Ichecked my watch and cursed.
I’d said I’d be back within two hours, and now I wasn’t sure I was ready.
It was her fucking fault. She’d made freeze-dried food taste good. She’d stood there this morning wearing my hoodie and probably just underwear, and she’d served me breakfast in bed with a stunning smile on her face.
And I wasn’t one of those fuckers who claimed that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. I’d spent my whole goddamn life learning to settle for MREs and meal bars. I didn’t care all that much about food, full stop. I had two vices; I loved cashews and churros. Basically, everything else wasfine.
This pheasant was also going to befine.
I grunted as I climbed higher up the slope and estimated I had roughly thirty minutes left of sanity. Thirty minutes until I was back at camp and had to watch her read or sunbathe or wash clothes or clear the helipad of pebbles.
Tomorrow, I’d pack for half a day in the valley. I’d catch us some fish and screw my head on right.
To be quite fucking honest, the thought of Kiera being interested in me didn’t feel too farfetched. She was extremely nice and caregiving, bordering on flirty at times, but that made shit worse. Because then it was up to me to be the good guy. She was going home to find a husband to knock her up, and I was…never gonna be that guy. Having kids had entered my mind briefly in my thirties, and sure, there was that part of me that’d wanted the traditions, the wife, the kid I could play catch with. But one look at my job…? All those thoughts flew out the window.
The past twenty-five years, I’d spent roughly two hundred days a year out of the country, without any guarantee of ever coming home. Granted, it was a lot less these days. I flew quick missions, one week here, another there, maybe a dozen times a year, but even so. And hell, at my age? Come on. My blood pressure may be perfect, but my knees popped like firecrackers when I’d been too still for a longer period of time, and if I slept uncomfortably, I paid for it the following day.
I stopped to catch my breath, and I looked out over the valley below.
How many missions had I flown in this terrain?
I remembered an era when these mountains had been filled with different worlds colliding. Local farmers, various ethnic groups, refugees getting lost in their desperate hope to reach the border, US Special Forces doing recon, our operators scouting and waiting…
I heaved a breath and lifted my tee to wipe sweat off my face.
“He said it was time for something new, and that he was the luckiest bastard on earth for having been blessed with three big loves. Me, my mom, and his white rocket.”
Perhaps the reason I was reluctant to quit fieldwork wasn’t because I loved this more than anything. Maybe it was because I didn’t have a fucking clue about what came next. I didn’t have three big loves of my life. I had work.
I was getting too old for the game, though. Sooner rather than later, I had to surrender my proverbial wings and get comfortable as the head of drone defense. That was going to be my full-time project. I’d come into the office in the morning, and I’d leave in the afternoon and go home again.
Kiera was reading one of my books when I returned, and I was guessing that my mood halted her from jumping into a conversation. She didn’t even ask if I had any update from her dad.
I dropped the pheasant by the firepit close to where she sat, grabbed my toiletry kit and a pair of skivvies inside, then muttered that I was gonna go wash off.
I practically felt her confusion as I walked away. Probably her concern too. She was definitely the type of woman who worried about others.
She was kind.
She’d have no trouble meeting some dream guy who’d buy her a minivan. Maybe he’d coach little league. Maybe he’d play golf on the weekends.
Maybe he’d choke on a fucking golf ball.
Some fifty feet past the helipad, I reached the stream that rushed water down the mountainside. Crystal clear and supposedly clean, though I always boiled the water I drank and used for cooking.
I stripped down to my boxer briefs and braced myself for the cold, and then I stepped down on the one sandy surface I knew was safe and wouldn’t set off a landslide or send me tumbling down the slope. I sucked in a breath before I leaned in and dunked my head in the rush.
I made quick work of soaping up. Jaw clenched, balls trying to crawl up inside my body, all while the afternoon sun shone on my back.
Looking over toward our camp, I deduced Kiera wasn’t going to come near anytime soon, so I lost the underwear too. I could barely spell modesty, but I didn’t wanna make her uncomfortable.
Fuck me sideways, this was too much. I rinsed off as fast as I could before I stepped out of the water.
New boxer briefs on, before I toweled off with a tiny washcloth. Last but not least, deodorant.
Now I was hungry.
The frigid water had helped.
