Otherwise Occupied (Evan Arden 2)

“Normal,” Bridgett announced as she beamed at me like I had just won a fucking triathlon. “That’s good! Do you feel better?”

“I feel like I’ve been run over by a tank,” I replied honestly. I closed my eyes and tried to bury my head against the side of her body. I was tempted to go back to sleep, but the ache in my hip wasn’t going to let me.

As I lay there and contemplated the idea that I just might survive this shit after all, Bridgett’s fingers moved up my back and into my hair again. They traveled down my cheek and over

my jaw. There was several days’ worth of growth on my face, which I absolutely fucking hated.

“I should get a shower and shave,” I announced, but the actual idea of standing up to get to the bathroom was less appealing than the idea of having my body magically groom itself without having to move.

Someone should invent that.

Bridgett’s fingers ran the opposite way up my cheek, which made sounds like sandpaper over a two-by-four, and I grumbled again.

“I think it’s kind of hot.” Bridgett giggled.

“I hate having a scratchy face,” I replied. “No stubble in the Marines. It’s worse than needing a haircut.”

“You really seem to have liked being in the military,” Bridgett said.

“Yeah, I guess,” I replied with a slight shrug.

“So why did you leave?”

I should have ignored her or told her to just shut up, just like I did with anyone who asked me about that shit. Maybe it was because I still wasn’t in my right mind or something, but for some reason I opened up my mouth. I went against all my good sense and actually answered her question honestly.

“I was…discharged,” I told her. I closed my eyes and look a long breath through my nose. It was already more than most people knew, and I still had a strange impulse to tell her more.

“You didn’t want to leave,” she finally said softly.

I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement.

“Not really,” I said. “I had been in the desert a long time. They just…”

My chest rose and fell with another deep breath as my fingers tensed against her hip. Visions from my dreams came back into my head, causing the back of my neck to sweat.

“They just decided after what I had been through that I was no longer fit to serve.”

“I’m fine, sir.”

“No, son – I don’t think you are.”

“I’m a Marine,” I remind him. “I’m perfectly fine.”

A hand on my shoulder that is supposed to be comforting isn’t.

“No one expects you to just walk away from that unscathed, Evan. Consider it early retirement for a job well done.”

Fingers over my cheek again brought me back to the present. Another long, drawn-out pause ensued until Bridgett finally asked in a whisper I could barely hear, like she thought I might kill her for uttering the words.

“What did you go through?”

I felt her body still beside me. She didn’t quite go tense, but I could tell she was just waiting. She didn’t know what she was waiting for, but she knew there was more, and she was going to try to out-patience me, and I let her. I never should have – I never should have let her get as close as she did. I never should have said anything at all to her.

It could only end in tears.

Or blood.

“I was a POW,” I finally told her. “I was captured and held for a year and a half somewhere in the Middle East – Iraq, Afghanistan, or possibly both. I couldn’t really tell, and the people who did it weren’t exactly forthcoming with a lot of information. Once I was found and brought back to the States, the Colonel didn’t think I was fit for the military anymore.”