“He took it too far,” Oliver retorted, arms crossed over his chest. He was avoiding Aberlour’s gaze, which was unusual.
“What’d he say? That you had big teeth? Stupid hair? That your mom was a whore?” Aberlour asked. They weren’t fucking kids anymore. They’d been trained to withstand torture, but Oliver had gotten into a public fight over a little hazing. What the actual fuck?
“He called me a fag,” Oliver said, anger obvious as he spat it out.
Aberlour couldn’t help laughing at that juvenile remark.
He sat down on one of the bottom bunks, creasing the pristine cover. Ghost would have a fit if Abe didn’t put it back just right. He couldn’t care less. His laughter was bouncing off the walls of the cabin, echoing loudly in their tin can of a room.
Oliver’s expression was growing darker by the second.
“Shut up!” he roared, obviously offended.
Abe fought for composure, but the pout on Darling’s face was hard to ignore.
“It’s not fucking funny!”
But it was. It really was. Aberlour stopped laughing, snorting once more for emphasis and shook his head at Oliver.
“He called you a fag, so you got into a fight with him,” Aberlour summarized.
“Like you wouldn’t have done the same!” Oliver snarled back, taking a step forward.
“Of course not,” Aberlour said, leaning casually back in the bed. “Because first of all, I’m not an eight-year-old, and second, it turns out that I am a fag.”
Oliver Darling had never been good at staying angry. Aberlour watched in real time as it was wiped off his face completely, replaced by a grin that he tried his hardest to hide. He turned his head to the side and bit his bottom lip.
“Not like you can talk, you thought about killing him for a second,” Oliver said, trying to change the topic.
“He was going to stab you,” Aberlour shrugged.
“It wasn’t your fight, though. You didn’t know what started it,” Oliver replied, trying to prove a point he’d already lost.
“He was going tostabyou,” Aberlour repeated, leaning forward, staring intensely at Oliver. “Doesn’t fucking matter why. I’d have killed him for trying.”
Oliver laughed and shook his head. Then he turned and locked the door. Aberlour didn’t have time to question why before Oliver sank to his knees in front of him, a shit-eating grin on his handsome face.
“You’re a romantic fucker, you know that?”
Aberlour didn’t get the chance to reply before he was rendered speechless.
Chapter 13
August 2013
They were lying in the sun.
On a perfect day like this one, Aberlour forgot what war felt like and, for the space of a single day, he was just—him, again.
Team Specter was on a five-day break in Hawaii, just enjoying the sunshine and peacefulness of watching and listening to the tide roll in, and then roll out again. Although Aberlour thought the meeting with the major general had gone alright, he just didn’t trust the guy. He seemed—bloodthirsty. Now Aberlour wasn’t a bleeding heart by any stretch of the imagination, but Major General Baron seemed to want to set the world on fire, his own men included, and dance around the flames laughing gleefully.
However, Aberlour decided to set that all aside for now, trading his worries for his swimsuit, stretching out on the sand so he could bake in the sun. He watched his men from a short distance away as they cavorted on the beach.
Carlos was waist-high in the water, shoving JD playfully as they roughhoused in the waves. Carlos was deeply tanned and very fit from spending three months hiking through the jungle, although he was stuck wearing a sling because of the bullet wound in his shoulder. JD wasn’t bad to look at either. Not as darkly tanned as Carlos, he had a slight burn across his shoulders. His hair was wet, his smile wider than Aberlour had seen it in months, and he had the energy of a golden retriever.
“Heads up!”
Aberlour turned his head just in time to see a football hurled his way. He snatched it out of the air, spinning it inone hand as he watched Marcus run towards him wearing an apologetic grin.
