Page 60 of My Forbidden Commander

I glance back once. Reyes walks rear security with his rifle up and his eyes moving, doing his job, not looking at me. Hayes walks beside him, quiet for once in his life, maybe still processing what he saw.

Sighing, I force my eyes forward again.

Two things are true at the same time. Callahan is gone, and I don’t know if we’ll get him back whole. And Noah Reyes loves me, and said so, on a mountain that nearly took him away from me twice in six weeks.

I don’t know how a man is supposed to carry both of those at once. I only know I have to, because the mountain isn’t about to wait for me to sort shit out.

30

NOAH

We reach Kestrel’s wire early afternoon, and by then my brain has checked out. The gate detail waves us through without a word, and Doc Ainsley meets us at the med hut door, barking orders before Bishop and Petrillo even set the litter down.

“Leg wound, gunshot, twelve hours old, field-dressed twice,” Liu rattles off, moving into the hut with her.

Wilder walks in himself, waving off assistance. The cut on his cheek has stopped bleeding, but it’s split wide enough that Ainsley takes one look and points him to a table.

I stand outside the med hut door for a second too long, watching them work, until Hayes’s hand lands on my shoulder.

“Come on,” he says, voice low. “Nothing left for us to do here.”

He’s right. I know he’s right, but I still don’t feel like moving.

Next thing I know, I’m standing under the spray in the shower with my forehead against the wall. This time, I’m not thinking about Gabriel. I’m not thinking about anything. Not Sykes’s leg, not the sound Wilder’s rifle made, not getting caught by Hayes. My brain has simply stopped generating thoughts. I almost go down twice, catching myself on the plywood at the last second, blinking water out of my eyes like that’ll wake me up.

“You’re swaying,” Petrillo says from two heads down.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re swaying like a tree in a storm, Reyes.”

Arguing with him would cost energy I don’t have right now. So I don’t.

I think about walking to Gabriel’s hut. I even get as far as picturing the door and how I’d knock on it. But then I think of Hayes’s face on the mountain, wide-eyed, mouth open. Tyler doesn’t have a cruel bone in him. But he also doesn’t have an off switch. If I don’t go to my bunk now, I’m inviting him to make up stories about where I am. And a lot of them would probably be true. So I follow him and Petrillo to our hut, and I fall face-first onto my bunk, still half-damp. The last thing I remember is the sound of my boots hitting the floor. And then it’s black.

When I wake up, the hut is dark and quiet, and for a minute I don’t know what day it is. Hayes is snoring across from me, one arm thrown over his eyes like he’s on a beach in Acapulco and not soggy mountains. Petrillo’s out too, curled toward the wall, breathing slow and even. The window shows a darkening sky, just one purple smear left over the ridge.

My body aches everywhere, but my head is clear again, and of course the first thing I do is think about him. I ease off the bunk without a sound and pull my boots back on in the dark without lacing them all the way.

I want to see him. I don’t even know what I’ll say when I get there—I just know I want to be in the same room as him.

I make it halfway across the compound before the command hut door swings open ahead of me, spilling yellow light across the mud, and Okafor steps out into it.

“Reyes.”

I stop like I’ve been shot. “Sergeant.”

“Get in here. I want your report while it’s still fresh.”

Not a request.

I follow him inside, the warmth of the hut hitting me first, then the smell of coffee, then the sight of Gabriel sitting at the map table with his good arm braced against the edge of it, looking like a man who hasn’t slept.

His eyes come up when I walk in, and they soften for half a second before he catches himself and wipes the expression off his face.

“Sit,” Okafor says, nodding at the chair across from him.

I sit. “Any word on Callahan?”