He grinned, cheeks slightly puffed with food. He chewed and swallowed with alarming speed and replied, “That, too.”
Her face flared and Lynnette distracted herself by diving into her own food. She let her eyes close in appreciation of the first bite, let herself take the time to chew it properly, and didn’t look up again until she’d swallowed.
Lance had nearly devoured the first half of his sandwich in that short time.
“You should eat slower,” Lynnette said. “You could hurt yourself eating like that.”
He paused with the next bite nearly at his mouth, and an almost sheepish grin lifted his lips. It was stupidly endearing. “Force of habit, I guess. Chow time’s been a limited thing for a while.”
She let herself smile. “Well, at least try to work on it. For your own sake.”
He seemed to watch her take a second bite, motionless and unblinking until she swallowed again. “Sure. Now you. Give me something. All I know about you is that your dad was Navy and you’re good at what you do, and obviously that you’re damn beautiful.”
She couldn’t have stopped the wide-eyed stare or the rush of heat to her face if she’d tried. She’d received her share of nonsensical, over the top compliments—it was par for the course in her work. Patients on medication said bizarre things, and that wasn’t even accounting for the personalities of the patients themselves. But the vast majority of those compliments were disingenuous, or, at best, inspired by fleeting feelings in the moment.
Lance’s simple, straightforward words hit harder than any of those. She knew he was sober. Painfully so. And he’d been very insistent in his interest in her.
Lynnette blew out a breath and ripped her gaze away as she attempted to sort out her thoughts. She hadn’t consciously realized that her plan to keep him company for a bit, to bring him lunch and not leave him quite so alone, would meantalking. And she felt like an idiot. So, she shrugged and said, “I guess I consider myself kind of boring. I always knew I wanted to help people, and I wasn’t really interested in doing what my dad did.” Her chest tightened as she reflected on where her story was leading, but she didn’t fight it. “My mom got sick shortly after he retired, the kind of sick that sent her bouncing from one doctor to another for a lot of years. Too many chronic illnesses still aren’t well understood, and it was hard for her to find treatment, even enough to be comfortable at home.”
Lance lowered his food, expression somber. “I’m sorry. Is she doing any better?”
Lynnette’s throat swelled and she had to swallow it down. “She passed about eight years ago.”
“Shit. Lynn, I’m sorry.”
She shook her head and picked at the crust on her sandwich. “It’s nothing for you to apologize for. We loved her as best we could, did everything for her that we could, and in the end her illness won.” She missed her mother, but her mother’s passinghadn’t been sudden or surprising. So, she pushed the tears that always threatened when she reflected on that time back and managed a smile. “Mom was my inspiration to go into the medical field. I wanted to help as many suffering people as I could.”
Lance matched her smile. “Then I owe Mrs. Garver a debt of gratitude.”
Lynnette scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Don’t make this all about me, Marine,” she returned before taking another bite of her lunch.
He grinned, shoved another bite into his own mouth, and had his swallowed down while she was still chewing. As he reached for his drink, he said, “My family story doesn’t have that heartwarming flare to it.” He gulped down a third of his root beer and screwed the cap back on. “You’ve heard the term ‘sovereign citizen’?”
“Of course.” She had about as much respect for those who claimed the title as they did for the law she lived under, but she also knew how to shut down her personal feelings. At the end of the day, people were people.
Lance dipped his chin. “My folks never used that term when I was a kid, but that was definitely them. We lived on a small farm, at the edge of the county, and the only law that mattered was my dad’s word and the weight of his fist.”
“Yet you enlisted?”
Lance chuckled. “Yep. They were too busy micromanaging the farm to homeschool me, so I went to public school—‘might as well use the system where it’s convenient’ was their logic—and I started seeing other perspectives. Made friends whose families had different viewpoints. I was a teenage boy, I didn’t always go to class, I didn’t always go where I said I had, and so I saw stuff my parents wouldn’t have approved of. But it caught my attention. I still remember that damn commercial that snaggedme when I was skipping class and watching some European soccer game on my friend’s TV. You remember the old slogan? ‘The few, the proud’?”
Lynnette grinned. “I watched a lot of TV as a kid. I can still hear that commercial in my head.”
Lance laughed. “Well, it was that, and the image. I wanted to stand tall like the men on the screen. To be able to, to have that confidence and power and whatever came with it. And even then, I knew my dad’s way would never get me there.”
“So, you enlisted in order to find your strength?”
He shrugged. “Something like that, I think. I wanted to do good, be good, but also be strong. And the more I learned, the more I realized how messed up my family’s teachings were. The more ashamed I was of where I came from. It made me wanna contribute to the country they were trying to take from like leeches. I thought if I worked my ass off, bled until I broke, maybe it’d make up for them.”
Lynnette frowned, hearing the frustration that had seeped into his voice and seeing the way it tightened his jaw. She shifted aside her food items and reached out, curling her fingers around his nearest hand and squeezing. “You’re not responsible for their actions, Lance. You didn’t make their choices. And as far as I can see, you’ve done a damn good job of accomplishing all of those goals. But maybe back off the ‘bleeding ‘til you break’ part, okay?”
His expression softened, his eyes crinkling. “I’ll work on that, since you asked.”
She smiled.
He smiled.
Her heart beat a little too fast.
