Chapter 19
SCOTTIE
“Mikey,” I whispered again, rubbing my bruised throat.
But he didn’t move. Not a muscle of his broad back twitched. His shoulders remained slumped forward, and I wondered how someone so absolutely powerful could suddenly look so utterly broken. He saved my life. He did his job very well. So well, in fact, that I knew these feelings of heat swirling warm in my belly were ill timed and inappropriate.
Except there was no stopping them. I didn’t want to fight them at this moment.
Even though there was another part of me upset with him. He hadn’t hesitated to put my life above his. I had no doubt that if it had come down to it, he wouldn’t have questioned death taking him if it meant saving me.
How dare he! Anger roared hot, but only for a brief moment.
How dare he… How strange how different the same three words could mean the longer I studied him.
I wasn’t ready to lose him; we’d only begun to scratch the surface, and for the first time in my life, I felt like someone saw me. Someone chose me. Even if I’d been practically forced onto the team, something had shifted for Mikey. He actually asked me questions.
And listened to my answers.
Taking a hesitant step toward him, my heart burned with this strange yearning. An ache new to my soul dragged my feet across the sand. A gentle breeze swirled grains of red and orange dust around the man still slouched on his knees. Crumpled beneath a burden I didn’t know about, his chest expanded, widening his broad shoulders.
And a crow, with feathers as black as night, swooped down into the ravine with a single caw. Pausing, I briefly shifted my gaze from Mikey’s hunched frame and tracked the bird. It swooped close to him, sending another spray of dust up around the man, and then shot off back into the sky, disappearing over the top of the canyon.
My skin tingled. I wasn’t a stranger to believing in legends and myths, but that was way too glaring in my face for it to be real. It couldn’t be.
Shaking free of the bonds telling me it was, I quietly continued on my way over to Mikey. Slowly, I slid over to his side, and my limbs went rigid.
Almost as dark as the feathers on the crow, dried blood stained the pant leg covering nearly the entirety of Mikey’s left thigh. Soaked in the iron liquid, I barely noticed the red covering his hands or splattered on the side of his face. Sand and dust coated much of his skin and uniform.
“You’re bleeding!” I gasped, louder than intended, and finally, his head whipped upright.
For a brief moment, right before that ever-present calm stretched across his features, his eyes remained dark. Guilt and terror unlike I’d ever seen twisted his expression, turning him almost inhuman.
Like a bolt of lightning, it was gone. His eyes returned to those ocean blue swirls, though there seemed to be a hint of pain left behind. “Huh?” he muttered, as if he hadn’t quite heard me.
“You’re bleeding,” I repeated and gestured toward his thigh.
His eyes darted down to his leg and air sliced through his teeth. “Well, shit, would you look at that?” A tight smile spread across his lips. “Anyway, we should radio Dom and let him know we’re all good here.”
Mikey placed a hand against the ground, shifted to the side, and rose with minimal weight on his left leg. His face didn’t contort in pain. Not a muscle flinched from the movement and strain that I knew had to be uncomfortable for him.
I stared at him, shocked to say the least. Was he pretending to be some tough guy? Or did it really not affect him? Was he maybe simply numb to the pain due to adrenaline?
“Phoenix, this is Viper, do you copy?” he radioed, but I didn’t hear anything in my ear.
“Try again, I didn’t hear anything,” I replied, letting him know that nothing connected.
“Phoenix, this is Viper, over?” he asked again, looking in my direction but not really at me. Something had shifted in him. I wasn’t sure what it was, but confusion flitted over my figure that had previously felt so grounded around him.
“Nothing.” I shook my head. “Phoenix, this is Crow, do you copy?” I said over comms.
Mikey’s brows pulled together, his eyes finally focusing on me. “I didn’t hear nothing either,” he said.
“Phoenix, anyone, come in,” I radioed one more time. Mikey shook his head and inhaled deeply, sheathing his bloody knife.
He shrugged his shoulders, too casually for the fact that our radios were down. “Well, let’s get walking. We can head back down this canyon and see if they’re still in the midst of the battle. If not, we’ll jump up to the rendezvous point.” He adjusted the PPE around his torso and shrugged the pack higher onto his shoulders. I watched in odd horror as he limped over to both my rifle and his, several feet away in the dirt, back near the absolutely demolished buggy we’d nearly been blown up in.
“Mikey,” I muttered, unsure of what to say as he stooped. Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he raised his gaze to me and cocked a brow.
“It’s not like either buggy is functional. So, the longer we wait, the longer it’ll take—”
“You can’t walk that far.” I closed the distance between us and slipped my rifle from his hands.
“Eh, I’ve had worse.” He scanned around me, still refusing to linger on any one place for too long.
“You’ve had worse?” I snapped a hand around his arm, shaking him. “Look at me, will you!”
His jaw knotted, and his gaze skimmed briefly across mine, then darted away.
“Mikey, will you fucking look at me!” I shouted, jerking his arm.
The casualness in his features snapped away, hardening. He aged right in front of me. Every line in his face deepened, maturing beyond his years. “Scottie, don’t.” His voice was sharp and he brushed at my hand on his tight sleeve. Every muscle in his forearm beneath my fingers rippled in tension, cracking out of my hold.
“Don’t what? Be concerned for you?” I slung my rifle around to my back and crossed my arms. But no matter how intense I tried to make myself, no matter how piercing and serious I tightened my face, he didn’t react. Where was the Mikey I’d grown to know?
He merely wet his lips and looked over my head. “You can be concerned when we get back to camp. I think you’ve forgotten your place, Corporal. Let’s go.” As sharp as ice, Mikey walked around me, not a single expression twisting his features.
Corporal.He called me Scottie. He called me Crow. He called me Scotch after some damn tape, but never my rank. He skipped right over my last name and went to the most impersonal thing possible.
Spinning on my heels to face him, I jogged after him, easily catching up with his uneven gait. “What in the actual hell is wrong with you?” I snapped, shoving him against his shoulder. Despite the need to unintentionally brace his weight on his bad leg to stay upright, the pain that had to snap through him never once appeared on his face.
“Nothing. We eliminated the target, now we need to get back,” he said without inflection.
“What…” I started to ask, but I wasn’t even sure what to say now. I had no idea what was going on with him. Something clearly went wrong, but what it was, I had no clue. Mikey resumed walking, his gaze darting around like a pinball. It honestly exhausted me with how rapidly his eyes shifted. But I followed along without a word.
The sand beneath our boots crunched softly, shifting with each step we took. Not another sound echoed around us. Straining for any familiar crack of a gun or rumble of an explosion, my ears quickly tired.
And then Mikey stopped, his head tilted up, eyes trained on something. Following his gaze, my heart dropped to my stomach, dread curling my toes. “Is that…?” I questioned, not wanting confirmation that the red sky swarming toward us was exactly what I thought it was.
“Sandstorm. We need to find cover,” Mikey stated, still without emotion in his words.
“What about the buggy we flipped? It’s smashed, but it would provide shelter until the storm passes,” I offered, watching as the tip of the dunes darkened. The storm was moving our way and quickly. Everything the sun touched around us turned a deep orange, and the wind that preceded the sand prickled against the hairs on my neck.
Mikey’s gaze slid across our surroundings once more. Nothing more than rock and sand rose around us, and then he paused. “There.” Raising his index finger, he pointed at a low crevice in the canyon wall. The opening was barely tall enough for an average person to slither in on their belly.
I drew in a deep breath, but he didn’t wait for me to respond. As quickly as he could, he limped around in front of me and made his way across the wide ravine. Reluctantly, I followed. How deep that fissure went, I didn’t know, but Mikey seemed determined that he knew best. To him, that chasm was a better choice than a smashed dune buggy.
We reached the crack just as the first wave of sand whistled down into the canyon. Without a word, Mikey laid down on his back, wrapped his hands around the opening, and pulled himself in.
My mouth fell open; sand coated my throat as he completely disappeared. Swallowed whole by the dune wall. Coughing against the grains of dust that whipped like tiny daggers into my cheeks, I quickly flattened myself as he had and tugged.
Darkness consumed me. The scorching heat that had coated sweat on my brow immediately dissipated with the cocoon of the wide cavern. Using my hands as eyes, my fingers slid across the rough petrified sand wall, grating beneath my gloves.
The wall rose enough that I found myself sitting upright, and then a faint crack broke the whistling of the sandstorm outside. Dim red light pierced the engrossing black and my eyes followed the light to its source. Mikey had snapped a glow stick. His steel frame highlighted by the haunting radiance as the rage of the storm outside roared louder.
It echoed around these cavern walls. Walls that rose like a bubble cocooning us, perfectly comfortable for the two of us. I studied Mikey. He stared back. Still not a single expression of anything but those hardened features met my eyes.
“We need to dress your wound,” I hesitantly whispered.
“It’s fine,” he muttered in response and set the glow stick down beside him. His eyes fluttered closed, and he tipped his head back against the rock wall.
“Quit being such a stubborn ass and let me at least help,” I replied, tipping forward, and crawled over to him. But even my harsh words drew no reaction from him, and I paused at his feet.
“Blondie,” I gently said.
His sand-coated lashes finally opened, but the blue irises normally full of life looked back at me, absolutely hollow. “Hmmm?” he muttered, mindlessly.
“Thank you,” I whispered. Hesitantly, I placed a hand around his ankle. Yet, he didn’t move or flinch from the touch. Instead, his hollow eyes sparked. A shadow drifted across them like a gentle whale swimming carefree through the ocean.
“What?” he asked, his voice catching in his throat.
“Thank you for all of that. You didn’t hesitate to—”
“You’re not…?” Despite cutting me off, he didn’t seem to be able to find the words to finish his thought. Whatever strange burden weighing heavily on his crumpled soul lightened. The deep lines in his face softened.
“I’m not what?” I quietly asked. But not a sound left his lips. His eyes remained trained on mine. In the dim red glow surrounding us, innocence filled the empty pocket once laden with an unbearable guilt. My heart hammered slowly in my chest as he simply looked at me. His gaze burrowed straight into my soul, searching for something. Whatever it was, I prayed that he found it.
Then the spell shattered with a simple blink of his eyes. But that hardened torture didn’t return to his face as he exhaled slowly. “You should’ve bailed when I told you to,” he chastised me. Despite knowing he was partly right, the relief from those words overwhelmed me.
“Blah, blah. I saved your ass,” I replied.
A small smile played on his lips. “Damn good shot too.”
“Told you I knew what I was doing.”
“I never doubted it, Scotch.” He winked that stupid wink, and I rolled my eyes, using that to mask the relief swarming like honeybees inside me. He was back. A gentle chuckle hummed from him, settling the tension spinning in the stormy air. Ugh, that sound was definitely something I craved, and I hated that I did.
“Can I help you now?” I narrowed my gaze.
His grin widened. “It really isn’t that bad, but be my guest.”
“If we don’t at least clean it up and wrap it, it’ll get infected, and then they might have to chop your entire leg off.” I crawled forward between his thighs. He adjusted his posture, widening slightly to make room for me, and I swallowed stiffly. It wasn’t lost on me how…intimate this was. I could’ve just crawled to his left side, not between his damn legs. The hell was I thinking?
As I glanced up from the bloodied pant leg, Mikey lifted a brow and that usual cocky grin spread across his face. My cheeks burned hot and I was so grateful the resulting red color would blend in with the lighting of this small cavern.
He pulled his bottom lip in with his top teeth and bit back his smirk. Scrounging through my pack’s pockets, I found the emergency wrap and the homeostatic ointment. Gingerly, I pinched the fabric that was torn from hip to knee and widened the tear.
A long cut sliced his thigh open parallel with the ripped cloth. The blood seemed to have already clotted, so cleaning up the area became more of a priority than applying some homeostatic ointment. I stuffed that back in my pack and slipped out a canteen of water.
“Take your pants off,” I said.
“Well, damn, girl. You’re not even going to buy me a drink first?” Mikey replied with a smirk.
I pursed my lips. “Not like that, dumbass.”
“Not even a scotch?”
“Oh. Ha. Ha. It’ll be much easier to wrap up your leg if your pants aren’t in the way.”
He chuckled and slid his hands to his waistband. I should’ve looked away. That would’ve been the appropriate thing to do, but I couldn’t help watching as he shimmied them down from his hips and slipped them under his ass.
I sucked in some air as he paused, his compression boxers not hiding much, and the shadows from the glow stick in his cavern only enunciated what he’d been blessed with.
“Scotch, you gotta move,” he stated.
My eyes widened. “Shit, sorry,” I mumbled and quickly scrambled out from between his legs. What the actual hell was that? He knew, he had to know that I was staring at his junk… Swallowing stiffly, my eyes rose from the blackened crevice floor. Immediately, of their own accord, they returned to the bulge sitting between his legs. Such an objectifying thought, I knew that, but just damn…
Damn.
The moment his pants were around his ankles, he kicked them free. The movement peeled my gaze away. I watched as he finally looked at the wound. “Well, shit. That’s gonna leave a gnarly scar.” He chuckled and gave me a tight smile.
“How is it not painful for you?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders as I cautiously crawled forward again. Between his thighs, again. Sweat ran slick down my spine, my heart beat so fast, I could’ve sworn he could feel the waves it was making. “I mean, it doesn’t feel good, but like I said, I’ve had worse.”
“Like what?” I asked and dribbled some water over the wound.
“Broke my femur before. That fucking hurt like the dickens.”
“How’d you manage that?” I tore some cloth from the extra rag I’d stuffed in my bag just in case I’d wanted a change of balaclava.
“Got in a fight,” he answered, grinning as I began wiping away at the dried blood on his muscular thigh. The wound didn’t seem too deep, but it was long enough that the amount of blood made sense.
“I’m just going to assume all of your injuries you’ve had came from fights.” I dabbed at some skin.
“That is the wisest assumption you could’ve made.”
“You told me once that you’re good at fighting because it’s something you’ve done for a long time. How long is this long time?” I asked, peeling some dried blood from his leg.
Mikey’s chest expanded, drawing in a long breath of air. “Got in my first fight when I was eight, almost nine.”
“What happened?”
“Beat the shit out of the kid ’cause he pissed me off. Don’t even remember what the kid said or did to make me so upset.” He brushed at some sand on his arm, the first indication that he noticed the dirt.
I furrowed my brows and paused. “You don’t even sound like you regret it?”
“I learned a long time ago that regret does nothing but cause you pain.”
“So, you have no regrets in life?”
He shook his head, but his brows twitched. “Nope.”
“That is a lie and you know it,” I grumbled, returning to the wound.
“What’s something you regret?” he asked.
Slipping the wrap beneath his leg, I tightly wound the cloth around his cleaned cut. “Asking you to take your damn pants off,” I grumbled, annoyed at myself more than him. It took everything in me to remain focused on the wound knowing what waited so close.
“Why the hell would you regret something you so clearly enjoyed seeing?” he flirted.
I rolled my eyes, cinching the wrap tight around his leg, and glanced at him. My eyes were supposed to have connected with his, but instead they flickered to his cock again.
Shit.I hissed. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
“How so?” He grinned wickedly.
“Your leg is sliced open, we’re waiting out a sandstorm and could potentially be stranded out here if the team leaves us, yet you’ve got a boner.” I gestured at it.
His eyes sparkled, arrogantly. “Scotch, I am not aroused.”
“Yes, you are. I can clearly see it.”
“What you’re seeing is me completely soft.”
“Do you enjoy lying to me?”
“I’m not lying.”
“Yes, you are.” Without thinking, I cupped his junk to prove my point.
His eyes bugged out of his head.
And I ripped my hand away, scrambling backwards.
“I-I-I am so sorry,” I gasped, slapping my hand over my mouth and ramming my eyes shut. There was no way that just happened. What I’d grabbed was more than a handful. It was more than two handfuls, and I wasn’t sure what to think or do.
“Soooo,” he drawled. I remained facing away from him. “As you clearly now know, I wasn’t lying.”
He had been right—it was soft. My body ran warm. A dull ache pulsed between my legs, burning. I partly wouldn’t mind doing that again, except when it was hard… He could grab my hips and—
HOLD. UP.
Absolutely not.
“Again, I’m sorry.” Overwhelmed with embarrassment, I began rambling. “I don’t really know why I did that. I shouldn’t have touched you without your permission in the first place. That wasn’t a very good display of trust between—”
“You’re welcome to do that any time you want,” he growled.
My stomach churned. My skin ran hot.
I cleared my throat, ignoring him. That was all I could do. “I do trust you, and know that when it comes down to it, you have my back. I crossed a line as teammates and—”
“You’re not the first teammate to grab my balls, Scotch,” he said, cutting me off again.
I whipped around to face him. “Will you stop interrupting me?”
“When you stop feeling so ashamed for fondling my dick.”
“Mikey, that— I wasn’t— It was—” I rammed my mouth shut, unable to express how I was feeling, especially since it wasn’t shame. What a cruel joke this was, it had to be. Because the desire to touch him again roared hot at my fingertips.
“Relax, would ya?” he gently said, a low chuckle escaping his lips again. And of course I was sweating. The harder I fought against whatever these strange feelings were, the more they swirled within me. Well, fuck me. These thoughts were so inappropriate, especially since no matter what, nothing could happen between us.
“Mikey, this is all harmless banter, right?” I questioned, finding my voice again.
“What do you mean?”
I raised my gaze to his, finally locking eyes with him. “This…” I gestured between us as he reached down to his ankles and grabbed his pants. “The way we talk to each other. It’s all in good fun, right?”
A crease formed between his brows. Granules of sand rained against the narrow cavern mouth, though inside all was silent. Our breaths mingled as he studied me, and the toes of my right foot began to go numb. He swallowed softly, the light from the glow stick sliding across his Adam’s apple.
“Is that all you want it to be?” he asked, his voice so low, it blended in with the howling of the storm outside. I sucked in the side of my cheek, studying him.
“That’s all it can be,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure why it hurt so much. The twinge in my heart as those words left my mouth shot a pang of discomfort through my entire body. Unexpected. He wasn’t more than a friend, so why did it bother me to voice that boundary?
“Understood,” he mumbled.
And my entire soul shattered.
Turning away, I wrapped my arms around myself. Hollowness filled my heart.
I hadn’t even realized it had been so full of Mikey until he accepted my boundary. But no man, not another person was worth ruining my career over. My job, my position as an excellent sniper, was all I had in this world.
So, why did I suddenly feel so empty?
So absolutely alone…