It's Always Been You

by Jessica Scott

  She pressed her lips to hide the smile that spread slowly across her mouth as embarrassed heat crept up her neck. She was at ease with this man because of his relationship with her friend.

  “That obvious?” she asked.

  “Pretty much,” Reza said lightly. “I’ve known Teague a long time. He’s a strange one but he’s also a man I’d have in a firefight with me any time. I trust him.”

  She looked up at the big man next to her, amazed that a man like him had managed to find happiness with her friend. Amazed at her own comfort around him.

  “He’s a good guy,” she said softly. “Command is going to be hard on him.”

  “If you’re doing it right, command is hard for everyone.” Reza reached for her, squeezing her shoulder gently. “And I suspect Teague is going to do it right, no matter how much he may protest to the contrary.”

  * * *

  Ben was having a hell of a time concentrating on the standard Monday morning briefings. He stood in formation listening to the sergeant major drone on and on about some ruck march up some mountain somewhere. There was beer involved but Ben couldn’t really see how that was a good thing. Dehydration and mountain climbing seemed to be a combination that never ended well, but hey, Ben wasn’t about to judge.

  He just wasn’t interested in participating.

  No, his mind was definitely circling back to last Saturday evening when he’d curled around the beautiful Olivia Hale.

  He’d wanted to press her on those vicious scars running down her ribs but she’d been determined to brush off his concern.

  He’d let it go in the name of keeping the peace but Ben wasn’t easily dissuaded.

  Somehow he’d managed not to call her after leaving her place. He’d thought about it. Several times. And each time he’d considered picking up his phone, he’d set it back down again. He was suddenly as inept as a thirteen-year-old boy. He had no idea if he should call her, or if he should wait.

  Dear Lord in Heaven, when had he lost his balls? Had he left them at her place that night? What was it about this woman that drove him to distraction to the point that the following night, he’d been trying to get some paperwork done and all he could think about was what she might have been doing at the same time.

  Damn.

  A tap on his shoulder made him turn around. Olivia was in his motor pool. Standing between two tanks, she looked positively tiny. Her hair was pinned up. Her uniform neat.

  Not a hint of the woman he’d made gasp and cry out his name through clenched teeth as he’d touched her.

  Her expression was polished glass. Once he would have been intimidated by the cool, distant expression but he caught the glint of awareness in her eyes. Just a hint, and if he hadn’t been looking for it, he might have missed it. “Captain Teague, do you have a moment?”

  Captain Teague. He wasn’t a moron. He knew they were around a thousand pairs of prying eyes. Still, he wanted to hear his name on her lips again.

  Damn it, he needed to figure out what the hell he’d done with his balls. He cleared his throat. “Sure, ma’am.”

  It felt strange calling her “ma’am”, but he’d be damned if he’d give away what had happened between them the other night. It was nobody’s business what the two of them did on their off-duty time.

  Ben wanted to do it again. He had a sudden dark and vibrant fantasy of taking her inside his Bradley and stripping that stiff uniform off her body.

  “What’s up?” he said when they’d moved away from the mass of humanity.

  He watched her closely as she pulled out the files she needed.

  “Child Protective Services called.” It was a long moment before she looked up. “They want to know if we’re going to follow up on the Escoberra case.”

  Ben swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. “Can you try that in English? Small words, maybe, no more than four syllables each?”

  His joke felt flat and listless.

  She smiled and it was more than just a grin at his crack. It was sympathy. She knew this was a tough choice for him, but she asked him about it anyway.

  He took a deliberate step backward. She was asking him to do his job and right then? It involved prosecuting someone he was close to. Someone who’d saved his ass on more than one occasion. “What does that mean?”

  “It means we can prosecute him under military law instead of waiting for the civilians to do it,” she said. She took a step closer, needing to offer comfort despite the harsh reality of her recommendation.

  Ben shoved his hands in his pockets. “Do I want to do that?”

  “Normally, I would say no. But here?” She hesitated. “If CPS closes their investigation, there’s no case,” she said.

  Ben rubbed his hand over his mouth, his heart pounding in his chest.

  “It means you don’t have to prosecute.”

  He looked down at her then, her eyes hidden beneath dark sunglasses. “I wouldn’t think you’d be happy about this,” he said. His words were thick. Rough.

  “I’m not.” She swallowed. “But I trust you to make the right decision about your men.”

  Ben took a deep breath, meeting her gaze. A quiet nod passed between them, tacit acknowledgment of things better left unsaid. They’d talk later. Away from prying eyes.

  “Thank you,” he said when he could speak. It was more trust than he deserved.

  God, but he hoped he was right about Escoberra. Because that night at the hospital was haunting him. Tormenting him with what ifs.

  What if he was wrong? What if Carmen was simply protecting her husband instead of loving him too much?

  Olivia trusted him to make the right decision.

  So why did he no longer trust himself?

  * * *

  Ben was in his office, wading through three hundred and twelve unread e-mails. He seriously considered doing a control-alt-delete and emptying all of them in the trash but somehow he didn’t think that the XO or the ops officer would approve of his actions.

  There was nothing in his office that made it officially his. He hadn’t made time to move things in and honestly, he wasn’t sure when he’d get time to do that.

  It wasn’t important, except that the space didn’t feel like his.

  He still felt out of place and unsettled sitting behind the commander’s desk. He stared at an e-mail that embodied everything about this job that he’d hated and feared. It was a request from Major Denis for an update on all of his legal actions.

  How was he supposed to do his job when he’d deployed with half the guys in the company? It wasn’t even that he didn’t want to believe they could do bad things—some of the guys like Foster did stupid things but they were just that—stupid. It didn’t mean they should lose their careers over them.

  It was acknowledging that any loyalty he’d had to his men was now gone and that the rank he’d always said didn’t matter now stood between him and his longtime friends.

  On the list of things he was worried about, that was at the top of his list, right along with returning to combat in less than eight months with barely sixty percent of the soldiers he needed. About half of the soldiers he did have were brand new troopers—either folks finally forced out of Korea or out of hiding from other posts, or brand new kids straight out of boot camp.

  And he still had to clean up the non-deployers he did have. Starting with Foster and going downhill from there.

  He clicked through, filing the e-mails where they belonged, unable to actually concentrate.

  There was a quiet knock on his door. He looked up as Reza sat down on the couch, kicking his feet up on Ben’s desk. “Rough day, huh?”

  Reza tossed a sleeve of chocolate chip cookies onto Ben’s desk. Ben shot him a wry look and opened the package. “You’re going to enable me now?” he asked.

  Reza grinned. “I’ve found them to be a deeply therapeutic substitute for alcohol.”

  Ben stopped chewing. “Really?”

  “No not really. At this rate, I’m
going to bust height and weight standards if I keep gaining weight.” Reza looked at him silently. “Want to tell me what’s prompted this cookie bender?”

  Ben stared down at the sleeve, then set it on his desk. “Escoberra’s at the hospital getting his mental health evaluation.” There was deep wariness in Ben’s words.

  “That was fast,” Reza said.

  “Emily helped get him in sooner.” He took a deep breath, looking up at his long time friend. “I still can’t wrap my brain around him doing this to Hailey.”

  Reza was quiet for a long time. “I haven’t seen too many cases where Child Protective Services gets involved when there isn’t something going on.”

  “How many cases have you been involved with?”

  “A few over the years.” Reza shifted on the couch that Marshall hadn’t taken with him, dropping his feet to the floor in front of him. “They’re not perfect by a long shot, but they’re people doing the best they can.”

  “When did you become so forgiving of the bureaucracy?”

  “Remember Tag?”

  “Tagalogue? Sure.” Tag was a heavy kid from somewhere deep in Louisiana. He’d married his high school sweetheart who Ben and Reza had suspected was related to him in a not-too-distant way.

  “Well, it turned out that her uncle was coming to visit a little too often. He would watch their kids when they’d go out on dates or whatever. Tag started to feel like something wasn’t right but didn’t want to piss off his wife. He got a call from the on-post daycare that sparked an investigation.”

  The cookie in Ben’s mouth suddenly tasted like cardboard. He spit it into the trash. “Tell me their kid is okay. He was a little bit older, wasn’t he?”

  “Tag’s kid was six when it happened. The uncle hadn’t done any permanent damage but he’d been working up to it.” Reza cleared his throat roughly, rubbing the back of his neck as if to scrub away the memories. “I guess my point is that maybe CPS isn’t blowing smoke up your ass.”

  “Fuck man, but Escoberra?” Ben covered his mouth with his hands. “There’s got to be a piece of this that’s missing. CPS dropped the case. Nothing makes any damn sense.”

  Reza shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t want to believe our boyo could do that but I don’t know.”

  “I was there. At the hospital that night when Hailey was there. I saw Escoberra.” The pictures of Hailey’s back would haunt Ben forever. He’d seen some terrible things over the years but this? This was somehow worse. “I’ve never seen a man look more devastated,” Ben said softly. His heart threatened to break in his chest.

  Reza shifted again, his eyes darkening. “No man should hurt a child like that,” he said softly.

  “I know,” Ben admitted.

  “War changes people.”

  “But this? Whipping a kid that he loves like his own daughter?” Ben scrubbed his hands over his face.

  “When you’re presented with the facts, you’ll have to deal with them. Whatever they are.” Reza looked up at him. “Because you’re not just another soldier now, Ben. You’re a commander and these decisions come with the job.”

  Silence stretched between them. Uncomfortable and filled with terrible choices and ugly truths.

  Finally Reza cleared his throat. “And you have to figure out what you can live with.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sorren walked into Ben’s office a bit later and closed the door behind him. “We’re going to have problems, sir.”

  Ben closed his laptop and gave Sorren his undivided attention. “What kind of problems?”

  “Monica Glass has been calling Foster since he got out of jail.”

  Ben took a deep breath and folded his hands in front of him. “Isn’t this the woman who had him arrested in the first place?”

  “Yep.” Sorren sat down on the couch, draping his arm across the back. His fingers drummed angrily on the back.

  “Shit.” Ben pulled out the limited information he had on the night Foster had been arrested. The serious incident report had remarkably little detail. “She’s the damn reason he’s been in jail to begin with. Didn’t she call the police when her father and Foster started fighting?”

  “Yep. And now Foster’s out of jail so she’s blowing up his phone and mine,” Sorren said. “She keeps calling and telling me she doesn’t feel safe with him out but he’s telling me she won’t stop calling him. I don’t know who to believe.”

  Ben cupped his chin in his hand and wished he still had some of those cookies from earlier. He’d thrown them away when they’d lost their taste and one of the orderly room clerks had already grabbed his trash. He was going to have to put a stop to that. He could take out his own damn trash.

  “Wasn’t her dad a first sergeant before he became a cop?” Ben asked. “She’s supposed to be one of the well-adjusted ones.”

  “Not if Daddy was too busy fighting the war to be a daddy,” Sorren said. There was a little too much bitterness in Sorren’s words for Ben to ignore.

  “Tell me about this daughter of yours.” Ben asked abruptly. There was no wedding ring on Sorren’s left hand. No faint mark where one had been recently, either.

  “Been divorced since I was twenty-two,” Sorren said roughly. “I’ve got a fifteen-year-old daughter.” He reached into his wallet and flipped it open.

  Ben leaned over and saw a beautiful girl with dark hair and her father’s eyes.

  “Man, she’s beautiful.” He glanced up at Sorren. “You sure she’s yours? Cause you’re ugly as all get out.”

  Sorren flipped Ben off as he leaned back. “Fuck you, sir.”

  “Seriously, she’s beautiful.”

  “Thanks. I’ve already talked to her mother about getting a shotgun.” It was almost funny watching the big man squirm talking about his daughter.

  “Foster’s right. She’s already dating, isn’t she?” Ben said with a grin.

  “Don’t say horrible things like that.” Sorren visibly flinched, and shoved his wallet back into his pocket.

  Ben’s grin widened and he kicked his feet up onto the desk. “Dude, there is no way I would touch your daughter if I was a sixteen-year-old boy. You’re terrifying.”

  “Especially not if I threatened that whatever you do to her, I do to you,” Sorren said. His expression relaxed into a sad smile as he stared at the picture. “But I’ve been gone most of her life and I don’t get that time back. I worry about what my not being around did to her.”

  Ben had no idea what to say. He knew what it felt like to have a parent be more soldier than parent. His mother wore her uniform like a shield. She’d never had time for him after his dad died—unless it involved interfering in his career where he didn’t want her.

  Finally, he broke the silence. “She looks like she’s doing okay.”

  Sorren’s eyes darkened and he rubbed his hand over his mouth. “We had her in a hospital last summer. She cuts herself.”

  Ben stilled. “What do you mean, cuts herself?”

  “Like not trying to kill herself. She just… cuts. She hides it. Really well, actually.”

  “How did you find out?” Ben asked quietly. His heart hurt for his first sergeant’s pain and the helplessness written on the big man’s face.

  “The school nurse called Melanie,” he said. “Let me tell you, that was a shitty Red Cross message to get in the middle of Mosul.”

  “Were you able to go home?”

  Sorren shook his head. There was nothing, nothing worse than being called in the war zone and not being able to go home.

  Carmen had called Escoberra once. Just once. She’d been in a car accident. Escoberra had nearly lost his mind when the company commander had told him that he couldn’t go home because there were no life-threatening injuries.

  Sorren said, “Nah. We had major operations going in Tal Afar. And, to quote my battalion sergeant major, she didn’t try to kill herself. I could deal with it when I got home.”

  Ben swore softly. “Are you
fucking kidding me?”

  Sorren shrugged. “That’s the way it goes sometimes. She’s better now.”

  “You have my permission to drop your retirement paperwork,” Ben said. His throat wasn’t working right all of a sudden. He’d never wanted kids, never figured he’d be the kind of dad who could raise stable, well-adjusted little humans. But if he did have them? What a terrible thing, to find out your kid was hurting herself.

  Guilt damn near choked Ben, and she wasn’t even his daughter. He looked over at Sorren and saw behind the rough exterior. For just a moment, Sorren’s shields fell and he was just a man, a father who wasn’t living up to his own expectations of what a dad should be.

  Finally Sorren looked over at Ben.

  “I’ll see this deployment through,” Sorren said. “But yeah, then I’m done. I think I’m going to go home. Try to be a dad to a kid who doesn’t need me anymore.”

  “They always need you,” Ben said. Maybe that was a lie but Sorren didn’t need to know that Ben rarely called his own mother. He’d stopped needing her a long time ago.

  His dad had died in the first Gulf War. Ben could still remember the day the phone call had come in. Because his mom had been a soldier, they’d done the notification differently.

  It was the first and only time Ben had ever seen his mother cry. She’d buried his dad and thrown herself into work. Ben had been a kid but it hadn’t taken him long to figure out he’d lost both parents that day.

  Mom was a full bird colonel now on some staff in Washington.

  And Ben? The only reason Ben was a soldier was because he’d wanted to feel closer to his dad.

  Instead, it had driven the final wedge into his relationship with his mother.

  Sorren cleared his throat roughly. “So what are we going to do about Foster?”

  Ben sighed. “I have no fucking idea. But I know just who to ask.”

  * * *

  Olivia’s desk phone rang. She hung her head for a moment and counted to three. Damn it, it was always this way. Right before the end of the duty day, when she was planning on sneaking out and working on the rest of the files from home, the phone rang.