1700 PVG
“What the fuck?” I showed the text to Foster, and he sighed.
“Looks like we need to grab our shit…” Foster’s phone dinged, and he laughed. He showed his text to me as he asked, “Y’all ready to fly with five kids and four dogs?”
CHAPTER 9
ADAM
SUMMER 2009
My eyes popped open.Immediately, the smell of piss and shit overwhelmed me. The heat made the smell horrific. I tried pushing it from my mind, but it was the same every damn time I woke up or came to. The smell was always worse when I first opened my eyes. It had burrowed under my skin and taken up residence in my nose and throat. I rolled over in the crate to avoid puking my guts out. I lost the battle and dry-heaved until my stomach clenched painfully.
“Fuck,” I groaned when my body finally stopped trying to evict all my organs.
My head banged against the metal, bouncing my brain around inside my skull, making me sick to my stomach again.
I lay back, trying to figure out if I’d fallen asleep or blacked out from the pain, which was fucking godawful. The bullet wounds from when I was captured still hadn’t healed. Of course, my captors fucking got a kick poking at them like they were the fucking Pillsbury Doughboy.
I was back in the dog crate. I had been for a couple of days. They’d always put me back here to “recover” from the shit theydid to me. It was a mindfuck. A devious one, and it fucking worked like a charm. Just as soon as I’d gotten used to the solitude and healed up a bit, so I wasn’t in excruciating pain, they’d come for me.
This last time was fucking awful. Stress positions, waterboarding, electrocution. I’d lost a pinky nail. Fuck, that had hurt.
The solitude was supposed to be one of the worst torture tactics, but sometimes being left to your own devices wasn’t so bad. I’d come to love the solitude and isolation. Living in my own filth sucked ass. Who knew what kind of shitty-ass diseases I’d have when I got the fuck out of here? But at least I was left to my own devices. I only liked being pulled out of the hot box, which one of the Arabic speakers had called it, because they’d hose me down.
Right before our last deployment, I’d bought a boat, taken up deep sea fishing and hiking, and even started reading—pleasure reading, at that. Who knew crime novels and thrillers were so damn good? I spent a shit ton of time trying to keep my mind occupied. But all those things still couldn’t keep my cock out of Brock’s ass.
Whenever Brock and I hung out, something came over me, and I couldn’t help myself. We’d be watching a ballgame, working on my boat or his house, or hole up in a cabin or beach somewhere, and the next thing I knew, I’d have him pressed against the nearest available surface, fucking him until he begged for mercy and we both blew our loads. And once we broke the seal, there was no stopping us. We’d fuck for hours until we couldn’t get it up again for love or money.
I’m an asshole.
I doubted Brock would argue against my assessment. I mean, I’d told the guy we couldn’t be together four years ago, but I’d kept fucking him, kept going on vacation with him, bothof which I was sure fucked with his head. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d told me so many times he loved me, but I’d never given those words back to him.
I’d denied my feelings, rejecting his, yet taking the things I couldn’t seem to do without when in reality, I couldn’t do without Brock Jones. It wasn’t just sex. Even though I knew that was what he thought.
I knew because he’d screamed it at me a few months before we were spun up for this op. Those few months between that argument and when I was captured had been the worst of my miserable life. I had filled my off hours with all sorts of shit. Things I didn’t give a fuck about or things that I did day in and day out. I did it all to fill the Brock-sized gap that last argument had left in my soul.
SPRING 2009
The sun blazed down, heating the air and slowly roasting us. We’d started the day in the marina scraping the hull and doing some maintenance, but Brock had suggested we head out to do some fishing once we were done.
We were about twenty miles off the coast, and there wasn’t another boat in sight. It was so fucking amazing. Just me and Brock out there with his grunge music blaring in the background.
“This is the life,” I said, reaching for his hand as he walked past with a fresh round of beer for the both of us.
Brock gave me the stink eye and pulled his hand from mine, replacing it with the beer he’d brought me. “What, being waited on and brought your beer?”
I turned my head toward him, confused by the surly attitude. “What crawled up your ass?”
Brock scoffed at me, shaking his head. He didn’t say a word. He just got up and started reeling in lines and packing away equipment. When he headed up to the wheelhouse, I followed him.
“Mind telling me what’s going on?” I asked.
He continued treating me to the silent treatment as he started up the boat. He brought us about and headed back to shore. I sat down facing him, but he never looked at me. Never spoke to me.
I sighed and decided to enjoy the ride.
After about ten minutes, I offered, “I’m sorry for whatever I did that pissed you off.”
