“Clearly you don’t remember your history very well,” he said, grumbling as he dropped his towel and bent to grab it. Whichwas just the refresher I didn’t need, that he did in fact have a nice ass and I had to bite down with all my willpower not to reach out and grab it. “Because I was never nice.”
“Sure,” I said with a huff as he continued walking, apparently completely unaware of what was going on in my head. “Whatever ya say.”
“I do say,” he said as he stopped at a door.
“This ain’t my room,” I said.
“You want to talk? We can talk in here, at least I can take a shower after you’re done…saying whatever you came to say,” he said with a frown as he tapped his key to the panel beside the door and it slid open.
“Ya make it sound like you’re walkin’ to your doom,” I muttered, realizing he was freaking out a lot more in his head than he was letting on if he was going to make a comment like that.
Walker pulled the collar of his shirt back and frowned, wrinkling his nose, peeling it off and throwing it into the laundry bin. My eyes lingered on the marks along his back, not just the scar on his hip that wrapped around to the front. There were other little ones as well, but the one on his right side was small considering what it had looked like the last time I’d seen it, just a puckered bit of skin that might once have been mistaken for a car lighter scar.
I reached out to rest my fingers on it before I could think about what I was doing. His hands had moved to his shorts, probably preparing to take them off for the shower, and then froze when he felt my touch. “What are you doing?”
“Just…lookin’,” I said, running my finger over it. “Understandin’ what you meant…about scars bein’ stories. This was the one that took ya away from us.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“Don’t be. I was the one who gave the all-clear when I shouldn’t have,” I said back to him. It remained one of my greatest regrets; there had been nothing I could have done short of insubordination for the rest of my team, nothing could have saved them from what happened that day, except not being there. But this? I had given the all-clear, and my team had trusted me. I had been tired from days of no sleep, barely any food, and rationing our water supply, but I knew better than not to order caution as we checked for anyone left alive. The shooter had only got a few bullets off before all of us, Walker included, had filled him full of lead.
Walker hadn’t even realized he was shot as he stood there, giving me a sidelong, stink eye because he knew I should have ordered a cautious sweep, but he wasn’t going to call me out. Then he realized he couldn’t breathe; behind him, Kines had seen the blood and cried out the alarm to the rest of us. It was only because we had cleared the area that a bird was brought in to take him rather than forcing us to drag him somewhere where he could be picked up; otherwise, he probably would have died there.
His last words before being taken away had been to yell at everyone to make sure I didn’t blame myself.
It didn’t work.
“I meant, I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he said gently. “For all of you.”
“You…probably would’ve died with the rest of ’em,” I said, closing my eyes. “I don’t know why I made it, but you would have been right there with the rest when it all went to shit. Not listenin’ to me when I ordered you back, and…don’t be sorry about that.”
“Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not,” he said with a shrug that made his back muscles bunch and ripple when they eased,and I felt it under my fingertips, reminding me why I had come with him in the first place.
“And I remember this one too,” I said as I reached down and touched the one on his lower back, letting my fingers slide to where it stopped on the front of his hips. “You stitched that one up yourself…with a little help."
“You guys couldn’t be trusted to start it right,” he said but the age-old irritation he had at the mention of us doing any sort of medic work was gone as he glanced over his shoulder toward me questioningly when my fingers came to a rest on his hips and stayed there.
“Cade?” he asked softly, but I kept my hand there as I ran my fingers along his skin, feeling the warm smoothness interrupted only by that puckered scar.
“I was thinkin’,” I said, biting back my normal comment about how rare that was as I placed my other hand on his lower back. “Ever since the other day, I been thinkin’…and that was what I wanted to talk to ya about.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, still not moving. “Not exactly how I thought you’d start that conversation.”
“Nah, you probably thought it was gonna be me sittin’ awkwardly on the other side of the table, not able to look ya in the eyes.”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“Well, I guess I’m glad I can still surprise ya,” I chuckled as I moved my hand down to cup his ass and squeeze it ever so slightly. Hmm, it was definitely firmer than anyone’s ass I’d ever grabbed in sexual anticipation, but there was still a softness I could recognize. But even with a noticeable difference from what I was used to, that didn’t stop my body from perking up and taking notice.
“Okay, I guess we’re back to things being weird again,” he said in a voice that betrayed the casual tone he was trying for.
“I realized earlier that I hadn’t done this yet.”
“Grabbed my ass?”
“Yeah.”
“What, do you have some sort of checklist?”
