Page 149 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
Wait.
Zelda. Zelda must’ve told her. But her mother didn’t know everything. Only that Kase had showed up at her tent drunk and with busted knuckles.
Which was apparently enough to warrant telling her daughter he was trouble.
Kase wasn’t sure he disagreed with her, but he would’ve liked to have been the one to explain to Hallie what happened…in a few months. When this was all over.
But what if he was wrong? What if it wasn’t his fault at all? Plenty of other things could’ve happened in the past few days. They were in the middle of a war, hiding underground with no idea when everything would go back to normal. How self-centered was Kase to imagine only he could possibly frustrate her? He was just better at it than most…well, that, and Zelda seemed to think he was at fault.
“You’re wasting my time, Pilot Shackley.” Sergeant’s gruff voice grated on his nerves.
Regrettably, he was right. It was pointless to just sit and stare while the entire world was literally crumbling around him.
Yet, he still stared.
A few more moments of indecision on his part gave enough time for Hallie to arrive, folded cloth bandages in her arms. She’d cleaned up and changed clothes since he’d last seen her. Her skirt was slightly shorter, more of her scuffed boots showing as she walked. Her shirt wasn’t one of her lacy blouses but a plain one with simple buttons a quarter of the way down the front. It was tighter across her shoulders and chest. He had trouble focusing on her face.
She swept past him without even looking at him.
Yep. She was definitely angry at him.
Kase ran his good hand through his hair. Sergeant raised an eyebrow. Huh, maybe he did have a personality. Didn’t help him now.
“Hallie, wait!” Kase said, reaching out.
She didn’t, in fact, wait. Instead, she avoided his grasping hand. She wove her way through the throng, handing off a bandage to one of the medics. Kase followed, dread pooling in his core. She knew, and now he was going to pay for it.
I didn’t mean to get into a fight. I didn’t mean to get drunk. But I did.
“Hallie…” He caught up enough to grab her arm. She didn’t turn. “Hallie, could we talk?”
She yanked her arm out of his grip. Pausing to hand off another bandage, she still ignored him. Kase muttered a curse under his breath.
He trailed her back to the supply tent. She didn’t look at him once and entered without turning back. With a deep breath, Kase straightened his shoulders and followed.
The space was small. Hallie stood in front of a makeshift table and gathered strips of cloth. Even with her anger permeating the air like the summer heat, Kase couldn’t help but examine the line of her shoulders and the curve of her waist. Her long braid reached just past the middle of her back, and Kase had to resist the urge to reach forward and tug on it just to see how she’d react.
Probably a bad idea—tempting nonetheless.
He chewed on the inside of his cheek. Was he simply overthinking things because she was clearly mad at him? Women were confusing—Hallie especially.
She folded a strip of cloth around her hand and set it aside. “If you’re going to ogle, then you can leave.”
Nope. Not overthinking.
Kase swallowed. “I wanted to talk.”
She folded another bandage and added it to her stack. “And if I don’t want to?”
Blasted woman.
He stepped up to a pile of what looked like bedsheets. He grabbed the nearby knife and began cutting the sheet into strips and adding them to Hallie’s pile to be folded. He was careful not to get his own blood onto the sheets. “Sorry I didn’t write again,but I’m officially off house arrest now, though there are still some parameters.”
Hallie focused on her work, not giving any indication that she’d heard him. His blood warmed—and not in a pleasant way. Kase’s neck protested as he bent to avoid the tent’s low ceiling, probably because he’d been sleeping at an odd angle in his cot every night. He paused his cutting and rubbed it. His injured hand twinged, and he sucked in a breath. Hallie shot him a quick glance before returning to her work. “So, the reason for the loaded flashpistol following you around?”
“Parameter.”
She went silent once more. Kase rubbed his neck again out of nervousness. Hallie turned and gestured to an empty bucket. “Sit on that and cut.”
