Page 76 of Keeping a Warrior

The weight vest dragged at her, and sweat dripped from her nose. Next to her Moose seemed to have caught a second wind and finished his squats, then staggered out the door for his final one-mile run, accompanied by the loud cheers of his guys.

Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred!

Pushups in the bag, Devon leapt to her feet and ran after Moose. He’d exhausted himself, and by leaving the squats for last, his legs were toast. Devon passed him easily, aware of his furious shout, his heavy puffs as he fought to catch up.

He never quite managed it, and in the end, Devon beat his time by almost a full minute. Moose threw his weight vest off and stalked out of the gym without a word, although a few of his guys came up for knuckle bumps and murmurs of “Respect,” before trudging after him.

Rhys leaned against a wall nearby, his green eyes warm with admiration. “You knew you’d beat him.”

“Yeah.” Devon shucked her weight vest and picked up a towel to mop her face with. “I always do. The guys who can beat me aren’t the ones threatened by me.”

With a shrug, she headed for the shower, followed by Rhys’s low, husky chuckle.

Over the next several days, she and Rhys joined a few of the recon patrols out into some of the more remote villages. The inhabitants were cautious but mostly welcoming. Bradley would meet with their elders, solemn men with weathered skin, their beards dyed red and kohl around their eyes.

Her hair tucked under a scarf, Devon sat with the women and children. They were curious about her life in America, and spoke frankly about their own lives—the lack of education, the arranged and forced marriages. One woman’s thirteen-year-old daughter had recently been given to a man in another village in order to settle a dispute. She was to be his second wife.

“The first wife abuses her terribly,” the woman said, her sorrow etched on her face. “Makes her sleep in the kitchen, only gives her the leftover scraps of food.”

Devon’s heart ached, but there wasn’t anything she could do.

“American women get to choose their own husbands?” a young girl asked wonderingly.

“Yes. We marry for love.”

The women scoffed at the notion.

Rhys offered medical care to any villager who needed it. He didn’t talk to the women, but he was allowed to see the children. Devon loved watching him interact with them, his gentleness, the funny faces he’d make that elicited shy giggles, his quiet expertise.

“You’re good with kids,” she said later, when it was just the two of them sprawled in his hooch with cups of weak coffee he’d made on his hot plate. “You want any of your own?”

“No way.”

He sounded so vehement that Devon glanced over at him. “Really?”

“Considering the lack of fatherly role models I’ve had in my life, the last thing I need is to be one myself.” His voice wasn’t bitter, just matter-of-fact. “I enjoy kids, and yeah, I think I’m good with them. I just don’t want any of my own. How about you?”

“Same, actually. I don’t have much of a desire to be tied down like that.” Devon leaned back against the wall and stretched out her legs. The chairs he had were rickety and uncomfortable, so they’d made quite the cozy conversation pit on a patch of floor with a handmade Afghan rug Rhys had bought in one of the villages. She fingered the elaborate, colorful weave, knowing that the women and girls who’d made it had toiled for hours in a hot and dusty room.

“What do you want to do after the Army?” he asked.

“Travel. Do something with my degree. Go to graduate school.”

Rhys finished his coffee and set his cup aside. “What’s your degree in?”

“Social work.” Drawing one knee up, Devon draped her wrist over it. “I’d originally wanted to go right to flight school, but I promised my dad I’d get that backup degree first.”

“The Army flight program doesn’t require a degree?”

“Nope. No officer’s commission, either. It’s called ‘high school to flight school’ for a reason. Hearing about the CST program derailed everything. In a good way, but...”

Despite the word officer in her title, warrant officers weren’t commissioned; they were enlisted with a specific specialty.

“What about you? Shane said something about PA school?”

“Yep. I want to go into emergency medicine. When I was at 18-D, the spec ops medic course, we did rotations in inner-city emergency rooms, rode on ambulances, did hands-on trauma care. It was amazing.”

Devon was curious. “What sets PJs apart from regular corpsmen and medics, then?”