He flicked a hard gaze toward me. “Luck.”
“Or skill?”
Mouth tight, he helped me don an old blue T-shirt emblazoned withDuke Medicinein white letters.
“You went to Duke?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he guided me—gently, but forcefully—back to the bed. My hands splayed over the clean cotton. “Did you…change the sheets?”
He swiped up the plate and shoved the glass of water into my hand. “Sorry,” he quipped. “I wasn’t aware you preferred dirty bedding. Drink this.”
“Wow.” I took a sip. “Your patients must have loved your bedside manner.”
“I was a surgeon, not a babysitter,” he said and left the room.
I stared at the doorway, bemused. Fornot-a-babysitter, the man certainly did a fine job taking care of me. He returned with the plate refilled, this time with a bowl of broth, strawberries and three slices of cheddar.
I lifted the cheese between two fingers, eyeing it.
“You need protein,” he said as if he assumed I would argue.
I moved my gaze to him. “The NAO has cheese?”
His expression eased. “The NAO has everything.”
Anger spilled into my blood, heating it as I tried to remember the last time I’d enjoyed the simple pleasure of cheese. This inoffensive orange square in my hand represented years of deprivation and loss. I ripped into it with my teeth, wishing I could do the same to the NAO.
A soft caress nuzzled my cheek. “Don’t waste your energy hating them right now. Just focus on yourself.”
“Who are you to give advice like that? All ofyourenergy goes toward hating them.”
“I didn’t almost bleed to death. I have energy to spare.”
I glared down at my NAO-infested plate. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll eat this whole meal if you tell me why you hate them so much.”
He sat at the corner of the bed. “I told you?—”
“They hurt your sister. Yeah, I know.” I rolled my eyes. “What did they do to your sister, Lucas? How did you go from doctor to executioner? Why did Commander Haynes shoot your father?”
For the third time that day, we entered a battle of stares, and I locked, unblinking, onto the blue in his eyes. His throat worked with a swallow, but finally—finally!—he capitulated.
“Fine. Eat.”
My heart leapt, but I kept the thrill off my face, opting to shove a spoonful of broth into my mouth instead.
Lucas’s sigh was heavy, weighted by memory. He set his elbows on his knees and spoke to his clasped hands instead of me. “I was in my last year of surgical residency when the Capitol Hill Massacre went down. Things moved fast after that. All military officers were called in for active duty, even those of us on an educational deferment.”
He glanced up to make sure I was eating, and I shoved a strawberry in my mouth.
“I came from a military family. My father was a colonel when this all started, and he lived and breathed for this country. My mother passed from cancer fifteen years ago. Sophie was ten at the time, and I was already away at college. My father didn’t know what to do with her, so he got strict, and she did the typical rebellious teenager thing and learned to hate everything he loved.”
“Including this country?” I asked with a mouthful of cheese.
His head fell. “Yeah.”
“So, what happened?”
“The war. I thought they’d want me as a medical major, but the Defiance took more men than anyone was led to believe. The NAO was desperate for bodies, and I hadn’t finished my medical training. Plus, I had a head for strategy. They shipped me to Ontario for intelligence and command. Dad was promoted to a one-star general once Haynes realized he was losing half his army to a rebellion.
