Page 4 of Better Late Than Never

Why couldn’t I find anenlistedguy who was this attractive? I mean, okay, there were plenty, but they were always straight, married, in my chain of command, or became deeplyunattractive the instant they opened their mouths (looking at you, MA1 Weyland).

“I’m so stupid,” I told myself, and I shoved my phone into my pocket before raking my hand through my short hair. “So fucking stupid.”

Maybe I needed to ping Isidoro again. He was a Spanish Marine who I’d hooked up with quite a few times; his English was about as good as my Spanish, but we managed well enough for some scorching hot nights together. He was still stationed here, wasn’t he?

I didn’t know for sure. Mostly because we hadn’t texted or fucked in…

In three months.

Since I’d zeroed in on that hot ass doctor who’d made me forget that other men even existed.

Yeah. I was stupid.

And I wasn’t going to get any less stupid any time soon becauseLieutenant Commander Marks wanted to find out what it was like to bang a dude.

Fuck. My life.

It was bad enough being a grown-ass man on the cusp of forty and having a crush like teenager. Seeing him on that app, seeing him as everything I would ordinarily swipe right on so fast I’d break my damn phone—that was just mean.

Ugh. I’d already known I needed to distract myself from him, but now I needed to step that up. Text Isidoro again. Maybe hop a train to Sevilla and hit up the clubs there. Or take a trip to Madrid or Barcelona. Could my liver handle another weekend on Ibiza? Kinda seemed like it was worth a try.

Yeah. That was what I’d do. Book a ticket to?—

The waiting area door opened, and a Marine who looked about fourteen stepped in.

Well, it wasn’t the distraction I wanted, but it was a distraction.

I’d take it.

* * *

“Guess I should watch where I’m going next time,” the Marine said with a laugh as he gingerly pulled his blouse back on. “How long do you think I’ll be on light duty?”

“That’s up to your primary care manager,” I said blandly. “All I do is take the pictures.”

He held my gaze, then chuckled, and a moment later, he was on his way back downstairs to his PCM. I hadn’t told him that he had slightly-worse-than-hairline fractures to his radius and ulna—that kind of diagnosis was above my paygrade, even if the fractures were clear as day on the X-rays I’d just taken.

The kid didn’t seem all that surprised when I’d pulled the images up on the screen to make sure they’d come out all right. He’d come to medical because his wrist was sore and swollen after a fall yesterday, and both he and his PCM had been concerned he’d fractured it. Now he was on his way back to her with confirmation that, yep, he’d fractured it.

I didn’t think he’d need surgery, but he would be in a cast for the next six to twelve weeks. Been there, done that.

I shuddered at the memory. At least he’d just taken a fall at work. It probably hadn’t been the best day of his life, but he’d been joking about it and didn’t seem overly bothered apart from the pain. If I had to guess, the injury was less a result of tripping over a toolbox and more that he and some of his buddies had been bored and horsing around. Marines—what can you do?

Sailors did shit like that, too, which was how I’d wound up on light duty a few enlistments ago after a sprained ankle. The two times I’d broken bones? Well, those had been years ago, but I relived the incidents in my nightmares more often than I cared to think about.

I absently flexed my long-healed left hand and tried not to think about the past. I rolled my shoulders beneath my utilities, which were suddenly a little too hot in this office that had suddenly become way too stuffy.

Fuck.

I sat down at my desk again and fanned my face with a file folder. I still had like five hours left before I could bust out of here; time to pull my focus away from bad memories.

It wasn’t even that broken bones triggered me. I wouldn’t have lasted as a radiologic technologist—or even a corpsman at all—if I couldn’t cope with broken bones. That memory was just tender today thanks to a rough night.

Stupid nightmares.

I tossed the folder aside and wiped a hand over my face. Maybe it was time to see a therapist about this. They had civilian therapists who could do televisits now, right? I could probably find one back in the States who’d help me sort all this shit out. I’d pay for it out of pocket, too; even after the Brandon Act, I wasn’t taking the chance of my insurance telling my chain of command about it.

What can I say? After eighteen-plus years on active duty, I had trust issues.

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