Chapter 16
James
Iwas still in a daze as we finished cleaning up in the flower shop for the day.
I’d kissed Marc and then he’d kissed me.
And he’d growled. Twice. That was… holy fuck, that had been hot.
And I swear to God, if that man did not stop darting looks at me, I was going to drag him upstairs like a fucking caveman.
Finally, the shop was as clean as it was getting for the day, and we headed upstairs.
The sexual tension was so thick it was giving the obscene humidity outside a run for its money.
Except when he opened the door to the apartment, and we stepped inside, something felt off.
I was still trying to put my finger on it when Marc attacked me with a bruising kiss, pushing me into the wall.
Unsurprisingly, my brain went offline as I got lost in the massage of lips and dance of tongues.
But that little voice that was adamant that something was off, the same one that had kept me and countless others safe overseas, wouldn’t be so easily dismissed.
At last, whatever processing was going on in the background reached a conclusion, and it might as well have dumped ice-cold water over me. He was trying too hard.
“Marc.” My first attempt at his name was more muffled consonants than an actual name, so I tried again, this time physically putting distance between us.
“Marc,” I said more firmly. The look in his eyes absolutely devastated me.
Worry, concern, quickly receding lust, sadness, and, fuck, fear.
Why was he afraid? What was he afraid of?
He took a half-step back, wrapping his arms around himself, and looked away.
Marc was neither fragile nor delicate, but clearly something more was going on.
“I’m sorry. I… I’m not,” he paused, squeezing his eyes shut and swallowed thickly, “I’m not very good at this sort of thing.
” A fierce pink stained his cheeks, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
That explained a little. Not everything. But a little.
“And you don’t have to be, baby boy.” I’d behaved myself before by only ever reaching for his arms, but with that sad look in his eyes, I couldn’t help stepping closer and sliding a hand around his waist. As he looked up at me, I gave in to another impulse I’d been denying.
I brushed the hair back from his face. Even with a day’s worth of sweat, dust, and debris in it, his hair felt every bit as amazing as I believed it would sliding through my fingers.
“It’s been an emotionally turbulent day for both of us.
What do you say we get cleaned up, I order some of that awesome Ravenite pizza, and we have a movie night? ”
“I think we still have some beer.”
“See? Perfect. It’s a plan.”
He squinted and tilted his head. “So, like Netflix and chill?”
I laughed and released him. Seriously, too adorable for public consumption. Why did I get the impression he didn’t fully comprehend all that casual statement implied? “Unless you’re planning to add a lot of other things to what I listed, I think movies, pizza, and beer are enough for one night.”
“Okay, yeah. That sounds like fun. Haven’t had one of those in a—” He narrowed his eyes at me and altered what he was going to say, “in a while. Not since I enlisted.” He turned to go into the bedroom, for once not insisting I go first, then looked at me with a cautious expression.
“What about, uh, kisses? Could some of those maybe be added to the list?”
I smiled at how unbearably sweet he was and stepped forward to place a small kiss on the tip of his nose. “Baby boy, you can have as many kisses as you want.” Cautious hope glowed in his eyes. “Now go get cleaned up while I order the pizza.”
The tightness that had wrapped around my chest from the moment we’d set foot in the apartment finally eased at his returned smile.
I waited for him to turn completely around before pinching his ass, because at the end of the day, I was still me and, even though he shot me a glare, I knew he enjoyed the teasing.
He was almost to his door when I called, “And Marc?” He looked back at me, and I was relieved to only see curiosity in his eyes. “Don’t forget to wash your hands.” I winked, and he rolled his eyes.
“You think you’re so funny,” he muttered to himself.
I snickered, but let him have it.
As many times as it was explained to me, I’d never understand why the US got involved in politics in the Middle East. At this point, I’d heard it all—danger to the US, danger to themselves, nukes, no nukes, regime changes, something about oil—it all sounded made up.
I was certain my brother Andy could lay it all out in thirty seconds or less, but that was a moot point now as sand blasted in my face.
God, I fucking hated working in sandstorms, even if this one was mild compared to others we’d had to work in. They never fucking stayed that way. Out here, nature was as much the enemy as the insurgents. And they were both pissed as hell about the American boots on the ground.
The wind picked up, sand-blasting every millimeter of exposed skin.
On cue, explosions rocked the ground. Thankfully, we’d anticipated this.
So far our intel was holding. I should have known, like the storm, it wouldn’t last. We came to a ridge dotted with broken rocks.
Maybe they’d once been part of some ancient structure, maybe they were just rocks.
Either way, they were cover, even if it was poor cover at best.
I waved for most of the team to hold back while my second and I worked our way to the top where we both pulled out our binoculars. “What do you got, MacAbee?” I asked, looking down at the same structures as she was.
“This wasn’t part of our intel,” she replied in her typical crisp tone. She continued to survey what appeared to be a small village below. “Looks like it’s been abandoned for a while from what I can tell. Though it’s not easy with all this damn sand.”
I hummed to myself. If it were, it would explain why it hadn’t made it into our intel. Still, I didn’t like it. Our guys didn’t generally leave things to chance. Even this ridge was in the intel, so why wasn’t the village? Something wasn’t right. “What do you think?”
MacAbee lowered her binoculars. “Ambush, maybe?” The sharp look of concern in her brown eyes told me she felt it too. This was the nightmare. Our intel had been compromised, and there was no telling where in the chain of command it had happened, not when you were the last ones receiving it.
I nodded and pointed back down to where the others were waiting.
We’d barely turned when a high-pitched whine filled the air and suddenly we were thrown violently from the ridge.
I hit the ground below hard enough to lose the air from my lungs.
Screams of agony filled the air. I scrambled for my weapon, but only found soft sand.
Then I came face-to-face with the vacant eyes of Corporal Abigail MacAbee.
Half her torso was gone. She’d never laugh again or rib the guys about being terrible at poker.
Never hold her four-year-old son again. And why?
“Sergeant!”
My hand closed around my Cold Steel SRK and I swivelled effortlessly into a fighting stance. Disorientation hit me hard. The sandstorm was gone, though the memory of it lingered and my visibility was nil. When had it gotten dark? And it was a lot cooler. Too cool. Was I not in the desert anymore?
“Sergeant Gallagher.”
I turned toward the shadowed source of the voice, knife at the ready. “Name and rank, soldier.”
“Specialist Weathers, sir. Logistics.”
Why did that sound familiar? I shook my head. I could worry about it later. Mid-mission gone FUBAR was not the time. “Report. What are you doing here?”
The shadow stepped closer, and I tensed. “Back from reconnaissance. Hostiles have been subdued.” I winced as a soft yellow light suddenly flooded the soldier’s features.
Then I remembered why I thought I knew him.
He’d been smiling the first time I’d seen him in passing on base.
God, I’d never seen anyone so stunning in my life.
He was that kind of beautiful only country boys ever seemed to be.
It had taken me two weeks to learn his name.
When I found out he and his unit had been taken captive, I’d moved mountains to find them.
I frowned, my confusion multiplying. “Specialist Marc Weathers?”
“Yessir.”
I stumbled a step back and grabbed my head, prompting Spec.
Weathers to lurch forward. “No. No. I… got you out. I wasn’t too late.
They didn’t touch you. I wouldn’t let them touch you.
” I wasn’t a religious man, but I’d prayed for days that he’d been too out of it to remember the way those men had looked at him, how they’d talked about his pretty face and the things they wanted to do to it.
He’d been beaten pretty badly by the time my team got there, but there hadn’t been any evidence of other types of assault on any of his teammates. Not the ones that were still alive.
“You did. You got me out. You got us all out.” He stepped closer, and I realized he wasn’t in his gear but in boxers and a plain t-shirt.
I shook my head. But I didn’t get them all out. “Marc?”
“I’m right here. You got me out.” He took another step closer, both hands held out in front where I could easily see them.
“You’re in Fairhope, Alabama. You’re safe.
” There was a small whine that might have come from me, given the way his eyes softened.
“I’m safe.” Another step closer. He extended a hand. “Can you give me the knife, JD?”
I looked from his kind face to his open hand. No bruises, no marks, no cave, no desert.
“James, please give me the knife.”
I took a shuddering breath and slowly placed the pommel of the knife in his hand. The second I fully relinquished it, he tightened his hold, then set it far out of reach, all without breaking eye contact.
“How ya doin’, James?”
“I… I don’t know.” Fuck, I was still so disoriented. I hated this.
“Do you know where you are?”
I nodded. “Fairhope in… in the apartment over the flower shop.” This was why I didn’t watch action movies before bed.
When was the last time I had an episode this bad?
Oh God, I’d almost stabbed Marc. I flinched back, but that didn’t prevent him from continuing to slowly close the distance, hands still where I could see them.
“Hey, shh shh, it’s okay. That’s right. Can you tell me what you need?”
Emotion rose like a tidal wave, like it always did in the aftermath of an episode, slamming me in the chest. I didn’t know if it was like that for everyone, but it was for me.
Breathing became a chore, and I struggled to push out the words, “I don’t want to hurt you,” but God only knew how much of it actually made it out before the debilitating emotion won and I crumpled into a wrung out heap on the couch.