Ricochet (Renegades #3)(66)
Author: Skye Jordan

When he pulled a lighter from his pocket, she said, “We don’t need a fire for five minutes.”

“I’ll smother it with sand.” He lit the paper and sat beside her, pulling off his own shoes and socks. “It’s all about the ambience.”

“Ambience? I never would have imagined that word was in your vocabulary.”

“I don’t blame you.” He grabbed the bottle of wine behind him and turned around with an opener and plastic cups.

Rachel’s heart took a few extra beats and tightened in her chest. “When did you do all this?”

“On my way back from Santa Ynez.”

She watched the paper catch and the flames lick up the sides of the wood, her throat growing tight. No one had ever done anything like this. Not even the man she’d planned to marry.

Nathan filled one of the small plastic cups halfway and handed it to her. Then filled the other and twisted the bottle into the sand at their feet. Mirroring her pose, knees up, arms resting there, he lifted his cup toward her. “To…” He paused, considered. “Spontaneity.”

She smiled and tapped her cup to his, then drank deeply. The red was lighter than she’d expected. Rich and fruity with a sultry taste that lingered in her mouth. “Wow, this is good.”

“Mmm,” he said around his own mouthful, his gaze on the horizon.

“That must have been some friend you saw today,” she murmured between sips.

Nathan’s mouth tipped up. He nodded without looking at her. “He is. He’s…” He shook his head, his expression turning serious again. “He’s…amazing. I’ve seen a lot of strong men in my life, always thought I was pretty tough, but after seeing him today…” He exhaled and lifted his brows. “I was…humbled.”

A rope twined around Rachel’s heart. She took another drink of wine and ended up draining her glass. He had fascinated her from that first moment in the bar, and the more she learned, the more she wanted to know. Yet she didn’t want to get so close she was hurt when he walked out of her life. And this…this…openness just teased her closer. The fact that he also had some deep wound that colored his world unearthed the nurturing streak she’d tried to bury.

“You, humbled. I can’t imagine. What would that look like?”

He picked up the wine and refilled her cup. “Looked a lot like me getting my ass kicked at hoops with a one-armed guy in a wheelchair.”

Oh, thank God for the wine. She took another deep drink. Her head finally started to feel light. “Damn. I would have paid to see that.”

Nathan laughed, twisted the wine bottle into the sand, and took a sip from his own cup. The fire crackled, and one of the sticks fell out of the teepee lineup.

“What happened to him?” she asked. When Nathan darted a sidelong glance at her, she lifted a shoulder. “You gave me the wine.”

His lips curved. “Right. Alcohol does tend to make you…direct.” He looked back to the surf and took another sip. “He got in the way of an IED. Lost both legs and one arm.”

Alarm clutched her chest. “In Afghanistan?”

He nodded, his mouth forming a tight straight line, eyes crinkled as he squinted at the sunset. “Fuckin’ farmer’s market in Kandahar.”

Kandahar. Oh God. His argument with Josh the night before rushed back at her.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Nathan had said. He’d been there. He’d been there when his friend had gotten blown up.

Alarm turned to horror as she thought about what kind of trauma that would cause in a psyche. What kind of scars it would leave on a soul.

So much about the man next to her suddenly made sense, and doubled the reasons to keep him at arm’s length and her desire to pull him closer.

“Just a normal call, you know?” he said, his voice quiet, expression contemplative. “Check out an IED threat in a vendor’s fruit stand. How dangerous could that be? Wasn’t like a guy with bombs strapped to his body in the middle of a playground. Wasn’t like a munitions building externally rigged with ballistic missiles or anything.”

He paused, and she could see his mind was somewhere else. His thoughts very far away, as if remembering those very real incidents, not making them up as examples.

“But we were still careful,” he continued. “Still went at it like we did every other call, as if every watermelon could have been rigged with land mines. But this time, they’d rigged a goat.”

He blew out a breath, lowered his head, and wiped his hand over his face. Rachel rested her chin on her knees so her mouth wouldn’t hang open.

“I’m sorry? Did you say they’d rigged a goat? Like, it had explosives wrapped around it?”

He shook his head. “No. Explosives were on the inside. Jesus, I thought I’d seen everything.”

Rachel finished the wine in her glass, her stomach tight and a surreal haze taking over her brain.

“He’s doing…” Ryker started. “I hate to say he’s doing great. I mean, he’s missing three limbs, has been through dozens of surgeries, his life altered forever in a way I can’t begin to comprehend.” He slanted her a look and added, “Mike, not the goat.”

Rachel burst out laughing, and Ryker’s mouth curved. Even though it lightened the moment, the wrongness of it cut her laughter short.

“I guess I just mean…after what he’s been through, he’s so positive. So optimistic. So…” Nathan gestured as if he were gathering the air in a ball, “I don’t know…together, I guess.”

Rachel got the impression he wanted to say so much more together than I am, and I’ve still got all my limbs. She wanted to touch him. Soothe him. Let him know that he wasn’t alone. But she took another drink of her wine instead. “How’d he do it?”

“He says it was his wife and son, Julie and Travis. They say guys with a girlfriend or spouse at home fare twice as well on deployment as guys without.”

That sounded reasonable. A man who knew he had someone to come home to would have something to live for, look forward to. A man who had someone to talk to outside the guys he was with day in and day out had an additional release valve for stress.

“You don’t agree?” she asked.

He shrugged and kept his gaze straight ahead. “Maybe for some.”

“Not for you.”

“Before I saw Mike today, I’d have said, no, not for me. I know how it feels to love someone, depend on someone, and have them leave you behind. My mother did it over and over until they finally took me away for good. I never thought I could live with myself knowing I was doing that. Don’t know if I could take the risks that I do every day if I was worried about someone else in the back of my mind.”