Page 61 of Erik's Salvation
“Grumpy, don’t-care-if-my-grandfather’s-flowers-die neighbor…or sweet, charming semi-friend.”
A ghost of a smile played at his lips as he pulled out one pink and one pale blue mug. The blue mug had a sloth on it, but it was the least feminine of the lot. “I don’t think I’m either of those today.” And he was kind of glad psychopath wasn’t on either list.
“Then what are you?”
He paused, not even sure himself. This all felt new to him. “I’m just Erik.”
She laughed, and the sound hit him in the damn chest. “Okay, just Erik, I have a question for you.”
Why did his muscles tense at those words? “Okay.”
“When we had that fight the other day, you knew my exact age. How?”
He paused. Whatever he’d been expecting her to ask, it wasn’t that. He could lie. He didn’t. “In my line of work, I need to know who the people are around me.”
It didn’t really answer her question, but it also kind of did. Her brows shot up. “You did a background check on me?”
He opened the fridge door and searched for the milk. “Ididn’t. I got my guy to do it.” When he couldn’t find milk, she came up beside him. Her arm grazed his, and it felt like a shot of electricity. She leaned down and grabbed a carton.
He frowned. “That isn’t milk.”
“It’s oat milk.”
He took the carton as she moved to the cabinet and pulled out two bowls. It was only when she set the granola on the table a bit too firmly that he turned back to her. Was she angry about the background check?
He put some water into the nearly empty pod machine, but when he went to turn off the faucet, it kept dripping. He made a mental note to look at the pipe before he left.
As he finished the coffees, he saw her inject her insulin at the table. He also noticed some printed-out job advertisements on the counter. Was she changing workplaces?
He set the coffees onto the table and watched as she added a dash of lavender syrup. Of course the lavender oat milk latte had been hers.
Her brows were slightly pinched, and her knuckles almost white as she gripped her spoon. He waited for her to get a few mouthfuls into her granola before breaking the silence.
“It was only a surface-level background check,” he said quietly. “Upbringing. Schools. Jobs. When nothing questionable popped up, we stopped digging.”
“Only?” She swung angry eyes his way. “Erik, that’s personal. All of it. It’s part of what makes me who I am. And it wasn’t your place to learn any of it until I told you.”
“I know. It’s a safety thing.” Then, because she was still looking at him like he’d run over her damn cat, he added, “I’m sorry.”
“You owe me information aboutyou. That’s fair.”
When he was silent a beat too long, she huffed and rose from the table. Before she could step away, he grabbed her arm and lifted her onto his lap so she straddled him.
She gasped and grabbed his shoulders. The shirt still covered her, but only barely.
“I grew up here in Redwood,” he said softly. “I went to the local high school. Decided I wanted to join the military when I was thirteen, after soldiers visited us at school and talked about saving the world.” He slid a hand inside the shirt and wrapped his fingers around her rib cage. “When I joined the Marines, I quickly worked my way into a special operations field. I got married to my high school girlfriend when I was twenty-one. I didn’t realize I was too young to even know what love was.”
Her breath seemed to stall for a moment. “You weren’t too young. There’s no such thing.”
“You’re probably right. We were just comfortable, since we’d dated all through high school, so we did what we thought came next.” Her gaze flickered between his eyes as he continued. “I was twenty-eight when I did my last mission. It was the worst mission of my life.”
“What happened?”
A familiar darkness tried to close in on him. “It was a mission in Syria to rescue some US citizens who’d been kidnapped from a university. We had a new guy on the team. He didn’t like following orders. He was young and cocky. Thought he knew best. I was the team leader, and I should have pulled rank and refused to let him participate. I didn’t. When I told everyone to wait for a signal, he didn’t listen. He fired, gave away our location, and a lot of blood was spilled.”
He didn’t tell her that he’d lost half his team on that mission, and that the weight of their losses almost destroyed him. He also didn’t tell her about the call he’d made just before stepping onto the plane to return home. The words were there, bubbling in his chest, but every time he formed them with his lips, they cut new wounds into his flesh, making him bleed all over again.
“There’s more to my story, but the basics are that my life changed that day, and I’ve been struggling ever since.” He grazed his thumb across her ribs. “Eight years later, and I’m back here, trying to live again.”
