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I couldn’t think of what to say to Adam, so I nodded and we sat in silence for a while. It was weirdly comfortable, the firepit snapping as lightning bugs began to glow in the dark.
Steve was still inside and Adam reached over, handing me a bottle of water. “You do you,” he said slowly. “That makes insecure people crazy.”
I nodded again. It seemed he was right.
“You’ve got the training,” he led slowly, uncapping his own water and I looked up just as he took a deep chug. I could appreciate the way his Adam’s apple moved in a sinuous motion, up and down his big throat. “You ever consider being a medic at a ground-based job? You know, no more jumping out of helicopters?”
I couldn’t help but grin at him. “I’m technically on the National Registry of EMTs, and says the man who works a life flight? Really, Beckman?”
“Hey, got no intentions of jumping out of that thing at any point. Heights and me, we don’t get along but when I’m in the bird I’m busy, I’m not looking out the windows.” He shivered a little.
“Maybe I’ll do that someday,” I said, because honestly that was going to require some thought. I’d never before considered it, settling down somewhere and holding down a job that wasn’t on contract. I’d never had a reason to consider it before.
“Doesn’t scare you, the thought of taking a job that might throw you right back into combat?” he asked slowly, and for a second I thought his swoony brown eyes held a note of concern.
“I know what to do because of training,” I said slowly. “My reflexes just take over.”
“Reflexes only take over when there’s gunfire?” He lifted the bottle to his lips again, tipping his head back just a little.
I sat back to consider my answer, firing off a question instead. “Why’d you get out?”
“You know why I got out.”
Medical discharge, I knew that much. Mom had gotten a hold of me at the base, to let me know Adam had been sent home after a mission went wrong. I’d had suspicions he and my brother were a part of the CIA’s Special Activities Division for some time, and when he was shipped home full of bullet holes from a mission he wouldn’t talk about, I couldn’t shake the idea.
“Afghanistan?”
He shook his head, plainly not about to tell me.
“And?”
“Took seventeen.” He sucked in a deep breath. “Shredded things bad enough that I was done for. No more running with a pack.”
“Where?”
He scooted forward on the sofa and swiveled his body, lifting his shirt so that I could count seven small scars. I hadn’t noticed the eighth on the back of his bicep until just now. Then he stood and hiked up the legs of his gym shorts just far enough that I could see four more. My eyebrows rose as I did the math and he dropped back down on the sofa, a little closer to me this time I thought.
“Can’t show you the rest.”
Why ever not?
“That explains the problems with running.”
He barked out a short laugh. “Muscle loss was only part of the problem. Number five went through the left lung. Didn’t make it clean through the front–collapsed it.”
Oh.
“Lost part of it; too shredded to save.”
That seemed like a pretty solid reason.
“Oh,” I said quietly, looking down. I had a few scars from combat, only two of them gunshots. “Suppose you get winded pretty easily then.”
Why I blushed when I said that, I’ll never know.
No, wait. That’s a lie. I know exactly why it lit my face on fire.
“There are some times I notice it more than others,” he answered simply, and it did nothing to stop the heat rolling in waves across my face. There were certain images crowding my brain that were beyond inappropriate, and right on time, Steve showed up with a beer in each hand. I took one from him gratefully, though Adam waved him off.
