9. Beau
Beau
Deal with your messes when you make them.
The longer you leave them, the harder they are to clean up.
A nother yawn cracks my jaw as I step through the thick forest, armed and ready.
But I have to fight to keep from glaring a hole clear through the back of Dom’s head.
Now , I generally consider myself a man slow to anger, but I have been known, on a handful of not-so-proud occasions, to boil over to bursting.
And this morning? I’m struggling to keep myself to a simmer.
Between trying to scare Eden away from coming home with us, shunning her in the games room, and then dragging me out of the house at the crack of dawn this morning before I could even steal a good-morning cuddle, Dom is getting on my last nerve.
He’s lucky I’m so even tempered. Not one to hold a grudge. In fact, it’s only because I’m such a professional that I haven’t given him the old what for. Nope , you’d best believe that I’ve kept my mind on the mission and eyes on the trees—and not on the Judas to my right.
Though I am counting every one of my lucky stars he isn’t at my back.
Since I’m running out of places he can stab me in it.
“ So ,” Dom begins, breaking the four-hour silence between us. He nods at the river of wildflowers running between the trees. “ Should I be picking you a nice bouquet to get my ass out of this doghouse?” He looks over at me and lifts a brow. “ Or is this a fancy tennis bracelet kind of deal?”
I blink, spluttering a laugh—then can’t help but roll my eyes. “ You know damn well I won’t wear a tennis bracelet.” Checking my MK 16, I add with a prim sniff, “ Not without the matching earrings.”
His mouth snags up in a half-smile, and I scowl.
.. because it makes me want to smile too.
Damn it. I hate that he can do that—get me laughing when he hasn’t even apologized yet.
But no, that would require Captain Slade to actually admit fault, and I’ve never met anyone so sure they’re right.
Or harder on themselves when it turns out they’re not.
But it takes a good dose of hard reality to smack him round his thick head before he ever comes to that realization.
I lower my rifle even as I raise a scolding finger, just the way my ma used to.
“ Don’t you just brush over these last few days, I’m —” I break off, grinding my teeth.
Nope . There’s no point in getting all worked up. I’m calm. A breeze through a cornfield.
I’ll be back at Bristlebrook and helping Eden get settled in tonight. It does not matter that Dom seems to be doing his level best to keep us apart. It doesn’t matter that he’s been rude and mean and petty about her and not at all willing to consider what she could mean for us.
It . Does . Not . Matter .
At all .
I turn abruptly, stalking ahead through the undergrowth.
Dom sighs. Sighs like I am the problem here. “ The word is ‘mad,’ Beau . Say it with me, ‘ I . Am . Mad .’ The world won’t break.”
Ducking under a low branch, I squint into the greenery. “ How about we just focus on cleaning up our tracks? I’m good with silence. Real good with it.”
Dom follows after me, watching my back.
“ No ? Let’s try something easier. How about ‘ Why , Dom , I am just fixin’ to rearrange your features,’” he mocks in the most atrocious accent I’ve heard in my life. “ Heavens to Betsy , I have never been so riled up in all my born days.”
I stop and gape. “ I don’t sound like that. I’ve never sounded like that.”
Dom rolls his eyes, then continues in the same exaggerated drawl, “ Well , howdy, Miss Eden . Ain’t you just plump as a peach. Let’s get you back to the farm now, and I’ll have you barefoot and pregnant before this here night is out.”
At the mention of Eden , my teeth grit again. “ It’s ‘plump as a dumplin’’ and you’re not even a bit funny.” Dom doesn’t respond but gives me a dry, sideways look, and I add, “ I’m not mad .”
“ Right ,” he mutters under his breath, then pauses. He crouches to study the ground. As he smooths over the boot print in the dirt with his palm, his lips compress.
Concern replaces my frustration. “ They didn’t track us, Dom . We would have seen them by now, or some sign of them anyhow.”
He stands and keeps walking, careful to leave no trace, but his fingers curl into a fist. I follow, moving up until I’m by his side, like I have been for the past four hours.
Like I have been for half my life. We find our rhythm again, falling into step like an old married couple—just without the man-on-man action.
Or the communication skills.
Finally , the grim line of his mouth cracks.
“ It was careless. We should have realized there were survivors— Eden told us how many there were—and I led us straight back to Bristlebrook . Didn’t even attempt to cover our tracks.
” He lets out a hard breath. “ We got lucky that they didn’t follow us. ”
Dom shakes his head once, a sharp, angry gesture, and I can just about see the silent self-flagellation he’s delivering.
He’s been this way ever since military school.
He liked to get a head start on beating himself up over his so-called failures before his pa, Colonel Slade —the piss-your-pants terrifying, legendary head of the 75th Ranger Regiment himself—could voice his disapproval.
I’m half sure Dom wasn’t born so much as carved out of the Ranger Handbook and made flesh by sheer force of the Colonel’s will.
And there are no mistakes in the handbook.
“ You don’t think any stragglers might have been put off by the giant pile of their dead buddies?” I ask.
Dom’s dark brows lower. “ Maybe .”
“ There were three of us out there. Not just you. We all messed up,” I offer, knowing it’s useless. To Dom , it’s all his responsibility.
He makes a noncommittal sound, his shoulders still tense boulders beside me.
We pick our way through the forest carefully, making our way back to the clearing-of-death.
It’s slow going—we need to stop and erase every sign of our passage from two days ago.
Dom is right about that, at least; we don’t want any surviving hunters tracking us to Bristlebrook .
After thirty minutes, he’s still kicking his own ass, and it helps me push down my prickly feelings. I’ve always been better at soothing tempers than stoking them.
“ We’re making good time,” I try again. “ At this rate, we should be able to make it back home by dinner.”
Dom’s head swings toward me. “ We’re going to town, then home through the caves.” He snorts, shaking his head as he keeps moving. “ I’m not about to undo half a day’s work so that you can bat your eyelashes at the new girl.”
I grab his shoulder and yank him to face me before I even clock the impulse. Dom studies my hand on his shoulder, then looks at me with a curious tilt to his head. He looks amused .
“ That will take days ,” I grind out.
“ Three , probably. Maybe four.” Dom picks my hand off him, then shrugs. “ But that’s no problem, right? After all, you’re not mad .”
He smirks, and I press my tongue against my teeth so hard I reckon I might pop one out. Days . Eden is skittish. In days, she could be gone.
A breeze swirls around us like it’s trying to cool us down before we get too hot.
“ I’m fine,” I reply automatically, but the words come out stiff... and tasting slightly of sour bubbles. My mama would have rinsed my mouth with soap for telling such a bald-faced lie.
Dom rubs a hand over his face. “ Fine ?”
“ And dandy,” I assure him tightly.
“ Oh , sure. Sounds like it.”
We stare at one another for a moment, and I work to stifle the words pushing at my lips. Dom sighs again, then turns like he’s about to keep on, and it all just comes bursting out.
“ Look , I just think it’s real funny how—”
Dom’s head drops back. “ Here we go.”
“ How ,” I repeat, ignoring him, “you managed to find a reason to drag both of us out of Bristlebrook the second she got there. Because me myself? I was planning on seeing what our pretty new houseguest looked like all tangled up in her sheets. Help her get settled in. Make her some breakfast. You know, actually make her feel welcome instead of dumping her on the others and bailing.”
“ You planning to wipe her ass for her too?”
I grind my teeth. I didn’t even get a chance to see her last night before she ducked off to bed—and I’d wanted nothing more than to crawl in beside her. Instead , he had me out here at the ass crack of dawn like he can’t bear to be in the same house with her.
I sling my weapon over my shoulder before I’m tempted to use it on him. “ You had no right to drag me out here on some useless exercise because you can’t bear that she makes you tingle in your happy places.”
Dom shoots me a warning look. “ Don’t start on that shit with me, Beau . I need your head in this—so pull it out of your ass. We have bigger things to worry about than some girl. Move west; the clearing was that way.”
He turns to stalk off, and I pick up the pace so I’m stalking beside him. We’re not going to avoid this conversation like we do all the others. It’s past time we talked through our shit.
“ You’re keeping me away from Eden , so I’m gonna go ahead and say you started this one,” I bite back. “ She’s most comfortable with me; it was a dick move to drag me off before she’s even settled.”
Dom doesn’t even look my way, every inch the stern CO , utterly unfazed by my irritation.
He steps over a log, checks the compass on his kit and keeps moving.
“ We need to do recon. There are others still out here, I’m sure of it, and there could be trouble.
I’m not compromising our security because you want to get your dick wet. ”
Dick wet?
“ You trying to piss me off?” I ask between gritted teeth. “ Kiss my ass, Dom . You need someone out here, fine, maybe you’re even right about that, but there’s no reason that had to be me. I brought her in. I convinced her to stay. She’s —”