She’d never explained how she’d been hurt—just “blown up trying to diffuse a bomb.” The ghosts of fear play in her eyes, and I wrap my arms around her naked body, relishing in the feel of her soft, warm curves against mychilledskin.
“I could hurt you. I’ve woken at the foot of the bed, even across the room. When I have a serious attack, I find the sheets and pillows on the floor. What if I kick you?” Barely able to manage a whisper, I grit my teeth to stop myself fromshivering.
“Then you’ll have to drive me home and carry me into my condo, where you’ll wait on me hand and foot for the few hours it takes my meds tokickin.”
She’s grinning now, but I can’t help flinching, and her smile fades. “West, there are a lot of things I can’t do.” She ticks them off on her fingers. “Dancing, running, mountain climbing, snowboarding… But I’m not fragile. I have pain. With all of the titanium, staples, and plastic in my body, I’m almost indestructible.Trustme.”
Iknowshe’s not a china doll. Not a broken bird who needs protecting. Doesn’t stop me from wanting to try. I nod, then snag my pillow off the floor. Once I’ve turned off the light, I stretch out on my back, as far from Cam as the king bed willallow.
“Not much better, soldier.” Her hand slides over my abs, and her arm brushes myshaft.
“Cam, I don’tthink—”
“Maybe you need some incentive.” She hums, halfway between a sigh and a moan as she drapes her luscious body on top of mine. At the first swivel of her hips,I’mlost.
“Don’t start something…you can’t finish.” Aching to bury myself deep inside her, I cup her breast, drag my thumb over her peakednipple.
She feathers kisses along my neck, closes her teeth over my ear lobe, and grinds her hips again. “Oh,” she whispers against my cheek, “I can finish. Indestructible,remember?”
11
Cam
West’s bedroomlooks out over a verdant backyard, and we’re on our second cup of coffee in bed when I trail my fingers over the stars and stripes that arc across his ribs. Names unfurl in an almost delicate script: Fox, Baxter, Hawk, andSmitty.
“Yourteam?”
He sucks in a breath, making the flag twitch under my hand. For a long moment the only sound in the room is his ragged breathing as his skin chills under my touch. “The ones I—we—lost. The entire squad.” After a sip of coffee, he sets the mug aside with a vaguely ill grunt and draws his leg up to rest an elbow on his knee. “My last op… Most of what we do—did—is classified. I can’t tell you where we were, what our objective was. Not in any detail.” He looks to me, seeking approval, and when I nod, he continues. “We were on a rescue mission. Two hostages and four hostiles. Or so we thought. We’d gotten bad intel. Walked into a fucking ambush. We’d trained for this, so we cleared the rooms one by one, taking heavy fire. Until the last room. They’d secured the hostages in a bedroom, down a long hall. The hostiles set off a bomb that brought down the building. Knocked me out, and when I came to, I couldn’t feel my arm.” He reaches for my hand, guiding my fingers to a thick scar just above his armpit. “Piece of rebar shattered the collar bone, pinned me to the floor. The hostages were dead, along with three of my men and a seventy-five-year-old woman and her granddaughter who were there as decoys. The last member of my team, Smitty, bled out in frontofme.”
Silence stretches between us, and he’s shaking, trapped in the memory. He doesn’t see me; his eyes are unfocused, watching his friend—his fellow SEAL—die all over again. I wrap my arms around him, but still, he trembles, and a keening moan escapes his pale lips. “West. Come back to me. Please.” I kiss him, run my hands up and down his arms. When he struggles free and meets my gaze, I tangle our legs under the blanket. “Were you incharge?”
With a heavy sigh, he nods. “Led dozens of missions before that last one, and while we had some failures, no one had died under my watch until that day. The navy asked me if I’d come back, but I couldn’t. Not after failing my squad. Four funerals, four grieving families—not to mention the dead hostages. Put in for my discharge before I’d even left thehospital.”
The skin of his back is cool under my palm, and I try to weigh what I'm supposed to say against what I’d feel if I were in his place. “Did you break protocol? Ignore a direct order or clearintel?”
“No.” He meets my gaze, and the raw anguish that churns in the depths of his eyes twists my gut. “In my head, I know I’m not to blame. I’ve replayed that day a thousand times—and I live through it again most nights. The insurgents fed us lies, and someone higher up believed them. I still see Smitty lying in a pool of his own blood, gasping for breath, begging me to tell his mother that he loved her. No amount of therapy can erase that horror. You understand,don’tyou?”
Three times I open my mouth to tell him what happened to me, but I can’t. The pain wells up, and the lump in my throat threatens to choke me. Burnt flesh, smoke, the bitter scent of blood mixed with sand and dust surround me, tinging the beautiful spring day a dark copper—the color of the innards of my ruined bomb suit melting into my skin. He waits for my answer, and as the seconds tick by, my silence adds more bricks to the wall I’ve so carefully erected over theyears.
When I shock myself out of my hesitation, I nod—too quickly—and fiddle with the hem of the t-shirt he lent me. “After the bombs went off… They say your life flashes before you. Mine didn’t. Not until later. I see myself cutting wires, sweat pouring down my temples, and I wonder if I’d just stepped left instead of right… I can only imagine what my CO felt. Hell, he wouldn’t even come to see me in the hospital.” Even now, thinking back to the weeks I spent in that uncomfortable bed, each member of my team rotating in to visit to try to keep my spirits up, Royce’s absencecrushesme.
“Tell me what happened?” He strokes his hand down my bare thigh, over part of my leg I haven’t felt in ten years. I can’t do this. Not now. Instead of talking, I lean in and crush my lips to his, offering him everything I am—or at least everything I’m abletogive.
* * *
Cam,
This module’s running perfectly for me. No unusual memory spikes or errors. Are you sure the problem isn’t somewhere else? I’m going to put in a few hours cabling with the crew, but I can help you out again after 7:00p.m.
-Lucas
“Shit.”I down the remainder of my coffee—grocery store brew that doesn’t hold a candle to the macchiatos West made me this morning while naked—and shudder as I tip over the edge from productive to jittery. Four hours of debugging and I’m no closer to fixingOversight.
Take a look at the HVAC module next. I’m diving back into the core framework. Thanks, Lucas. How are Al and the guysdoing?
My laptop beeps as another error pops up on screen, politely informing me that the surveillance cameras will shut down in thirty seconds to conserve system resources. “Come on, baby. Talk to me. Tell me what’s got you so tied up inknots.”
Half an hour later, a single line of code catches my eye—one I didn’t write. Like a treasure map, that line leads to another, and another, and soon I’ve found half a dozen modules with errors in them. Small, insignificant errors that add up to something muchbigger.
