Chapter 10 #2
“I thought you might like to drive down to Austin to see Holman.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” Brain asked.
“Why would you want to go see him? Don’t think I don’t know you aren’t my team’s biggest fan,” Aspen said.
“I’m not. But you told me in an email that you were worried about him. And as his medic, I know you’re probably dying to see for yourself that he’s okay. I can put aside my differences if it means giving you what you want.”
Aspen looked down at him for so long, Brain began to worry he’d said something wrong.
“Thank you,” she said after a long moment. “I’d love to see how he’s doing. But don’t you have to work tomorrow?”
“Nope. We always get a few days off after a mission.”
Her eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Really. Why does that amuse you so much?”
“I was just thinking about how much Trigger and Lefty must love that…not to mention their girlfriends.”
Brain laughed. He finally stood and held out a hand to Aspen. “They do love it. It’s obnoxious, if you want to know the truth.”
“You wouldn’t think that if you were the one getting some,” Aspen told him with a laugh.
“True,” Brain said, gripping her hand and pulling her upright.
But he didn’t stop there. He yanked her right into his body, wrapping an arm around her waist until they were plastered together from hips to chest. He knew she could probably feel his erection against her, but she didn’t pull away. She simply wrapped her arms around his shoulders and smiled.
“I’d love to spend the next few days with you…after you get home from work, of course. I feel as if in some ways, I know you really well, but in others, I don’t know you at all. I’d like to remedy that.”
“I’d love to,” Aspen agreed.
“Good.” Brain moved his hands to her waist and couldn’t help but slip his thumbs under her shirt to caress the bare skin there.
“Things in Afghanistan went well?” she asked.
Brain opened his mouth to instantly say he couldn’t talk about his mission, but then realized that Aspen knew exactly where he’d been, and why.
There would be times in the future when he couldn’t discuss his assignments with her, but he felt more relieved than he knew how to put into words that he could talk about Akhund.
“We got him,” he told her.
“Good,” she said firmly. “It didn’t take too long, if you’re already back home.”
“Took longer than any of us wanted, but because of Spence’s amateur actions, Akhund went to ground. It took a bit of sleuthing to figure out what rock he was hiding under.”
“By sleuthing, I’m assuming you mean using your super language powers to eavesdrop,” Aspen said with a smile.
Brain wanted nothing more than to lift her shirt over her head, throw her down on the couch and show her without words how much he loved her teasing, but instead, he sat on the couch and pulled her down with him.
He settled into the corner of the surprisingly comfortable sofa, and she immediately curled up next to him.
Brain put his arm around her shoulders and sighed in contentment when her own arm wrapped around his stomach, her knees resting on his thigh.
He’d never been a cuddler, but he decided right then and there he could definitely be one with her.
“Something like that,” he admitted. “Anyway, he’d barricaded himself in a house and had surrounded himself with as many women and children as he could find. Bastard knew we wouldn’t kill innocent civilians if we could help it.”
“What about the men who were shooting at us?” Aspen asked.
“They weren’t an issue,” Brain told her, not going into detail about how they’d hunted down those men and made sure they couldn’t hurt anyone else ever again.
“Right. How’d you get to Akhund?”
“With a loud speaker.”
Aspen raised an eyebrow in question.
Brain shrugged. “I used it to tell the people in the house, in Pashto, that if they surrendered, they wouldn’t be hurt. That they could take their children and go.”
“And just like that, they came out?” Aspen asked in disbelief.
“Not exactly. It took two days, but eventually, little by little, they came out. Akhund wasn’t happy.
I heard him screaming at the people in the house, threatening them, but for some reason, he didn’t strike back at his people when the first woman left.
That gave the others the courage to exit the house themselves.
Then it was just a matter of going in and ordering Akhund to surrender. ”
“He didn’t though, did he?”
Brain shook his head. “No.”
“What about Shahzada?”
“In the wind,” Brain said. He turned to look at her. “And what I’m about to say goes no further than this apartment.”
“Of course. I’m aware I don’t have the same level of security clearance as you do, but I know enough to keep my mouth shut,” Aspen told him seriously.
“Before Akhund died, he bragged that we’d never find Shahzada. That he was smarter than everyone. That the villagers were loyal to him, and any attempt at finding and killing him would fail.”
“Did he give you any clues as to where he is or who he is?”
“No,” Brain said in frustration. “We’re pretty sure he’s still in the area, but that’s all we know. There are reports that he’s got an extensive network of followers, and his MO is to take prisoners of war to gain information.”
Aspen sucked in a breath. “Shit, seriously? Are there any POWs right now that are still in captivity in the area?”
“It’s hard to tell. There have been people who’ve gone AWOL, but most have been accounted for,” Brain said.
“I’m glad I’m not there anymore,” Aspen muttered.
“You and me both,” Brain agreed.
Aspen took a deep breath. “Well, I’m relieved Akhund is no longer an issue. He terrorized the villagers.”
“He did. And hopefully our negotiations with them, and the fact we didn’t have to kill any innocents, went a long way toward helping the US/Afghani relations in that region.”
“I hope so,” Aspen said with a nod of her head.
They were both quiet for a moment. Then Aspen asked, “Are you sure you aren’t hungry? I can find something for us to eat if you want.”
“I’m sure. But if you are, don’t let me stop you.”
“I’m good,” Aspen reassured him. “I just…I don’t want you to be bored.”
Brain looked down at her and smiled. “I don’t care what we do together, skat, just being with you is amazing.”
She frowned. “Skat? Please tell me that’s darling in some other language and you didn’t just call me excrement.”
Brain chuckled. “It’s Danish.”
“I think I prefer chérie or something,” she told him with a pout.
“Noted.”
Brain had never been much of a talker. He preferred to read a book or listen to music.
But for the next few hours, he and Aspen talked nonstop.
Sometimes they discussed serious topics like global warming, effects of war on children, or the coronavirus.
But other times they talked about nothing important, like their preferences in fast food.
It was getting late, and Brain knew he should leave since Aspen had to get up for PT in the morning, but he couldn’t tear himself away. He liked hanging out with her. Liked that she seemed perfectly comfortable around him. It almost felt too good to be true.
And that thought abruptly brought another woman to mind.
He hated thinking about anyone other than Aspen when they were together. He tried to push away thoughts of that other bitch, but since his mind had chosen now to remember what she’d done, he couldn’t stop it.
His body must’ve tensed under hers, because Aspen lifted her head and asked, “What’re you thinking about so hard?” She’d lain down at one point in the evening, her head resting on his thigh. Brain was running his hand through her hair over and over, loving the sight of the strands covering his lap.
He sighed and didn’t even consider lying. To Aspen, he was an open book. He wanted her to know everything about him, even if that meant sharing some of his insecurities. “Remember when I told you I hadn’t been with a woman in two years?”
She lifted her head and furrowed her brow. “Of course I do.”
“You have to understand…I was always the youngest person by far in my classes growing up. In high school. In college. Women didn’t really see me as anyone other than someone they could get notes from, or who could do their homework.
So when I joined the Army and was suddenly surrounded by men and women my own age, it was pretty overwhelming for me.
I wasn’t treated like the ‘smart guy’ at first. In fact, most people didn’t even know about my degrees or anything about my intellectual abilities. ”
“That’s good,” Aspen said softly.
“Yeah. I dated a bit, but it was awkward for me. I didn’t really know what to say or do, and I don’t even want to get into how long it took for me to get comfortable with my sexuality.
Anyway, I met this woman, Deidre, a few years back.
The team and I had gone to a bar to chill out after a particularly gnarly mission and saw some other guys from the post we knew.
We were having a few beers when a group of women came in.
They were also soldiers, and they made a beeline for us.
We all started talking, and somehow it came up that I was good at languages.
Everyone seemed duly impressed…but Deidre was especially interested. ”
“Please tell me this isn’t going where I think it’s going,” Aspen said, sitting up and curling her arm around his chest once more.
Brain shrugged. “I got her number and before I knew it, we were talking every day and she was hanging out at my place. I enjoyed talking with her, and she admitted that she was trying to learn Farsi and was having a hard time. So I gladly helped her. She was very dedicated to studying, and I admired that. I liked her a lot. She was pretty, tall, had long blonde hair, and it was flattering that she’d picked me out of all the other guys who were at the bar that night. ”
“I think I don’t like Deidre very much,” Aspen said heatedly.