“The explosives might not have been packed properly, making them unstable, or the trigger could have been dodgy. It could be anything,” Eli said. “Because it detonated out in the open though, it only damaged the bridge. It wasn’t enough to collapse it.”
“How many people died?” I whispered, scared to know the answer as I recalled the haunting sound of the screaming casualty.
“Only the bomber. Nobody else. Not this time,” Tom reassured me. “The explosion caused a multi-car pileup, and the woman you heard screaming was trapped in a car. She was airlifted to hospital, and she’s fine now. There were multiple casualties, but no fatalities.”
I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I leant back against the pillows. For one brief moment in time, we had escaped. We were safe.
“Do you think we were the targets?” I was horrified at the idea that, simply by being on that bridge, we’d put so many people in danger.
“For now, Vasili needs you alive. Besides, it wouldn’t be his style to take you out like this. I’m afraid it was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Tom reassured me, leaning forward to tuck a strand of my hair behind my ear. I closed my eyes as I savoured the brush of his fingers against my cheek.
“Thank you. For being there. For taking care of me,” I whispered.
“You suffered a concussion while I walked away injury free. I don’t feel much like being thanked,” he replied, making me smile.
“If you’d have been hurt, who would’ve been there to save me?”
“Buttercup, I have no doubt at all that you’d save yourself, and me most likely.”
“You’re absolutely right. If the SAS started recruitting women, this would never have happened,” I replied, making all the guys chuckle. I tried keeping up with their background chatter, but it was getting difficult to keep my eyes open. Reaching up to finger the lapels of his tux, I mourned the fact that it was ruined.
“You should shower and change, go and get yourself something to eat,” I suggested.
“I’m not leaving here without you.”
“Come on, boss, you’ve been up all night,” Will reasoned. “Your girl talks more sense than you do. We brought in some clothes for you and Brit. You can grab a quick shower and something to eat on the concourse, and I swear to you, the lads and I will watch over her till you get back.” I liked the “your girl” bit, and it was comforting to think that Will, at least, was on board with the idea.
“I’m only going to sleep. You won’t miss anything,” I added, unable to contain a yawn from escaping.
“Fine. I’ll check in with the nurses’ station. They won’t let you sleep too long with a concussion, so I’ll be back before they wake you up.” He starred at me like he was trying to memorise my face, and I had no doubt that, if we’d been alone, he would have kissed me.
“One day,” I whispered.
“One day,” he replied.
Grabbing his stuff from Will, he gave me one last lingering look, before giving a quick nod to Will and leaving us alone.
“I thought he’d never leave,” Will said, settling into the battered old chair next to me. Across the room, Crash went back to messing on his phones, pausing only to laugh at Eli, who snorted every now and then between snores.
“Why do you call him Brit?” I asked, curiously. When Tom was speaking to me, he always referred to him as Eli, but when he was chatting with his men, he reverted to using the nickname as well.
“Do you remember what his full name is?” Will asked me.
“Lance Corporal Eli Spears, isn’t it? Oh, I get it. But really, you named him after Britney Spears?”
“Very fucking unoriginal, I know. With the number of people who sing that shit to him, even I get sick of the fucking nickname,” Will admitted.
“Do you remember that time we were in a bar in Paderborn?” Crash said, looking up from his phone. “This fat bastard thought it would be funny to block him from going to the can so he could serenade him with one her songs, thinking it would embarrass Eli or some shit.”
“What did he do?” I asked, feeling bad for the guy after hearing how much grief he got for his name.
“Punched him in the face and knocked out two of his teeth. What did he expect, singing ‘Hit me baby one more time’?” Crash replied. “I think he reined it in pretty well, until the guy started rubbing his nipples as he sang. That shit’s just wrong.”
I tried to imagine Eli knocking some guy out, but I couldn’t. He just seemed too laid back to me.
“The stupid bastard had no idea Brit was SAS. When we work with other soldiers, we don’t exactly advertise it. He took one look at his size and thought he’d have a bit of fun. He’s fucking lucky Brit didn’t ram those missing teeth up his arse,” Will explained, reading my mind.
“How about you, Crash. How did you get your name?” I asked him.
“Stupid fucker crashed a tank into a tree,” Will explained.
“Don’t they fire you for that?” I asked, shocked at the thought that he could have been involved in such a tragic accident.
“Nah, you’d be amazed how much it happens,” Crash said. “It’s not fair that no one lets me drive anymore though. It was at night, and nobody can see shit at night.”
“You crashed that tank because you were pissing about. You’re lucky they let you drive again at all,” Will told him. Crash replied by flipping him the bird with a grin.
“Does Tom have a nickname?” I asked. If he did I wanted to hear the story behind it, but fatigue was weighing heavy on me.
“It’s Reaper and how he got it is pretty self-explanatory,” Will told me, pulling my blanket up higher. It was an uncharacteristically gentle move from a man that was nothing but steel and bone.
“Get some sleep, little Tatem,” he suggested, leaning back in his chair and covering his face with his cap so he could nap as well.
“The boss is going to love that I dropped that bombshell,” he muttered, and they were the last words I heard before drifting off into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Tom
“Wake up, buttercup. We’re home,” I whispered. She looked small and fragile, curled up on the seat. Her face was so pale that the ugly bruise around her eye was already starting to show. My gut knotted up inside when I thought of how close she’d come to being seriously hurt. I’d been in too many dangerous situations to count, and while I had a healthy sense of self-preservation, I never looked back after to consider the “what ifs.” If my men and I made it back from a mission unharmed, it was on to the next one. If there were any near misses, an immediate debrief uncovered the problem and we fixed it before the next operation. This was different. Never had I been in a combat situation with someone I cared about. As a general rule, I didn’t fucking care. About anyone. Perhaps that wasn’t true about my unit, but if they were injured, I would still be clear and level-headed enough to get the job done. Outside of that, Nan was possibly the only person on the planet I actually gave a shit about.
Until now.
It was fair to say that I wasn’t handling the fact well either. Was I freaked out about the idea of being in a relationship? Fuck no. It was still as true as it ever was that I didn’t deserve her, but I couldn’t think of a single person who did. Every moment we spent together was a fucking gift, and I’d give my last breath to make sure she was safe. She was mine, and the thought of her with another man, even a better one, had me wanting to tear apart the world with my bare hands. What I wasn’t doing so well with was my tendency to be a tad overprotective. After last night, that protective streak was a mile fucking wide. Sarah had been hurt. On my watch. She was two feet away from me, and I couldn’t stop it. The fact that there was nothing I could’ve done about it made absolutely no difference at all. It actually made it worse. Because I was keeping her in danger, when every fibre of my being told me to take her and run. A strange sense of foreboding hovered over us all the time, and no matter how much I planned or prepared or trained, we were
headed towards the unknown. And I didn’t like it. Not one little bit.
“This isn’t home. It’s Dad’s place,” she mumbled sleepily, peeling open one eye. Sliding my arms beneath her back and legs, I hoisted her into the air, then settled her in my arms. “I can walk,” she offered. It was a half-hearted protest at best, given how quickly she burrowed into the warmth of my chest. It was the only place I wanted her to be.
Walking through the house with her in my arms made me wonder why she hated it so much. I’d never given much thought to what made a home before. Until I was fifteen, I moved from foster home to foster home before I finally landed at Nan’s. My eyes nearly fell out my head when I saw the place. Everything was new and soft and a million miles away from some of the shitholes I’d stayed in. But it never felt like mine. Even with Nan cleaning and filling it with photos and stuff, it was still just a fancy place to rest my head. Like a luxury hotel room in between jobs. It wasn’t a huge stretch to see why Nan gifted the place to me. She wanted me to lay down roots. She wanted to anchor me to a place that would always bring me back to her. She had no idea that she was that anchor.
As I laid Sarah down on the bed, a modern art monstrosity with a velvet headboard so big it made the whole fucking room look like a padded cell, it hit me. The reason why my place was a home wasn’t anything to do with where it was or how it was decorated. It was the memories I had there. It was Nan kicking my arse to finish my homework at the kitchen table, her teaching me to play poker so I could fleece the kids at school, and it was seeing the look of complete and utter peace on Sarah’s face as she lay comfortably in my bed. When I watched her and Nan going toe to toe in my kitchen, Sar cooking up breakfast like she lived there, something in me shifted. I wanted to be there. I wanted to be in the place that gave me all those memories. And I wanted to be there with her.
“You know, I didn’t know your dad, but his decorating preferences left a lot to be desired. I hope bad taste doesn’t run in the family.”
“Of course it does or I wouldn’t be attracted to you,” she mumbled.
“If we were at my place, I’d be smacking your arse for that,” I whispered in her ear. My words were barely audible, knowing that any louder and MI5 and the Russians would both be jacking off to thoughts of her being spanked. In the beginning, it hadn’t bothered me, living in a goldfish bowl. Pretty much my entire career had been monitored and recorded. Before that, it was social workers and teachers. Now, things were different. I was possessive, even over her words. The idea of them listening to her, even hearing her breathing while she slept had me wanting to fucking shoot something.
So far I’d shown her the parts of myself I knew she could live with. But if she could see inside my head, if she even glimpsed at the empty, soulless, remorseless killer that watched over her, I would become her nightmare, not her saviour. Everything about my personality type should have her running for the fucking hills. Domineering, controlling, overprotective, suspicious. What made for the perfect warrior, also made for the imperfect man. My job was to change her ideal. I might not make great boyfriend material, but no fucking normal boyfriend would protect her like I could. Besides, anyone else wanting to take a shot at the job, they had to come through me for the interview.
“Promises, promises,” she replied, making me smile.
“How are you feeling?” I was still worried over that head wound. I’d had more than a few concussions myself, but none of them had bothered me like this one did.
“Like shit,” she replied, “but a good rest today and I’ll be right as rain for work tomorrow.”
“Sorry, Sar, there’s no way you’re going back to the office tomorrow. In case you missed it, you were in a car accident yesterday and you’re still concust,” I told her, stunned that she’d even think about going back. If I had my way, she’d be wrapped in cotton wool for a month. And tied to my bed as well, come to think of it. The look on my face was one that usually had rookie squaddies pissing in their pants, so I hoped it conveyed the fact that there was no room for fucking argument. She gave me that hard, determined look that was pretty fucking adorable, and sat up, gripping my face firmly in her gentle hands.
“I’m alive. But if I’m not back in the office by tomorrow morning, I might not be for much longer.”
My blood boiled at her words, but when I breathed through the rage and found the reason, I knew she was right. Her safety wasn’t supposed to come before the operation, but it did, and we both knew it.
“You have a choice, you know,” I replied. “Despite what anyone else makes you think, you always have a choice.”
“I know.” She stroked my cheek gently. “This is me making it.”
It was in the nature of us all to shelter and protect what we cared about. So maybe then it was understandable that I wanted to sweep in and take over, order her to follow my command. But these were her decisions to make, and I needed to step back and let her make them. My job wasn’t to stop her from jumping, it was to catch her if she fell.
“Look, if you’re going back in tomorrow, why don’t you rest up for a bit. Maybe watch a few movies and pig-out on some junk food. Take care of yourself today. Tomorrow will come soon enough.”
“That sounds perfect.” All of a sudden, she looked a little sheepish, like she wanted to ask me something and didn’t know how.
“Come on, spit it out,” I told her.
“I was wondering if you’d stay with me? You don’t have to. I mean, you must have a ton of stuff to do—”
“Sounds good to me,” I replied, not even giving her a chance to finish.
She grinned so big, she looked like an excited little kid. It was a strange feeling, knowing that somebody could be that happy just at the thought of spending time with you.
“Well, there’s no fucking way I’m sitting through a movie on that instrument of torture your dad called a sofa, so you down for watching them in here?” I asked, nodding my head towards the big-arsed television on the wall across from the bed.
“Works for me,” she said, shrugging and then wincing as the movement hurt.
“Right, you find the movie, and I’ll order us a pizza. What do you fancy?”
“A medium margarita please,” she replied. She was already searching through Netflix, so it took her a moment to realise I was staring.
“What?” she asked, her face a picture of confusion.
“What the fuck, buttercup? Who orders cheese and tomato pizza? You might as well eat the box!”
“I got food poisoning when I was a kid from eating a dodgy chicken pizza, and now I can’t get past the whole idea that it’ll make me sick if I eat it again. And let me guess, you order the stereotypical meat feast, covered with a sampling of pretty much every animal on the farm.” She rolled her eyes at me.
“Jesus, you’re not a vegetarian, are you?” I asked in horror.
“We’ve been together for weeks, and you’ve watched me eat chicken how many times?”
“What? Vegetarians eat chicken!” I protested.
“In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, ‘I do not think it means what you think it means,’” she replied.
“Who’s Inigo Montoya?” I asked.
“Seriously! The Princess Bride,” she said, like that was some magical clue that would tell me what the fuck she was talking about. Apparently, my vacant stare clued her in.
“It’s a classic cult film from the 80s. I can’t believe you haven’t seen it! Let’s watch it now.”
“Yeah, there’s no way I’m watching a chick film. Keep searching, Sar.”
“Come on, give it a go. I bet you like it. And it’s not a total chick flick, I promise. There’s adventure and revenge, a fire swamp, and rodents of unusual size,” she explained, trying to sell this thing. I wouldn’t admit it, but if sitting through a shitty movie was all it took to put that look on her face, I’d sit through them all day.
“If you want it that bad, I’ll do you a deal. I’ll watch your fairy tale shit if you
eat meat on a pizza,” I said, offering a compromise I immediately wanted to take back when she started looking a bit green.
“I can’t eat chicken. Not on a pizza.” Her voice allowed no room for negotiation.
“Okay. Baby steps. How about pulled pork with barbeque sauce?” I offered, figuring that was a girl’s pizza. With the amount of time she took to contemplate her answer, her gaze flitting between me and the television, you’d think this was a life-and-death decision.
“Face your fears,” I cajoled.
“Fine. It’s a deal,” she said, eventually. “But if I’m eating that crap, can you order me the melt-in-the-middle chocolate cookies too. My taste buds need to know they’re getting a treat after having to eat all your man meat.”
I raised an eyebrow, smiling, as she realised what she’d said.
“Yeah, that sounded different in my head,” she mumbled, waving circles around her brain, as if to explain its inner workings.
“Don’t ever change, buttercup.”
Two hours, two pizzas, and four melt-in-the-middle chocolate cookies later, I figured I’d be living in the gym for a month after this to get myself operational ready again. We were both slouched against the pillows in a food coma by the time the movie ended.
“What did you think?” I asked her about the pizza.
“It was all right. Not as vomit-inducing as I feared, but nowhere near as nice as a good margarita.”
“Inconceivable!” I replied, quoting the film and knowing I’d make her giggle.
“So? Was it as horrible as you thought it would be?”
“Unlike your awesome pizza, there were a few vomit-inducing moments, but it wasn’t the total crock of shit I thought it’d be.”
By the look of sheer horror she gave me, you’d think I’d kicked a puppy.
“Cool your heels, I was kidding,” I said, before she blew a gasket.
“Very funny,” she grumbled. “What do you think? Shall we watch something else?”
I looked at my watch, finding it was still early.
“How about a TV show?” I suggested, taking in her relaxed, sleepy expression. “I don’t think you’d make it through another movie.”
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