Cockney: A Stepbrother Romance (38 page)

Except what if you can’t? What if you hit that one wall of your spirit inside they never got through; the wall to the part inside that keeps you being human when you’re faced with the horrifically
in
humane every single day? 

It’s just the three of us left now from the nine of us that found ourselves in the Taliban ambush. I swallow heavily and choke back the rage as I glance back at the first of the two Humvees we rolled in with; the one that hit the IED and lit up like the fucking Hindenburg before they even knew what happened. I look around us at the burning wreckage of the village. In war, bullets don’t discriminate between Taliban psychos trying to murder you and innocent villagers just trying to get the fuck out of the way, as much as you try to do so. I look at the bodies strewn across charred and cratered streets and in the smoldering ruins of what were homes, businesses…

…Or a school, like the one that burns quietly like a funeral pyre behind us. 

Logan catches my glance and shakes his head fiercely; “That isn’t what we signed up for, man.” He follows my eyes to the burning school; neither of knowing but both of us hoping to God it was empty; “I’m here to fight for my country, not watch bombs drop out of the sky onto fucking
schools
.” He spits, his face shaking.

“Drop out of the sky; right out of the sky.” Bryce is staring at the dirt in front of him and just rocking back and forth.

“So, what, we just walk away? Here in the middle of the fucking desert?”

Logan catches my eye and nods quietly; “The radio went out with that second IED hit; as far as they know back at base, the whole damn convoy got taken out.” He gives me a hard look; “This isn’t going to
stop
, Hudson.
Every
mission is going to be like this;
every mission
is going to be bad guys hiding behind
kids
and the guys back home hammering them with bombs anyways.”

“You’re talking about desertion of duties during wartime, Logan.” I say my words slowly; “They shoot you for that.”

“I’m going to shoot
myself
if I have to be part of something like
that!
“ Logan jabs his finger at the burning school across the shelled street at us, the flames still licking the burning Afghan air.

“And it’s only
desertion
if they think you
deserted
. If you’re dead, well…” He trails of and looks up at the mountains on the horizon. 

“Where the fuck would we go, man? What do we do, fucking
walk
back to the States?”

“I don’t think we
do
go back, Hud; ever.”

I swallow heavily as I let his words sink in; we’d
never
go home. I mean it’s not like there’s anything left for me back there
anyways.
It’s not like my job at the garage before I enlisted was my dream career, and the only family that still even remembers who I am is my drunk asshole Dad, and if he remembers who I am between sips from that bottle, I’d be fucking shocked. Really, at this point the only family I’ve got are these two guys right here; my de facto brothers. I don’t know much about either of their lives before the Marines either, but I’ve heard enough to know they’re not much different than me. 

“So, where?”

Logan’s face is grim; “Haul ass to the Chinese border, skip across and try and hook up with some of the Blackriver guys there.” He shrugs; “We’re not the first guys to do this, Hud, and the mercenary groups are always picking up guys with skills and a spotty background checks.”

I grimace; “You want to be
mercenaries
? Out of the frying pan into the fire?”

Logan’s laugh is hollow, and it ricochets sharply off the empty streets of the village; “Look around you, man; we’re already
in
the fucking fire!” 

Bryce looks up at Logan’s outburst, his eyes looking more focused for a moment as he nods; “We can’t go back, Hudson.”

Yeah yeah,
you can never go back
, as they say. Except this time, I know they’re right. I’m already a
completely
different man than I was before, but I’ll be damned if I let them take the rest of me; “So, that’s our only option?”

“We’re in hostile territory in an active war-zone, surrounded by countries that
hate
the United States and people that would kill each other to be the first to string us up or cut our fucking heads off,” Logan looks at me and his eyes soften for a second; “I don’t really see what other option we’ve got, man.”

Fuck it
; he’s right and we all know it. It’s go forward or go back, and we all know we can’t go back. I turn to Bryce and nod at his twisted ankle; “You ok to walk?”

He shrugs, yanks the morphine pen out of his med-pack and stabs himself in the thigh with it; “Now I am.” He grins.

Logan nods towards the pickup  parked next to burning sheep hut that looks relatively untouched; I’ll drive if you can navigate, Hud.”

Fuck, we’re really doing this.
“Any fucking idea where China is?”

“East?” He chuckles, winking at me; “Out of the frying pan, Hud, and out of the fire.”

*****

Months later though, it still feels like we’re very much in the fire. When we’re scraping by, making a living selling ourselves and our services and parts of our souls to whatever awful piece of shit will pay us the most, I know we all still feel the burn. When Logan goes a little crazy, and Bryce goes to the needle, and I decided to be just like my father and find peace in the bottom of a bottle, it sure as shit still feels like we’re in the fire. Maybe we can never go back, but we’ve also got no place left to go.

We feel those flames for more than a year like that; the hurt and the pain searing itself into us every single day. That is, until the day we meet William Archer, and
everything
changes.

P R E S E N T

I wake up to the sound of my apartment door slamming shut, and sit bolt upright.

I live alone. 

I’m out of bed before my head is even fully awake, and I grab the first deadly weapon I can find, which happens to be one of the heels I wore last night. With the fiercest face I can muster with my heart hammering in my chest, I fling open my bedroom door and scream bloody murder as I brandish the stiletto at the figure standing in my hallway shrugging of a winter jacket.

He turns and grins that cocky, arrogant smirk of his at me; “And a good morning to you too, Princess.”

Hudson?!

I freeze with the stiletto still brandished above my head, blinking as I stare at him trying to figure out just what the hell he's doing standing in my apartment and leering at me like that at 6:30 in the morning. 

"What- I mean,
how
-" I start to sputter, my mind still trying to piece together the reality him
being
here right now when I see his eyes dip for a moment, and his grin only gets bigger as his eyebrow arches along with his smirk. 

I am suddenly
keenly
aware of the fact that I'm standing in the hallway with him in nothing but a thin t-shirt and panties, and with a gasp, I'm dashing back into my room and slamming the door to the sound of his laughter. "What the
fuck
are you doing here?!" I shriek through the door as I press my forehead against the wood and groan to myself as my face burns bright with embarrassment; "How did you even get in?"

Hudson is still laughing, and I can hear him jangling something against the other side of the door that sounds like keys; “Donald gave me a set," He chuckles, pointedly ignoring the first part of my questions. I yank on some pajama pants and fling the door open again just as he marches past my door into the kitchen. My eyes narrow at his back, trying to will my cheeks to stop being so damned red.

"Aw, no battle-cry this time?" He turns and grins at me, his eyes twinkling; "I'm hurt."

"Yeah well, break into my place again and you
will
be hurt." I mutter, feeling my ears burn as he only chuckles at my empty threat and breezes past me into the kitchen.

I'm momentarily thrown off by suddenly realizing what he's wearing. He's not in a tux this time, and is instead curiously in running shorts and a black undershirt, despite the fact that it's freezing outside. I stare at him as he pokes his nose into my refrigerator, totally forgetting my train of thought as my eyes rove over the sleeves of tattoos running up his muscled and defined arms and across his chest and collarbone. I’ve seen them partially before I guess, but it’s only now seeing them in the daylight that I realize how beautiful they are. I recognize one image as the same Marine corp emblem that my father had inked onto his arm as well, but on Hudson the design is set into a twisting and complex background of other images and inked names.

I’m once again drawn to his shorts and I wrinkle my brow; ”Wait, what are you
wearing
?" 

He frowns; "What do
you
wear to the gym?"

"We're not
at
the gym, though."

He grins; "Yeah, but we will be after we eat."

"Excuse me?"

He sighs heavily and rolls his eyes as he pulls away from the fridge with a carton of Almond milk in his hands. My jaw drops as I watch him open it before he brings it to his lips and takes a swig.

"What are you
doing
?”

"Oh relax, cupcake, I don't have cooties," He makes a face and stares at the carton in his hand before turning to me and shaking his head; "
Almond
milk? What the hell kind of-"

"What, I'm lactose intolerant,” I grumble, brusquely pushing past him and trying to shove the fact that his arm just brushed against my side out of my head. I push the button on the espresso machine and turn back to him.

Hudson snorts; "Of
course
you are."

"
Remind me
why you're here again?" I say, feeling the temper rising in my voice. I'm taking the damn campaign money, and I'm even taking it knowing that I'm going to have to deal with Hudson as a direct consequence of that. But what I am
not
signing up for is him barging into my home and seeing me in my underwear at a 6:30 in the morning.

"I told you last night, to protect our investment." He swigs from the carton of almond milk again before I rip it out of his hands and throw it away. Hudson grins at me, as if laughing at my admittedly childish behavior. 

"But why
you
," I say, venom dripping from my words.

"You mean, besides having been a soldier?"

"How could I forget" I snap. Actually, I don't know why I say that. I mean I vaguely know he served just from hearing my father mention it once or twice, but it’s not like I’ve ever heard Hudson say anything about it. For a moment, my eyes are drawn back to the marine emblem on his bicep, and as my gaze looks higher, for the first time I notice a shiny looking scar the size of a quarter on his upper shoulder.

"Thanks, yeah I've been hitting the gym a lot recently." 

I shake my head and frown at him; "What?"

Hudson is smirking at me, and he leans forward towards me, one arm reaching past my side to hold himself up against the countertop. He's suddenly
very
close to me - closer than I want him to be - and in spite of every part of me trying to stop it, I'm suddenly remembering the last time he had me pressed against something.

"It's just that I saw you checking out my arms," He shrugs, looking so fucking arrogant and so fucking hot at the same time that it's make the gears in my head grind against each other.

Even though I can
feel
the heat from his body he's so close to me, and my gut instinct wants to grab him and pull him crushing against my body, instead, I narrow my eyes at him; "Do shit lines like that ever
work
?"

The smug look on his face drops for
just
a second; just long enough for me to know I've scored a hit against great unflappable, unshakable Hudson Banks.

His smirk is back in a second though, and he's grinning as he pulls back from me and turns back to the fridge; “Oh you have
no
idea, Red.”

I roll my eyes; "There's no reason for you to be here, you know." It's weird, wanting him to get the hell out of here but at the same time wanting him to stay so badly it hurts.