Page 40 of What I Should Have Done

“What?” Her voice sounded distant, almost ethereal.

“Crows. You could’ve picked any childhood memory, but you picked a moment where you fed birds in your yard,” I explained, and her fingers paused.

Her gaze rose, and amber eyes met mine. “Legend says that crows can carry messages to and from the spiritual world.” She resumed tracing my burned skin beneath the ink. “The earliest memory I have is looking out my window and seeing a crow land on my windowsill. For whatever reason, the sunlight hit that bird just right, and his feathers no longer looked black but had this beautiful rainbow coloring to them.”

She sighed and mindlessly removed her hand from my hip, resting it on my thigh. “I talked to this bird, like a toddler does with my incoherent babbling, but he seemed to listen. And when I was finished, he simply flew off. He would return over the years, or maybe eventually it was a different crow, and then several crows started coming and going at once. They would all listen to whatever I had to say and then fly away.”

Her voice faded into silence.

“What does that have to do with the legend, though?” I gently asked, studying her far-off gaze.

She opened her mouth as boisterous chatter erupted outside the tent. Close, and getting closer by the second.

“Shit!” I exclaimed, my stomach jumping to my throat.

She leaped to her feet, backpedaling a few steps from me. “Hurry!” She pointed at the curtain.

Spinning on my heel, I quickly glanced out, and then raced back into my stall. Leaving my forgotten first aid kit behind without hesitation, I threw on my pants and shirt, bundled everything up in my arms, and escaped from the unexpected solitude that Scottie and I had shared.

Chapter 15

SCOTTIE

Nobody asked a thing about yesterday. Not even Mikey asked me anything more after my meltdown, and for whatever reason, I was torn on how I felt about it. Part of me was grateful he seemed to trust me enough to handle my own shit. The other part wished he’d at least attempted to pry more.

But Bernie’s words the moment we met rang heavily in my ears: Mikey was not one to trust easily. While Mikey had let slip he had an ex-fiancée, the intensely mistrusting root ran much deeper than just that.

Cool metal slipped fresh beneath my palms as I sat on a table with my sniper rifle sprawled out in pieces in front of me. Hot sun blazed down on the desert as the rest of the team was lifting in the outdoor gym to my left. All the jabs at jokes tossed around seemed an empty attempt to avoid speaking about the questions that none of us had answers to.

While the impending attack we’d disappeared during had been easily diverted by the platoons remaining at the combat outpost, our mission had gone sideways before it’d even begun. That was twice now we’d failed, and while I was new to the team, I’d heard stories from the other soldiers about this specific SEAL team, and those stories warned me that my team was not happy at all.

Ford grunted beneath a barbell, pressing the heavy weight off his chest with Duncan offering him a spot. Dom nodded once and left the team, shooting me a casual smile and tossing a passing comment that he was going to see if the colonel had any new information. He was as impatient as the rest of us.

Mikey’s blue eyes had barely even glanced my way as he snapped the shared lifting belt Bernie had managed to pack out here onto his waist. Sweat deepened the color of his shirt collar and ran down his spine, something that should’ve had me gagging, but instead, my heart raced in my chest like a runaway vehicle, desperate to be near him.

His chest expanded, inhaling a deep breath, and he braced against the belt, stooping with ease to start his set of deadlifts. If only we didn’t have to wear our fucking cammies out here and I could see his legs while he picked up weight that should not have moved as easily as it did.

At least the short sleeves exposed his forearms. With each rep, the veins intensified, running like thousands of rivers down across the back of his hands. Red, sweaty, and hot, his thick neck was accentuated by each pull of the weight.

And then, for the first time all day, as he plopped the weight down, his gaze flickered over to me. He stepped over the barbell, winked, and flicked the lever on the belt.

Tearing my eyes away from him, everything in me ran warm, and a dull pulse ignited in a place that I’d long since believed to have gone dormant. Squeezing my legs together a little tighter, I immediately picked up the scope and began cleaning it.

What an arrogant man…

Such a simple, openly flirtatious moment should not have happened, especially if someone else saw. But it had.

That had been him flirting, right?

And what about yesterday? That had all been innocent, right? He’d merely been trying to help me with the injuries that ached today, right? But the scars… Something about that had seemed more vulnerable than two teammates taking care of each other.

Each tattoo covering the scars clearly held purpose. As if he attempted to cover whatever caused the pain that never fully healed with art that meant nothing and also everything to him.

The way his hand had so quickly snatched mine, jerking it away from him, I’d never seen such shock on his face. Pain once coursed through him, leaving an expression in his eyes I recognized all too easily.

No wonder he didn’t seem to fear death.

Honestly, he didn’t really seem to be afraid of anything, and my stomach twinged knowing he knew I was afraid of something. Taking him up on his offer for extra hand-to-hand combat training sounded better and better as the day wore on. Yet, I’d avoided it this morning. More so because I was avoiding him.

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