Chapter 1 #2
I don’t have time to spend at the range like I’d like. Hell, I can’t even go to the range without renting the whole damn place for the day, but I’m still accurate enough to shoot this motherfucker from thirty feet away and right now, I’m only two.
He flashes his military I.D. but I don’t care enough to read the words underneath his name. Instead, I turn away from the door and walk through the quiet house, heading for a can of Coke in the kitchen.
It’s been weird without the guys around.
I went from living in barracks to living with my three noisy bandmates.
I haven’t ever been on my own and I can’t say I’m a huge fan.
I try to get Jen to stay with me as often as I can but she likes her own space.
Her desire for independence is at direct odds with my desire for more.
Luke tsks behind me.
“Threatening a government official and not offering me a drink?”
“You’re down to three minutes.”
He ignores the seat at the table and opts to lean against the counter, ankles crossed at the end of his long legs, hands behind him, fingers wrapping over the edge of the counter, like this visit isn’t already testing the limits of my self-control as his t-shirt stretches tighter across his chest.
A thump sounds overhead followed by a string of feminine curses, drawing our attention.
Luke looks at the ceiling. “Girlfriend?”
I wish. “Something like that.”
“Maybe I should come back another time then.”
“The hell you will. This is the one and only time you’ll ever step foot in my house so say what you need to say and get the fuck out.”
When I look back at Luke’s face, my blood runs cold. His head is angled down and he’s looking up at me through light lashes, all traces of joking gone. His head is bowed in reverence this time. His forehead is pinched and the start of a wince is visible in his features.
I’m not going to like whatever he says next.
“For fuck’s sake, out with it already,” I growl as my heart picks up speed in my chest.
“Hailey’s gone.” His voice is barely a whisper.
My kitchen spins as the blood drains rapidly from my head, pooling around my pounding heart, creating an uncomfortable pressure in my chest. For the second time in two days, I’m on my knees because of Luke Blackwell.
I know what gone means.
Hailey’s not gone. She’s dead.
I think I’m going to be sick.
“Breathe, Staff Sergeant.” Luke drops next to me, careful not to touch me like bisexuality is contagious and he’s trying to avoid infection.
I haven’t been a staff sergeant in six years but I don’t correct him.
It doesn’t matter what he calls me, it won’t change the fact that the world just became a darker place.
Hailey Tomlin was all light. There were several days I only got out of bed because I knew she was doing the same thing.
She was still living and moving on despite the tragedy that changed our lives forever.
The tragedy caused by the man currently squatting in front of me.
When I finally regain my composure, I push him away, fixing him with cold eyes and a clenched jaw. “Get out.”
“I would, but there are some things in her will that were left to you.”
My heart pinches but I manage to speak through the pain. “So have her attorney contact me.”
“I’m here on his behalf. He’s a good friend of mine.”
“You have to be fucking kidding me. Isn’t that a bit of an invasion of privacy?
No way Hailey would’ve wanted you to know anything about her will.
” I get up from the floor and root around in the cupboard opposite where Luke is also climbing to his feet.
Soda isn’t strong enough for this and once Brett and Bri moved out, I restocked all my favorites. As I’m pouring, Luke continues.
“I know about a lot more than just her will, Sloan.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I was on her medical team.”
I scoff. “Her medical team? As what?”
“Her doctor.”
I jerk back like he slapped me. I don’t know why I’m surprised. Luke was always driven. He’s also smart as all fuck. I was the brawn. I won the PT drills and the shootouts. Luke was the brain. Analyzing data, formulating a plan, and executing every detail is kind of his thing.
“I was assigned to Hailey’s team when I was on my oncology rotation,” he explains as the room begins to spin. “With no children, no parents listed, and Grant go—”
In a flash, I’ve grabbed Luke by the neck of his shirt and smash his head against the cabinets behind him.
He doesn’t even flinch. The fucker was always tougher than nails when it came to physical pain and that fact annoys the shit out of me right now.
“Don’t you say his name. How dare you come into my house and say his name. ”
I release Luke’s shirt to pick up the shot glass and throw the tequila back with no chaser, immediately pouring a second, my unshed tears burning my eyes. Nothing pisses me off more than crying. And I’ll be damned if I do it in front of Major — Doctor — Blackwell.
I brace my hands on the counter and close my eyes, my head hanging between my arms. I’d hoped to swallow enough fire to wake me up from this terrible nightmare. Unfortunately, the liquor is made so well, the fire is non-existent, and worse, Luke’s still here when my eyes open.
“Are you going to offer me one?” He nods toward the bottle on the counter.
“I’m sure you can’t drink on the job.” I have no intention of wasting my top shelf tequila on his sorry ass.
“I’m not on the clock.”
I only just now realize that although his badge is clipped to his jeans pocket, he’s not in scrubs or his military uniform. If he had been in the latter, I probably wouldn’t have opened the door.
“Then why are you here? Couldn’t you have told this to me over the phone?” Even as I’m arguing with him, I’m pouring his first shot and my third. I never was any good at denying Luke.
“It didn’t feel right dropping a bomb like this over the phone…especially considering the history.”
I throw my shot back and watch Luke’s Adam’s apple bob as he follows suit.
If I’m twenty-nine, that puts Luke at thirty-one because he completed two years of undergrad before he decided he wasn’t ready for college quite yet and joined the Army instead.
Fuck if he isn’t more attractive now than he was then.
I’ve always been jealous of his jawline.
Where my jaw is defined, it’s not sharp.
My lips are full, my hair is curly, and my skin is flawless underneath my stubble.
I get called beautiful and pretty a lot, but Luke’s features scream masculinity.
He has a faint scar under his right eye from a piece of shrapnel and a couple of light freckles on his cheeks and forehead. His Viking heritage is strong in his facial features. No one would dare call him pretty.
“Guilty conscience finally catching up to you?” I spit, angry that I’m even noticing his appearance. “It’s about goddamn time.”
He takes the bottle of tequila and pours himself another shot.
I should smack the bottle out of his hand.
I’d rather see my favorite tequila spreading across the floor than touch his traitorous, backstabbing lips, but for some inexplicable reason, I don’t.
I just watch him throw it back like the first, hating myself for the uptick in my pulse as his lips part to allow the liquid to pass.
“Look, Alexander.” Why is it that officers who rank higher than you always insist on calling you by your last name? He didn’t always rank higher than me. In fact, the day he caught Hailey and I, it was my promotion he was summoning me for.
And it pissed him off as if he were a bull and I’d just waved the red flag.
“My name is Sloan, Luke.” I emphasize his first name to remind him I’m a civilian, he’s off-duty, and we’re in my kitchen, not on base.
“I know your fucking name,” he growls. “It’s everywhere. I can’t escape it. I may have cost you a promotion, but I cost myself my fucking sanity.”
After allegations had been made — by Luke Blackwell no less — my promotion was revoked, I was forced to transfer units, and I was pulled from every mission until my discharge.
In a flash, I’m in his face, primed to strike.
“You cost me a helluva lot more than that promotion, you homophobic bastard, and you know it.” He makes no attempt to stop my fist as it connects with his jaw. He doesn’t even duck despite my swing being slower than usual due to the alcohol coursing through my veins.
His head snaps back because his body is already leaning against the counter and there’s nothing left to absorb the blow.
Rubbing his annoyingly chiseled jaw, he turns his steely gray eyes back to me. “Feel better?”
Frustratingly, I don’t.
“You’re still breathing and they aren’t, so, no.
” My words are starting to slur and my brain is becoming numb to the emotions churning inside me.
The longer he’s in my space, in my house, in my presence, the harder it is to deny that every time I hit him it’s like I’m punching myself, but I don’t know what else to do. He makes me so fucking angry.
“Sloan?” I hear Jen yell from the stairs.
“In here,” I call from the kitchen.
She’s found her shorts and tank top which is good.
Otherwise, I’d have to gauge Luke’s eyes out tonight.
The warm, humid, late spring air causes her clothes to cling to her golden skin despite the air conditioning in the house.
Her long dark hair is in a messy bun on top of her head and her lips are still swollen from me sucking on them.
I open my arms for her to step into them, needing her embrace now more than ever. Luke doesn’t even try to hide the lust in his eyes as Jen folds into me, nuzzling my neck.
When she pulls back, her eyes move from me, to Luke, to the bottle between us, and I know what she’s thinking so I shut it down immediately.
“I’d rather hand-feed my balls to a piranha.”
“That’s too bad,” she says with a wicked grin before running her hand up my bare chest and giving me a quick kiss. “I’m going to head out because I have the 7a-7p shift tomorrow.”
I don’t want her to go but begging her to stay would most likely make her leave faster. Jen’s under the impression that being in a committed relationship means she’ll lose the right to live her life how she wants, despite my frequent protestations.
“Okay.” If I were sober, I’d remind her that my place is closer to the hospital and I’d try to tempt her with fifteen extra minutes of sleep in the morning as well as breakfast and morning sex, but seeing as I’m having trouble staying upright, I lack the ability to argue my points.
Although she sends a questioning look at Luke, she doesn’t ask who he is.
Jen’s not the jealous type, and she allows me room to think, and breathe, and just exist without being up my ass all the time — which is a miracle considering the number of men and women that throw themselves at me on a daily basis.
I’ve never mentioned my relationship with Grant and Hailey — or my bisexuality at all, for that matter — to Ryan, Noah, or Brett, but one night not too long ago, Jen and I got drunk and I spilled some of the truth in a rough overview as I whined about missing the rough, calloused hands of a man.
She quickly, and excitedly, let me know she’d be down for a third, but ever since I lost Grant, I can’t stand for another man to touch me.
“She’s hot,” Luke says, staring at the front door as it closes behind Jen.
“Don’t fucking look at her,” I snap.
Luke holds his hands up even as his eyes stay focused on the door. “Not looking at her.”
I take my next shot straight from the bottle, sucking the tequila like it’s water as I slide down the cabinets until my ass hits the floor again.
“How?” I finally manage to rasp.
“How what?”
“Hailey.”
“Breast cancer. Spread to her lymph nodes before it was found. Most aggressive case I’ve ever seen.”
“Jesus fucking Christ. She’s thirty-nine years old.” I could be half dead myself and I’d always know how old she was. Even though we haven’t spoken since I got out of the military, rarely does a day go by when she or Grant doesn’t cross my mind.
“It sounded like she wasn’t doing great even before her diagnosis, Sloan,” Luke says, joining me on the floor, his thigh less than an inch from mine.
I don’t want to hear this. In my mind, Hailey was happy, and healthy, and loved, and healed. I carried enough pain and bitter resentment for the both of us.
I should’ve reached out. I should’ve stayed in touch. I should’ve done a lot of things differently, but once Grant was gone, I couldn’t handle the constant reminder of him by being with her.
Like usual, in an effort to deflect my actual thoughts, I make a joke. “Careful, Blackwell, if you sit too close, my dick might accidentally jump in your pants.”
He shocks the hell out of me when he jokes back. “Nah, I’m not your type.”
If you only knew.
“You’re right. I prefer my lovers to be human … with a fucking heart.”
Grant’s dead.
And now Hailey’s dead.
How much more is this asswipe going to take from me?