A wicked ugly sense of insecurity washed over me and suddenly I was angry. At myself in part but at Sam, too, for opening my eyes.
I’d never gone hiking with a girl before. I’d never just simply enjoyed hearing her wild laugh at the first step off the cliff. Shit, that was a sound of pure freaking joy and I’d ruined it. When she’d leaned over the edge, her arms out wide, the sound coming from her was enough to make the entire valley smile, but for me? Within me, the sound had turned sour, and I’d reacted without thinking. I needed her to stop laughing, and so I accused her of doing something I knew, deep down, wasn’t going to happen.
My actions came from the protective sense of self-preservation I’d cultivated since my girlfriend Carrie had cheated on me during my second deployment. I was getting shot at, my friends were fucking dying in the field, and I spent every night dreaming about being home with her, in her bed. But while I was creating fantasies to keep me from going insane, she had been shacking up with the local Marine recruiter.
Only in the Marines did you love your brothers one minute and then hate them the next for sleeping with your girl, rifling through your mail, and stealing anything of worth that wasn’t locked down. A true fucking dysfunctional family. I wasn’t sure why I loved it, but I did.
But it had been there for me when Carrie wasn’t. When I came home to find her shaking the tires off her car with the Marine officer, it had been my brothers who took me out and got me wasted. It was the Corps that had given me so much shit to do that I didn’t have time to think of Carrie. I had been too tired to even stroke my wood if I had the urge—which I didn’t for several months after I saw her pale ass bouncing in the window of the car. It had been the men in my platoon who found me hook up after hook up until I was lost in a sea of unfamiliar pussy and had forgotten my own name as well as Carrie’s. It had been Hamilton, my battle buddy, who’d recommended doing the friends-with-benefits thing with a local first responder. And one thing led to another until all I had in my life was my family, my brothers from the Corp, and a few women who I called up at ten at night to ease my physical ache. Then I left them, because lying in bed with a woman for the entire night was more than I could stomach.
I never spent time with woman just casually unless it was my mother. No wonder Sam confused me. But even as she scared me, I was drawn to her. We weren’t done yet. I just had to figure out how to convince her to give me another chance.
The next morning, I took Noah and Bo up on their offer to run around the neighborhood. I think I’d foolishly hoped I’d bump into Sam. At five in the morning. Hey, she’d fucked with my mind. What could I say?
“This is like physical training. You always were a gunner, Noah,” I panted as we came off a sprint. I’d made the stupid mistake of asking Noah how he was training for an upcoming fight he had on television. Come and see, he’d said, which was the same as saying that he didn’t think my post-deployment ass could make it more than a few miles. I couldn’t stand down from a challenge. I was regretting it now. Rather than a sustained run for eight or nine miles, Noah had decided that Bo and I should run interval sprints. For an hour. The good thing was that I was too tired to think about the shittastic ending to yesterday’s hike. My cheeks felt hot when I thought about the tantrum I’d pulled. Rivulets of sweat blurred my vision, and I grabbed the bottom of my shirt to wipe my eyes and cover my flush. "You two do this every morning?”
"Bo's too busy with AnnMarie to run every morning," Noah complained, before sucking down an electrolyte pack.
"Got one of those for me?"
Noah pulled out two more from the pocket of his running shorts and handed them out.
I pushed the entire contents of the pack in my mouth and slid the crumbled plastic into my pocket. "That true, Bo? You wimping out?”
"God didn't make a girl like AnnMarie so she could wake up alone," Bo replied, his mouth still around the opening of his energy supplement.
"So she's sleeping with some other guy this morning?"
"Fuck you. She's at the house, and I'll be showered and back in bed for some morning delight before she's even awake.”
"Or she and Grace will be making breakfast with Finn," Noah suggested.
"Man, I hope it’s peach French toast. That shit's the bomb." Bo and Noah knocked fists together.
“I’m surprised they allow you to eat French toast.” I ruffled Noah’s hair, which wasn’t easy to do given we were about the same height.
He knocked my arm away. “I can have one piece.”