Page 30 (1/2)
CHAPTER ONE
Gray
“YOU SURE I CAN’T GIVE you a ride, Sgt Phillips?” the sixty-year-old woman I’d sat next to on the airplane asked for the fifth time
“No ma’am,” I replied promptly “Where can I put these for you?”
“Right here is just fine” She pointed to a luggage cart
“I’d be happy to carry theht be easy for her to e into her trunk by herself? Not happening
“My son is picking ”
I looked around skeptically but didn’t see anyone butthat looked like someone had puked flowers all over it
“What’s up,and then pulled
“Just ets to her car in one piece”
“We’re waiting for my son,” she chirped “And there he is now” Mrs Krelance fro up, we’d still be helping thee and placed it in the back of the four-door sedan Mrs Kre behind the smell of lilacs and baby powder
"Always the good Samaritan,” Bo joked as alked to his crackerjack box of a car
“You helped”
He just shook his head “Only because I’d have looked like a fool standing there while you hauled her luggage around”
“She looked frail,” I protested “Besides, you and I’ve both carried far h about the woman, let’s talk about your damn car Will my pack even fit in there?”
“Yes, princess, it will How come you didn’t ask Noah to pick you up if you hate my baby so much?” He hit a button and a sorry excuse for trunk space appeared at the rear of the vehicle
“I didn’t want toand pack into the trunk and wedged myself inside the even tinier interior
“True that Seriously, forty-five days? How'd you e that?"
"How do you think? I'm a lucky fuck"
"So The Honorable Dennis Phillips cah?"
"Guess so" My old man was on the House Aret special dispensation for inning of suh was helped by the fact I'd taken almost zero leave for the past six years and that I possessed a spotless record, but it was still a big deal Other Marines would have killed to have even half that ut I shifted in the seat, which was too narrow for my six-foot-one, two-hundred-and-five-pound fra small for you"
"I like 'eht" Bo stroked the leather dash of his sports car
"Given your dick is so tiny, it's no wonder you need 'ein then?"
"What?" He jerked his hand back and glared atabout AnnMarie and sex Besides, I saw you staring at my junk plenty while ere in A-stan"
"Because you whipped it out every five seconds"
"Can't help that ulation pants couldn't keep it in"
I shooklike a loon "Missed you, man"
"You too," Bo said, sone in a blink of an eye"
"I know" My grin dimmed a little This wasn't entirely a vacation My exact orders fro head out offor college He wanted randfather wanted me to stay in I felt a little like a sorry bone between two angry pit bulls
I had eight years under eant that I wasn’t sure I deserved, and so a career Marine was the right choice forour fa that evaluating everyone’s “knife hands” while running during physical training didn’t hold a lot of —and Dad had pounced
“There’s plenty of room for you outside the Corps,” he’d said
Then Pops had bristled “Corps was good enough fordoubt in the boy’s head where there was none before”
Match to kindling, the two had gotten into one of their heated argu two career Marines screa tothe table in tears andat me I’d wanted to sink under the tablecloth but since I’d started it, I sat there and took it like the man I was supposed to be
Since then I’d told Pops that my commite When Bo and Noah, two former Marines in my platoon, invited e coeds at the ready, I fled before the yelling could start again
“You really in a tizzy about whether to re-enlist?” Bo asked, surprise evident in his voice
“Marines don’t get into tizzies,” I scoffed “We get angry Also drunk Shitfaced Tired No tizzies, though”
“Which one are you?”
“Tired I’et off the pot”
“Is shitting staying in or getting out?”