Page 5 of Passion and Payback

She stared at me before her face broke into a genuine smile. “Alright, my brother-in-law is like that. You have a sense of humor?”

“On occasion.”

“As dry as the desert, just like his, I see.”

“I…thank you for trying to help me,” I said, adjusting my bag. “But I’ve got to meet a friend.”

“Friend, huh?” she asked, clearly curious still.

“Old friend.”

“A good one?”

“Yeah.”

Which wasn’t the whole story. Hunter was the only friend I’d had growing up, and he was more than someone as awkward and quiet as me could hope for. Our friendship had seemed divinely ordained if you were the sort to believe.

A kid born to be bullied and beaten by peers and a kid born to fight and want someone who didn’t treat him like a brute. In each other, we found what we needed, acceptance and warmth.

“A…special friend?” she asked, a smirk crossing her face.

I blinked, taken aback for a moment, before shaking my head. “No, nothing like that.”

“That’s a shame,” she said, surprising me with how genuinely put out she sounded. It wasn’t fair to this woman, who I knew nothing about, but she wouldn’t have been the first married woman to see a man in uniform and try to pounce. I couldn’t say anything about the guys from personal experience, though. They generally took one look at me and assumed I was straight. “Everyone deserves to have someone special in their life.”

Hewasspecial, of course, but it wasn’t likethat. Or at least it hadn’t been like that except for that one time. Even then, that had been a…well, it wasn’t the norm for us. Not that it bothered me. I had thought about it for years afterward, but we weren’t like that. It had been a short-lived thing for him, and he’d moved on, and for me, it was…impossible.

“Anyway,” she said, tucking hair behind her ears and taking half a step back. “I can see I’m doing that pestering thing my mom always warns me about. I’m glad you made it back home, and I hope it’s a good visit.”

That was a loaded statement to respond to, so I just shrugged. “It’ll be better when I get settled in.”

“Which is my cue to leave you alone before I go from kind of annoying to holy hell, when will this strange woman shut up?” she said with a low laugh.

“I appreciate it, though,” I told her quickly, not wanting her to get the wrong idea. Ididwant her to leave me alone, but that didn’t have to do with her being annoying; it had more to do with me just being awful at conversation. Talking, right up there with showing emotion, wasn’t something I was the best at. “So, thank you.”

“Of course,” she said brightly, giving me a wave. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find my husband. He’s probably taken advantage of me being gone and has our twins loaded up with sugar. It’s good we don’t have another flight for another couple of hours.”

“Good luck with that,” I told her, meaning it.

Freed from the conversation, I had to remember my way through the maze of the airport to baggage claim to gather the last of my stuff. Most of what I owned, which wasn’t a lot, was in storage. I didn’t have family I could rely on to watch my stuff, but Hunter had been good enough to keep an eye on things each time I was deployed.

It finally hit me that I would see Hunter again for the first time in over ten months. It hadn’t been nearly as bad to leave him the last time. After…what had happened to him and his former boyfriend a couple of years ago, while I was deployed, I hadn’t wanted to leave him to deal with it alone.

Not that he hadn’t already. After everything, he’d lost several friends, though Hunter never shared why, and I didn’t push. It had happened months before I could get back to the States, and I was only back half a year before being dragged away again. Except now, my contract was over, and while that left me with a lot of uncertainty and questions about what I was going to do with my future, it also meant I could be here for my friend.

I pushed the thought away quickly, feeling guilt and shame nipping at its heels. I was not only gone but uncontactable when he’d…well, when he’d lost Lucas…among other things. I hadn’t been there when he’d been dealing with the aftermath, losing his friends, the case against the men who’d attacked him and Lucas falling through for some reason. Hunter’s entire life had come crashing down around him into jagged pieces that cut him thousands of times, even as he had to bury the man he loved and figure out how to getsomethingback.

He swore up and down he was finding peace again, and that the six months I had been with him had helped a lot. But now it was two years after he’d been violated in ways he’d never detailed to me. Maybe that was enough time for him to heal, and I could do more than call or write emails when I could.

I had to remind myself that I was supposed to be pushing those thoughts away, and I quickly did so as my bag showed up on the belt. With a grunt, I snatched it and headed for the front, where I could find a ride into the city where Hunter was. Icouldhave found an apartment, I had plenty of money squirreled away, and finding a job wouldn’t betoohard, but…staying withHunter for a while had been at my insistence, though to Hunter’s credit, he hadn’t fought too hard.

I knew he’d avoided living with anyone after Lucas’s murder. He swore it was because he didn’t see the point. His savings had been enough to get him through the first few months without help, and after that, he was working again and could handle it. There was no need to bring someone else into his house, and he definitely wasn’t going to start dating again. The thing was, I knew fear when I saw it, and I thought it had less to do with not needing anyone around but that he didn’t trust anyone else to be with him.

That was, except for me.

With my bag in tow, I got my phone to cooperate long enough to find a ride on the app. My phone, thankfully, hadn’t changed that much. The thing was a little old, though, and I probably need to replace it. Thankfully, it could still find me an Uber, which was all I needed for now.

The trick, however, was finding where to get picked up. I stood in the pick-up area, looking for my Uber since the app insisted it was waiting for me, but I couldn’t see anything. After five minutes, I finally dialed the number attached to my booking.

---