A PLACE CALLED HOME
CHAPTER 6
“We have to swing by my battalion headquarters before we head out to the training area.”
Emily followed Reza out into the bright Fort Hood morning, trying to get used to the weight she now carried in the form of her Interceptor Body Army. Reza had corrected her and told her to just call it her I.B A. The weight was evenly distributed around her torso but it was still bulky and uncomfortable. Reza wore his like it was a second skin. She wondered if he had some kind of superhero gene because the man positively radiated power.
Yeah, her lady parts were getting all quivery. She really was pathetic. She’d done so well keeping distance between herself and the temptation of so many well-built, honorable men. The kind of men who would cause her mother to faint.
She peered at Reza as she walked next to him. His skin was darker on his jaw, the shadow of his beard already making an appearance. She caught herself wondering how often he shaved.
She rubbed her hands together and he glanced down at her. “Where are your gloves?” he asked as they approached the Humvee in the parking lot.
“What gloves?”
There was nothing but the silent pulse of his jaw. “Here.” He peeled his gloves off and thrust them at her. “I’ll get another pair out of my truck.”
“Why do I need gloves?” she asked, sliding her hands into the too big gloves. They were still warm from his skin and she smothered a ridiculous heat that spread through her body from the echo of his touch.
“Ammo shells, broken glass, shards of metal. All kinds of good reasons.” He climbed into the passenger’s seat of the Humvee and said something to the driver, a skinny dark-skinned kid who looked like he was about twelve.
Emily climbed into the backseat behind the driver and simply sat for a moment. Her first trip in a military vehicle. There were divots running down the center of the truck and a tarp separated the front from the back. There was some kind of radio system between Reza and the driver.
And the noise. As soon as they started driving the engine rumbled to life, drowning out all thought, all sound. It was a constant roar, like standing in the entrance of a cave as the sea rushed in. The thin seat beneath her vibrated and she felt every bump, every brake check.
She glanced at Reza, who was constantly checking the mirror to his right and the road in front of him. When they stopped at an intersection, he shouted something to the driver but she couldn’t hear him. The driver gunned it through the intersection and kept going.
The transition from the hospital complex to the area owned by First Cav was stark. Everything on Fort Hood was dated but the buildings that housed the various battalions of the First Cavalry Division were ancient. Some of them looked like they should have been condemned and yet, they stood proudly emblazoned with their unit logos and guidons waving in the easy spring breeze.
It was funny how the transition was subtle. The pride that the officers walked with over here. She hadn’t believed the hype about the division. Everyone ran around post saying “First Team” when they saluted her on those rare occasions that she ventured out of the clinic. They had to be faking that kind of enthusiasm, right? But as she rode deeper into Cav country, she started to think that maybe they really did believe that stuff about being America’s First Team.
They rolled to a stop beside a headquarters building sheltered beneath old oak trees. The driver killed the engine and Reza shifted back to look at her.
“You coming or you want to wait here?”
“What are we doing?”
“I need to check on a training plan to make sure that nothing went wrong on the range.” Emily smiled but before she could speak, Reza’s lips curled ever so faintly at the edges. “Come on. I don’t have time to translate right now.”
The driver shot Reza a funny look but said nothing. Emily wondered at the relationship differences that seemed so much more stark over here. The soldier barely spoke to his sergeant but when he did, it was with a reverence akin to awe.
Granted, she grew a little more and more in awe of Reza the more time she spent around him, but somehow, she figured he’d be more comfortable with his men.
“What’s on your mind, doc?” he asked as he flashed his ID at the staff duty sergeant.
“Just wondering why the driver didn’t make conversation,” she said after a moment, following him down the hallway and trying not to feel like she was rushing to keep up.
“We don’t take warm showers together, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Emily laughed quietly. “Was that a line from Heartbreak Ridge?”
“You didn’t strike me as a war movie kind of girl.” Reza stopped short, studying her. “Are you honestly telling me you’ve watched that movie?”
Heat crept up her neck. “Before I signed up for the Army, I wanted to know what I was getting myself in for. I watched every war movie I could find.”
Reza simply stared at her, his dark eyes glittering. She was sure he was laughing at her.
“You know those were Marines in Heartbreak Ridge, right?”
“Of course.”
He cracked the barest grin. She supposed it was better than yelling at her, so there was that. She followed Reza down the hall toward two double-wide doors that led to a wide open cubicle farm.
“Sloban’s here,” Foster said, stepping out of the headquarters without his headgear. His face was streaked with dirt and dust and sweat. “Needs to see you before you head out to the range. Who’s this?”
Emily stiffened as the young sergeant in front of her snarled as she walked up behind Reza.
“Doc from the hospital,” Reza said next to her. “Where’s Slo?”
“In the ops.”
Beside her, she felt Reza stiffen. She was embarrassed, both professionally and personally, that they couldn’t find his packet. Foster’s eyes swept over her in a way that made her feel judged and found unworthy. She knew the empty space on her right shoulder set her apart, just like the knowledge that she was medical and not combat arms. Had his gaze been any more suggestive, she might have added the fact that she was also female to the list of reasons why his resentment was a tangible thing.
“We got to find that damn paperwork, Sarn’t Ike. The commander has been giving Sloban shit about his medical file.”
Reza said nothing as she followed him into the ops. It was a dirty place. Run down with a fine coat of dust settled over just about anything that hadn’t moved in the last week. It was a long way from the sparkling buffed floors of the hospital or her clinic. It felt like another world.
Emily frowned as they rounded the corner and into the ops. There were five soldiers in there but instantly she knew which one was Sloban. His hands were in a constant state of motion; his eyes were haunted and hunted.
He wasn’t one of her patients but he was one of Reza’s soldiers. She walked over to him. “We’re working on finding your medical packet,” she said softly.
Sloban turned those haunted eyes on her and she felt a coldness to the very pit of her soul. He opened his mouth but no sound came out. After a moment, he looked at Reza.
“She works at the mental health clinic. She’s trying to help us find your file,” he explained. His voice was gentle. Soothing. As though he was trying not to spook the kid.
He was using. She’d bet her hat he was using.
That didn’t bode well for his file but she didn’t say that.
“I sent it back to the board people,” she said. “We’ll find it.”
“Can’t you just make copies?” Sloban asked.
She shook her head. “I wish it were that simple,” she said.
Foster sighed hard. “Well, at least we know where it isn’t. Sloban is losing his fucking mind, you know that, right, Sarn’t Ike? The commander is being a real douche to the guys with medical issues.”
“Got it. I’ll talk to him.” There was an odd note in Reza’s voice that hadn’t been there a moment before. He glanced at Emily, his hand on Sloban’s shoulder. “Give me a few minutes, okay?”
She nodded, wishing there was something she could do to ease the strain and the fatigue she heard in his voice.
It was the fatigue of a warrior who’d fought one too many fights with no end in sight. Sloban was just one more soldier. One more life he could touch.
But who was there to hold him up when he stumbled? Who did Reza lean on in the bad times?
She sat in the company ops as he disappeared behind closed doors, a sinking feeling in her gut that she knew the answer to that question.
He had no one.
And that simple realization broke her heart.
***
Reza closed the door behind Sloban, fighting the urge to take a wire brush to Foster’s backside. He wasn’t really sure what had Foster’s panties in a bunch and he didn’t really give a shit, either. His attitude had sucked the last few days and Reza was itching to get him to the gym to beat the living shit out of him in the combatives ring to make him talk about whatever was eating him. Foster got PMS about once every six months and it took a good bout in the ring to get him to open up. Usually, he had women problems but as far as Reza knew, there was no one serious in Foster’s life right now.
Unless he counted the stripper down at whatever name the club in Harker Heights was going by these days. Foster had been spending far too much time in that shit hole.
Foster wasn’t his main worry. Sloban was, and right now, Sloban looked like he was ready to climb the walls inside Reza’s office.
Reza pulled up a chair diagonal to Slo. “What’s going on?”
Sloban’s hands shook as he tried to find something to do with them. He said nothing. Reza didn’t expect him to. Since he’d gotten hooked on meth all those months ago, he didn’t say as much as he used to.
The warrior he’d known was now gaunt and strung out and pockmarked. His skin stretched too tight over his bones, his eyes were haunted.
“Are you using?” Reza asked.
Sloban looked down at his hands. “I’m trying. I’m trying so fucking hard not to screw up again, Sarn’t Ike.” He looked up, his eyes watery. “I need to go home. I can’t fucking stay here and keep waiting. Why is it taking so long?”
Reza glanced at the door. Emily was trying to run down the packet. It was more than anyone else in the medical system had done for any of Reza’s soldiers.
But it wasn’t enough. And Sloban was running out of time. He knew it. He could see the hunger in the kid’s eyes.
“If you use again, Marshall will stop the medical board with a court-martial,” Reza said slowly. “Slo, you got to stay clean.”
Sloban’s throat moved, his eyes darting around the room. “I’m trying.”
“How can I help?” Reza asked.
Sloban’s answer was a flat smile. “Just get me out of here. That’s all I need.”
He reached over and squeezed Sloban’s shoulder. “I’m working on it. Just stay with me a little longer, okay?”
Slo looked down at his hands and nodded. As promises went, it didn’t measure up but it was the best he could expect. The warrior Sloban had been was long gone.
But Reza wasn’t going to abandon the kid. He had no idea where the packet could be and short of raiding the hospital commander’s office, there was little he could do other than keep calling over there three times a day.
Sloban stood and Reza followed him out of the office. Emily stood by the door, watching everything going on around her in stoic silence. The kid slipped by Emily without so much as a glance. The silence in the ops left with him and the entire office seemed to breathe a collective sigh.
Reza looked down at her as she stood. The body armor made her movements awkward. “You okay?” she asked as she followed him out of the company ops.
He said nothing for a long time. What could he tell her? That he knew the hunger that Sloban fought? That he knew how hard it was to stay sober and clean?
That he knew how this ended and it terrified him?
“I have to be,” was all he said instead.
She said nothing. But after a moment, her hand rested on his shoulder at the edge of his body armor.
A simple gesture, nothing more. But the marks on his arms burned where she touched him.
What would she say if she saw what he’d done to his body over the years? How would she react to the scars and everything else?
But instead of brushing her hand off, he simply reached up and squeezed it gently.
And for a moment, it was enough.
***
He rapped on the doorframe to Teague’s cubbyhole. “Where’s Captain Loehr? I need to make sure we’ve got clearance for the MOUT site today.”
Teague grinned and stood. “Perfect timing. I need a ride out to training.”
“There won’t be any training unless we get the green light from Captain America.”
Teague held up a folder. “You mean these? I swear, one range fire and you’ve turned into a timid little baby kitten afraid of his own shadow.”
Reza swore under his breath, wishing Emily wasn’t standing right there watching Teague show his ass—figuratively, of course. He wondered how long it would be before Teague tried to hit on her.
The thought made Reza’s spine stiffen as he glanced over at her.
Emily raised both eyebrows, her lips twitching. “Range fire?”
Heat crawled up Reza’s neck, along with a strong desire to throttle Ben Teague. “I may or may not have been involved in an incident involving a small fire here at Fort Hood.”
“Ha,” Teague snorted and grabbed his helmet. “He burned down three hundred acres of training area last year.”
“It was an accident,” Reza snarled. “Get your shit and let’s go. We’re burning daylight.” “It’s always an accident,” Teague said. “What’s she doing here, anyway?”
“Wants to observe training,” Reza said, stuffing the paperwork in his cargo pocket. “She’s putting together an officer professional development program for the docs and asked for help.”
He saw Emily open her mouth then snap it shut as the wisdom of the lie took hold. It wasn’t actually a bad idea. He could practically see the shape of the good idea fairy forming in her thoughts. She pulled out that little moleskin notebook and jotted something down before climbing into the back of the Humvee.
He wondered if she always carried it even as she struggled to stuff it back into her cargo pocket. He watched as she moved, her body strong beneath the body armor. He’d thought she was prim and proper when he’d first met her but he was wrong.
The woman was so much more than she appeared. Dedicated. Smart. And so damned sexy.
The vehicle rolled out of the parking lot and headed to the MOUT site, leaving him to his thoughts for the moment.
That kiss still burned on his lips. A foolish gambit, one he wasn’t going to regret but one that he couldn’t repeat.
No matter how much he might want to.
He’d given up drinking and boozing. At least, that’s what he kept telling himself. But with Emily, there was something more there. A need. A desire for something more than a stolen kiss or an office flirtation.
He felt a pull of something real, something stronger than just sex.
Something that terrified him with the strength of it. He was trying to be the soldier the sergeant major wanted him to be. The warrior his men deserved. If he couldn’t get clean and stay clean, how was he supposed to expect his men to do it? He wanted to save the remains of his career. He wasn’t sure he could even go to bed with a woman without being shitfaced drunk.
He couldn’t remember the last time something like that had even happened.
Sex and alcohol were all twisted up inside him and he damn sure wasn’t about to admit to his own personal psychosis to her.
He’d kissed her. She’d kissed him back.
It would have to be enough. Because the truth was, he didn’t trust himself to try anything more.
He swallowed the bitter pill of frustration as they pulled into the MOUT site a few minutes later. Life was so much easier when he was drinking.
Reza grinned in Teague’s direction as he climbed out of the truck. “Ready to get your ass whipped?”
“Oh yeah. I’m going to lay your ass out flat,” Teague said, pulling on his gloves.
“You wish, pretty boy. You better wear a face mask ’cause I’m going to double tap you right between the eyes,” Reza said. Reza tapped his own forehead.
Emily came up beside them, adjusting her hair beneath her helmet. He had no idea how to help her with that. Claire would have been able to give her some pointers on that one but Claire was in California right then. Emily was on her own as far as her hair was concerned. “Um, can I be the complete and total newbie here and ask what you’re talking about?”
“You don’t know what we’re doing today?” Teague looked at her with an expression close to bafflement on his face. He looked back at Reza. “You didn’t tell her?”
“Tell me what?” Emily sounded like he was dragging her toward a darkened pit filled with slithering things.
“We’re going to a shoot house.”
“A what?”
“Shoot house.”
She went very still. The kind of still that made Reza think she was second-guessing her decision to come out here. “What’s a shoot house?”
“A building where we go shoot each other with sim rounds.”
“And sim rounds are…”
“Very painful,” Teague said with the wicked smile of someone who knew exactly how painful they could be.
Teague was enjoying her discomfort far too much. “Go tell my driver to get the truck ready.” He was used to bossing the captain around. Teague was a good guy but he was ADHD boy. Needed someone to step on his neck to keep him focused and out of trouble. Teague unsupervised was a recipe for disaster. Reza wondered just how much of that was real and how much of it was a facade Teague put on to avoid any major responsibility. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re going to shoot each other?” Emily sounded shocked.
“With fake bullets.”
“You just threatened to shoot him in the face.”
Frustration at her naivete snapped at its leash inside him, surprising him with its intensity. “Haven’t we had this conversation before? The one where I explain to you that we’re not giving out candy and roses when we’re busy winning the hearts and minds?”
“Stop putting words in my mouth,” she said more sharply than he’d anticipated. Something had gotten under her skin in between leaving the office and coming out here. He wanted to know very much what it was.
But he didn’t know how to ask. “Then what is it?”
She opened her mouth to speak, then snapped it shut. “Never mind. I’m tired of you laughing at me because I don’t know anything about the world you’re from.”
Reza stepped close, until his body armor almost brushed against hers. A more effective barrier he’d never seen and yet, he still felt an incredible attraction toward this woman. “I’m not laughing at you, Emily,” he said, keeping his voice low. “You’ve never been to combat. You’ve never seen men die because of actions you’ve taken or worse, actions you did not take. You’re untouched by all the death and dying and killing.” They were alone near the truck. He did not bother to rein in his urge to brush his knuckles against her soft cheek. “You have no idea how rare and precious being untouched by the war really is in my world.”
She didn’t flinch beneath his touch but she also did not acknowledge it in any way. Her skin was soft, satin beneath the rough ridge of his knuckles. Her breath was a scattered thing, coming in fits and huffs.
He wanted to tell her more, so much more. Wanted to satiate her curiosity to know about the war and send her back to her protected office, where she would never have to venture out into the real world.
A knight in shining armor would want to protect her. Cherish her.
Reza was no knight. He was a warrior. A man who fought for what he wanted. But with Emily, those things were no longer clear. And for the first time in his adult life, he turned away from a woman who’d trembled beneath his touch. There was more to Emily Lindberg than Reza had realized. So, so much more.
If this went any further, he would ruin it. He always did. There was nothing in his life he didn’t screw up and he very much did not want to screw this up.
He wanted to keep her on her pedestal. Keep her unsullied by the war and the world he lived in. He pulled his gloves out of where she’d stuffed them into a small pocket. “Make sure you wear these today,” he murmured.
***
Reza felt Emily hesitate before she climbed the hill toward the MOUT site behind him. His gaze fell to his gloves on her hands, and an unexplained warmth spread somewhere in the vicinity of his belly as he watched her.
He wasn’t entirely sure what the hell had happened to him. Not so long ago, he’d gone up one side of her and down the other for keeping information about a soldier from him. Not so long ago, he’d told her she did not belong in the Army.
Now she was out at the range with him, wanting to know about the world he lived in.
A world he didn’t want her to know. The scars on his body were testament to the ragged ugliness of war.
She’d watched movies about combat. He’d led men in combat. Bled with them.
What on earth had possessed him to bring her out here?
He knew what it was and it pissed him off. If she was going to deploy, maybe something she learned today would save her life later. He hated to think of her in a bunker with rockets landing all around. His stomach twisted hard. He couldn’t protect her. He wouldn’t be there to keep her safe.
People like her simply didn’t recognize the world for what it was: a cruel, hard place that would crush the best of them. It was a world that required exactly what they were about to do: train.
If he couldn’t protect her, he could train her. At least, a little. A little was better than nothing.
If she backed away from the shoot house, he wouldn’t let her go. She needed to do this, to see this in training where it was safe. No matter how much he wanted to protect her from the smoke and chaos of war—even a mock war like they were getting ready to wage today, the simple fact was she was going to deploy. Better to learn what she could here today rather than head to the desert with zero training. The threat of violence was a very real thing in his daily life and if she was going to deploy, she needed to understand that.
He watched her as she approached, careful to keep his expression neutral.
Part of him wanted her to run, to turn away from the violence of his life.
But another part of him, the dark part, wanted her to join him in the muck and the mire. That darkness held a powerful lure, a quiet shame mixed with the pride: he was good at what he did.
She flexed her hands in those gloves and his guts clenched. Down, boy.
“You ready for this?” he asked as she stopped next to him.
She peered up at him intently through her Army-issued protective glasses. They were at least three sizes too big. “Is one ever really ready for something like this?” She didn’t look nervous but he heard the stress in her voice.
“Would it help you to know that I’m looking forward to this? This is the fun stuff I signed up for.” Not the killing parts. No, not those. But the force-on-force mock fights? That was the fun stuff.
“Fun? Are you serious?”
“Hey, Sarn’t Ike, check this out!” One of his old lieutenants, Miller, ran up from the entrance to one of the blown-up windowless buildings of the mock city. He lifted his shirt, showing a brilliant purple and red welt on his side.
“That shit’s going to hurt like hell tomorrow,” Reza said with a low whistle. “Did the medics check you out?”
“I’m not fu— Nah, I’m good,” Miller said, stopping himself once he realized there was an officer present. “Ma’am.” He saluted and Emily returned the courtesy.
Reza almost shook his head at the sharp perfection of her salute. She obviously hadn’t learned the half-assed officer salute that so many officers passed off as real customs and courtesies. He watched her expression change from horror to pure curiosity.
“Is that—”
“Some of the guys were screwing around, ma’am. Doesn’t hurt that bad.” Miller had turned about as red as the bruise on his side.
“How did that happen?” she asked, peering closer.
Miller glanced at Reza for permission and Reza nodded. Unless he was mistaken, that bruise had come from an epic case of fucking around and he didn’t mind Emily hearing that. She needed to see the fun side of the guys in addition to the fucked up stuff inside their heads. Maybe if he could get her to see them as people, she’d stop thinking of them as victims. Better to hurt in training than bleed in combat.
“Couple of the guys cornered me. I let my guard down and well…there you have the results.”
Reza grinned, feeling the warm comfort of familiarity slip around him as Miller ran back toward his boys. This, Reza knew. This was the only thing that kept him from crawling back into the bottle. A chance to lead his boys again.
He wasn’t in charge today. No, that day was still a long way off. But he wanted—no, he needed—to be back with guys like Foster and Miller. With captains like Teague.
“Just follow me and stay close. It might get a little loud.” Reza watched as she tried to get her bearings over the sounds and the movement and the chaos.
People who had never been to combat didn’t understand the chaos on the battlefield. It was oh so easy to second-guess the actions of the men and women on the ground when the videos captured everything but in the thick of the fight? Yeah, it was never as easy as the video games and armchair quarterbacks made it seem. There was too much smoke, too much yelling, far too many people.
One wrong choice and the squeeze of the trigger ended a life. It might be fun, what they did in the shoot house, but that fun ended the minute they rolled with real rounds in the chamber.
“A little loud?” She was shouting. “I’m not sure it can get any louder.”
“If you’re still talking to me in a few months, I’ll take you out on an op in the tunnels. You want to talk about loud.”
“Tunnels?”
“We do tunnel training because we never know when we have to go below the cities, or literally in tunnels.”
Her eyes widened slightly as though she was only just starting to grasp the variety of situations his boys faced. It was fascinating watching the scales fall from her eyes. She took everything in. Watched with a fascination that told him she wasn’t missing anything.
Her brows drew down in a slight frown. “What?” he asked.
“Nothing. You’re just… You’re different out here.” She tipped her chin at him. “More intense. You really do enjoy this stuff, don’t you?”
The strange feeling in his belly unfurled completely, spreading warmth wide through his blood. “There is nothing better than leading men in combat,” he said over the noise.
Nothing until he held that experience up next to the possibility of touching Emily again.
What would he give up for a few more minutes alone? To touch her the way he wanted, to feel her soften beneath his mouth and his fingers.
An explosion ripped through the noise and he ducked, more on instinct than anything else. When he looked over at her, her jaw had tightened in determination. And Reza fell a little harder.
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