Page 56 of Walking Red Flag

“What do you mean?” he replied, looking away.

“You had another four months left on that deployment. You shouldn’t be here,” Shasha countered.

Dima opened his mouth and then closed it for a long time before saying, “I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”

“Fair enough,” Shasha said, turning back to me. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I am…going to make it,” I said, not bothering to lie.

That was all I could give him.

I wasn’t great.

But I wasn’t bad, either.

I was what I was, and that wasn’t going to change until this looming presence of Lyle Pennington stopped hanging over my head.

The moment he was dead, then I’d be good.

But not until then.

Ain’t no cookie better than a subways Michael Damien cookie.

—Doc to Cutter (Macadamia)

CUTTER

I was on my second bottle of beer, and hot beer at that.

I didn’t even wait for the shit to cool down after the prospect brought it inside before I’d popped the lid on not one bottle, but two.

I’d finished the first bottle in about a minute and a half. The second one I was slowing down a bit on.

The men around me were all staring.

“What are the fuckin’ odds?” Detroit asked, not expecting an answer.

“Exactly.” I scrubbed my face with my hands. “I mean, I feel like a fuckin’ asshole for taking her there now.”

Out of all the places that she could have seen someone that caused her trauma, why did it have to be there?

I shouldn’t care so fuckin’ much.

Really, I should be indifferent that I could never take her to meet my brother properly ever again.

But I was pissed way the hell off, and I had one single person to blame.

“You weren’t doing the wrong thing.” Webber, our president, used his authoritative voice that would usually shake me out of my funk. “You were doing what you thought would get her into a better mood. And that’s taking her for a ride. You should’ve probably left her at the diner but…”

“But now that you know that she was hurt in the worst way, leaving her anywhere by herself is never going to happen again,” Apollo grumbled. “Someone’s here.”

My brows lifted. “Who?”

The clubhouse was wired with some of the best security one could have.

All of it put in by a military member that now owned a construction business and built secure locations that were better than Fort Knox.

The clubhouse wouldn’t withstand a siege or anything, since the man had only done the security, but it was good enough to deter the most unwanted of visitors for a time.

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