Page 28 of What I Should Have Done

No fucking clue.

“Nothin’.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Let’s go again.”

“Absolutely not. You already sent Ford to the medic with a fucking bloody nose. I don’t know what I was thinking agreeing to spar with you after that blatant display of unrestraint,” Bernie hissed, placing his hands against his thighs and panting.

Closing my eyes, I gulped down the confusion tingling at the back of my throat. What was going on with me? Even a distraction wouldn’t fuel me to behave in such reckless ways as I was right now. There was something more going on.

“By the way,” Bernie began, and I opened my eyes. “What happened last night?” Clenching my jaw, I swallowed stiffly.

“Last night?” I asked as casually as possible. There was no way he knew or saw Scottie and I holding hands. Wait, why the hell was I so nervous that he might know? We hadn’t done anything wrong… Okay, yes, it had totally crossed a line, but still…

“Yeah, when you went to take a piss?” Bernie continued. I furrowed my brows, feigning even more innocence and hopefully buying time for me to get my story straight. He rolled his eyes. “You know, how I asked you to check on Scottie because she was gone too?” His gaze shot over my shoulder, presumably landing on the very woman I’d been avoiding all day. And there was no stopping my own eyes from glancing at Scottie set up beneath a barbell, squatting.

Her skin glistened, the heat from the sun shining against the sweat that dripped from her cheeks. My own body roared hot, something flickering low in my core as I watched her brace against the weight. As if attached to puppet strings, my head tipped sideways and this strange uncontrollable desire to find out what her sweat smelled like crashed through my body.

Hammering like a drill in my chest, my heart begged for me to get as near to her as I could, to run my tongue against—

Stop it, you shithead.

Ripping my eyes away from her, my stomach sank, appalled with my own thoughts. What in the world was going on with me? Our hands touched last night, that was it. Why in the world would a carnal desire like that cross my mind? Ever. Especially about her. No. No. No—

“Earth to Mikey. Hello?” A voice I recognized came through the muddied gutter my thoughts were quickly drifting toward. “Yo, assface!” Fingers snapped in front of my gaze, jerking me out of whatever frozen stupor I’d been locked in.

Bernie. Standing in front of me, his brows drawn together tightly, Bernie stared at me, waiting as if I was supposed to say something.

I was supposed to say something, right? He’d asked me a question about Scottie, which was why I’d looked at her. What was it…?

“Oh, um, you know, uh…” I clacked my teeth together.

“I’m gonna assume that she was fine ’cause you can’t even remember what happened last night,” Bernie said, shaking his head with a chuckle.

Right.

“Yeah, she said she needed to pee which was why she left,” I explained, running a hand over my hair. Grains of sand sprayed from the touch as a shiver shot up my spine. Someone was looking at me. And I knew who it was. There was no one else who would have a reason to look at me except for Scottie.

She’d avoided my gaze all day, as well, and barely spoke to anyone—not just me. At some point we were going to have to face each other, though I would not bring it up again. There was no need in rehashing something that shouldn’t have happened or the fact that I should have done something different.

But there was a part of me wondering if the shift in her attitude had less to do with me and more to do with Reyes and his buddies. There was something off about that guy, something that had me wondering how appropriate it would be to ask Colonel Duke about his file and how he did in sniper school that would create such intense feelings of envy in him. Though I knew if I did inquire, someone else might get suspicious, and I didn’t want that, especially over some stupid ass jealousy thing that shouldn’t even be happening.

It wasn’t my place to step in. No matter how much I wanted to scratch that itch, Scottie had asked me to let it go. Even though it didn’t seem right that she was subjected to that kind of harassment, knowing I could do something about it but she didn’t want me to. For reasons that I understood but didn’t totally agree with, and never would completely understand because she was right—she was a girl in a boy’s club.

“Let’s get the team and run some drills or something after I take a leak,” Bernie offered. I nodded but didn’t say anything. He quietly walked away, leaving me alone to huff and puff in my own strange world of confusion and misery.

Staring blankly at the rolling dunes that seemed to go on for forever just beyond the walls of this outpost, my mind slipped back into that same box I’d been so unsuccessfully avoiding all day. If any sign of that damn terrorist showed up right now, I would not complain. Heading out on a mission with a clear goal in mind would be exactly what was needed in this situation.

Because all I was managing to do was wrap myself up in something that didn’t matter at all.

“I heard you made Ford’s nose bleed.”

Scottie.

My gaze snapped sideways, and there she stood, right beside me. Hair stuck against her forehead and the top of her neck, coated in sweat from whatever workout she’d just finished. The blood in my veins roared with adrenaline, prickling beneath my skin and slamming my heart against my ribcage.

“Uh, yeah,” I muttered. What the hell?

Her brows arched, and she shot a glance around me, as if checking that we were far enough away from the rest of the soldiers that our conversation would be private. “Did you do that because you couldn’t punch Reyes last night?” she asked.

“Punching him would feed his ego. So, no,” I answered, turning to face her.

---