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“She’s twenty one and yes I met her when she was eighteen,” Creek snarled a bit. “Trust me, the last thing I ever expected was to fall in love with a woman like her. And she is a woman.”
“I’m assuming this isn’t the first time this issue has come up.”
“She was a rescue,” he admitted. “Which made her persona non grata to begin with. Being barely legal added to me fighting with myself for a time.”
“Don’t say she seduced you,” Mike warned with a bit of a harsh tone.
“She wouldn’t even know how,” Creek admitted, running his hand through the thick black hair he sported. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t fall hard for her and doesn’t mean I didn’t question our relationship from a thousand angles. Everything led me back to her.”
“A week ago I wouldn’t even question,” Mike admitted.
“I will say this, don’t let her sweet face fool you,” he warned. “Crossing her is like crossing me without the buffer of years of combat and training having created a bond.”
“Basically she’ll pull a death by a thousand cuts,” he reasoned.
“Nah, she’ll just shoot you.”
“You’re supposed to marry your other half, not your twin,” Mike joked and got a half smirk from the man as the two settled back into a silence as distant sounds amplified in the open space.
A mix of engines, scurrying animals and random sounds of children laughing. He assumed from the other homes in the circle. There was a peace here he wasn’t expecting, the cold wind blowing past them from time to time reminded him of the blonde from earlier. Someone he shouldn’t even be thinking about with all that was going on in his world, but she’d stuck all the same.
“Speak?” Creek said as he finished the last of his soda. “We didn’t come out here for you to question my life choices and you are being tightlipped on my security breaches, so, at this point you have no purpose.”
“No reason to kick a man when he’s down.” Mike took his own swallow and wished it was stronger, a hard liquor with a proof level high enough to keep a car running or strip furniture.
He needed the burn going down his throat to set off other pain receptors in his body and allow for truths to flow. Training in torture techniques helped him learn his weaknesses so he could either fight them or exploit them. Use them to trip down the path of least resistance so he could share the truths he kept bottled up and locked away. Instead, of Coke he needed a damn beer to help him break through defenses and loosen his tongue. But he’d probably need more than one, yeah, twelve might get him talking, but one merely quenched his thirst.
“I need to stay here for a little while,” he finally said, hating the fact Creek had the ability to stay quiet as a hooker in church when he was waiting for a reply. There was no deep interrogation when it came to the man. He’d wait you out in a way that could drive a person crazy. Silence, staring, or completely ignoring you to the point you wondered if the man was a hallucination.
“Define a while?”
“A few weeks I guess. I’m working shit out.” He took the last swig of beer and set the bottle down by his foot. “If not, give me a few days to find a ride and I’ll make my own way.”
“When do you need to report back to base?” he questioned.
“Two weeks basically,” he said. “Eight A.M. Monday, a week after Easter.”
“Two Monday’s from now,” Hack clarified and Mike nodded.
“It’s nut cutting time,” he said. “I have the paperwork, just need to decide if I’m pushing for my twenty or cutting out while the bone spurs are under triple digits and my vertebrae aren’t fused together.”
“And you wouldn’t be stupid enough to go AWOL, would you?”
“The temptation is there,” he admitted. “But probably because orange is my signature color and breaking bricks will get me views on Tocker.”
The unamused glare set Mike back a bit. It was his own fault for falling into the comfort and peace he knew when among his brothers. Creek had no patience for his bullshit. The last thing this compound needed were overzealous MP’s rolling in thinking they were doing something as they storm the place looking for a wayward sailor.
“For my daughter I’d risk it, but if I can find a way to safely turn in my papers I’m thinking that’s what I’ll need to do.”
“Kids usually have two people looking out for them,” he said, not saying out loud the truth of it all. “Exceptions have been made over the years. There an exception I don’t know about? I remember a woman at a few parties years ago.”
“Sassy has no vote in this.”
“Says you or the law?” Creek asked, cutting his eyes toward him as his head shifted slightly to the side. Sadly, Creek wasn’t someone you could fast talk, few in his unit could. “What’s this about Hanover?”
“I need somewhere to stay, but the less you know—”
“The more believable my response of ‘I have no idea’ can be.” Creek once again leaned forward, his head dropping a bit as if he we were checking the toe of his boots before inspection. “Hanover, is this something to do with the scared little girl hiding away in my sister-in-law’s room?”
