I sighed heavily, wondering if he had an off switch as I looked around the atrium. A few men glanced our way, their eyes lingering with curiosity. Well,mostlycuriosity, there was one man whose eyes lingered on me a shade longer than necessary, and I glanced back at him, doing a double take. He was cute; I had to admit that, and as I looked away, I wondered how much privacy I could expect here. After all, if I was going to be locked up here for weeks, then it was only fair that I should be able to?—
It felt like my stomach and chest were swooping, rapidly switching places as the ticking of my brain ran wild like it had just taken a huge hit of electricity. I felt my mouth open in surprise, but there was no chance of forming any words as the next part of Reggie’s well-practiced introduction speech faded into the background.
I wasn’t standing far from him, and the place wasn’t that loud, so I heard this shockingly familiar man speak in a shockingly familiar voice. “Rhodes?”
Holy shit. “Sergeant?”
Sergeant Cayden Wilcom. I hadn’t seen him in what, five years? Give or take, I couldn’t really be trusted to measure time that accurately. It was definitely him; he was just as big and eye-catching as when I’d first come to the base and was introduced to the men I would be working with. I already had combat and medical experience, but I’d known coming into a new team was always a roll of the dice. How a team treated a new addition usually hinged on the attitude of the one who held the leash, but it had been Wilcom, a jolly, friendly man who had clapped me on the back with a grin and dragged me with a strength that was comforting and a little terrifying to meet his team.
He blinked, putting a phone to his ear and muttering something I couldn’t hear before jamming it into his pocket and coming toward me. He had that stride I remembered had caught my attention when we’d first met, strong, confident, and yet completely casual and even laid-back, except…well, except I could now see the metal leg in place of a flesh and blood one.
“I think ya can just call me Cade here,” he said, his eyes, those goddamn eyes that held every inch of your attention, swept back and forth as if he was trying to make sure I was real. I didn’t blame him. I had never expected to seeanyoneI knew here, not even someone in passing, but him?
What the absolute shit was with my life right now?
“Then you should probably call me Walker,” I heard myself say, surprised at my lighthearted tone.
Memory was such an odd and fickle thing, and only idiots convinced themselves it was something they had control over. It might behave itself for a while, maybe even years, but italwayshad a will of its own. At this moment, I wasn’t thirty, pushingthirty-one, a man made bitter and cynical by a world that was apathetic to the point of cruel. I was that man I had been at twenty-four, surprised to find someone I had to actually turn my head up to look him in the eyes, a man who was larger than life in everything from sheer size, to the volume and genuineness of his laugh, and a grin that stretched over features that could have easily been hard and mean.
And there it was, that laugh, the one that boomed, an initial explosion that continued in deep waves like aftershocks. I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t hesitate to reach out, grab my shoulder, and yank me close in a tight hug. He and most of his team had never been shy about showing affection, and he had always been the first to hug or drape his arm over people. I had almost forgotten that his hugs felt like being crushed against a wall of steel while somehow being comforting in their strength.
“Goddamn,” he said with another laugh, yanking me back so he could look me over. “Lookit you! Ain’t changed a whole lot, have ya?”
“Neither have you,” I said as I looked up at him in a mixture of confusion, shock, and pleasure. I had almost forgotten what it was like to be happy to see another person, but as always, his warmth and joy were infectious.
“You’re kiddin’, right?” he asked with a snort, letting go of me to pick his metal leg up and give it a wiggle so it was on blatant display. “Not all of me is here.”
“Well, yeah,” I said, not sure if I should be embarrassed for not mentioning it or because he was in this state. “But you’re still…you.”
“I guess,” he said almost bashfully, and I looked him over again. Other than his leg, there wasn’t a lot different. Of course, the fact that he was here was a sign that not all was well, which fit the stories I’d heard, but?—
“What are ya doin’ here?” he wondered, his brow furrowing.
“Probably the same thing you are,” I said evasively, because there was no way I was going to get into the real reason. Maybe I’d tell Cade under different circumstances, but we were out in the open, in a place I didn’t trust or know, and I wasn’t going to start running my mouth yet.
“I’m not even going to bother asking if you know each other,” Reggie chuckled beside me, and that was the last thing I needed to be pulled back to reality. “That much is obvious.”
I glanced at him, knowing it wasn’t his fault that he was a reminder that I was back in the present rather than in a far more comforting part of my past, but still annoyed by his intrusion. “And yet you felt the need to state the obvious, so here we are.”
Reggie shrugged. “Like you said, I’m annoying. What would I be if I didn’t live up to my image?”
I wanted to point out that it wasn’t necessary for him to be so annoying to live up to his so-called image, but I bit back the annoyance before it could lash out. Despite knowing I was back in the present and not in some weird land of memory, I was hyper-aware that the Ser…Cade, his name was Cade, was right there and hearing everything.
“I don’t know,” I said instead of what was bubbling away behind my words, aching to be let loose. “Whatwouldyou be?”
“Probably a far more agreeable person,” he said with a shrug that said he wasn’t worried. “Though my original point was going to be that there is no point continuing our tour since this seems to be a surprising reunion between two people who know each other well. Which means I’m off the hook and you’re free of me…if Cade will take over for the tour that is.”
It was said in a tone that said he knew the answer, and Cade followed through with a wide smile. “Of course! I don’t mind, I been here enough times that I probably know as much as you do.”
That startled me a little, but Reggie smiled. “That you do. I’ll leave this in your capable hands. Just give him the platinum-level tour, will you? Oh, and he’ll have to be shown to his room, which, uh, hmm?—”
“Is there something wrong with my room?” I wondered, but he wasn’t looking at me. Reaching into his pocket stalled as he stared at Cade instead, a conflicted expression on his face.
Cade’s smile faltered, and he cleared his throat, looking away for a moment before turning back to Reggie. His smile returned, but it felt fixed rather than natural. “It’s Clay’s old room, isn’t it?”
What wasthatugly flash of emotion that ripped through me without warning? It couldn’t be something as stupid as jealousy, could it? Because that was monumentally ridiculous. Excluding the fact that there had never been anything between Cade and I in the past despite the massive crush I’d had on him that bordered on obsession, or that I hadn’t seen him in over five years so what the hell could I possibly expect him to have done with his life? No, the first reason in a long line of them why it would make zero sense for me to get upset was that he was, and undoubtedly still was, heterosexual.
I might be stupid about a lot of things, but there was no way in hell I was going to forget that vital piece of information, was I?
