“I know…but I’m askin’ now. If ya wanna answer,” he said, still not looking at me.
I frowned, resuming rubbing his biceps. “It started with me…and you.”
“What do ya mean?”
“After I was hurt, they basically slapped me back together, clapped me on the back and said good job, get back out there. My lung got torn apart, and they waited the bare minimum time before sending me back out,” I said in a low, angry voice. “And then I heard about you and the guys while they had me at the other end of the country working in some ass-end of nowhere encampment. And everything I heard after that was how youwere all just…fucked. Fucked by men in suits, people who’ve never had to fight a day in their lives. And then you were buried, literally, but also under all this paperwork, sweeping everything under the rug.”
“That’s…just kinda how it goes,” he said in a sad voice. “Ya had to know that before everythin’ happened.”
“Of course I knew,” I snapped, giving up on trying to massage his arm before my anger made me bruise his skin. “But there’s a difference between knowing something and dealing with it firsthand, alright? I started seeing shit like that everywhere, and it was all I could see, all I could talk about. It was a miracle they didn’t throw me out on my ass before my term ended and I was allowed to go home. And when I got back, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I realized that no one…no one knew. There’s all this talk about how soldiers are just blood-soaked monsters for the machine of war andno, we were boys, boys thrown into a mess that made us into the sort of men that would be monsters if we didn’t cling to our humanity. When it’s all said and done, the people who fought, who killed, who bled and suffered for what some bureaucrat said was necessary, are just…tossed aside. All that pain and suffering, both for us and for the people we were suffering for? Done for the people at the top who don’t care what happens to everyone else, because we’re just numbers to tap into a computer and send on without batting an eye right before lunch. So I got mad; I got real mad. I took everything I knew, and I started using it…I started writing. I started pointing out the gaps in stories about what was going on overseas; I started telling stories of people who were left behind. I started…dropping vague hints to other people, for places where they could dig, where they could find the bodies.”
Cade’s eyes went wide. “Walker?—”
“I know,” I said with a snarl. “That’s basically espionage and treason.”
“It’srealclose,” he said in a low voice. “What the fuck? You’re lucky ya didn’t end up in a hole somewhere…or worse.”
“That’s exactly what the nice man in a nice suit said when enough people, or the right person, got sick of my shit,” I said with a sigh. “I was going to tell them to fuck off, but they were going to involve my family. And…what’s the point of trying to do something if that something is going to ruin the only good shit you have in life? So it was let them rip me and my family apart, or I let them interfere, paint me as crazy and in need of help and then come here to make the story more believable. So…here I am.”
“I…dunno what to say,” he said after staring at me for a few seconds. “I just…Walker?—”
“I hope you’re not waiting for me to say I regret it, or that I wouldn’t have been doing it still if they hadn’t got a bug up their ass,” I said, looking away.
“No,” he said so quickly that I looked at him in surprise. “I ain’t sayin’ you were wrong for doin’ it; I dunno if I can even call it wrong. But Jesus, that was playin’ with fire and ya got off lucky.”
“Maybe,” I said with a shrug. “Maybe not. It’s not like they said this was all they would make me do. I might be on a leash for the rest of my life. So you know, keep that in mind while you’re trying to be my friend or…whatever.”
Yeah, ‘whatever’ covered everything we were doing…not.
“I dunno if I wanna call ya stupid or brave,” he said with a smile, reaching up to give the side of my neck a squeeze. “Maybe both. They’re kinda the same thing if ya look just right.”
“True,” I said with a laugh. “Sorry, I don’t know. I expected you to be mad.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you’ve…never seemed bothered by what happened. You kind of…accepted it, I guess. I just assumed that even if it didn’t end the way it should have, you still?—”
“Supported it?”
I winced. “Yeah.”
“Don’t,” he said softly, pulling me closer and giving me a kiss. “It’s kinda my fault. I just…go with things, it’s how I am. I feel ways about stuff, and I got opinions, but I don’t share ’em much ’cause I figure it ain’t gonna do much good. But you? You weren’t willin’ to do what I did, and I’m not gonna be mad at you for that. It’s just scary, thinkin’ about what could’ve happened…what could still happen.”
“I try not to think about it too much,” I told him as I sat there, my forehead pressed against his and taking a deep breath. The anger and outrage were dissipating, and I knew it had everything to do with the man cradling me firmly as I sat there, wondering what my life had become. Then again, if it had brought me here, to this moment, there were worse ways for my life to end up.
“Ya wanna teach me that trick?”
“Well, first,” I said, bringing my head up to kiss him and push his chest so he was on his back. I ground my ass down on his groin. “You need to find yourself a wonderful, incredibly sexy man.”
“Check,” he said, grabbing my hips and grinding up against me to show he was getting hard again.
“And then you get him naked…or close enough that you can look over his body and realize there’s plenty of good things in this world to take your mind off the shitty parts,” I said, running my hands up and down his chest.
“Hmm,” he said, grabbing my shirt and pulling it so I had to bend over and he could throw it off to the side. “Sort of check.”
“And then,” I said, sliding back so I had access to his underwear, fishing his cock out and smirking when I saw it growto its full, impressive size in the palm of my hand. “You remind him he’s been through the training and there’s definitely lube in his room. And if he’s ready and willing, you let him fuck you until your eyes roll back in your head and you wonder why you didn’t let him do it sooner.”
His hands rested on my shoulders. “You, uh…ya sure about that?”
