Page 10 of What I Should Have Done

Ford pursed his lips. “It’s for my damn rate, I’ll have you know.”

“Nah, it’s for your big ass,” I quipped, and he tossed a crumpled up gum wrapper my way.

“Duncan is Matrix, Mikey is Viper, and Bernie is…” Dom paused and glanced at the redhead sitting next to him who was grinning from ear to ear. “Bernie is Bernie.”

Scottie’s head shot up, her gaze rising from the rattling metal floor. “Your name is your callsign too?”

He shook his head. “My name is Benjamin, but everyone, since my first tour as a SEAL, including my mom now, calls me Bernie. You know, because I like to blow shit up. Bernie the Blaster.” His grin widened like a kid in a candy store.

Scottie arched her brows. “You know, I have been wondering something. Why do you guys use your first names? Pretty much since bootcamp, I’ve been called Aleck—my last name.”

My heart twanged, reminded of something I hadn’t thought about in years. “It was Griffin’s idea,” I answered. My tongue slapped to the roof of my mouth as I clenched my jaw.

“Griffin?” she asked.

“Our old commander,” Ford answered and sat forward, opening his eyes. “And the best damn sniper I’ve ever met. The guy who you’re temporarily replacing.” Ice slipped across his words, as cutting as his gaze that narrowed in on her.

She hesitated in her response, but there was no sign of her backing down to a man built like concrete, just merely a pause. “Why’d he do that? It’s different from everyone else.”

“Exactly that. He wanted us to be different. And it clearly fucking worked because no one’s been killed or seriously injured from this team since he took over. Shot a few times, concussed, broken bones, but nothing permanent. Not anyway, yet,” Duncan answered, casting a questioning glare at Ford.

“And your name is really Duncan?” Scottie shifted in her seat, her shoulders relaxing as we flew closer and closer to our first destination of death.

“I know, right?” Bernie answered, casting a wink at the man seated beside Scottie. “What was your mom thinking? Imagine bumping uglies and trying to moan the name Duncan.” He leaned his head back and let out a high pitched “Duncan” that sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard.

“And that right there is why you don’t have a fucking girlfriend, asshat.” Duncan reached across the chopper and flicked Bernie on his forehead.

“Tell me one girl who’s ever been able to properly moan your name. Just one, and I will take it back right now.” Bernie lifted a cocky brow at Duncan.

“But who the hell wants to moan Bernie in the middle of fucking someone?” Ford backed up Duncan and then backhanded Bernie on his chest.

Scottie’s eyes slowly widened as I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. “At least those girls aren’t coming to a fucking vehicle brand,” I jabbed with a crooked grin, and Ford snapped his steely gaze toward me.

“Low, Mikey, very very low,” he hissed with a wink.

Scottie’s eyes were ready to bug out of her head, but she seemed to be only half listening to the conversation at hand.

“Alright, shitheads,” Dom said, attempting to rein us back in.

“But really, are you guys being serious about your legal names?” Scottie asked, ignoring Dom. “Like Ford. Is that really it?”

He nodded.

“And Mikey? On your birth certificate it says ‘Mikey’?” she added, turning toward me.

“It’s Michael,” I answered, and she inhaled deeply. Her eyes lingered on mine, long enough that I mindlessly began counting the dark flecks speckled within her glowing amber irises. They seemed lighter now compared to earlier. How intriguing and rather unique. Now a color somewhere between a roaring fire and a deepening sunset stared back at me. Calculating. She may not have said much, but she sure as hell was absorbing it all.

A flash of something more innocent crossed her gaze. Ever so briefly, I doubted it had even happened, yet my heart latched onto it. Almost as if she’d nearly found herself asking something of me. A whispered secret, one that held fear unlike I’d experienced in my life.

Maybe that made me clinically insane, or a psychopath, but death—whether being met by his outstretched hands or delivering the grim reaper to a target myself—had never been something I feared.

But now, a twinge of uncertainty graced my darkened soul. For the first time in my life, I thought twice about what was coming. And while I still wasn’t afraid to meet death or deliver that final blow, there was a new urgency to make sure that every single movement and choice of mine was deliberate.

Silence settled over the group as the pilot let us know we were about five minutes out from drop. Adjusting the headphones over my ears, my fingers started the mindless checklist of my gear. There was a sense of something new in the air. But not one that I could place or decipher—yet.

Just a shift in the atmosphere. A change that smelled stuffier and more permanent than anything I’d experienced yet. The tips of my fingers tingled, itching to deal more than a warning blow during sparring but for reasons I couldn’t place. Anger roared in my heart, fueling a fire that started the moment everything at home had changed—maybe that was it. But something in the dark silence of this metal box told me that wasn’t entirely the issue.

Even joining Griffin and Jane during her MMA training had done nothing to satiate this strange need for blood. Maybe Griffin had been right. Maybe I was bottling up my emotions that all related back to Rachel instead of addressing them and letting them go.

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