Page 14 of Over the Top

“So, we… what? Cool our jets here until they get back to us?”

Gunner considered the options. “Let’s catch some sleep now, before anyone’s chasing us. Spec Ops 101: sleep whenever you can. You never know when you’ll get another chance.”

“Ugh. I love me my sleep,” Chas declared. “I would make the world’s worst special operator.”

Gunner’s lips twitched. That was no lie. For more reasons than he could count.

Chas grinned. “I need my eight hours or I’m a total bastard when I wake up.”

Gunner shook his head. “Longest I ever went without sleep was six days.”

“Six—” Chas started to squawk. He lowered his voice quickly with a glance at the baby, who stirred slightly. “Six days?” he murmured. “How did you manage that?”

“Stim pills. Fuckers are straight amphetamines. Jack you up like nobody’s business. The most you’re supposed to use them is five days. But we were in a world of hurt and ran on ’em for six.”

“Then what happened?” Chas asked quickly.

Oh. Right. Sometimes he forgot that outsiders saw his world as glamorous, exciting—romantic, even. “Then we made it to our egress point. A helicopter was waiting for us, and every last one of us spent the next week in a hospital sleeping it off and recovering.”

“Yikes. Intense.”

He shrugged. “All in a day’s work.” Cripes. Chas was looking at him as if he was some kind of superhero. He didn’t care when women in bars looked at him like that. They were just looking for bragging rights at having slept with a SEAL. But Chas—he was different. They had a history together.

Which didn’t make being alone in a motel room with the guy any easier. His sweatshirt started to feel uncomfortably hot and tight around his neck, in fact.

Dammit, if Chas could go topless, so could he. Gunner stripped off his hooded sweatshirt and T-shirt and stopped short when Chas gasped.

“My God. How are you standing upright?”

Gunner glanced down at his chest and stared. His entire torso was one giant mass of purple bruises. No wonder he’d been hurting like hell ever since he woke up. He was lucky crashing through that tree hadn’t done more damage than crack a few ribs. Punctured lungs could be dangerous if not treated quickly and properly.

He couldn’t believe McCarthy had already signed off on his transfer out of the SEALs. Why hadn’t the guy at least given him a chance to come back from this? Bastard didn’t know anything about the determination of SEALs to recover from injuries, obviously. This admiral was an interim guy until a permanent replacement could be found for Jerome Klausen. Gunner hoped that replacement was found soon. The SEALs were going to chew McCarthy up and spit him out.

“What happened to you?” Chas asked lowly, concern vibrating in his voice. He moved swiftly to Gunner’s side and laid his hands lightly on the worst of Gunner’s bruises.

Gunner couldn’t help it. He flinched away from Chas’s touch.

Chas flinched in turn, almost as if he’d been slapped.

“It’s nothing personal,” Gunner mumbled at Chas’s back as his old friend turned away, a hurt expression plain on his face. Dammit, he was so bad at this relationship stuff. Not that they still had a relationship, of course. Or did they? Hell if he knew. He was confused as all get-out, though.

Silently, Chas turned back the covers on the far side of the bed and crawled in, turning his back to Gunner.

With a heavy sigh, Gunner sat on his side of the bed and, rather more painfully than he let on, lifted his legs onto the mattress and stretched out. God, he hurt from head to foot. A pinch of pain in his spine warned him of the agony to come when the epidural painkillers wore off in a week or two.

Chas reached out and turned off the lamp beside the bed. Darkness embraced them, and Gunner sighed in relief. He was most at ease in the night. He loved its concealment and silence.

“I had a bad parachute jump,” Gunner said into the darkness.

Chas made a soft sound of distress that went straight to his heart. Gunner wasn’t used to anyone caring about him like that. Not in a personal, intimate way that wasn’t backslapping dude affection. “What constitutes a bad jump?”

“Too windy. I got blown into some trees.”

Without warning, Chas asked, “Do the SEALs know you’re gay?”

The words hung in the air, heavy and loaded, hovering over him in a smothering blanket. “I’m not even sure I’m gay.”

Chas grunted. “Huh.”

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