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“Excuse me,” a deep, rich, exquisitely baritone voice said, bringing my attention back to his face.
He speaks!
Dazed, I stepped aside with a mumbled, “Okay.” I watched him walk toward his truck and, my God, that booty. It was downright phenomenal. Juicy. That was the appropriate use of that word. I’d have to let Ainsley know later. He jumped into his truck, which was parallel parked in front of our apartment building. He cranked the vehicle, not sparing me a single glance, and pulled into traffic.
There I stood in a fog as I watched his truck fade in the distance. It wasn’t until he was out of sight that I noticed I was still clutching my Chinese food to my chest. I pulled it away from my body and winced at the brown sauce down the front of my favorite, white book shirt.
“Son of a monkey,” I said to myself as I climbed the steps. Horrified. Embarrassed at the whole ordeal. “Okay? Okay?” I mumbled over and over. “That’s all you could think to say to the man of your dreams?” I shook my head and made my way into my apartment, determined to say something other than okay the next time I saw that gorgeous man.
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck as soon as the chopper lowered. We fast-roped in even as a sick, eerie feeling overcame me. One I couldn’t fucking shake for the life of me. My team of twelve had been taking part in an ongoing series of operations that had successfully disrupted insurgent activity in Afghanistan for the past couple of weeks. But this was different. Our boots hit dry dirt in Kandahar Province, our guns raised, our voices silent, and my skin prickled with an awareness I was all too familiar with. And that awareness was never good. My stomach lurched as I marched ahead of our medic, First Lieutenant Davies, motioning for him to slow with my hands. When these feelings came over me, I always walked ahead of my team. I looked back at my squad. They all had wives, families, children to get home to. All I had was an estranged sister and a healthy dose of no fucks.
Our mission was concise. Find the target, take him out, and get the hell out of there as soon as fucking possible. Five hundred feet to the right stood what appeared to be an old abandoned building, but I knew better than anyone the kind of traps that lay in wait in buildings like that one.
The air was dry, the dirt drier. Even with the hot sun on my face, sweat in my eyes, the earth’s grit in my mouth, and this stomach sinking feeling, I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Serving my country in the only way I knew how.
We treaded to the building on ghost-like feet, crouched low, ready for anything but always prepared for the absolute worst.
I motioned young Private Lawrence forward, giving the silent order for him to do a sweep of the entrance to the building. He entered ahead of us, a look of weariness evident on the features of his smooth face, checking the area carefully with his mine detector. A nod of his head and we had the all clear. We entered behind him, half of my team along one wall of the square room and the other half along the other side.
A doorway hidden behind an old blanket led to another room and Lawrence swept the doorway. Deciding it was safe, he motioned the team through. I stayed behind, offering rear protection, always aware of my surroundings, ever vigilant. The last through the doorway, a sense of foreboding hit me hard, along with a wave of sound and debris that happened in slow motion and took my breath away in an instant. I was launched backward a few feet before landing hard on my back, the little air I did have sucked from my lungs like a siphon from the sheer force of the impact.
I lay there, shocked, my eyes screwed shut tight, trying to catch my breath before I checked myself for injuries.
My ears rang with a high-pitched sound, but I still managed to hear a soldier call into headquarters. “Contact IED. Wait out.”
Fuck, I’d stood on an Improvised Explosive Device. My face burned, but I forced my eyes open. Only my right eye was clouded and unfocused, so I moved my hand to it, checking to make sure my eyeball was still there. My swollen hand came away with a wetness I could only assume was blood. I moved my head around, trying to focus with my one good eye.
Dust.
Ringing in my ears.
Soldiers yelling.
“Any casualties? Any casualties?”
I held my hands up in front of my face, doing a limb check, but I could barely make them out through all the debris still floating in the air and the blood in my eyes. I moved my hands down my body, across my battered torso. Grunting, I rolled to my side, checking my legs and that’s when I felt it.
Nothing.
And absolutely fucking everything.
A pain so unimaginable, so goddamn searing, that blackness nearly took me under.
“Me. Me. Steel. I’m a casualty,” I somehow gritted out through cracked, bruised lips.
“Fuckkkkk.” I startled awake, the pain in my leg so intense my body arched and contorted with it. Sweat blanketed me and nausea rolled in my stomach.
I pressed my palm over my mouth tightly so I could scream behind it without waking the entire building. My other hand made a fist and met the headboard with a bang over and over while I yelled into my hand until the pain eventually somewhat passed.
I exhaled and rolled to my stomach, reaching for the pain pills and water that were always on my bedside table.
And that’s how I started every day for the past six months.
With a real-life nightmare haunting my thoughts.
With a cuss word on my lips.
With a pain pill sour in my mouth.
