundred percent,” she said as she stabbed at her food. “Maybe something memorializing your service in the Air Force.”
I blinked. “Have I told you I was in the Air Force?”
She paused and stared at me for a while before her cheeks tinted a bit. “Not in so many words. But you’ve said enough that makes me feel like that’s where you served. Am I wrong?”
I searched her face for a while. “You’ve been rifling through my things.”
She took a quick bite of her food and chewed.
“Anna.”
“Hmmm?” she hummed as she swallowed.
I tilted my head. “Are you going through my things?”
I expected her to look cheeky. Or do that fake innocent thing where she batted her eyelashes at me before unleashing the stench of her pickle breath. But instead, I saw her do something I never saw her do before.
She caved in on herself a bit.
“It’s okay,” I said, my voice coming out a bit softer than I had intended. “I just—”
“Your bathroom,” she said with a sigh as she thunked her fork down against the bowl on the pillow in her lap. “I rifled through your bathroom at some point in time.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Don’t really remember when, everything sort of blurs together lately.”
I just watched her while she spoke.
“You don’t ever tell anything about yourself,” she said as her hand fell from where she pinched the bridge of her nose. “And I had to go to the bathroom anyway. So I snooped, and I found your wings. I’m really sorry, Bee.”
An apology.
For just… wanting to know more.
“You’re fine,” I said as I went back to eating.
I heard her head snap toward me. “What?”
I peeked at her, trying not to make a big deal of things. “You’re fine. What’s the issue?”
She balked. “You—you’re not mad?”
I shrugged. “Why would I be mad?”
Her eyes widened. “Because I went through your stuff!”
Now, I’d never been a smart man. Knowledge was never my thing.
I struggled through school, barely made ends meet with my grades, and somehow managed to get out of high school.
The military or some dead-end jobs were pretty much my only options growing up.
But I knew enough to know that when women snooped like that, it was because they wanted to know things about someone they couldn’t get to talk.
I didn’t like that.
That she felt she had to snoop just to know about me.
“Well, I’m not mad,” I said as I pointed to the scar cutting through my upper lip. “Wanna know how I got this one?”
She nodded quickly and cocked her body a bit to face me. “Yes, please.”
Please.
She said fucking please.
Just because I talked with her.
I made a mental note to engage her in conversation more.
Clearly, words were her currency.
“It was one of the many missions I flew with the Air Force,” I said as my hand fell away from my face. “Got clipped by a missile and my head slammed into the cockpit controls, and a piece chipped off and sliced my lip open.”
“Jesus,” she said breathlessly as she took another bite of her food, her eyes on me.
I kicked my boot up onto the edge of her bed and rolled up my pants leg. “See this scar?”
Her mouth gaped open. “The fuck!? It cuts all the way down your calf!”
“That was from horsin’ around during training,” I said with a chuckle as I rolled my pants leg down and moved my foot off her bed. “Some dumbass trainee wasn’t watching what he was doing, and I had to dodge him in order to not get swiped by a knife he was practicing with.”
“A knife? You guys wield those in the Air Force?”
I shrugged. “Everyone has their preferred weapons they train with, even in the Air Force. His particular fascination with close quarters combat made him want to seek out training with knives. But unfortunately for him, sweaty hands and knives don’t go hand in hand.”
She grimaced. “Oh God.”
“Yep,” I said with a nod. “Slipped right out of his hand, stabbed its way into my calf since I wore shorts that day, and rode the ride down until it clinked on the ground. Took damn near forty stitches to close me up.”
She whistled lowly. “That’s a fucking gash if I’ve ever heard of one.”
I thumbed over my shoulder. “Got a gnarly scar on my back as well. Another mission I ran with the Air Force. Things went off without a hitch until I got back to our encampment. And before I knew it, I tripped and stumbled, falling right back onto the embers of a fire that was put out.”
She gaped at me and clapped her hand over her mouth. “How bad is the burn scar?”
I shrugged. “Pretty much my entire back.”
Her eyes widened. “Jesus, Bee!”
I chuckled. “Yeah, I was pretty prone to accidents and shit during my time in the service. But I always had a way of bouncing back quicker than the doctors expected me to. Even Doc is sometimes floored by how quickly I heal from things. Always kinda been my thing.”
She sighed. “Well, I’m glad you’re at least okay.”
I winked at her before I knew what I was doing. “Always.”
She stared at me for a while. Just… looking.
And almost mindlessly, I watched as that little tongue of hers darted out and caught her lower lip.
She pulled it into her mouth, nibbling on it precariously as her gaze slid up and down my form.
Like she tried to catalogue every injury I’d ever had that she couldn’t see.
Her lower lip glistened as she did.
I cleared my throat and looked back down at my food, but my bowl was empty. So I reached for my drink and downed it the rest of the way. I still felt her gaze on me. Still staring, like she was drinking in her fill
I had to stop thinking about that tongue of hers.
Since when the fuck did I hyper-fixate on people like this?
Felt like some goddamn dude back in the olden days, losing his shit over some ankle.
“You finished?” I asked as I stood abruptly.
I had to get out of the room.
I was about to do shit that would get me killed by King if I didn’t.
She blinked a few times, like I startled her out of a trance. “Oh, uh… yes, actually. Here, I can—”
I jutted my hand out. “I’ll take it for you.”
“Oh. Um, thanks.”
I scooped the bowl off the pillow in her lap before reaching for her dirty glass. It didn’t take long for me to gather up everything in one hand, and then I made my way to the door.
Don’t be rude. Don’t be rude. Don’t be rude.
I turned around in the doorway. “Thanks, Anna.”
She furrowed her brow as she clutched her lap pillow to her chest. “For what?”
“Inviting me to eat with you. It was… nice.”
She studied my face before smiling softly. “I enjoyed it. You’re welcome to eat with me anytime.”
Fuck, my groin pulsed. The hell was wrong with me? “I may take you up on that.”
“I really hope you do.”
And fuck, she looked like she meant it.
I felt another smile tugging at the corner of my lips, and pretty soon, she had a smile pulled across her face as well. She looked so… girlish… with her smile. Her tattoos and crass demeanor made her almost one of the guys, but that smile.
I need to make her smile more often.
Until a blood-curdling scream erupted through the safehouse.
“AAAAAAHHHHH!”
Anna leapt out of bed, ready for action as I shoved the dirty plates into her hands.
“What the—hey! Bee!”
I rushed out of the room, pointing at her. “You stay here.”
“But, Bee—”
“I said, stay!” I barked.
I bolted at a dead sprint down the fucking hallway.