Ricochet (Renegades #3)(48)
Author: Skye Jordan

Ryker shook his head hard, rattling the memory from his brain, clawing for sanity. The blood coating Carmello vanished. The hopelessness in his voice faded. But pain throbbed at the center of Ryker’s body and would have taken him to his knees if something hadn’t been holding him up.

“Now it’s all PT.” Chappie’s voice seemed gruesomely enthusiastic to Ryker. “And he can do that at the local VA in Santa Barbara. I know he’d like to see you, man. I’ll text you his address. And when you see him, tell him a few missing limbs ain’t getting him out of that one-on-one he challenged me to before the blast. I’ll be up there the first day of my next leave to kick his sorry ass.”

“You bet.” He pushed words out, hoping Chappie mistook the gravelly sound of his voice for the distant connection. “I’ll do that.”

“Dune says if you scratch his truck, he’ll break your face. And if you mess up his apartment…”

Ryker only caught pieces of the rest of the idle threats before he told Chappie to tell Dune where he could shove them.

Just before he disconnected, Ryker said, “Love you, man. Stay safe.”

“Love you, too, Sarg. Get your ass back here soon.”

Ryker disconnected and heaved a breath out of his tight lungs. But Chappie’s last words reminded Ryker where he was. Which reminded him there was no alcohol nearby to drown the pain. And that he wasn’t alone.

He forced his eyes open, but everything was blurry. Instructed his hand to slide his phone back into his pocket, but his arm wouldn’t move. And if this tripod slipped, Ryker would end up face-first in the dirt.

“I think we had a sudden heat wave.” Rachel’s voice sounded decadently sweet to his ears. Ryker didn’t even try to make sense of what she said. Just the fact that she was close gave him strength to keep himself from shattering. “Or maybe that climb just caught up with me.” The gurgle of water caught his ear, then the shift of her voice as she grew closer. “I’m not feeling so great. I’m hot and nauseous, and you don’t look much better, so drink. You’ve still gotta get us off this hill.”

She pried the phone from his hand, not saying anything about the way his fingers clung to it as if it were a life preserver and he’d been lost at sea for seventy-two hours, then replaced it with an uncapped bottle of water.

After she stuffed the phone into his pocket, she reached up and put something cold on the back of his neck. Cold and wet. Water trickled down his back, and relief cleared his mind like a breeze blowing away storm clouds. When he didn’t drink on his own, she gently lifted his hand holding the water toward his mouth, releasing it when he took over and tipped the water back, guzzling the entire bottle in one long drink, and wiped the cool, wet rag around his shoulders and down his chest.

In those few moments, Ryker gathered all the memories and most of the pain and shoved them back into the hole they’d crept from at the sound of Chappie’s voice. He finished the water, dropped it on the ground, and lowered his head for a moment.

Rachel stood close. Quiet, but strong. She was a doer. A fixer. A mediator. He’d seen it the first day in the trailer. Her relationships with the others screamed nurturer. By the way she’d acted in bed, he knew she was a giver. And by the tortured tone of her voice when she’d talked with her father over the phone, the way she’d been hurt by her sister, Ryker was pretty sure this “no strings” rule she’d put into place was out of protection, not preference.

Which was another reason, he told himself, he should leave her the hell alone.

But then she took that last step in and slipped her body beneath his in a way that urged him to lean on her instead of the tripod. She wrapped one arm around his waist, raised one to his face and stroked his cheek before running her fingers through his hair.

Her body was warm and stable and fit beneath him like the perfect crutch. He let her pull his head down until his forehead pressed against her shoulder. Let her just hold him. Let her just keep scraping her fingers against his scalp until he thought he could fall asleep on his feet with the sweet relief.

“Can we go back?” she asked. “I don’t feel good.”

“I know what you’re doing.” His voice was low and rough, filled with the remnants of pain still ripping at his insides. “You don’t have to pretend to be sick to save my ego.” He slipped his free arm around her waist and pulled her up against him. Heaven. “But thanks for the thought. Give me just a minute, okay?”

She relaxed into his hold, and her body molded to his. Christ, she was like straight sugar directly into his vein. She tugged on his hair, urging him to lift his head, and when he finally met her eyes, the concern there, true and deep and so sincere, reopened the ache inside him, but in a whole different way.

“Are you…okay?” she asked.

He brushed her hair aside, told himself to nod, but his head didn’t obey. “That’s…highly debatable.”

“Do you always tell your guys you love them?”

“Yeah. It’s the only unit I’ve ever done it with. You just never know—” His voice caught.

She searched his eyes so diligently, he would have found it funny in a better frame of mind. He braced himself for the questions he could see she wanted to ask, answers she needed. But she just brought her hand back to his face and murmured, “I wish…I could…” With an exhale, she pressed her lips together and gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. “Someone told me recently that it’s good to talk about stuff. I’m…an okay listener.”

“Just okay?”

“Yeah, just okay.” The corner of her mouth quivered in an almost smile. “I kinda tend to want to…um…fix things for people.”

He huffed a breath that was probably supposed to be a laugh, but he hurt too much to laugh. “You are so fucking beautiful. You know that?”

“No,” she said softly, stoically. “I’m very average, and I’m okay with that. You met the really beautiful ones last night. And you’ll meet more beautiful ones in a few days.” A little smile lifted her lips but didn’t make it to her eyes. “And just wait till those speed bunnies see you.”

“There is all kinds of beauty,” he said. “And some of those women may have flash, but not all guys like flash. And there’s a lot more to beauty than what’s on the surface.” Split-second images of the many gorgeous women he recovered from an Afghan nightclub after a bombing—deformed, maimed, scorched—popped into his head, but he instantly blocked them. “Which is good, because that all goes away eventually. Sometimes even sooner.” He lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. “And I can find bunnies anywhere. But there’s only one Rachel Hart.”