Chapter 8 #2
Jace sobered and said, “There was never one thing I was particularly good at when I was a kid. I got mediocre grades, I wasn’t popular or good-looking, I did okay in sports but I wasn’t any kind of standout. I eventually just accepted I was average.”
“I find that hard to believe,” I admitted.
“It’s true,” he said. “At first it was hard for me to be okay with it. My parents, they were amazing – they always encouraged me to try things, but never pressured me to succeed – it was always more about me doing things that I enjoyed. The skiing was my idea because I just wanted to find that one thing I was really good at – that thing that would make me me .”
“And did you?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s just not something I can say I’m particularly proud of. I mean, I was at the time, because I thought it was really cool that I could do what only a handful of people could. I mean, suddenly I was being noticed for something.”
“You were good with a gun,” I said softly, as it dawned on me what he was referring to. The tone in his voice suggested it wasn’t a topic he enjoyed talking about.
“No, lots of guys in the military can shoot. But they can’t take out a moving target from a mile and a half away.” Jace took a sip from his bottle of water.
“You hated it,” I murmured. On the one hand, I hated having brought him down with the unpleasant conversation, but on the other, I wanted to understand what made him tick.
“Sometimes,” he said. “I didn’t know shit about the men and women I saw through my scope. I was told who to take out and that was it. I didn’t ask if the person on the other end deserved it. I was a good little soldier and followed orders.”
When he fell silent, I instinctively knew there was more. “What happened?” I asked quietly.
“Over two hundred kills in ten years. Didn’t hesitate even once.
Final mission, final deployment. Order comes in, I find my target…
it’s a woman and a kid approaching a checkpoint.
She ignores orders to stay back. Soldiers on the ground can’t get a good shot – too many civilians around.
She was acting suspicious enough that they were worried she had an IED and was using the kid to blend in.
I knew something was wrong because she was drawing too much attention to herself,” Jace said with a shake of his head.
“Did you take the shot?” I asked. My heart was in my throat because I already knew the answer.
“Had to follow orders,” Jace said quietly. “I didn’t have a clean shot, not with the way she was holding her kid. Baby couldn’t have been more than a year old. But I did what I was told.”
“I’m sorry, Jace,” I offered.
He shook his head. “Turned out she was just trying to get some help for her kid, but she was deaf. Couldn’t understand the orders the soldiers were calling out to her.
The baby had been sick for a few days, but she’d been afraid to take him to the hospital because the city had been overrun by insurgents.
When we showed up, she thought we were her kid’s salvation. ”
“You couldn’t have known,” I said.
“But I did. In my gut, I knew. But all that discipline that had been drilled into me when I enlisted, that I’d needed , had me pulling that trigger anyway.
There’s a husband out there who no longer has his wife or youngest son.
There are four other kids who don’t have a mother anymore.
And what did I get out of the whole thing? A medal. An actual fucking medal.”
Jace took another sip of his water, then motioned to the bay. “That fucker’s out here. Hopefully buried under twenty feet of fish shit where it belongs.”
I took that to mean he’d tossed the medal overboard at some point after he’d returned to the States.
“What about you, Caleb Cortano?” Jace asked with a loud sigh. “What are you good at?”
Besides fucking my father?
I shoved the errant thought away and began reeling in my line, more so I’d have something to occupy my hands while I spoke than anything else.
“Everything,” I admitted. “Well, I was, anyway.” I cast him a glance.
“Straight-A student, captain of the football team, basketball team, baseball team, soccer team… you get my drift,” I said with a shrug.
“I made friends wherever I went and grown-ups loved me because I was respectful and well-behaved. Perfect kid,” I muttered.
I looked over at him and said, “So to answer your question… nothing important.”
I expected him to argue with me and he did.
But not in the way I was expecting.
“Not true… you’re a much better hook-from-ass remover than Dalton, and I’ve never seen anyone bait a hook so gracefully.”
I couldn’t help the smile that drifted across my mouth.
“And the lengths you went to just to feed your Sno Balls habit? Impressive,” Jace said in all seriousness.
“Shut up,” I growled. “At least I don’t still need a cup of warm milk at bedtime.”
“Hey,” Jace said loudly. He pointed at me with mock irritation. “That’s pink milk, not warm milk. Because that shit’s just nasty.”
I chuckled and we both fell into a more comfortable silence. I cast my line back out.
“Jace,” I said as I kept my eyes on the water.
“Yeah?”
“If it helps, I don’t think there’s anything average about you. ”
He was quiet for a really long time. “Caleb?”
“Yeah?”
“It helps.”
I found myself smiling wide, but I kept from looking at him.
“Caleb?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to know what you’re good at?”
I didn’t answer him. I heard him shift his weight and then sensed him behind me, but I didn’t turn to look at him, though I really wanted to.
I shivered when his fingers briefly drifted over the back of my neck.
Then his lips were dropping to the top of my head and his fingers curled around my throat until they were resting on my thrumming pulse.
“All the stuff that really matters. Don’t forget that, okay?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he reached past me to grab my nearly empty water bottle. The move put his face precariously close to mine. “Will you watch my line for a second?”
I swallowed around the knot of anticipation in my throat. “Yeah,” I choked out.
Then he was gone and I finally managed to take in a deep breath.
Seconds later I heard a clanging sound behind me.
I looked over my shoulder just in time to see Jace’s fishing pole bounce along the bench and then disappear over the side of the boat and splash into the water below.
I let out a bark of laughter as I realized Jace had forgotten to put his rod in one of the holders to keep the pole from going overboard in case a fish took the bait.
I began laughing.
And laughing.
And laughing.
And that was how Jace found me.
Bent over my own rod, tears of laughter streaming down my face.
“What?” he asked. “What happened?”
I managed to point at the place his pole had been.
“Oh hell,” he muttered. “Not again. Dalton’s going to fucking kill me. ”
That just sent more peals of laughter bursting from my throat.
Jace had been right.
He couldn’t fish for shit.
And it was in that exact moment that I lost the first little bit of my heart to Jace Christenson, and I just knew it would only be a matter of time before the rest followed.