3. Carson
CHAPTER 3
CARSON
I looked up from my phone when Brock’s voice pierced the air. Glancing around, my eyes landed on a man I never thought I’d see again. It had been years since I’d last seen him, but his face was still the same. Still regal and aristocratic. A complete departure from where we’d grown up. Granted, he’d not been born in the mountains of West Virginia like I had. Nor was his family what one thought of when you mentioned our hometown. No, that was my family. Big, loud, hillbilly accents that echoed through the holler we lived in. Especially when Mama called us in to eat. None of us liked being in the house.
Jumping to my feet, I said, “Holy shitballs! Roman Ott? Is that you?”
Roman’s gaze flew to mine, and I grinned as I watched disbelief turn to curiosity before pulling him into an embrace. His body was stiff against mine for a moment, and then he melted into me. His arms wrapped around me, and I was transported back in time to the day I realized I could be me, or I could realize my dreams. I swallowed my desires then, shoving them into a box and slamming the lid on them as I pushed them and him out of my mind. I did the same now.
Pressing my hands to his biceps, I pushed him away from me.
“Damn, dude. What the fuck are you doing in Germany?”
Finlay scoffed and smacked me upside the head. “Peel open those peepers, dumbass, and clean out your ears.”
Finlay’s love language was smacks to the head. I’d gotten used to it, we all had, and typically I would’ve ducked. I had his timing down pat, and he knew it. So, when I took the smack, he cracked up, laughing so hard he snorted.
I blamed the man in front of me. Just like back then, he had me under his spell without even trying or knowing what he was doing.
“What?”
“And you’re who we trust for overwatch?” Finlay and my brothers laughed.
Instead of looking like more of an idiot, I let my eyes travel over Roman and then stepped forward into my stupid. “You’re a doctor?”
His face twitched while my teammates laughed behind me. Then he lost the battle and joined them, cackling at me. My face heated, and I shook my head at the ridiculously idiotic question. The man wore scrubs and a lab coat, for fuck’s sake.
“Yeah, okay, laugh it up. I’m an idiot,” I said, sitting in the chair I’d vacated a few minutes before.
The laughter continued for a few more minutes, and my face grew hotter and hotter. I couldn’t believe I’d made such a bonehead comment. But then again, Roman Ott had always made me dumber than a doorknob.
I cleared my throat and said, “I’m going to check on Woody,” as I stood and left the room.
I heard Brock call out to me, but I ignored his threat to kick my ass if I woke Adam up. The team spent so much time here getting our asses patched up that I knew the place like the back of my hand. I headed past the unit Woody was in and made my way to the spot I found a year or so ago when I was been a patient here myself. I’d gotten blown off course on a jump and landed funny. While making my way back to the others, I took a round to the shoulder, and they dumped me here for surgery. Once they patched me up, I got tired of sitting in my room, waiting for them to put my ass on a plane back to the States, so I started roaming the halls. That was when I happened on this little area that no one else seemed to know about.
I glanced over my shoulder to see if anyone had followed me. A weight I didn’t realize I was carrying lifted, and relief flooded through me, making me feel a ton lighter. I loved my brothers. I did. They were my family. My chosen family, anyway.
Mama, Daddy, and my actual brothers didn’t understand me. They tried, but they all still lived on the holler I’d grown up on. Even the ones who were married with families of their own lived there. Once you got to the head of the holler, it was a Wilcox family compound. Every house belonged to either my parents, brothers, uncles, or cousins.
They lived together and worked together. All the men in my family were coal miners. If they’d left West Virginia at all, it was to take their kids and wives on vacation to a beach. It was always the same beach, the same hotel, the same restaurants and outings, taken the same week of the year. That was something that had only happened in more recent years. I didn’t remember us ever taking a vacation when I was a kid unless it was a camping or hunting trip. It was one of the reasons I wanted to get the fuck outta the mountains.
When I first started deploying, I told them about all the places I visited. I wanted to share with them all the cultures and sights I’d experienced. I always framed it as if it was something I’d done on leave because I didn’t want them to worry, and because I never told them I was a SEAL.
After the first year or so, I quit giving the all the details because the looks they gave irked me. And if the looks weren’t enough for me to hold my peace, then overhearing my family saying I was living above my raising definitely had been. Most of the time, I bit my tongue, but the last time I’d been home, we’d come to blows. Well, not all of us. Just me and my oldest brother. Trip was an asshole on his best day.
I’d gotten in late on a Thursday and spent the next day with Mama, who’d made sure all of us were together for dinner on Friday. The next day, I’d tagged along with Daddy and my brothers on the fishing trip they’d planned. We’d camped on the river bank all weekend, guzzling beer and pulling in smallmouth bass.
“You just had to open your fucking pie hole,” Trip said as he cracked open another beer, snapping the bottle cap between his fingers toward the trash bag we had hanging on the tree.
I clenched my teeth together until the muscles in my jaw popped, and my teeth throbbed from the pressure. I refused to take his bait. Of all my brothers, Trip was the only one I couldn’t stand to be around. Curt, Craig, the twins, Corey and Casey, and I rarely said a cross word to one another, but Trip was a grade-A fuckstick.
“You just had to make the rest of us look bad. Ash couldn’t fucking shut up all night about how amazing you are and how exciting your life is compared to ours.”
I continued to ignore him, and his ranting turned to grumbles. I didn’t believe for a second that this had anything to do with me. A glance at Daddy made me second-guess myself, though. Daddy leveled a glare at Trip to shut him up.
A couple of hours later and another half a case of beer, Daddy left us boys on the riverbank and went to bed in the camper. I started counting once the door to the camper slammed shut. I hadn’t even made it to ten when he started in on me again.
“I bet you haven’t even been to all those places you’ve talked about. I bet the Navy keeps your fucking stupid ass on base in Virginia.”
“Trip…” our brother Curt started.
“Nah. I’m over him thinking he’s fucking better than the rest of us. He ain’t no better. I betcha fifty bucks he’s out there in Virginia sucking cock. He’s probably making up all that shit about going to all those fancy fucking places to impress Mama and the girls to make himself look good, so they won’t realize the baby of the family’s a fucking fag.”
I shook my head at him and rolled my eyes. Little did he know I’d never even kissed another person, and instead of the luxury trip they were dreaming up, my team had been in Europe on a mission. We’d taken out the head of a terrorist organization, who was plotting to assassinate a head of state. I tweaked my shoulder and got sent home.
Even if he’d known, it wouldn’t have mattered. I was queer, and he’d been a miserable asshole ever since he lost his football scholarship when he blew out his knee his senior year of high school. Things had only gotten worse a few months later when Ashley turned up pregnant.
Unable to hold my tongue any longer, I said, “You know, Trip, you’re a miserable, jealous, fucking prick, and you have been since you got hurt. I’m sorry you lost your football scholarship, but I work my fucking ass off for this country. Maybe, if you showed your wife a little more attention than you do your huntin’ dogs, then maybe she wouldn’t be dreamin’ of how much greener the grass is on the other side of the fence.”
He swung at me. I knew what would happen when I said it. He’d gnawed on my ass every moment he’d gotten since I pulled into the driveway, and I was over it. It didn’t help that I’d been itching for a fight since Command had ordered me to sit my ass at home while my teammates headed out on a mission without me. Trip was just the lucky fucker to rip the lid off my can of whoop ass.
I’d been drinking, just like he had, but unlike my pissant brother, I was trained to kick ass. Once he swung at me, I unleashed on him. Fists flew, hitting their mark over and over. I held back, but only enough so I didn’t injure him, but I didn’t pull too many punches. I wanted to put him on his ass so he would feel it for days.
When I knocked him to the ground, I fell on top of him, pinning him to the ground. He hammered his fists against my thighs and chest. He was so drunk his blows didn’t have any oomph behind them. They glanced and bounced off me while I’d switched from punches to smacking his face with my open palms.
“ENOUGH!”
It didn’t matter that I was a grown man who could kill a fucker with my bare hands, that voice sent a shiver of fear through my body freezing me to the bone. I climbed off my brother and stood, crossing my arms over my chest as I faced our father.
“It’s about time you stood up for yourself, boy,” he said, patting my cheek before turning to my brother.
“You need to pull your head outta your ass because the whole lot of us are over your shit.”
He turned and walked back into the camper. When he was gone, I decided it was time to put some space between me and my brothers. I grabbed my sleeping bag and one of those death trap lawn chairs that could fold you up like a taco and headed off into the night.
“Carson?”
I looked up into the pale blue eyes of Roman Ott and my mouth went fucking dry as my dick twitched. I swore under my breath at the reaction, thanking God it happened now and not when I hugged him in front of the team a few minutes ago.
The man was fucking beautiful. He always had been. Roman had played football with me and my brothers and he’d been friends with us all. Unlike my brothers, though, Roman hadn’t been just my friend. He’d been my first and only crush.
The one who made me realize who I was and why the pom pom parade hadn’t ever done anything for me.
He was the only one who ever made my dick hard.
The only person who ever made me come in my sheets.
And apparently, he still was, even though my dick hadn’t shown interest in a single person between the last time I saw Roman and now.