“So, where?”
Logan’s face is grim; “Haul ass to the Chinese border, skip across and try and hook up with some of the Blackriver guys there.” He shrugs; “We’re not the first guys to do this, Hud, and the mercenary groups are always picking up guys with skills and a spotty background checks.”
I grimace; “You want to be mercenaries? Out of the frying pan into the fire?”
Logan’s laugh is hollow, and it ricochets sharply off the empty streets of the village; “Look around you, man; we’re already in the fucking fire!”
Bryce looks up at Logan’s outburst, his eyes looking more focused for a moment as he nods; “We can’t go back, Hudson.”
Yeah yeah, you can never go back, as they say. Except this time, I know they’re right. I’m already a completely different man than I was before, but I’ll be damned if I let them take the rest of me; “So, that’s our only option?”
“We’re in hostile territory in an active war-zone, surrounded by countries that hate the United States and people that would kill each other to be the first to string us up or cut our fucking heads off,” Logan looks at me and his eyes soften for a second; “I don’t really see what other option we’ve got, man.”
Fuck it; he’s right and we all know it. It’s go forward or go back, and we all know we can’t go back. I turn to Bryce and nod at his twisted ankle; “You ok to walk?”
He shrugs, yanks the morphine pen out of his med-pack and stabs himself in the thigh with it; “Now I am.” He grins.
Logan nods towards the pickup parked next to burning sheep hut that looks relatively untouched; I’ll drive if you can navigate, Hud.”
Fuck, we’re really doing this. “Any fucking idea where China is?”
“East?” He chuckles, winking at me; “Out of the frying pan, Hud, and out of the fire.”
Months later though, it still feels like we’re very much in the fire. When we’re scraping by, making a living selling ourselves and our services and parts of our souls to whatever awful piece of shit will pay us the most, I know we all still feel the burn. When Logan goes a little crazy, and Bryce goes to the needle, and I decided to be just like my father and find peace in the bottom of a bottle, it sure as shit still feels like we’re in the fire. Maybe we can never go back, but we’ve also got no place left to go.
We feel those flames for more than a year like that; the hurt and the pain searing itself into us every single day. That is, until the day we meet William Archer, and everything changes.
REAGAN
P R E S E N T
I wake up to the sound of my apartment door slamming shut, and sit bolt upright.
I live alone.
I’m out of bed before my head is even fully awake, and I grab the first deadly weapon I can find, which happens to be one of the heels I wore last night. With the fiercest face I can muster with my heart hammering in my chest, I fling open my bedroom door and scream bloody murder as I brandish the stiletto at the figure standing in my hallway shrugging of a winter jacket.
He turns and grins that cocky, arrogant smirk of his at me; “And a good morning to you too, Princess.”
Hudson?!
I freeze with the stiletto still brandished above my head, blinking as I stare at him trying to figure out just what the hell he's doing standing in my apartment and leering at me like that at 6:30 in the morning.
“What- I mean, how-” I start to sputter, my mind still trying to piece together the reality him being here right now when I see his eyes dip for a moment, and his grin only gets bigger as his eyebrow arches along with his smirk.
I am suddenly keenly aware of the fact that I'm standing in the hallway with him in nothing but a thin t-shirt and panties, and with a gasp, I'm dashing back into my room and slamming the door to the sound of his laughter. “What the fuck are you doing here?!” I shriek through the door as I press my forehead against the wood and groan to myself as my face burns bright with embarrassment; “How did you even get in?”
Hudson is still laughing, and I can hear him jangling something against the other side of the door that sounds like keys; “Donald gave me a set,” He chuckles, pointedly ignoring the first part of my questions. I yank on some pajama pants and fling the door open again just as he marches past my door into the kitchen. My eyes narrow at his back, trying to will my cheeks to stop being so damned red.
“Aw, no battle-cry this time?” He turns and grins at me, his eyes twinkling; “I'm hurt.”
“Yeah well, break into my place again and you will be hurt.” I mutter, feeling my ears burn as he only chuckles at my empty threat and breezes past me into the kitchen.