Cole: The Wounded Sons, Leah Sharelle [the reading list .TXT] 📗

The music was loud and the conversations were louder, and for a minute, I was regretting my choice to be here. My job gave me the peace and quiet I craved, alone in the jungle or desert; even the firefights didn’t feel like noise to me. My mind takes over then, calculating my next move, my focus on my team, and the ability to tune out all the unnecessary sounds around me. I do the same now, finding that place in my mind where nothing around me can penetrate and take me away from the silence I need when in situations like these.

Gabe calls it my tunnel vision, where I get my strength from to do the shit that I have to do in war to get the job done.

I call it my salvation, the only way for me to survive the harsh world where I live most of the time. Lately, I was having difficulty assimilating back into the civilian world … after losing Deke. This time the death in front of me wasn’t a nameless face, not an insurgent coming at me with a gun pointed my way. No chaos, no gunfire, no sounds of RPGs going off around me. This time it was different. This time it was Deke’s eyes haunting me, wild and pleading for me to save him, then rolling back in his head as his body lifted violently off the floor of the chopper with every electric shock to his bloodied chest.

Usually, the nightmares came in a hurry giving me hell, but they always left, allowing me to move on. Deke’s battered face wouldn’t leave, no matter how much alcohol I consumed. He was there, bones breaking under my palms as the light had faded out of him, leaving me with a nightmare so vivid nothing could rip it from my mind.

Until Oaklee.

I tried to talk myself into believing it had been the grog I inhaled that night, but in the cold light of day, I admit it was her soft hands, her sexy moans and her tight wet heat that pressed pause on my torment for those few short hours. I remembered the way she cuddled into my side, her nose pressed into my throat, and her small hand over my pec in a possessive gesture, but most of all, I remember sleeping without dreams of death.

The best sleep for years, and I woke up alone, the smell of sex and lilacs on my sheets and skin. For days I thought it was all in my imagination that I had finally lost the plot and heading for a medical discharge. Once it all fell into place, the guilt and remorse quickly kicked in. The look she gave me the next morning in the kitchen made sense now; she’d looked at me expectantly when she walked in. Her hair wet from a shower and smelling exactly like my room, not that I put two and two together, not even when her pretty, shy smile dropped, replaced with a pained, hurt expression. I had been so wrapped up in my own quandary of had I had sex or had it been a dream, I never took any notice when Oaklee excused herself from the kitchen table and took off like a scalded cat.

So much for your commando training, very slick Stephens.

Annoyed and frustrated, I followed Willow through the crowd of customers to a roped-off area where Steel kept reserved seats for the Club members who wanted to enjoy a drink but not necessarily the jostling for room. As a kid born into the Wounded Souls, I enjoyed the liberties that offered. Not all of us wore a patch of office like Shiloh, Zander and James did, but we had lifelong patch membership. I had my own Cut that I wore with pride when the occasion called for it—Club runs and charity events, I attended them if I was country side. I worked in my father’s custom shops, helped at the gun shop and took my turn pulling beers here or at the strip club. I grew up with a handful of part-time jobs just like any of the other kids, earned my pay and learned from the lessons our fathers dealt out.

Sitting with my back to the wall, Willow automatically slipped onto the other side of the booth so as not to obscure my line of sight. She was used to this with Dad and our uncles and didn’t comment on it.

“Did you speak to Monroe at the funeral?” Willow asked quietly, not looking at me rather at her hands on the table.

“Yeah, briefly. She isn’t taking it too well obviously, being Deke’s twin sister, she is feeling his loss more keenly than she might otherwise.” I hated seeing Monroe’s pain at her brother’s funeral. Her grief had been palpable, so visceral I felt it all the way down to my soul. Holding Monroe Williams as she cried for her brother and telling her what happened that night was one of the hardest things I had ever done. We rarely talked about our deployments and what went on, it wasn’t uncommon to pay our respects by talking about them when we lost someone. And telling the family the circumstances about the death was par for the course for the beginning of healing.

If only it was that easy for my team and me. Losing Deke had left a huge hole, one I was afraid couldn’t be filled. The trust between the whole team was fucking rare, not just comrades, but we were like brothers. We knew how each member worked, understood each other’s tells and moods. We were like a well-oiled machine, in tune with a deep respect. What our next step is, was anyone’s guess, the major gave Team FIVE leave for the next two months, the only commitments being some training at the base in Queenscliff