Page 47 of Drilled

“Nope. Feel free to order whatever,” she said with a wave of her hand.

“Brave of you,” I said.

“I trust you,” she answered, and for some reason, that made me feel proud. She leaned back, her hands on her thighs. “So Silas is a family guy then?” she asked, a small smile tugging at her lips.

“Yep. He has half a dozen siblings and enough nieces and nephews between them to fill a football stadium. That’s where he’s at now, actually. Birthday dinner,” I explained, finishing up the order placement.

“Have you met them?” she asked, sounding genuinely curious.

It was kind of odd to be speaking about this with a client. But who was I kidding? Any weirdness surrounding talking about our history was nothing compared to the complete obliteration of professionalism that was sleeping with said client.

I still had a knot in my gut about what happened in that truck. Crossing a line with Lane had been a massive breach of protocol, especially knowing about her and Dax. But right now... right, she was waiting for an answer. Focus, Wade.

“Uh, yeah. I have. Do you wanna move this to the couch? You look like you could do with a little warming by the fire,” I said and she chuckled.

“Is that your polite way of saying I look like a drowned rat?” she asked, voice teasing.

“No,” I stammered, clearing my throat. “That’s not…”

She was joking, of course. But my eyes caught on the outline of her body anyway. The snug, black turtleneck she was wearing accentuated the curve of her throat and rise of her chest. Her pants hugged the length of her legs, legs that were almost disproportionately long for her otherwise average height. She looked soft and expensive and sharp…all things that pulled me in like a magnet.

“I was kidding,” she clarified, her cheeks flushing and I looked away, embarrassed that she might’ve caught me looking.

“I know,” I said. “So is that a yes to the fire?”

“Sure,” she said, taking her glass from the counter and following me to the living room. She got herself comfy on the couch while I kneeled at the fireplace. I had to make do with what I had on me, layering a few tight cylinders of crumpled up newspaper beneath a small pyramid of dry cedar kindling, then striking a heavy steel lighter.

I adjusted the flue damper, waiting for the draft to catch before carefully nesting two split logs of kiln-dried ash on top.

The room was immediately filled with a steady, amber glow and the crisp scent of woodsmoke. I stepped back, happy with my work and when I turned around, Lane was waiting for me with a separate, thick blanket.

My throat bobbed.

Just like last time, she’d remembered the flare-up with my leg and tried to take care of it. I nodded at her, joining her on the opposite end of her sofa.

“So, you and Sy,” she said, propping an arm on the backrest and looking invested. “When did you guys meet?”

“Sy and I met at UIC after I got discharged,” I said, unable to stop a small smile of my own as I stared into the fire. “I was the angry vet in the back of a structural engineering class, and he was this giant, over-enthusiastic kid who brought a literal thermos of hot cocoa and scrap oak planks to a balsa-wood bridge project. Everyone else’s model snapped under twenty pounds. Sy’s held sixty before the professor ran out of weights. He gave me a massive, unprompted hug right there in the lab. I couldn't get rid of him after that. When I started at Cornerstone, he was my first call. And he brought Dax along to handle the wiring.”

Her grin widened. “So you guys have just always been the way you are now.”

“Depends on what you mean by that,” I said.

“Sy being the glue. You being the blueprint. And Dax…well, Dax being whatever the hell he is,” she said, sounding pensive. Then her eyes drifted to my leg. I followed her gaze.

“Thank you, by the way,” I said quietly. “For now and for the last time.”

She didn’t say anything at first. Then a soft, “You’re welcome, Bear.”

There was nothing but the crackle of the fire, and in that silence, I realized two very concerning, life-changing things. One: I wanted Lane to trust me enough to tell me about whatever happened with her mother. And two: for that to happen, I needed to prove that trustworthiness to her again. Knowing I did that sent a shot of straight dopamine to my brain. I slapped a hand on my leg.

“I never got to tell you how this happened, did I?” I said.

She shook her head. “I didn’t want to ask if you weren’t going to tell me on your own.”

“Helmand Province, 2012,” I said, resisting the urge to direct my eyes back to the fire. “My combat engineer unit was clearing an old mud-brick compound so a supply convoy could pass through safely. A load-bearing wall was completely shot, buckled at the base, and I was setting up structural jacks to stabilize the roof. That’s when a secondary IED went off behind the brickwork. It was a pressure-trap. The whole wall collapsed outward. I didn’t have time to run, so I threw myself over a nineteen-year-old private who was handing me tools. Took a chunk of jagged rebar right to the lower back and hip. The kid walked away with a concussion, but my spine hasn’t quite forgiven me on cold Chicago mornings.”

Her green eyes were dark in the meager firelight. She didn’t throw another joke or snarky retort my way. She didn’t look at me with pity, either. Instead she leaned forward and put a hand on my shoulder, her fingers gently brushing the tension-soaked muscle before sliding up to the nape of my neck.