I stood there a moment longer, both wishing things had ended differently, and wishing I hadn’t let them go where they had.
Then I crossed the lot to my bike and pulled my helmet on, kicking the bike into gear, the sound of the engine drowning out the sound of my thoughts, at least for a little while.
CHAPTER 3
Brenna
I let myself sleep in later than I should have.
I figured I deserved it because I hadn’t let anything happen between Matthews and me last night.
And, somehow, somewhere along the way, it was like I’d forgotten what a total ass he was, and I’d desperately wanted something to ignite between us.
I knew I wasn’t alone in that desire — I’d seen it reflected in his eyes — but if that overture at the end of the night was any indication, I was certainly the more likely of the two of us to prevent it from happening.
I wasn’t sure if that was something to be proud of, or something to be resigned to.
I put him out of my mind as best I could and managed to make it through the next few days without our encounters hanging over my head.
I wasn’t going to be able to avoid it forever, though, because classes were about to ramp up and I’d see him daily.
It wasn’t going to be pretty, either. We’d be doing unpleasant simulations, and at the end of the six-week course, we’d have the mother of all survival experiences. The plan was to turn loose the cadets at the bottom of the mountain and let them rely on everything they’d learned to pull them through.
I’d seen sworn vegetarians kill a rabbit with their own hands at the end of a week of survival skills.
Major and I would be out there on the outskirts, watching them, aiming to be as undetectable as possible, just an emergency resource at their disposal. One more safeguard against a tragedy happening.
That meant he and I would be spending a lot of time together. Alone. Unsupervised. In the mountains. With nothing to do.
I was trying not to focus on that part of the course. I was pretty sure I could come up with a few ways we could keep ourselves occupied. And it wasn’t gin rummy.
I fought a growing desire to “accidentally” run into Chad Matthews. I threw myself into rounds at the hospital. I stayed late. I picked up shifts. I did whatever I could to avoid going home to my military issue two-bedroom apartment. Idle hands and all that.
But I was officially out of time.
Tomorrow, bright and early, I was going to be in a classroom with a list of cadets in front of me.
And a man beside me that I couldn’t seem to put out of my mind.
Chad
I had the distinct impression I was being intentionally avoided.
Not that I was broken up about it, or anything. The Captain was just one in a sea of pretty women I didn’t have time for. Yep, one more that I had no interest in using as anything more than a brief distraction.
I told myself that at least twice a day.
I also tried to kid myself into believing that I wasn’t looking forward to the coming week, when I would have the excuse to see her every day.
Not excuse. It wasn’t an excuse. It was a job requirement.
If I were being brutally honest with myself, I would have to admit that Brenna had totally derailed me. Since that night at the bar, I had only felt myself spiraling further and further from myself, the pull of the mountains and the night stronger than I wanted to admit.
It was part of the reason I had enlisted in the military. To learn to control it. To learn to dampen the urges and needs that were rooted in my very soul.
But now, each step outside into the new summer air sent a tingle spiraling along my skin, had me on the very edge of my senses, all but sniffing the air like an animal.
I hadn’t felt this out of control since I was a teenager, dammit, and I wasn’t relishing the trip down memory lane.
A cold shower and two cups of biting hot coffee later, I was dressed and ready to meet the class.
The campus was a quick walk from temporary housing, where I had been put up over the summer. This wouldn’t be a long term position for me — just something to fill the stretching void between deployments. It looked good to my teams when I was overseas, and it looked good to the cadets when I was there at the Academy. The Air Force knew how to use its resources.
I’d been in the classroom the day before to make sure I had everything I’d need. I wasn’t a big believer in using a classroom for teaching something like survival. Anything I could teach in a classroom, they could learn themselves from a damn book. But, there were a few things we could go over for safety’s sake.
We’d spend the first week in there, max, then we would be out in the field, setting snares, starting fires, putting out fires, working without instrumentation… thinking about the syllabus had me excited all over again. We would do our best to address any and all of the scenarios they might find themselves faced with.
Maybe that was the way to keep Brenna out of the equation. Focus on the nitty gritty. Don’t engage her.
Certainly don’t think about that tattoo, or the incredible way she filled out a pair of jeans. Or that mouth.
Dammit. I hadn’t even seen her this morning and she was already consuming my thoughts.
This could prove to be the longest summer of my life. If I couldn’t get my bear under control.
She hadn’t arrived at the classroom yet, so I set about writing on the board organizing the handouts, and setting up my clipboard so I could call roll as soon as class started.
It was five minutes to the start of class and cadets were already arriving. Brenna hadn’t made her appearance yet.
I was beginning to wonder if she didn’t value punctuality, if she wasn’t planning on coming, or if she had somehow managed to get herself reassigned, when she arrived. She looked pleasantly flushed, like she’d been rushing to make it on time.
“Morning, Doctor,” I said when she approached, her feet tapping on the old linoleum floor.
“Morning, Major,” she murmured, her voice soft, making me think of early mornings and midnight confessions.
I passed copies of the paperwork in her direction. “I assume you’ll be sharing some basic info with the class about how they should handle themselves and their bodies in a survival scenario?”
“That’s correct,” she said, still not meeting my eyes and flipping through the paperwork she had brought. “Basic things they should know already, but we’ll go over it anyway.”
Her dark eyes found mine for the first time that morning, and I immediately thought of that last heated moment in front of her car at the bar, before she’d driven off into the night reminding me that I meant nothing to her.
Which was probably the cold, hard truth.
“Besides,” she continued, one finely shaped eyebrow lifting upwards, “I expect you’ll be going over everything I’d planned to cover anyway.”
I couldn’t help the grin I gave her, because she was correct. Whatever trauma protocol she was interested in giving them, I would cover without a filter.
I was going to go ahead and tell them all about emergency trachs and compound fractures. They deserved to know the worst of the truth before finding themselves wading through it all. Whatever clinical definition and direction Brenna was planning on giving them wasn’t going to do them a damn bit of good in the field.
I knew from experience. She had only controlled environments under her belt.
She probably hadn’t done half of the things I’d had to do, in environs beyond unsuitable for the task, with no tools to speak of.
But we weren’t in class to talk about my achievements or experiences. We were there to prepare the cadets for the career they’d chosen and the worst of the unforeseen circumstances.
Wherever we differed in opinion, I was sure we were on the same page there.
The clock struck the hour, and I turned to the class. I gave a brief introduction of both the doctor and myself before running roll.
With everyone accounted for, I outlined the expectations, further class locations, appropriate clothing and foot wear, and the syllabus.
Teaching cadets is sometimes like staring at a classroom full of children. You know they’re trying to process the information, but they’re distracted by every freaking thing.
Worse than children, maybe.
And if I caught one more fucking cadet staring at Brenna, I was going to be sending him into a survival sim he was most assuredly not going to enjoy.
I might not be able to make many promises during a survival class, but that was one thing I could state with certainty.
CHAPTER 4
Brenna
I’d somehow managed to make it through the first two weeks of the class without killing Matthews.
Or having sex with him.
So, as far as I was concerned, we were in pretty good shape.
We would meet wherever we were scheduled to meet, and it changed every time. Sometimes we were in a flat field. Sometimes we were in the shade of the craggy mountain. Frequently, wherever we were, we were caught in the growing heat of the Colorado summer in full gear. Hot and uncomfortable.
Everyone, that is, but Matthews who seemed to thrive under those conditions. The man looked like he was basking in the damn heat.
Meanwhile, I was melting into a pathetic puddle of existence. But I was just here as the consult, anyway. With a man like Matthews, that meant my position was entirely a formality.
A fact which he never let me forget.
Now that we were well into the program, we were coming up on our first overnight, and I had the sinking suspicion things were about to get real.
Our role as facilitators was clear. We weren’t there to hamper or interfere. We weren’t there to give direction.
We were there to navigate emergencies and give them a grade, and if they deserved it, a recommendation.
I was dreading the trip.
And, part of me was looking forward to it. Whether I liked to admit it or not.
I arrived on time with my duffel, just as expected, packed with all the things I was supposed to bring and nothing more. Major Matthews wasn’t one that would take kindly to fancy makeup brushes and clay facial masks.
I wasn’t surprised to find Matthews on site already, waiting for everyone else. He was shading his eyes against the sun, looking for all the world like he had just sprouted out of the earth, and was waiting for his moment to return to it.
He was breathtaking, if I were being honest, and it wasn’t the first time I had noticed. His clear grey eyes, the hard line of his jaw and strong brow.
He was exactly the kind of man you imagined might teach a survival course. Right down to that scruff on his cheek that had him constantly looking like he’d shaved twelve hours earlier. Not to mention his tan.
I definitely did not need to mention that. And I most definitely did not need to be thinking about tan lines.
“Major,” I said, stepping up next to him, depositing my duffel on the ground next to his. I was fairly certain he could wear his duffle indefinitely without breaking a sweat, but in this kind of heat, I was going to take advantage of every possible way to reduce the strain.
It wasn’t actually the heat, but the humidity, that was overpowering. It wasn’t usual during this time of the summer, but the weather reports showed clear skies and good weather.
Other than the heat, and the heavy humidity.
“Doctor,” he said, making a little check on the paper in front of him, next to what I could only assume was my name.
I hadn’t failed to notice that he only ever addressed me as Doctor. Never by my last name. Never by my first. Never by my rank. I guess he was consistent, if nothing else.
“Muggy today,” I offered, like an old man sitting on a front porch.
He looked out at the empty field in front of us, like he was considering it for the first time, like up until then it had somehow escaped his notice that the weather wasn’t fit for man or animal.
“I guess it is,” he said, and silence stretched between us.
It seemed to be how it always was, that underlying zing of tension that never went away, that barely concealed hunger that neither one of us wanted to address.
Well, I wasn’t sure that neither of us wanted to address it, but at least we both acknowledged we shouldn’t address it.
Sort of.
It wasn’t long before the cadets arrived, and after a quick equipment check we were on our way.
We were given a simulation scenario: the plane had gone down and each cadet was placed in a small group of three. They had between them rations for one day, no communication devices and no change of clothing.
Like everything about survival sims, it seemed pretty upfront. None of those stipulations presented as a deal breaker. We collected their phones as they arrived, and stored them in a single bag I was going to be in charge of. The Major and I tossed ours in there for good measure.
And then we were on our way, a seven-mile walk scheduled before we hit the base of the mountain.
Matthews wasn’t from the area, and as far as I knew, he hadn’t spent much time up in the mountains, but when I’d looked at his sketch of how he thought the cadets would play out their sim, it certainly appeared that he’d spent an extended amount of time scoping out the area.
We were off at a nice clip, but by the time we had four miles under our belt we’d all started to drag.
All of us, except Matthews, of course, who looked just as fresh as the moment I’d first seen him in the field.
Damn that man. It was not fair that he could be trudging through this kind of heat and looking so fine, while I was all but dissolving.
I was more than ready for the shade that greeted us at the edge of the mountain. Not that I would ever admit that. I didn’t need to give Matthews any more fuel for his fire. He’d made it perfectly clear where he thought I stood in the pecking order of soldiers.
Fortunately, I didn’t need to do the grumbling about the exercise, because the cadets were doing it for us.
I agreed with each and every one of them- silently.
By early evening we had reached our final destination and were setting up camp before each team moved to address dinner.
Per the requirements, the teams were set up twenty feet apart from one another, and were expected to engage in conversation, discussion, and strategizing only with the others in the group. Each was to pretend there was no one else around them.
Matthews and I were to be flies on the wall.
We found a spot perched above them, so we would have a better view of them as they worked. From there we could take the notes we would need to add to their files.
He watched them intently from up above. There was something vaguely predatory in the way he studied them.
In fact, since we’d entered the woods, he seemed different. Not that I knew him very well before, but we had been spending a fair amount of time together in the past few weeks, and he just seemed…different. More at ease. More in tune. Like there was something about being there that reset him.
I really couldn’t understand it, since I was pretty much a hot mess of exhaustion. My back and feet were killing me, but to each his own, I suppose.
“So what do you think?” he asked, settling onto his bedroll.
“About the walk?” I turned toward him, and then wished I hadn’t. If I had thought he was good looking before, it was nothing compared to how he looked now, dappled by the tree’s shadows, his face swimming in and out of the light, his eyes that amazing shade of grey.
Christ, I was like a teenager just learning she had hormones.
He gave me something I could only classify as a smirk.
“Actually, I meant about the cadets. What do you think about them and how they’re doing?”
“Oh,” I said, peering down at them, watching them sort through their belongings, take stock, and begin to formulate a plan. “I think they’re doing well
?”
I hated myself for turning it into a question, for having to ask something when I knew damn well I had my own opinions about it.
“I agree,” he said. “They’re doing fairly well. No one’s done anything exceptionally well, and no one’s done anything exceptionally stupid. So all things considered I think they’re in a good place.”
We watched them a while longer, not talking to one another, sitting closer to each other than we should.
The rain came sometime in the night.
Before it did, there was a single crackle of heat lightning that zipped through the sky, one loud clap of thunder I was sure must have been something else at first.
And then the pouring rain.
It came down in sheets. It was hard to see even a few feet in front of us; the ground immediately softened, sucking at us with each step.
“Fuck,” I heard Matthews say loud enough to be heard over the sound of the spattering rain, from somewhere near me.
I was struggling with my bag, trying to find my poncho, my hair plastered to my head, blinking away the drops that were making it hard to see.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to have rain,” I called back to him.
“We weren’t,” his body was close enough to touch mine, his hand on my elbow. “This isn’t the right time of year for rain like this.”
It was dark and I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear something I didn’t like in his voice.
Something like worry. Something I had never heard from him before.
“We have to round up the cadets, and get them somewhere else.”
In the darkness and the rain, I could see him turn slowly in a small circle, like he was trying to intuit where that space we could take them might be.
“Where should we take them?” I asked.
He was looking up, even further up from where we were.
“I don’t think we have a choice. We need to get somewhere flatter, drier, before this ravine becomes a raging river. And these trees…Dammit.”
Bears of Burden: THORN Page 87