Page 4 of Maverick

“Dated?” smirked Pax.

“Okay, okay, been with. Not dated. Anyway, we’ve been with a lot of women over the last decade, and they’re all the same. How did our folks get so damn lucky finding one another?” The guys all looked at one another and nodded, saying it at exactly the same time.

“Mama Irene!”

“I suppose,” grinned Mav.

“They’re not all like her, Mav. You know that,” said Patrick. “Look, let’s talk about our exit day. We’re all leaving on the same week, right?”

“Yep,” nodded the team.

It was unusual that they put brothers on the same team, and even more unusual when four ‘brothers’ from Belle Fleur were on the same team. Although, in fairness, very few people knew who their families were. They worked hard trying to keep all of that secretive, and for the most part, they were successful.

“I say once the papers are signed and we’re done, we get the fuck out of here,” said Patrick. “I’m thinking about giving up my place now and just moving in here for the last few weeks.”

“Just remember I have two weeks longer than you guys unless the Navy decides to be kind to me,” he said with an exaggerated eye batting.

“Yeah, good luck with that shit,” laughed Pax.

“I’m headed home,” said Mav, standing. He set his beer on the table and fist-bumped his friends. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow for PT.”

“Hey, Mav? It’ll happen, brother. When you least expect it, it will happen. You’ll see,” said Brax.

Mav left Braxton’s apartment, walking the short distance to his own. They all lived off base, wanting their own space, but lived within a stone’s throw of one another. Even Pax and Brax had separate apartments, although they were usually at one or the other together. Maverick never understood why the twins didn’t just live together, especially since they always seemed to be in the same place at the same time.

Mav stopped walking, thinking he heard something up ahead. He eyed the darkness and waited. This street was always dark, the streetlights never seemingly working the way they were meant to.

“Let me go!” screamed the woman. He heard shuffling and then heard a scream again. Shaking his head, he knew how this might end.

“Shit.”

He sped up, taking out his phone and texting the guys to follow his tracker. As he neared the shuffling noise ahead, he was shocked to see a tiny woman, red hair swaying over a man’s back.

“Problems with your girl?” asked Mav.

“Fuck off,” said the guy.

“Help me! He’s not my boyfriend. He’s kidnapping me,” yelled the girl.

“Is that right?” asked Mav. The guy just stared at him as another stepped out of the darkness.

“You don’t want to fuck with us,” said the guy. Their faces were somewhat masked by the dark light, Mav not able to get a good glimpse of their features.

“Wow, you’re really scaring me,” smirked Mav. He took another step into the light of the one working streetlight, and the two men stared at him, then at one another. “Put the woman down.”

“Back off, buddy. I don’t want to hurt you,” said the man standing without the woman.

“Yeah, we wouldn’t want that, would we,” said Pax, standing behind the two men. Brax approached from the other side, and they stared at the three men. When Patrick moved forward, they looked at one another with a strange expression.

“I won’t ask again. Put the woman down.”

The man gripped her tiny, childlike waist and tossed her across the sidewalk, straight at Mav. He caught her midair, staring down at her face. Her shocked expression looked up at him with huge green eyes, a small cut bleeding along the side of her face.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Y-yes. Thank you,” she said, struggling to stand. Mav barely noticed, then set her feet on the ground.

“Stay behind me.”

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