Chapter 15 - Ranger
RANGER
I bumped my bedroom door open as I carried a stacked tray of food.
Two massive bowls of soup, a plate stacked to the brim with grilled cheeses and buttered toast, since I wasn’t sure which one she would prefer.
There was a capped carafe of ice water as well as two glasses of ice and four sodas.
I really had to balance the tray to get it back to the room.
But nothing could have prepared me for seeing Marla’s body peeking out from beneath that blanket.
On top of my bed.
“Well, hey now,” I said as a grin spread across my face, “and here I thought you didn’t like my bed.”
Her little giggle flitted from beneath the blanket as she peered out at me with those cute blue eyes of hers. “My ribs didn’t wanna lay back down in the closet.”
I finally breached the bedroom and bumped the door closed with my hip. “I can’t say that I blame your ribs. This carpet isn’t very comfortable.”
I had to walk past her so that I could set the tray of food down on my bedside table, and it forced my gaze away from her.
Which was fine, because then I could breathe.
Seeing her in my bed, wrapped up in my blankets and my clothes, did something to me that I didn’t want to admit.
I heard her shuffling around, trying to get comfortable, so I took the opportunity to turn my back for a moment.
I shoved my hand into my pants and rearranged myself.
Not the time, asshole.
I couldn’t think about that kind of shit with Marla. Not by a fucking longshot. She’d been through too much. Seen too much. Experienced way too much. I wasn’t about to throw her back into the fold of feeling like she had to sleep with anyone around her.
No matter how beautiful I found her.
“All right,” I said as I turned to face her, only to find her propped up on some pillows and staring at me, “ready for food?”
She smiled softly and gathered the blanket onto her lap like a little makeshift tray. “Ready when you are. Are you eating with me?”
“Do I ever eat with anyone else?”
She smiled at me, and it hit me like a freight train. “I suppose not.”
I smiled back as I handed her the bowl of soup. “Grilled cheese, or buttered toast?”
She leaned forward to smell the contents of the bowl. “Ooooh, does this have mushrooms in it?”
“It does,” I said as I cracked open a Mountain Dew and poured it over ice for her. My God, she needed the calories any way she could get them. “But if you don’t like mushrooms, I could—”
“Oh, I love mushrooms,” she said as she picked up her spoon.
I watched as she dipped it into the creamy mushroom soup before bringing it to her lips.
I watched those puckered lips of hers blow against the steam before they parted, and my cock kicked in my pants.
Goddamn it, I watched her like a fucking dog as she wrapped her lips around the spoon, pulling that thick, creamy soup off the end.
I had something thick and creamy she could—
Cut. It. The fuck. Out.
The voice in my head reminded me of how sick I was, thinking of this woman that way. She trusted me. I finally earned her trust, and I envisioned her in ways that were no better than the shit that was done to her for fucking months.
“Here you go,” I said, my voice a bit choked off.
I was glad she didn’t clock it. “Mm. This soup is good. Thank you.”
“I’ll let Wrecker know. It was his turn to cook, but all he can really do is soup.”
She snickered and took another bite. “Well, tell him he makes good soup.”
I handed her a small plate with a grilled cheese cut into triangles and three slices of buttered bread. “I’ll let him know.”
“Ooooh, grilled cheese,” she said as she picked up a triangle.
She dipped it right into the soup.
“A woman after my own heart,” I said as I pulled up my office chair to the edge of the bed.
“There’s nothing better than soup and grilled cheese,” she said with her mouth full.
I smiled as I kicked back in my chair and reached for my bowl of soup. “Especially on a cold winter day.”
“Mhmmm,” she hummed emphatically before taking another bite of the soup.
We ate for a while in relative silence. She slurped her Mountain Dew every once in a while, and I watched.
She took bites of her soup, and I watched like a hound dog.
She ate every single piece of bread I put in front of her, and even went back in for that second Mountain Dew, and I prided myself in the calories I was able to shove into her body during this particular meal.
Until her voice broke the silence.
“Do you miss the military at all?”
The personal question caught me off-guard. I figured she’d want to know more about the meeting. But I was more than okay with this line of questioning.
Anything to have more of her time and attention.
I was apparently becoming a manslut for it.
“No,” I said with a shake of my head as I finally cracked open a soda for myself, “I don’t.”
She paused. “You don’t?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
She tilted hers. “Why not?”
I dipped one of the pieces of buttered bread into the soup. “I don’t know if I should answer that.”
“Is it classified or something?”
I snickered and peered over at her. “No, but it’s telling of our military, and it’s a definite trigger for some people. I don’t know what all triggers you, and I don’t want to accidentally do it.”
There was a softness that came over her features before she took a sip of her Mountain Dew. Her eyes roamed over me, but she wasn’t quite there. It was like she was thinking. Hard.
I wished I could hear her thoughts.
“I’ll be okay if you want to talk about it,” she said as she set her drink down.
I just shrugged and went back to eating.
“Sometimes in the military, soldiers will get orders they don’t agree with.
And that’s when the brainwashing cult aspect of the military comes into play.
You either fall in line and do what your commanding officer says, or you Dec-statement out and don’t come back. ”
“What’s a Dec-statement?”
“It’s a declaration of intent not to re-enlist,” I said before I took another swig of my soda. “It’s just a paper you sign that means you have no intent of re-enlisting, and it takes you off the docket for things like deployments and reassignments.”
“Oh. I take it you signed one of those?”
“I did.”
“What made you sign it?”
“An order I didn’t want to follow.”
She paused before she asked the inevitable question. “What was the order?”
My eyes slowly gravitated to hers. “I was ordered to kill a child.”
She stared at me for a very long time while those words hung in the air between us. And then, I watched that little button nose of hers, which was a bit crooked still from being broken, wrinkle up.
“You what?”
I slowly nodded. “I know. At first, I wasn’t even sure I’d heard my commanding officer right.”
She blinked. “You were told to kill a child.”
“I was.”
She balked. “Wh—but—but why?”
I drew in a harsh breath. “Because the American military doesn’t see the children of terrorists as anything other than future terrorists.”
Her eyes danced between mine. “Miles. What the fuck?”
“I know. What the fuck is right.”
She narrowed her eyes on me. “They really gave you that order.”
“They really did.”
Then she did something I didn’t expect.
She gave me a soft smile.
“Lizzie would like you,” she said as her attention fell back to her soup.
Oh no.
I wasn’t letting her have that train of thought.
“We’re going to find her,” I said.
She just nodded softly and took another bite of her soup.
“Marla, I really need you to listen to me right now, because I’m not joking,” I said as I placed my foot and drink off to the side before I leaned forward, setting my hand on the edge of the bed.
“We’re going to find your best friend, and we’re going to bring her here.
Doc is already using his memory of the video to craft a potential treatment plan so that he can get to work once we get her here. ”
Her lip wobbled before she busied herself with another bite of food.
“And it’s okay if you don’t believe me right now,” I said as I dipped down a bit to stay in her peripheral vision. “But I still need you to keep hope. For me. Okay?”
That got her to peek her gaze at me. “Okay.”
I smiled softly and leaned back into my office chair. “Okay. Good.”
She finished up her food before setting her bowl off to the side. “Is there a plan? To get Lizzie back?”
“That’s what me and Ghost are working on. It’s why we leave in two days’ time.”
“Oh?” she asked as her attention came back to me after dealing with her dirty dishes. “Okay. So. Talk me through it. Is that something you can do?”
I nodded as I kicked my feet up on the edge of the bed and crossed my arms over my chest. “Well, the first big thing is waiting forty-eight hours. They’re baiting us and expecting us to retaliate, and quickly, so we can’t give into that urge.”
She looked at me quizzically. “You’re talking like you already know where Lizzie is.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to her statement. But while I gathered my words in my head, her eyes bulged.
“Wait, you know where she is?” she asked breathlessly.
Oh boy. I should’ve been quicker. “We have theories—”
She scrambled onto her knees, creeping closer to me. “Is that why you and Ghost are going to that law firm again? Because you think she’s there?”
I drew in a deep breath. “If she’s not there, then there’s a good chance—”
“Miles, what if she doesn’t have two days?” she asked as anxious tears welled in her eyes. Fuck, I was worried about this. “What if she’s already dead? You guys have to go get her. Ghost is done eating now, right?”
“Hey, hey, hey,” I said softly as I kicked my legs off the bed and leaned toward, covering her nervous hands with my own. “Marla, look at me.”
Her body shivered as her watery expression met mine. “What if she doesn’t have two days, Miles?”