Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
“You normally are,” Rian ventured softly. “Graceful, that is.”
Damon jerked oddly—minutely, but there, blinking as he gave Rian a startled look, before he cleared his throat and looked away. “You want the story, or not?”
“I’m listening if you want to tell me.” Smiling to himself, Rian shifted to pillow his head on his arm, curling his fingers against Damon’s grasp. “I’m guessing they had something to do with the Navy.”
“Everything to do with it. You know what they say about the Navy—everybody’s taxis.” Damon let out a groaning sigh, settling against the bed, and Rian understood the layered soft futons atop the mattress now; Damon’s weight made the mattress sink, and just one layer of padding would probably mean feeling the box spring underneath after a long night. “I was barely eighteen, on my first deployment. We’d been sent as the taxis to get this Army unit out. Afghanistan. They’d been pinned for weeks, caught in place, half of ’em torn apart by IEDs, the rest of ’em running out of food and water real fast. We’d already tried an airlift, nearly got shot out of the sky. So ground team it was.”
Rian frowned, stroking his thumb along the edge of Damon’s hand. “They sent you overseas when you were that young?”
“Anyone fit to move got shipped where we were needed.” Damon’s shrug was diffident—but his eyes were far away, as if he was seeing hot cloudless skies and choking pale sand. “And young blood was cheap meat to throw at a mission to extract just three guys; all they had left. Khalaji, Arcones, don’t remember the last guy’s name.” His fingers tightened idly on Rian’s. “All I knew was we had no business being out there. None of us. Even fresh meat like me could tell that; we didn’t fucking belong there. But...” His mouth tightened. “We thought we’d swept the area before we went in...but we missed one. IED hidden inside a hollow brick in a wall, pressure trigger on the easiest walkway through some ruins.” He let out a bitter snort. “I don’t know how every last one of us survived. Some of us worse off than others, but we lived. And I knew damned well I wasn’t gonna get that lucky again.”
That same clutching, hurt feeling hit Rian; the same feeling he’d had when he’d first noticed that viscerally deep scar below Damon’s ear, and realized how close the world had come to never having a Damon Louis in it again; never having a Coach Louis, never having a Mr. Louis, never having a frustrating asshole who just made Rian want to rip his own hair out, and then for some reason come back and do it again.
And he wondered if, if it had happened that way...
If some days, as he wandered the halls, Rian would pause and listen to the ghosts haunting the spires of Albin Academy, and feel as if there was a fundamental absence in who should be here.
“But you did get that lucky,” he murmured.
“Yeah. I just got away with this.” Damon moved their clasped hands until their twined knuckles touched the scar under his ear...then down, to one of the ones starting on his shoulder. “And this. And this. And this.” Over and over again, guiding Rian’s hand to one scar after another...before stopping, clasping Rian’s hand against Damon’s chest while dark brown eyes watched him thoughtfully. “Spent months in the hospital recovering from blood loss and trying not to move enough to rip my damn stitches and cause more than surface tissue damage. Didn’t take more than a week of being confined to bed rest to know I was out, soon as my tour was up.”
“So the soldier becomes the football coach.” Rian smoothed his hand against Damon’s chest, flattening his fingers and spreading them under Damon’s palm, soaking his warmth into Rian’s skin. “What made you get into the military in the first place?”
“Just seemed like what everyone thought I should do. I was good at football in high school. Not much else. Didn’t know where I belonged, so figured I could try to belong in the Navy. Band of brothers and all that crap you hear.” He grunted derisively. “It’s horse shit. I wanted to goddamned well build things, Rian. Whether it was people, or just something I made with my own damned hands. Not kill people just to take what they built.” That distant look in Damon’s eyes cleared, then, finally fully focusing on Rian, the tight line of his lips relaxing to a self-deprecating smile. “In case you haven’t figured out, I got issues with people taking things that ain’t rightly theirs.”
That shouldn’t have hit like a spear to the chest.
But wasn’t that what Rian had done?
Taken Damon’s warmth, his comfort, when they didn’t belong to him—without thinking about Damon’s feelings at all?