9. Chapter 8
Before
“What’s with the face?” Bradford asked when Hope tucked her satellite phone into her backpack after rejecting the incoming call.
She shot him a sideways glance, then slid her sunglasses on as she looked away from him. It was balls hot outside even at eight in the morning here and the sun was already beating down on them.
“Family right?”
“Oh my god, nosy,” she grumbled, but she leaned back and took a sip of her water.
His team didn’t have anything on the books right now, though they often got called out last minute so that didn’t mean anything. “So you get to ask questions, but we don’t?”
She turned to glare at him, but then seemed to remember her sunglasses and shoved them up on her head. “That’s different.”
He shrugged. “Just asking as a friend, but I’ll let it go. My own family sucks though, if it makes you feel better.”
“In no world would I feel better knowing your family sucks. ”
Just like that, he fell even harder for her. Because of course that’s what she would say.
She turned away from him and looked out on the “lounge” area they’d set up, which was a bunch of crates they’d stolen from somewhere set up in a big circle around a firepit.
They’d found a bunch of chili-pepper-themed lights and strung them up around the seating area.
It didn’t make the desert any less shitty, but it was fun to look at.
“My dad left when I was six. I have some memories of him, but they’re hazy.
Mostly he just made my mom cry a lot and he seemed big to me.
But that could have just been because I was a kid.
She tossed all pictures of him so I can’t even find out.
Then she moved on to a whole string of assholes.
Most of them left me alone, but there were a couple who tried to fight me when I was about fifteen. ” He shook his head. They’d all lost.
And then his mom had lost it on him. She was a tiny thing, but that hadn’t mattered, because he sure as shit hadn’t been about to fight back.
After that, he’d made it a point to be gone most of the time and couch surfed with various friends until he outstayed his welcome.
Then once he was eighteen, he’d joined the Marines.
“I’m really sorry, B.” She reached out and squeezed his forearm once in that gentle way of hers and he wanted to lean into her touch. Savor it.
He’d have to make this feeling last, because he knew she’d be leaving soon. Something he had to keep reminding himself of.
“It’s okay. I mean, I know it’s not actually okay, but I found my people.” No one else was around yet, but she knew who he was talking about. His guys were his brothers in every way that mattered. They’d all come from different walks of life, but it hadn’t mattered once they’d bonded.
“You kinda sound like Tiago.” There was a smile in her voice as she spoke.
“Right? Better not tell him though. It’ll just make his head even bigger. ”
She snort-laughed, then said, “I…just rejected a call from my father. I don’t know why I feel bad. He doesn’t deserve anything from me. But we’ve been talking lately. Mostly surface stuff, but…” She shrugged, the action jerky instead of casual. “He’s my only living relative.”
“Ah, that guilt. Yeah, I get it. My mom sent me a few letters years ago. She didn’t come to my boot camp graduation or anything, and after a while I realized her letters were basically just sob stories…
and her asking for money.” Which he had no doubt she would have given to her boyfriend of the week, or wasted on drugs.
“Do you still talk to her?”
“No. And for the record, I don’t feel guilty about it. Being related by blood doesn’t make up for years of neglect and her being a shitty person. But I’m sorry you’re struggling with your dad.”
“He’s an alcoholic,” she said, her voice quiet. “He wasn’t always. We had a lot of good years. Until we didn’t.” She sighed, leaning back in her seat as she stretched her legs out.
An announcement came out of the loudspeakers about breakfast and then some other bullshit that didn’t concern him, so he just tuned it out.
“He’s seemed better lately on the phone,” she said.
“It’s too much to hope that he’s actually sober, but at least he’s not slurring when we talk.
And he’s been getting involved with some local stuff.
I guess…it makes me feel a little better to know he’s not wasting away on our homestead just drinking himself to death.
” Her jaw went tight for a moment and he simply watched her profile.
And wished he had the right to comfort her. Even as a friend, but he didn’t think she’d welcome any touch and he never wanted her to feel uncomfortable around him.
“I’ve got a bunch of old pictures of my parents…before my mom died. I can see how happy they were back in the beginning, before me. And then wh en I was young. But something changed. Or his addiction caught up to him I guess.”
“I have…had a cousin who was an alcoholic. He could never kick it, finally wrapped himself around a telephone pole.” A complete waste.
“At least he didn’t kill anyone else.”
“Right?”
“That was always one of my fears too, that my father would kill someone. Though he rarely drank and drove. He’d save all his bullshit until he got home, then just drink himself into oblivion and pass out.”
“That had to be hard to watch.” His own mom had more than “dabbled” in heroin, so he definitely understood how hard it was to watch a parent slowly kill themselves. But he didn’t want right now to be about him so he kept that to himself.
“It was…and you’re a really good listener.” Her tone was only slightly accusing as she looked over at him.
He lifted a shoulder. “I try.”
“Thank you…just for listening. For being such a great friend. I kind of thought you guys were going to hate me when I got assigned to you.”
“Hell no. I don’t think anyone could hate you. Anyone with half a brain anyway.”
She grinned and it was like the sun shone even brighter, a near impossibility here. “Plenty of people hate me when I write about them.”
“So what are you going to say about us?”
“I can’t tell you that…yet. Though if I’m being honest, yours is definitely a feel-good story, which is so random considering where we are.”
Now he laughed. “Random indeed.” But he knew what she meant.
She was here doing a miniseries of stories on the shift in military culture in general in regard to connectedness with the broader community and combating harmful behavior that had once been tolerated.
“For the record, I can’t wait to read your series. ”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I can read. Hard to believe I have more than rocks in my head, I know.”
“Hey! That’s not what I meant.” She nudged him gently.
“Just joking.”
“Yeah well, you do that, put yourself down, and I don’t like it.”
“Now who sounds like Tiago?”
“Well he’s right sometimes,” she said. “And you’re my friend. So you don’t get to talk about yourself like that.”
God, he really did like this woman. “Fair enough. I read your series on poverty myths and the working poor and it was solid.”
Her cheeks flushed pink. “Oh…thank you.”
He noticed that she often got flustered when someone complimented her, as if she didn’t know how to take compliments. “We all read your stuff before you arrived. And don’t tell Rowan I said this, but I’m pretty sure he wanted to go all fanboy on you.”
She laughed. “Now I know you’re lying, but thank you.”
He savored the sound of her laugh, letting it roll over him as some of the others started to arrive half dressed, coffee in hand.
The moment of privacy between them was over, but he’d replay the time he spent with her later. Because when he was with her, everything inside him was at peace in a way he’d never experienced.
Never even known was possible.