Page 98 of Back To Our Beginning

She chuckled. “I won’t let the bedbugs bite.”

“Nut.” I kissed her again.

As I was turning off the light in her room, I heard her whisper. “Yeah, but I’m your nut.”

* * *

“That’s the captain for you,” Pete said. “He definitely understands family issues.”

“Yeah, Phillips is a good guy,” I agreed.

“So, are you thinking of leaving the Marines early?” Pete asked.

I was out in Maddie’s backyard. I’d weeded the whole thing before finally calling my best friend on my team. I knew he would ask the hard questions.

“I don’t want to. It’s not just because I want to wait for my twenty and early retirement. It’s also because I’m not ready to leave the team. You know?” I admitted. “But for her, I’d do anything.”

“Yeah, that’s how I feel about Darla,” Pete agreed. “She and my daughter have me wrapped around their little fingers.”

I laughed. “I knew that the day I came over and caught you wearing a tiara for Amy’s tea party.”

Pete started laughing, too. “I put up a mirror right beside the front door after that fiasco, so I could check for tiaras and the like. Also helps Darla makes one quick check to see how badly I’ve fucked up her lipstick.”

I heard the back door open and looked over my shoulder. Maddie was standing there, wearing one of my T-shirts, and probably just that pair of panties she’d slept in. “I’ve got to go, Maddie’s awake. It was good talking to you, Pete.”

“You, too.”

Maddie put her hand on my shoulder. “Was that your teammate? The man who you caught wearing a tiara?”

“The one and the same.”

“I loved that story.”

I got up off the ground from where I had finished weeding. “Yeah, Pete’s a good guy.”

“Wanna come in and eat some ice cream?” Her voice was laced with temptation.

I put my arm around her shoulders and hugged her close as we both walked back into the house. “Chunky Monkey?”

“What else? Somebody has been loading up my freezer with the stuff every time he goes to the supermarket.”

“Sounds like a smart man,” I teased. I steered her toward the couch. “Why don’t we sit down and talk first?”

“That sounds ominous.” Her brows pleated as she sat down.

I cuddled her close. “Nothing bad at all. I just wondered about your talk with Little Grandma. It seems to have done you a world of good.”

She looked up from where her head had been resting on my chest. “It did.” She let out a deep breath. “You know I’ve had a couple of hang-ups since you rescued me. I mean, it’s been kind of obvious.”

“Yeah, but you told me you weren’t sexually assaulted or touched that way…”

“No, I wasn’t,” she assured me. “But I’d gotten mixed up after the stuff with Grizz…”

“Okay, what stuff, honey?” I waited for her to continue. It was tough, but I kept myself relaxed with a calm look on my face. I knew I wasn’t going to like this.

She looked me straight in the eye. “Grizz threatened me. That he and Bishop would…” She looked down, then up again. “Then somehow seeing Lana doing…that with the men. It got mixed up in my head and I ended up feeling dirty.”

I didn’t quite understand how she ended up feeling dirty, but I definitely had friends who had PTSD, and I knew the mind was tricky. The ultimate trickster, in fact.