“Enough!” Chris barks as Damon snickers beside him, trying desperately—but failing—to keep his attention on sharpening the blade in his hand.
“You missed your zipper, boss,” Damon shares with a smirk and cocky arch of his brow, both our eyes darting to the gaping fly of his pants as even more heat flares up my cheeks.
Chris hastily zips up, cursing under his breath, as the guys all break out in laughter.
I clear my throat. “We found it,” I divulge, my voice barely interrupting their boisterous laughter. “The evidence we needed.”
The mood in the tent shifts, the jovial, lighthearted smiles replaced with somber, concerned faces in an instant.
“What do you mean, found it?” Damon asks carefully.
My throat tightens, and I lower my voice, unsure who might be listening on the other side of the canvas walls. “Classified documents. Proving the military was involved in the massacre at the village.”
“Christ,” Gunnar exhales, his fingers flexing subconsciously around the rifle in his hands.
“Not just involved,” Chris adds from beside me. “That they were ordered. I’m going to call Mattis in the morning to have him dig deeper.”
The silence that follows is heavy and sharp. Jagger is the first to break it. “So we’re getting the fuck out of here now.”
Chris answers immediately, “Yes.”
“No,” I rebut before I can stop myself. Every head jerks toward me, but it’s Chris’s—and the glare he shoots me—that pins me in place. I swallow hard. “Not until I uncover what’s going on here.”
“Reese.” His voice sharpens. “Youhaveuncovered it. You’re not staying in a place where people are being executed en masse. You’re not?—”
“You think running is going to fix it?” I interrupt, stepping closer to him. “If we leave now, whoever did this gets away with it. Again.”
Damon stands, sliding the knife back into its sheath. “We’ll take the next patrol shift,” he says quietly, nodding toward Gunnar. “You two should… rest.” His tone makes it clear he means more than sleep. He meanstalk.
“Appreciate it,” Chris replies.
Jagger’s grin creeps back as he gets to his feet. “Yeah, you definitely look like you could use it, brother.” Hawk shoots him a look that could peel paint. “Right, shutting up.” Jagger chuckles quickly, slipping past the tent flap close behind Gunnar and Damon. The night swallowsthem, leaving the tent hushed except for the soft rustle of canvas in the wind.
For a long moment, neither of us speaks. Then Chris sighs, low and rough, rubbing a hand down his face. He looks exhausted, every inch of him stretched tight with restraint. He quickly strips down to his boxer briefs and drops onto his cot.
I stand there for a moment, watching him before crossing the small space. After removing my boots and pants, I slide in beside him. I curl against his side before he can protest, and his skin is hot against mine. The cot dips under our combined weight.
For a while, he doesn’t touch me. He merely lies still beside me with slow, measured breaths. His arm wraps around my shoulders, pulling me closer to him until my cheek is resting on his chest. His heartbeat beneath me is steady and slow—too calm for the chaos I know is currently raging inside him. “This is dangerous,” he murmurs, voice barely above a whisper. “Too dangerous.”
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t have come here in the first place.”
“I’ve been here for six months, Chris,” I counter softly, stifling my annoyance at him thinking he has the right to come back and dictate how I live. “I like my life. I choose to spend my days in godforsaken places, because people should know what is happening in the world.”
“What you do is admirable as hell.”
I lift my head to look at him. His jaw is tight, and his eyesare dark, unreadable, shadows cutting across the sharp lines of his face.
He exhales hard through his nose. “You don’t get it, Reese. If they keep pushing to bury this, someone is going to get hurt. And if it’s you—” He stops, like he can’t finish the thought. His hand curls around my hip instead, possessively squeezing. “I don’t know if I can protect you from that.”
“You’ve already protected me,” I whisper. “You always have.”
His eyes flicker with pain and guilt.
I reach up, brushing my fingers along his jaw. “You think you left to save me. But the truth is, you broke me worse than anything else ever could have when you left.”
“Reese—”
