Chapter 17
Landon
The Dead Presidents sure knew how to throw a party. We had more food than my entire platoon could eat, and more beer than it would take to drown them. Sitting around a giant table in the dining area, we all shot the shit about glory days in the military. Havoc said something about Ben heading to boot camp, and the entire room erupted into stories about basic training.
“The ruck marches were the worst,” a guy named Stocks said. “Can’t tell you how many people in my squad were selected for their random rucksack checks only to discover they were carrying nothing but socks and shit to keep the weight down. I think we had extra PT every day of basic.”
Wasp cleared his throat and beat on the table until he had everyone’s attention. “My rucksack was usually empty, but the drill sergeant let it go. He didn’t think it was fair to make me carry the normal weight since I was already lugging around this sixty-pound dick.”
Laughter and calls of “bullshit” erupted around the table.
Emily shook her head, laughing. “You’re awful, Wasp. When does Carly get off work? We need her to wrangle you back under control.”
I hadn’t met Carly, but would have to before I left town. Any woman who could handle the club clown had to be worth meeting.
A guy who’d introduced himself as Frog chimed in. “Best reason I ever heard for anyone enlisting… scrawny kid named Private Lewis. Nerdy on a whole new level, even more so than Morse there.”
Morse looked up from his tablet and flipped Frog off.
“We had some top brass asshole come around, asking why we’d all joined. This Private Lewis kid tells him his level eighty warlock got banned fromWorld of Warcraftand he freaked out and bit a kid at school. The guidance counsellor told his parents the Army was his only hope.”
The table roared. More stories were swapped. With my arm draped over Mercy’s shoulders, I ate until my stomach hurt and laughed until my cheeks burned.
Then the assholes turned the conversation on me.
“I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into with this 68Whiskey, Mercy,” Link said, taking another sip of his beer.
“What do you mean?” she asked, smirking at me. “He seems like an all right guy.”
“Oh, I’m sure he is. But there’s lots of stories about medics. For starters, whenever anything’s wrong, he’s gonna shove Motrin down your throat.”
Everyone around the table laughed.
“It’s true,” Havoc said, chiming in. “The Army gives medics these 800 milligram tabs of Motrin, and medics hand them out like candy.”
Mercy eyed me thoughtfully. “He has fed me a lot of ibuprofen,” she confirmed.
More laughter roared.
“You had a concussion,” I defended.
Link set down his glass. “You know what they say… above the waist pain, you get Motrin, below the waist pain…”
“You get foot powder,” everyone chanted.
“Comedians, all of you,” I said. “Just wait until I join your ranks. I’ll be flushing out your road rash with lemon juice.”
That only made them laugh harder, the savages.
“That’s what whiskey’s for,” a biker by the name of Eagle said, saluting me with his rocks glass.
“For you,” his very pregnant wife, Naomi, complained before taking a sip of water. During the meal I’d discovered that Eagle was formerly a sniper in the Marines and Naomi—who was also Link’s sister—had been a helo pilot in the Air Force. They were one badass couple.
When the conversation finally wound down, Link showed us the upper stories of the building. There were locker room style bathrooms and several bedrooms on both the second and third floors. He put me and Mercy in a room next to Ben and told us to feel free to roam around and check the place out, but after the day we’d had, we were exhausted.
I checked Ben’s wound, changed his bandage, and listened to his breathing before he disappeared behind his door. Then Mercy and I locked ourselves in our room for the night. I made a quick call to Mom to make sure she was okay, and then Mercy and I stripped off our clothes and fell into bed with her lying partially on top of me, chest to chest.
It had been an exhausting day and we were both tuckered out.
