The Charlotte Chronicles (Jackson Boys 1)

Out loud, I answer, “A guy on another team was gay but pretty far in the closet. Even with the new policies, almost no one admits their sexual orientation. And in the Special Forces, we’re all aggressively heterosexual.” I correct myself, “Or at least we pretend we are. When I wasn’t hitting on all the available women on leave, rumors started spinning. Never bothered me, but it led this guy to develop some ideas. He came on to me. I turned him down and shared a little about you.”

“You sound mad.” Little lines appear on her forehead. She’s probably concerned because her friend is gay.

I hurry to assure her that who a guy enjoys fucking makes zero difference to me. “What I was pissed off about was that this guy thought I was going to rat him out to his teammates and so he retired. Last I heard he was working for a contractor and stationed somewhere in the Middle East. I’ve got no problem with one of my teammates being gay because who they spend time with says fuck all about their ability to handle a weapon and think on their feet. If he’s a good teammate, a good brother, what he does in his bedroom is none of my goddamn business.”

“It’s too bad that he left then.” She shifts again, and my cock slides between her cheeks. Fuck, that feels good.

“Um, yeah.” What we were talking about?

She giggles and shifts again. The little minx knows exactly what she’s doing to me. I pump between her ass cheeks, and she pushes back against me. Just when I think we might be getting somewhere, she starts talking.

“I think Nick was my worst client.”

Muffling a sigh, I say incredulously, “Nick? How come you moved to Dallas with him anyway?”

“Because he needed me.” Her shrug implies the answer was simple, but Nick wanted her to come to move to South Bend when he was at Notre Dame and she refused. “I didn’t realize how truly lonely he was in college. Because he has so many people around him, it’s easy to scoff at that notion, but when these high school boys go off to college they get as homesick as anyone. There is the physical stress of bulking up and realizing that everyone on your team is awesome, not just you. The competition is fierce, and the pressure to win placed an immediate strain on him. I never really understood it until I saw what a mess he was leading up to the draft. So after the draft I went to down to help him out, run errands for him, and try to make it so the only thing he needed to worry about was getting to training camp at the right time.” She turns and rubs her cheek against my chest in a kittenish fashion. The small caress is enough to cause me to catch my breath. “He abused me though, and that’s why he’s my worst client.”

“How so?”

“He’d either use me as a shield or a voucher. He’d tell girls he wanted to avoid he was taken and then put his arm around me, or he’d say, ‘See, I’m with this nice girl Charlie, so I’m nice too.’”

I laugh hard because I can totally see Nick doing that. “So he calls you Charlie?”

“A teammate of his started calling me that, and it just caught on.” She lifts a hand and watches the water drip down. She does it again and again as if the answer to some terrible question can be seen in the drops. Finally she asks, “Why didn’t you ever tell me you wanted to join the Navy?”

My erection wilts at her obvious dismay, at the remembered pain, at the distrust. I need the Men in Black pen that erases memories.

“I was scared.” And weak, but I suppose that’s implied. “I figured if I told you and you objected I wouldn’t go. I wanted to do something with my life, Charlotte, and not live off being the son of Noah Jackson. I didn’t want to be one of those trust fund kids who got a job because his father called in some connections. Whenever Gray would visit, our dads would reminisce about their time in the Marines, and it just sounded like something I could do. It seemed like I could be part of something bigger than myself.”

A sigh big enough to lift her out of my arms runs through her body, as if she’s experiencing the hurt I inflicted on her all those years ago.

“I was resentful. I wanted to blame our separation on anything but me or you. Then I wanted to believe that our letters would see us through. When your mom came to me and showed me the pile of letters that she had exchanged with your dad, I conjured up this fantasy that the ink and paper would bind us together.”