CHAPTER 2
Bailey
“Yo, Moore. Where we headed?” Cooper asks as he climbs into the back seat of my truck. Moore piles into the front, his wife, Lindy, closing the door behind him and leaning in the window.
When Moore had sent a message in the group chat saying he needed some help assisting a friend of his wife’s, none of us questioned it. The four of us piled into my truck outside the barracks and headed over to his house.
Lindy pipes up from her perch against the window. “My best friend finally kicked her ex out.” She glances in my direction. “You know Palmer, right, Bailey?”
It takes Moore nudging me with his elbow before it registers that I’m the one she’s talking to. No one ever uses my first name in the Army, so it’s not something I’m used to responding to. At times, I’m honestly not sure whether I know who Bailey is anymore. “Sorry. Who?”
“You know, Palmer? She’s a teacher. We do girls nights together?” Lindy says.
I squint her direction, processing through names I’ve heard mentioned before.
“PJ? Peej?” Moore offers up, jogging my memory.
“Right.” I point his direction. “Yeah, no. You guys have talked about her quite a bit, but I haven’t met her before.”
Lindy shrugs. “Oh, okay. For some reason, I thought you had. Anyway, she left her house to go on a date, and this guy is, like, super fucking hot, so—well, you know.” She raises her eyebrows suggestively.
“Anyway, her ex is dragging his feet on getting stuff out, and she’s worried that he’s going to fuck up her house or take something he’s not supposed to, so Chase”—she rests her hand on Moore’s bicep—“offered to go help get him out. Thought he might need a little motivation.”
Moore scoffs. “More like a swift kick in the ass.”
I chuckle, not missing the dark undertone in his voice.
She leans in, giving him a quick kiss. “Love you.”
Moore smiles, his eyes never leaving her face. “Love you more, hot stuff.”
Returning his smile, Lindy looks around at the five of us. “You guys are the best! PJ asked me to get you all pizza and beer for the trouble. I grabbed sweet tea for you, Amir.”
Phillips tips his ballcap toward Lindy. “’Preciate it.”
“So, hustle and get that asshole out, then come eat! Anyone opposed to pepperoni and sausage?”
The murmurs in the cab give her all the confirmation she needs.
“Cool. I’ll order the pizza once Chase texts me to let me know that you all are wrapping up over there. See ya in a bit!”
Lindy gives a quick wave, and we pull away from the curb.
I pull up to the stop sign at the end of the street and hand Moore my phone. “Can you type in the address for me?”
He finishes, then mounts the device on the stand. The place we’re heading is about a fifteen-minute drive.
I turn onto the next street. “Okay, real life, man. What’s up with this whole thing?”
He releases a long sigh. “Straight up, this guy is a fucking dick. I’ve known Peej for a while.
Probably, I don’t know, three or four years?
She and Lindy are always hanging out, and you know me.
” Moore tucks his non-existent hair behind his ear and flashes an ornery grin. “I’m a sucker for girl’s night.”
Everyone laughs, because we know he’s right. In fact, he has tried on more than one occasion to get all of us to participate. Each time, it’s met with mixed reviews, so we end up just playing video games or having a fire in his backyard.
“Anyway, I’ve been around the guy maybe a total of ten times.
And I’ve been around PJ a whole lot more than that.
Every time we hang out, she ends up having to make up an excuse for why he’s not there, and when he is, he always ends up getting shitcanned and being a total fucking prick then tries to bro out with me.
” Moore shakes his head, staring out the window for a beat, then continues quietly.
“Anyway. I just thought it’d be better for him if we weren’t alone. Right now, I want to fucking kill him.”
“And you think any of us are going to stop you?” I ask, only half joking.
“No.” He ponders for a moment. “But I guess it’ll be easier clean-up with five guys instead of one.”
I know he’s kidding about killing him (probably), but I also know he’s serious about how angry he is.
Moore and I have worked together for a long time; hell, we met in basic training.
If there’s anyone in the truck who knows Moore almost as well as he knows himself, it’s me.
Moore is typically pretty chatty and likes to joke around.
Not tonight. Tonight, his words are clipped, and his posture is stiff. That tells me everything I need to know.
Adams pipes up from the back, “Sounds like a real piece of shit.”
Moore chuckles humorlessly. “You have no idea. Like a week ago, she walked in on him cheating on her with his stepsister—”
“Oh, my god.”
“Dude, what the fuck?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“On the couch,” he continues. “In the house PJ owns. And the motherfucker talked his way into her letting him stay, then he broke up with her the next day, and has been staying with her since.”
I can see the looks on the guys’ faces in the rearview mirror. Their noses are wrinkled in disgust, even Cooper’s, who is probably the biggest man whore I know. Cooper mumbles something crass about the ex-boyfriend’s nether regions, but no one comments on it.
Shaking his head, Moore says, “I’m not sure why she let him stay, and I’m not sure what made her finally ready to get him out, but I’m more than happy to help.”
“Motherfucker,” I mumble, under my breath.
“That’s putting it mildly,” Moore murmurs in agreement.
Turning up the volume on the heavy metal playing over the radio, we ride the next five minutes in silence.
Probably not the best music for keeping anyone calm, but I don’t exactly feel calm right now.
I fucking hate a bully. I’d hated it when it was my dad, and now, his face is the one I see in every bully’s.
I hadn’t noticed my knuckles tightening on the steering wheel as Moore had spoken, but now that I do, I wipe my hands on my jeans, flexing my fingers.
This whole scenario is a little bit funny to me.
When I had enlisted in the Army, it had been because I didn’t really feel like I had many other options.
School hadn’t been my thing, and I wanted to be able to take care of my mom even if something happened to me.
I didn’t care what I did, how much I liked it, or whether anyone else cared about what I did as long as Mom was taken care of.
My plan had been get in, do my twenty years, get out.
If I was lucky, maybe get some disability on top of my retirement pay then disappear to do my own thing.
But no matter how hard I pushed people away or actively avoided getting attached, they just kept coming back.
The Army has a funny way of forcing people together, especially the ones you would never in a million years be around in the civilian world, and they end up being your best friends.
Then, when I reclassed to Special Forces, it was like the process completely stripped away that hardened shell I had spent so many years putting up.
These weren’t just people I worked with anymore; they were my family, too.
And now, I’m on the way to kick some piece of shit guy—who I’ve never even heard of—out of some chick-who-I’ve-never-met’s house.
Why? Because Moore asked me to. And because, by some weird default, PJ is now my extended family because Lindy loves her, and Moore loves Lindy, and I would die for Moore.
Thanks, Army.
Now when I think about my future dreams, all I want to do is tighten the cinch, ride out my remaining eight years without dying, then have a well-earned, peaceful retirement.
I want to buy this plot of land that I have my eye on out by the lake, build a house big enough for me, myself, and I, and spend my days in the quiet.
No more getting shot at. No more answering to anyone except myself.
I’ll be my own man living by my own rules on my own time.
I’ve spent so long proving to everyone that I’m something, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life proving something to anyone else.
The only person I want to worry about proving anything to is me.
That’s all I’ve ever wanted. That’s the dream.
At least until the Army changes its mind again about where it needs me, then I’ll be on the road again and off to find a new dream. Hazards of the job, I guess.
As we turn on the last street, I turn down the volume and gesture with my head toward the small brick house with the black car in the driveway. “This it?”
“Yep.”
I pull along the curb and turn off the ignition.
The house is cute. It’s one of those places you see on Zillow that makes you think about a starter home and a happy family playing in the yard. You know, white picket fence and all that jazz.
“Come on, assholes,” I mumble.
We all climb out of the truck and make our way up to the front door. My boots click along the concrete, and I try to time my breaths to match every three steps. Maybe if I breathe, I won’t want to beat the shit out of this guy.
Maybe.
Moore raps on the front door, and I tuck my fists into my pockets. No answer.
“I could kick it in,” I offer.
That earns me a chuckle.
“I think Peej would come for me if her door was hanging off the hinges when she got home. She’s not really someone whose bad side I want to end up on.” Moore knocks again, louder this time.
“Wouldn’t want to miss out on girl’s night?”
He flips me off as he raises his hand to knock for a third time, but before his knuckles meet the wood, the door swings open. The man holding it on the other side of the threshold looks pissed.
Good.
He’s about my height with hazel eyes and dark, wiry hair that’s thinning on top. If ever looks could kill, the five of us would be laid out flat. Unfortunately for him, his glare isn’t the scariest thing I’ve seen even today, so looks like he’s stuck with us.