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Two suitcases and one duffel laid out on my bed, and I wondered how he'd managed to condense his life down to just so few things.
“This one is my clothes,” he said pointing first to the duffel then the ugly orange bag. “That's all my uniforms. That one over there is the shit from Mom's house and a few knickknacks.
“Which one do you want me to start on?”
He shrugged.
“You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. You can just get naked and hang out in bed while I hang this stuff up. Your choice.”
“My choice,” I scoffed with a grin on my face, going toward the really ugly one.
With a rather smooth zip, it opened up and an array of green and tan popped out. First we're all his Charlie uniforms, then the Bravo and Alpha service ones. I stacked the neat piles to the side, placing his caps on top. Next were the blues. A smooth wool jacket was the next thing my fingers touched. The red piping down the collar and breast caught my eye immediately.
“It’s your blues,” I murmured, pulling out the jacket to stare at all the metals pinned to the front.
Holy moly, the man had a pin and metal for just about everything.
Beneath the jacket were the matching pants with the blood stripe that I would’ve given anything to see him wearing. I bet he looked so freaking hot in his Alpha blues.
“When was the last time you wore this?” I asked, reaching into the suitcase to collect the suit hanger that I assumed went with the ensemble.
“I didn’t wear it too often,” he admitted. “It’s been a while, so I don’t remember the last time I did.”
That was a crying shame.
Further down I found a few pairs of field camo pants and matching jackets with Kane written above the breast. Between the layers was a pair of coms and a large knife.
“They let you keep this?” I asked, holding up the items for him to see.
“‘Let’ is a strong word,” he mumbled, reaching into his other suitcase to remove some pictures.
I got a couple of the camos on hangers and placed them in my closet and smiled. It felt so damn good to see his clothes there next to mine. Natural. Perfect.
Next in the bag, there was a shoebox that I peeked into to find his shiny dress shoes. Into the bottom of the closet those went.
“So you stole them?” I asked with a laugh in my voice.
“More like, I didn’t offer it up and they didn’t ask.”
Right.
“Everything at the base they kept, but this one happened to be home with me, so I just…didn’t return it. I figured a little memorabilia never hurt anybody.”
It was probably because of his longing to be back in the field, not necessarily memorabilia.
In the bottom of the bag, I saw a cluster of little boxes, so I peeked inside them. Most were empty, but they looked like little medal boxes. Probably from the ones hanging off his dress blues. Digging down, I found another that looked newer than the rest. There was gold writing on top that said… Purple Heart.
I touched the box gingerly and ran my fingers across the black leather, then popped it open so gently. I’d never seen one in real life.
“You never mentioned that you got a Purple Heart,” I whispered, afraid to touch the shiny medal.
He paused and looked over at me, frowning when he saw it.
“Yeah, they gave that to me after kicking me to the curb. How nice of them, giving me a consolation prize.”
“It’s not a consolation prize, asshole,” I scowled at him. “You almost died that day. I’m sure they gave several of them out from that day.”
He shrugged.
