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"I mean, he filled them. He used a spatula to make sure that shit filled every nook and cranny from fingertip to wrist. Marco had to borrow some old stinky ones until he could get new ones, which Dad made him pay for. Marco hasn't played a prank on Dad since."

Tea chortled. "Yeah, don’t fuck with SEALs, man. Pranks are a kind of love language in that world."

"There was this one time my cousin Dane switched my toothpaste with hemorrhoid cream," I said. "To this day, I still cannot figure out how he managed to get the hemorrhoid cream into the toothpaste tube, but he did, and he won't tell me how, the fucknugget."

Tea covered her face with both hands. "Oh god, ew. What did you do?"

"Mixed Ex-Lax into his protein shakes at random for a month. He never knew when I’d do it. I'd let him think I was done, and he'd drink his shakes again, and then I'd do it again. He shit his pants in school—twice."

"Jax, that's so mean!"

"Hemorrhoid cream," I said, deadpan. "In my mouth." I sighed. "That one was, I admit, maybe a little over the line. There was a whole Badd Clan meeting about pranks after that, and a discussion of what's acceptable and what's not. I had to do all of Dane's laundry, including folding and putting it away, for a month. Meaning, I had to go over to his house and do his laundry."

"You made him shit himself in public. Doing some laundry seems like a tame punishment," Tea said.

"Maybe, except for the fact that Emerson lived with them, which meant seeing her. And this was at a time when I was doing my best to just avoid seeing her at all."

"So it was a pretty effective punishment, then."

"I'd rather have had any other punishment, to be honest. That wasn't the intent for Mom and Dad. They just felt doing his laundry was appropriate for the crime."

"Valid."

"It just sucked."

“I can imagine.”

The conversation wandered, then, to random things. Movies we liked, music—we both shared an affinity for classic 90s and Early Aughts rap. It was companionable and easy, and as we talked, Tea actually relaxed a little. Her shoulders lowered from their permanent position up around her ears, and her foot, as we sat side by side with our backs to the granite with the fire on my left, occasionally nudged mine. Not quite footsies, but contact; I’d take it.

Evening fell, and I was getting tired again—apparently getting mauled really takes it out of you. Who knew, right? I let Tea help me up and out into the trees so I could take a piss, and by the time I was sitting down again, I was sweating and shaky and in pain. I hadn't seen my own injuries, but if someone who's seen actual combat says it's serious, it's probably pretty fucking serious. And it felt serious; I don't mind admitting.

I was feeling a little weird in one specific way, though: mentally. More specifically, I felt suspiciously even-keeled about the whole bear-fight business. And the crash landing. It felt like I should be more…freaked out. Or something. It wasn't that I wanted to be, obviously. I wanted, desperately, to be cool and tough and unaffected. I wanted Tea to be impressed. Lame, lame, lame, but I couldn't help it.

I fell asleep before the sun had fully set, leaving Tea to mind the fire.

That night, all the trauma came due.

Chapter 10

Tea

I was jolted awake by Jax's scream—wordless, full of rage, full of a warrior's defiance, full of pain. I rocked upright, finding him on the other side of the fire, rolling around, thrashing, legs kicking, arms flailing haymaker punches at the air.

Once again, experience has taught me what to do. I stayed where I was, first of all. "Jax!"

He just thrashed and screamed. "Jax! Wake up! Jax!"

Nothing.

Fortunately for me, Jax wasn't a trained killer who slept with an eight-inch Tanto blade or loaded Beretta under his pillow. Waking up an operator from a trauma nightmare can be hazardous to your health—those razor-sharp instincts don’t always know the difference between friend and foe when woken out of a nightmare.

Still, Jax was a big dude, and even an accidental punch from one of those ham-hock fists of his could take my block clean off, so better safe than sorry. I used a stick to poke him in the thigh from a safe distance. "Jax! Hey, wake up! Wake up, Jax. You're dreaming."

"No!" his voice was ragged and hoarse. “No, no, no. Tea—don't. RUN! RUN, GODDAMMIT!"

"Jax!" I poked him harder with the stick, this time in the side—the uninjured one, obviously. "Wake up, Jax!"

My prudence paid off: he snatched the stick from me and swung it with all his might. If I'd been at his side shaking him awake, I'd be unconscious, with a motherfucker of a migraine when I came to. As it was, the stick whistled through the air less than a foot from my nose, cracked against the wall, and snapped. Which is when he woke up with a full-body spasm and a scream so raw and terrified and agonized that it hurt to hear. He lurched upright in a jackknifing movement, injuries momentarily forgotten. Momentarily being the key word. A second later, he listed heavily toward his injured side, breathing out a thin, tense, breathless moan, elbow and opposite hand braced against his wounds. Now that he was awake, I crawled around the fire on all fours toward him. He was sobbing. Dry-heaving, gasping, panting. His face was bathed in sweat that mingled with tears of terror, and I did the only thing I could possibly do.