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CHAPTER FOUR
RUSKI
Isat between a mountainof a medic and his pink-haired missus playing footsie with Abby under the table. Or at least from the cute as fuck flush that burned her cheeks constantly I knew it was her. Otherwise, it was the moping Brit I played with, though I suspected Abby would be a whole lot more fun. My shirt stuck to my skin in the heavy Cairns humidity as I watched her across the table.
She managed the onslaught from the female contingent admirably, maintaining her calm with a minimum of snark. I was glad to see her loss hadn’t crippled her, but then Abby was always strong. It was the thing that drew me to her the most.
Like now, where she sat across the table from me, wearing a white cotton sundress that accentuated her golden skin, valiant and brave as she glanced at the two vacant chairs seated beside her. I found Ace’s annual ritual of putting seats at the table for those they lost during the year more than a little macabre.
For a unit who, until recently, had escaped the inevitable odds of a zero percent eventual survival rate, they were doing fairly well. I noted a few other chairs pulled back from the table, recognizing their fallen from years gone by.
If I added my dead in, we’d end up with a fucking auditorium of empty seats.
Abby glanced up at me, and our glances caught and held. She hadn’t approached me since I arrived a handful of hours ago, though I wasn’t impervious to her constant searching for me, knowing to look in the shadows if I wasn't hiding in plain sight. One hand rested on her bump while the other played with a well-cooked steak and roast veggies that steamed.
Apparently, the unit wasn't taking any chances with my girl, and I respected that. We might have had a few years’ break but I fully intended to bring her back into my life—assuming she wanted that. From the way she kissed me back under the surveillance of her entire crew, I very much doubted I’d get anofrom her, provided I approached her right.
Her cheeks flushed and she turned her head to the side to speak softly to the Brit who glared at me as he spoke to her. His significant other sat on the other side of him, offering him a quiet smile and talking across him with Abby. I could understand why I’d been sent in to shake the team up—around the table, soldier and side piece dotted the landscape. I winced internally; I never sounded more like the father I hated until that moment.
Only a man with no morals talks about people like they’re dispensable.
But they were, of course. Every one of us.
I thanked Caleb Anderson for the giant platter of prawns and Moreton Bay Bugs and pushed a decent portion onto my own plate, counting out the remaining places to be served and making sure there was enough. As soon as I emptied my hands, a salad bowl filled them. On and on the meal went, constant serving and chatter until most of the dishes were cleared and I’d taken the name of three suppliers and one catering company to commit to memory.
Finally, Ace scraped his chair back, his hand on his dog’s head, his other arm wrapped around his woman. Conversation stopped as every eye turned to him at one end of the table.
Every eye but Abby’s.
She murmured quietly to her bump as Ace kickstarted their truly terrible holiday tradition, not using the Tran twins, I noted, as his call out, but rather a young soldier I knew he lost overseas years before.
Noah King named his father, the hulk beside me murmuring a name I didn't recognize from my intel. The table made to skip past me, as not a true part of the unit—yet— but I slid my hand across the table, intent on lifting Abby’s attention to me.
I didn’t give much of a shit about the rest of the old timers around us.
“Jonny Chinn. Leroux.” I gave two names, the ones who still hurt the most.
Abby’s gaze lifted to meet mine, startled into stopping her own soft chatter that no one except me seemed to have noticed. She kept her attention on me as a pause filled the table and the round continued after a short breath.
Until her turn came up.
“Ryker. Kai,” she whispered. Her hand brushed over her bump, but her other hand inched across the table in my direction. She didn’t grab my hand or lunge across the table—even if she could—but the motion was enough.
I nodded as her attention drifted inward, leaning back in my chair as the Brit named a captain or major. Hell, it could have been an admiral—I couldn't recall the rank and had stopped listening—and silence fell.
I used that minute of reverence to remember the bullet Jonny Chinn took for me, and the one my father put into the back of my cousin’s head, execution-style. Not that it mattered; who in the world was going to call out my father on his preferred method of murder?
