Page 22 of S.O.S. Mizzay

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Despite the lack of street lights and the semi-overcast night, Andy drove confidently. She wasn’t worried she’d lose her way. She knew this road like the back of her hand, having traveled it off and on for years.

She grew almost giddy with anticipation. What would Cobble think when they arrived? Would he freak out, or take it all in stride?

Andy, seeing that Cobble wasn’t really asleep, started up a neutral conversation, even though the silence that had descended within the car felt comfortable.

“Tell me what you’ve been doing since I last saw you,” she started.

Andy was curious. Cobble always had something interesting going on, and it had been two years since they’d last touched base. That was a long time.

“I thought you said you kept up with me through Chuck?” Cobble grunted, straightening his neck and peering out the front window at the darkened, treed landscape. His lips looked…pursed.

Was he pouting?

Andy snuck a definitive peek at him, and from the light of the dash, she could see that he wore a moue of disappointment. Clearly, he’dwantedher to be curious about him.

She assuaged his concerns.

“Of course I’ve asked Chuck about you,” she soothed. “But you know him. Mr. Gruff. All I’ve gotten out of your taciturn cousin is that you were working another construction job, and that you liked it. He didn’t go into detail about anything else.”

“Iwaspart of an interesting build this time,” Cobble confirmed. “It was with a commercial crew in the city. I learned a lot.”

Andy knew that picking up new skills was something Cobble loved to do. She almost snickered. His head would probably explode with how much he’d have to learn at his next stop. Or maybe he wouldn’t blink. Cobble had a lot of layers to him that Andy had yet to uncover.

Did she want to? Uncover what really made the man tick?

Uh, yeah.

Even though she’d prevaricated earlier over her answer when Cobble had asked if she’d thought about him over the past two years, in reality, he’d never been far from her mind. And not just as a job. During the small swaths of time she’d spent with Cobble while mutually deployed, while keeping him safe in the hospital, while aiding Chuck in getting Cobble settled in several new locations, and with that hug…her one-time squad member had worked his way under her skin.

And he’d made her itch.

In a good way.

Butalsoin a manner to which Andy was unaccustomed.

When she had, previous to being in the Army, needed to scratch an itch—irritations that had never prickled as much as when she thought of Cobble—she’d once or twice found a willing man, had a romp, then waved an easy bye-bye.

But those encounters had never really done it for her, and once she’d met Cobble, it was his face she always imagined straining above her, his longish blond hair tousled, and his brown eyes sparking fire. And wasn’t that fucked up?

Andy startled as she realized Cobble was still speaking.

“…I also took some more classes, and started an outdoor adventure club which a lot of my coworkers joined,” he continued, not knowing where her mind had gone, thank God.“It was a symbiotic relationship. They taught me how to erect steel framing, and I gave them the chops to survive in the wilderness.”

“Sounds like a good swap,” Andy agreed, trying to keep her mind on his words instead of where her brain had gone; imagining Cobble naked.

Dammit.He was just so…jacked.

But that wasn’t the entire draw. She’d also known for a long time that Cobble was smart, ambitious, artistic, and curious about new things; like a scientist whose brain never stopped questioning. Those attributes, combined with his good looks made him extremely lethal to her objectivity.

“I’m going to miss them,” he sighed, growing melancholy.

Andy immediately stopped thinking with her pussy.

“I know. It sucks.”

She got it. It wasn’t easy for a man like Cobble, who had deep familial roots and attached to people quickly, to up and move all the time. She and Chuck were asking a lot from him to stay patient. And, goddammit, it had already been nearly five years. How much longer would it take before Cobble could come out of hiding, testify against El-Umar, and get his life back?

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