“Fuck this shit,” Kyle growled.
Ryan slapped him on the back in sympathy, knowing it wasn’t the pain making Kyle pissed—it was having to leave his team in the middle of an operation. They trained hard for these missions, living and breathing it every day. Being rendered useless to your team and missing out on the action would be a goddamn motherfucker.
Moments before Kyle was evacuated, he lifted his chin at Ryan, the action saying more than any words could.
Ryan nodded back, and after their team received a response from Squadron Headquarters, they moved further up into the mountains in order to gather further intelligence.
Gripping his weapon tight, Ryan looked up at the ridge as darkness fell and repressed a shiver when cool air collided with his sweat dampened skin. They were one man down and heading directly into a region yet to be occupied by Coalition forces. In essence, they were quite possibly climbing their way right into Hell.
Seven weeks later
Fremantle, Western Australia
“Honey, you can’t eat that.”
With narrowed eyes, Fin watched her mother reach into the supermarket trolley and take out the packet of smoked salmon she’d just tossed in there.
Then she listened to her mum sigh with enough exasperation to make Fin feel like she was ten years old again.
“Didn’t you read the pamphlet I gave you on what you could and couldn’t eat?”
Fin rolled her eyes at Laura who was rounding out today’s contingent of the female Tanner shopping expedition. Laura smirked in reply.
Fin had taken one look at the pamphlet and tossed it on her desk for another day. The list of what she supposedly couldn’t eat was at least a mile long. If she paid it any attention, she may as well give up eating altogether. She wanted sushi and her favourite sandwich—smoked salmon, cream cheese, and rocket; or turkey with cranberry sauce, camembert, alfalfa, and avocado.
“I looked at it,” Fin told her mum as her stomach growled angrily. Dammit. Was food all she could think about anymore? Better than thinking about Ryan.
Her mother rolled her eyes before striking up a conversation with the lady over the deli counter and ordering a half kilo of ham. Sliced deli meat was one thing she remembered skimming her eye over. “If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t know right now that I’m not allowed to eat that ham,” she pointed out.
“It’s for your father,” her mum murmured distractedly.
Intent on using the distraction to her advantage, Fin gripped her hands firmly to the trolley and made a rapid escape from the pair of them. Breathing a sigh of relief at seeing the next aisle empty of people, Fin gave up the pretence of trying to walk like a normal person. Her feet, encased in plain black flip flops, were literally going to kill her. She was only just past six months along—were they supposed to be that swollen already? God. She just wanted to be at home lying on the couch, her feet elevated on the arm rest as soothing music wafted through the room. She could rest her hands on her belly and imagine they were Ryan’s, but she was only kidding herself and the pretence just made her feel worse.
Moving farther up the aisle, Fin halted in front of the cereals and hitched up her bright purple yoga pants. “I really need to buy some maternity clothes,” she muttered as they slid back down, the soft, elasticised waistband folding back underneath her tummy—enough to expose the very tips of her tattoo.
Sighing, Fin tried to tug her tank top down instead. It didn’t quite reach the waistband of her pants, leaving a sliver of exposed skin.
“You may as well just bite the bullet, Finlay Tanner,” she told herself as she adjusted her clothes without success, “you’re doing this on your own. Putting off buying maternity clothes isn’t helping anyone, especially the public who right now have to bear witness to your fat stomach.”
Grabbing at both a packet of Weet-bix and Coco Pops, Fin held them aloft as she examined the contents. She had to have the milky chocolate crunch or someone would pay, but Weet-bix was the healthy option, wasn’t it? Maybe she should get both. Why was choosing a cereal so hard? A tear slid down her cheek, and then another, until clutching both boxes of cereal to her swollen belly, Fin began to sob openly, not even caring that she was crying in the middle of a supermarket. She was pregnant, dammit. She could get away with all kinds of emotional outbursts. It wasn’t like the supermarket was full of people anyway, and even if it was, she was sure most would be giving her a wide berth. They would have to anyway, what with her giant belly being in the way and all.
“Hey now, what’s wrong, sweetheart?”