Page 80 of Come Back to Me

Contentment shuttles through me as he mutters, “That was too easy.”

I stiffen. “What was?”

“Me talking to the MC this afternoon and them listening tonight?”

Immediately, I relax.

I thought he was talking about me.

I hear him rub his cheek because his beard scuffs over his palm. “Nothing’s ever that easy.”

There’s the voice of experience talking there—and that experience was forged in warfare, not the police academy. Or marshal academy? Whichever.

“They probably don’t want to get on your bad side.”

“Doubtful. I’m not exactly terrifying in my Chief Wiggum outfit.”

A bark of laughter escapes me. “The last thing you look like is Chief Wiggum.”

I hear the grin in his voice. “I was scarier in the sky.”

“You had a fifty-million-dollar piece of metal between you and the ground and it was loaded with bombs—hell, yeah, you were scarier. I, for one, am grateful you’re not walking around with incendiary devices?—”

“You’re no fun,” he teases.

“Tell me something about yourTop Gundays.”

His smile fades.

It might be dark out here, but the light from the moon sends rays drifting over his features. I see it fade, sense it turn reminiscent.

Icouldlet him off the hook, but I don’t.

Experience with Butch tells me that soldiers don’t like to share stories, but there had to besomefunny anecdotes. I think it’s important for them to remember the good as much as they do the bad.

Even if the bad outweighs the good ten to one.

“I was close with two guys—Jax and Loca. They’re…” His throat bobs but he rolls past what I know he can’t say.They’re gone.“Anyway, Jax was a little fucker. Always getting into trouble. Incapable of staying straight. Honestly, he’s lucky that he made it through training.”

“That’s how bad he was?”

“Worse.” Smirking, he taps my nose. “Anyway, this particular day, we were in the barracks, and this guy Jax already dislikedgot in his face about his family. Jax’s past wasn’t the squeakiest. Rumors had spread that he was there unfairly. Some program to straighten out bad kids, but it was bullshit.

“Jax was a brilliant soldier and an even better pilot. They were just jealous as fuck. So, shortly after the pair of them got into it with each other and earned themselves two weeks peeling potatoes together, we learned the douche was terrified of rats. Of course, Jax immediately started trapping rats?—”

“What?! Why?!”

“Listen and I’ll tell you,” he chortles. “So, he’d trap them and then he’d drop cheese and shit around the guy’s locker, under his pillow?—”

“Then let the rats loose?” I gasp. “That’s so devious.”

“That was Jax. Anyway, he did this for weeks. Never in a cycle. Always random days. Sometimes when the guy was off duty, sometimes when he was on, but Loca and me, we were the ones who’d tell the guy if there was a rat near his bed.”

“You were his wingmen,” I crow in delight.

His smile turns wistful. “We were.”

I need that wistfulness to fade, so I sneak my hand into his and squeeze. “What happened?”

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