“And you want to go racing after these guys half cocked, Sophia. What about your upbringing in Seattle as a preacher’s daughter, living with everything you could possibly need, never having to make hard decisions or real sacrifices, qualifies you to face off with these guys when grown ass marines cry like babies at the mere thought of it?”
My ex, Matt, used to tell me I was sheltered. He used to tease me about the fact that I wasn’t street smart at all, and it used to drive me crazy. If he had said everything Jamie just said to me back then, I’d have lost my fucking mind. He would have been making fun of me, trying to be hurtful by making me feel silly, but that’s not the case with Jamie. I know he’s not trying to call me spoiled. He’s not trying to mock me, or criticize me for the way I grew up. He’s merely pointing out facts. I am the daughter of a preacher from Seattle. I didn’t grow up on the streets. I was taken care of. I was loved. I didn’t have to make hard decisions or make any real sacrifices. I was privileged, and I never wanted for anything. I have no military training. I’ve never really fired a gun properly. Not really, under pressure, when it matters. I feel, all of a sudden, very foolish.
Jamie’s eyes are grief-filled, his entire body tense with worry. “Tell me you’ll consider that, Sophia. Because I’m fucking worried out of my mind over you, over this whole fucking situation, and I feel like everything is about to spiral out of control.”
His dark hair, normally buzzed close to his head, is a little long at the moment. Jamie runs a hand through it, pulling on it as he leans one elbow against the bar. He really does look like he’s worried out of his mind.
I take a second to really think about what I would do in his place, and it dawns on me that I wouldn’t react in any other way. I’ve been so overtaken by my own vim and vinegar, pissed off about my civil rights being infringed upon, that I haven’t seen what this is doing to him. It’s absolutely killing him.
I step into him, wrapping my arms around his neck, and I hold onto him as tightly as I can. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I shouldn’t be, but I am. Things would be so much easier for you if you’d never met me. You’d have dealt with Hector a long time ago. He probably wouldn’t have come to New Mexico at all. If I weren’t in your life, everything would be easier.”
Jamie’s arms find their way around my waist, and his lips find their way to the sensitive skin of my neck. He kisses me, and then sighs, leaning his head against mine. “If you weren’t in my life, sugar, I’d only be half a man. I wouldn’t trade knowing you, caring for you, loving you, for anything in the world.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
REBEL
AFGHANISTAN
I can smell smoke. I can smell something else on the night’s breeze as well, something heavy and acrid, organic almost, and a knot forms in the pit of my stomach. There are no alarms going off to signal something significant is happening, but I’m gripped with foreboding. Something is fucking going down, I know it is. I prop myself up on one elbow, squinting into the darkness, and Cade is already sitting up in his bed on the other side of the room, a mirror image of me, concern etched deeply into his face.
“You smell that?” he whispers.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“You know what it is?”
I shake my head, no, though I have a worrying suspicion that I actually do know and I just don’t want to admit it to myself. “Better check it out,” I say.
Cade flings his legs out of his cot, shoving his socked feet straight into his polished boots that are sitting next to his bed. I do the same. We’re both already dressed, t-shirts tucked into our pants, ready to rock and roll. In the army you learn pretty fucking quickly that you have to go to sleep fully geared up. Too many times we’ve been called out in the middle of the night and needed to move quickly. Takes too long to wrestle into your clothes when there are people screaming at you and sirens wailing in your goddamn ears.
I don’t wake the rest of the unit yet. Since we haven’t officially been called to duty, it would be a mistake to drag everyone out of their cots when we might not be needed. Cade and I are hardly quiet as we exit the tent we’ve called home for the past eighteen months, but the other ten men we bunk with don’t even stir as we head outside into the darkness.