Page 122 of What I Should Have Done

His chest expanded, and I watched as some of the burden he carried slipped away. “I love you too, Scotch.”

“Hurry up, lovebirds!” Bernie’s voice boomed.

I grinned as Mikey shook his head, bounding down the last two steps. Ford slung an arm around Mikey’s shoulder the moment he passed by, and Bernie wiggled his eyebrows at me.

“You still owe me twenty bucks,” I immediately said.

Bernie rolled his eyes but slung his arm around my shoulders. “Yeah, yeah. I know. I’ll double it if you kiss him right now before he washes that blood off of his mouth.”

I arched a brow, sliding my gaze across the most handsome and unhinged man I’d ever come across as we approached the door leading to the ladder.

Bernie stopped moving and his jaw fell open. “Are you fucking considering it?”

Mikey and Ford immediately whipped around just across the threshold. I shrugged my shoulders, my heart jumping in my chest with the approaching light lifting our mood. “I mean…”

And Mikey sprinted forward, grabbed my cheeks with both hands and planted his lips firmly against mine.

Chapter 42

MIKEY

There was nothing like a gentle spring breeze and birds chirping in the early morning. Except for the warm body curled up within my arms on a mattress that had once been too soft. Scottie’s long hair brushed against my chin as she shifted in her sleep. Gentle snores left her lips. Subconsciously, she scooted tighter against my body.

I wrapped an arm behind my head, staring up at the ceiling fan that gently swirled. Solid walls. An actual bed. Trailing my fingers up her back, her skin so soft beneath my fingertips, I sighed.

Scottie’s brother had called her back yesterday. After she’d left a voicemail on a phone number she wasn’t even sure was still his. They’d talked for hours, and he offered to fly out to Idaho, to our home, next week. She was so excited to see him after all of these years. I hated that her news, that reuniting with a family member who had been told by her fucking awful, so-called parents that she wanted nothing to do with him despite that being a lie, was being overshadowed by the reason we were heading to Arlington National Cemetery today.

Duncan’s funeral.

I closed my eyes, swallowing the dull ache in my heart. The entire team was going to be there. Even Griffin had said he was coming when he’d received the news while we were still deployed. There was a part of me that wished we could go back, that we could redo the entire mission.

But I knew that wasn’t possible. I had delivered death to enough people myself. I was aware of the fragility that we called life.

Oftentimes, I questioned what I should have done at that moment. If there was anything I could’ve done that would’ve changed the outcome. But there was nothing.

And that killed me even more.

“Mmmmmm,” Scottie softly hummed, wrapping her body tighter against mine.

Slipping my fingers through the ends of her hair, I methodically wound the strands up. The sleek feeling of her tresses grounded me. Her naked body pressed to my side was a comfort that I didn’t deserve but cherished with every breath I was afforded. There was something straining in these silent mornings.

Yet, at the same time, there was something feeding me strength—not something, but someone. Sheets wound between our legs, a shade of purple I would’ve never considered until Scottie saw them and thought they matched the damn comforter that definitely didn’t fit my taste. But I happily agreed, watching her in this newfound sense of freedom and femininity.

We hadn’t even been home that long, and I felt warmth flood a house that once was so empty and cold. Fucking pictures littered my walls, mostly ones taken by Bernie when he wasn’t supposed to have a phone or camera out. But nobody said a word. Those were memories that I would forever cherish because whenever we would deploy again, this time it would be without Duncan.

Scrunching my nose up, I bit back a wave of tears. I’d cried. For the first time in years, I’d cried seeing Duncan’s casket wrapped in an American flag. Scottie had held me and not said a word.

Resting my chin on top of her head, I stared at the picture on her nightstand. The pink glow of the rising sun piercing through the curtains over the sliding glass doors reflected from the frame.

The team. Scottie, Duncan, Dom, Bernie, Ford, and myself stood shoulder to shoulder. Before the shit show of our final mission had begun, while we waited for the Black Box to be broken into. A moment of peace amidst a world of darkness and destruction.

Clamping my teeth together, I swallowed stiffly and closed my eyes, burying my nose into Scottie’s hair. She scootched herself even closer, wrapping a leg between mine and clutching to me as if I was her only lifeline.

She still had nightmares every once in a while, even though she never talked about them. I knew. Anytime her fingernails would dig into my flesh, I knew. I only wished I could take it away, but I knew there were scars that nobody could erase—including some of my own. I merely hoped that the therapy she was starting after the funeral would help some.

Living in the dark, fighting in a world that civilians didn’t need to know existed, afforded me some comfort to watch them thrive in the light.

“You’re restless,” Scottie’s hazy morning voice pried my eyes open. I glanced down at her, her lashes still closed.

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