It's Always Been You (9 page)

Goddamn Ben Teague for bringing back those twisting, writhing memories.

“To hell with this,” she mumbled. She shuffled the files into her briefcase and headed out. Across post to her friend Emily’s office, where there was a sympathetic ear and a stash of emergency chocolate.

Emily looked up when Olivia knocked on the door. Her friend’s expression softened immediately.

“You look like you’re having a rough day,” Emily said by way of greeting.

“I could say the same to you. What happened to your hair?”

Emily’s hair was never messy. Emily’s cheeks flushed. “Reza stopped by,” she said, her words soft.

Olivia laughed and some of the anger and the hurt and the sadness that had been squeezing off the air in her lungs evaporated as she twisted the top on her water bottle. “Which doesn’t explain why your hair is a mess at three in the afternoo—oh, you dirty girl.”

Emily’s flush deepened. “He missed me.”

“Apparently.” The laugh felt good. Really good. Her eyes burned with tears. Too much in one day. She swiped her fingers beneath her eyes. “That’s hysterical. How did you manage to not get caught?”

Olivia removed the top of her water bottle and lifted it to her lips. Emily flicked the cap on and off her pen. “We were really quiet.”

Olivia choked on her drink and barely avoided snorting water out her nose. “I’m impressed. You’ve embraced your wild side. Did you do it in the office?”

Emily tried to lie but her eyes gave her away.

“I’m speechless,” Olivia said. “I’m so glad I came by. You’ve made my afternoon.”

“You’re welcome.” Emily cupped her chin in one palm. “Why are you having such a rough day?”

Olivia tipped her water bottle toward Emily. “That, m’dear, is a conversation to be had over wine. Or chocolate.”

Emily opened her top desk drawer and pulled out a box of Godiva truffles. “I keep these here just for you.”

“You’re a goddess. You know that, right?” Olivia took a dark ball from the container.

“Spill. What’s wrong? New job worse than you thought?”

“You have no idea. There’s so much. I could work all day every day and not get caught up because new work comes in faster than I can process the old stuff.”

“But that’s not what’s bothering you,” Emily said.

Olivia nibbled on the truffle and considered her words carefully.

“Ben Teague is the problem,” she said quietly. She was less angry than she’d been when she came in but Emily’s question brought all the emotions churning back to the surface. Olivia took a deep breath. “He’s sitting on a separation packet. He’s refusing to throw a kid out of the army.”

“And this matters because?”

“Because the battalion commander wants the bad soldiers cleaned up.”

“I know Ben. He’s not really a dishonest guy.” Emily raised both eyebrows. “So what’s really going on?”

“I—” Olivia took a deep breath. “Remember when we first met?”

“Yeah. You were talking to some full bird colonel in the hallway.”

Olivia smiled bitterly. “That colonel was my first battalion commander many, many moons ago.” She looked down at her hands, the memories from earlier rising up and threatening to tumble free. “I’d advised him to court-martial a sergeant. The sergeant had been arrested five times for assaulting his wife.” She looked up at her friend, her voice cracking. Again. Goddamn it, she was so tired of crying over things she couldn’t change. The chocolate had lost its flavor. It melted on her fingertips. “My commander opted not to court-martial him. He opted not to do anything. He didn’t want to ruin the sergeant’s career. A week later, the sergeant and his wife were dead.”

She hadn’t realized Emily had moved until her friend’s arms came around her shoulders. She thought about resisting, about pulling away, but instead she leaned. Just for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” Emily whispered.

“Me, too.” She sucked in a deep breath and reached for a tissue for the chocolate. She no longer wanted it. She didn’t want to talk about her father or the men who hadn’t believed her then but every single time one of these files turned up missing, it was like she was that sixteen-year-old girl, being ignored all over again. “So yeah, I get a little prickly when these guys hide packets and try to protect some of these men.”

“Why do you think Ben’s hiding this?”

Olivia looked down at the smeared mess in her hands. She sucked her thumb clean. The chocolate was bitter on her tongue. “I don’t know why he’s hiding the packet,” she admitted softly.

She hadn’t thought to ask.

“I’m going to say this because you’re my friend and I love you.”

Olivia squished the chocolate in the tissue. “But this is going to chafe, isn’t it?”

Emily lifted one shoulder apologetically, her grin sheepish. “I think you’re letting your past cloud this. These soldiers aren’t your responsibility to save or punish. You’re there to make the system work, just like I am.”

“Part of me knows that.” Olivia’s lungs tightened again with Emily’s words. It was suddenly so hard to breathe. “But what if there isn’t some altruistic motive? If he sits on this one, how many others will he sit on?”

“A very wise friend of mine told me once that feelings are real, they’re just not always true. So while your fear is real, it may not be justified. Why is he sitting on the packet?”

“Does it matter?”

“Maybe? Maybe he’s got a really good reason for sitting on it.” Emily stood to put the chocolate away. “Ben is good friends with Reza. And I’m confident that Reza would not have that man as a friend if he wasn’t trustworthy.”

She hated that her temper had clouded her vision so completely. She turned Emily’s comment over in her head but couldn’t come up with a reason for Ben to sit on the packet. “Being trustworthy in a firefight isn’t the same thing as doing the right thing back home,” Olivia said dryly.

Emily slid the box of chocolates back in her desk. “I get that. On a rational level, I get that, but we’re not talking about someone he went to church with every week.” She paused. “Combat forges some powerful bonds.”

“Reza taught you that,” Olivia said softly.

“Yeah. Among other things. He’s taught me a lot.”

Olivia smiled, desperately needing something to lighten the oppressive pressure in her chest. “Including how to have a quickie at lunch without getting caught.”

Emily choked and covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed. “That was sneaky,” she said.

“My job here is done.”

Later, Olivia sat in her car a long time, letting the conversation tumble over in her head, staring at the Stetson in her passenger’s seat. Emily was right. Olivia swiped at her eyes. The tightness in her chest eased back, enough that she could breathe again.

On a gut level, she knew it. But Ben hadn’t come clean with her. He could have told her the truth.

Then again, she hadn’t given him any reason to.

But if he lied to protect this soldier, what would happen when they got to the serious misconduct cases? To Escoberra and the others? Would Ben still fail to act?

How far would he go to protect the men under his command?

Ben was used to not sleeping well. He supposed it had started in Iraq, after their base had gotten blown all to hell and nearly taken Ben with it. But it had worsened with a vengeance when he’d been in the hospital after having his stomach stitched up and with the burns on his shoulder itching and driving him crazy. He’d drift into that foggy space between consciousness and unconsciousness, unsure whether he’d ever really fallen asleep.

He supposed it had been around the same time that he’d started to let things drift apart between him and Escoberra. He was too ashamed that he hadn’t been able to keep the commander from lighting Escoberra’s ass up over the attack. He’d given up sleeping much after that and developed a strong affection for caffeine.

But he’d also learned to appreciate the little bits of sleep he did get. So when the phone started ringing at the ass crack of dawn, it really ruined any chance of him actually sleeping.

He squinted at the blurred number.

“Sir, it’s First Sarn’t. We’ve got guys in Bell County jail.”

Ben sat up, cradling his head in his hand, and waited for the words to connect to actual thoughts in his brain. “Who?”

“Sarn’t Foster and Wookie.”

“Ah fuck.” Ben frowned, surprised to hear First Sarn’t call one of their boys by his nickname so soon after arriving to the unit. Of course, Wookie
was
exceptionally hairy. The kind of hairy where you could see the thick carpet outlined through a combat t-shirt.

Ben had once bet him a three-day pass that he wouldn’t wax his chest.

He’d waxed it. He’d bled while he did it, but he’d waxed it. At the time, Ben had been a lowly platoon leader who had not yet had his faith in the men around him destroyed by malfeasance.

And now Wookie was in jail. With Foster. Awesome.

Ben was going to kick both their asses. Foster’s especially.

“What’d they do?” he asked First Sarn’t.

“Public intox with a possibility of a bar fight still being considered. I talked to the arresting officer. Sounds like our boys were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Sorren sounded far too alert for this early in the morning.

Ben scrubbed his hand over his face. “Can we send someone to pick them up?”

“You sure about that?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because the battalion commander has a policy that if our boys go to jail, they’ll post their own bail.”

Ben stared into the darkness. “Were they actually arrested or are the police just holding them at the police station?”

“What else would they be doing at the police station?”

He scrubbed his hand over his face again. He was going to kill Foster. Damn it, Foster knew better than to do this shit. “The cops here sometimes just take our boys in without arresting them. Which means we need to send someone to go pick those two knuckleheads up before they
do
get arrested and hit the blotter.”

“Got it. But you’re going to need to call it in.”

“Sure thing, Top.” Ben clicked off the phone and cradled his head in his hands. He wanted to crawl into bed and wake up in the middle of the afternoon like he’d done when he was a lieutenant.

First Sarn’t expected him to follow the rules and call the incident with the police in to the battalion commander. Except that they hadn’t really been arrested so there really wasn’t anything to tell. Ben wasn’t about to wake the old man up for something that could easily wait two more hours.

It wasn’t as if they’d killed someone. Then the police would have actually arrested them and then they’d have had to do a lot more than just call the first sergeant.

Anger pulsed in his veins. He wanted to whip Foster’s sorry ass for being dumb enough to get into trouble. Damn it, Ben didn’t need this shit right now. There was another reason he didn’t want to be a commander. He didn’t want to have to bail his boys out of jail. He wasn’t cut out for responsibility. He looked at the phone. He probably should call the boss. But a little piece of his soul died at the thought.

It felt too much like narc’ing on his boys.

His to-do list ran through his head as he sat there and he debated heading into the gym or not. He still had to inventory all his property. He had to counsel his lieutenants on what he expected of them. All the administrative tasks that responsible commanders were supposed to do.

He didn’t want to be a good commander. He wanted to be a good friend. It was infinitely more important to him at that moment to take care of Escoberra and Zittoro and even Foster’s stupid ass.

He scrubbed his hand over his face. It was easier to think of the tasks than the people. His mother would tell him he was being weak. That he was there to accomplish the mission, not coddle soldiers.

She certainly hadn’t coddled him after his dad had died. And her coldness had left an emptiness in Ben that he’d given up trying to fill with anything other than the war and his boys. Because those things never let you down.

Everyone else always did.

Except that now Ben was in charge, so he had to be the guy that didn’t let people down.

And that just wasn’t how he was wired. He hated letting people down.

Ben sat up, frustrated that he couldn’t sleep. He was going to pay for this later. And by later, he meant about three in the afternoon when he’d want to curl up beneath his desk and hide from the world, and try to catch a fifteen-minute nap to sustain him for the rest of however long the day was.

Funny how he’d learned to nap over the years when he’d realized that insomnia was going to be a permanent companion.

He shuffled into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. It was going to be one of those days—the kind that required chewing on coffee beans straight up instead of just drinking coffee.

All he could do was get up and get after it.

Maybe a good workout before he faced the day would help. He glanced at his watch. He could get into the gym at the division headquarters. It was open twenty-four hours. Ben packed a bag.

He wasn’t going back to sleep. Might as well do something useful with the time.

* * *

Olivia made a habit of working out every morning. She tended toward cranky when she didn’t get in her morning run, a fact that more than one of her subordinates had pointed out on more than one occasion.

So when she got to her regular gym that morning and it was closed for maintenance, her temper sparked. She had a routine for a reason.

She didn’t want to work out in the division headquarters but it was the closest building to her new office and she could shower there and walk across the street to her office after, thereby avoiding the morning traffic jams.

She hoped it wasn’t busy. One of the reasons she preferred her usual gym was because she timed her morning workout so she’d be showering by the time everyone else was first arriving. She always managed to avoid the crowds that way. She didn’t enjoy pressing up against towel-draped bodies in the female locker room. It closed her in and threatened to suffocate her.

It was early but not so early that the division headquarters wasn’t already filling up. She walked to the back and headed into the locker room, changed and secured her bag in one of the lockers, then made her way toward the small but functional gym.

She checked her e-mail as she walked toward the gym. Music blasted in her ears from her iPod.

So it was a complete surprise to run into a solid wall of man.

She braced her hand on his chest to keep from stumbling.

And then looked up.

Ben. God but her life was such a cliché.

His fingers gripped her upper arm where she’d collided with him. His t-shirt was wet, his hair spiked with sweat. The smell of man and soap mingled in her senses and crashed over her.

Her eyes met his. A silent look passed between them. A silence that alternated between a fragile truce and a terrible anger. It was all there, thick and heavy.

She should move.

But neither one of them moved.

And then she felt it. A slight caress. The barest of gestures. His thumb brushed over her exposed upper arm.

Her breath caught in her throat. Her skin came alive beneath the strength and power in his grip. His lips parted and she could see the tiny lines at the edge of his mouth.

It was Ben who moved, releasing her arm and taking a step back.

And just like that, the spell was broken.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“No problem.” She had to work with him. She didn’t have to run around pissed off and angry. She could be civil despite their last argument. Right? “Is the gym busy?”

He ran his tongue over his teeth, making an irritated sound. “Just two guys lifting. Cardio is clear.”

“Thanks.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what interpersonal hostility feels like at five o’clock in the morning.
But she didn’t say that.

Ben moved out of the way and she pushed open the door to the gym, needing the workout now more than ever. She made a beeline for the stair stepper, her preferred torture method, and popped her headphones back into her ears. Cranking up whatever came on, she hit the start button and started climbing.

She was not going to spend the entire day pissed off. She refused. She was going to listen to music and find her happy place and go to work and do what the army paid her to do.

She was not going to fume over Ben Teague’s refusal to do his job. And she damn sure was not going to think about the feel of his skin on hers or the smell of his skin…

She took a deep breath and cranked up the speed on the StairMaster. If her brain was working overtime, it meant her legs were not.

She closed her eyes and let the music pulse over her. Her feet fell into step with the beat.

She climbed, leaving behind the anger. Leaving behind the frustration.

Leaving behind too many bad memories, dragged to the surface by Ben protecting his men.

She breathed deeply, forcing her legs to work harder. Forcing her body to comply.

She was never going to be weak again. She would never again fail to act.

She could have gone over her commander’s head all those years ago. Should have gotten the lawyers at division involved. She should have done
something
other than stand there when her commander had decided to protect his sergeant.

But she hadn’t. And a family was dead because she’d failed to act.

But Emily was right. All night, she’d wrestled with Emily’s words. Ben hadn’t said he wasn’t going to process the packet; he’d only said he wasn’t processing it right now. She could give Ben the benefit of the doubt. But she was not going to forget about that packet.

There were too many good soldiers doing the right thing that deserved an army focused on how to bring them home from war. They deserved leaders not distracted by bad seeds who took time, effort, and energy away from training for the next deployment.

They deserved officers worthy of being called leader.

The anger crept back in over her ineffectiveness, her inability to argue her case better. If she closed her eyes, she could still see Mrs. Hellman the day she’d come to battalion. The bruise blackened her left cheek. She’d made eye contact with Olivia and slipped her hand into the hand that had put the bruise there in the first place. Olivia knew the feeling so well.

She knew what it was to put your hand in your abuser’s and hope that your love was enough to make him change.

Even if Olivia had managed to get her commander to act, Mrs. Hellman had already decided to stay with her husband.

The futility of it burned. Olivia climbed harder, trying to outpace the demons from her past. She kept going even as the haunting echo of her failure stung behind her eyes.

She needed to stop before she imploded. She’d hit a wall before. When frustration and anger and hurt had overwhelmed her and she’d been unable to act.

She was terrified that if she stopped she’d never get started again. She hated that fear. Hated that weakness. She should be better than that.

But she wasn’t.

Her feet moved in time with the beat. Climbing. Climbing. Trying to leave the past behind. Trying to forget how she’d failed. Trying to stop blaming herself for someone else’s decisions.

The StairMaster slowed. She glanced down. Her workout was over.

But the blame, the residual flame of anger was still there.

And so was Ben Teague.

* * *

Ben was a firm believer in the magical powers of a hard workout to cure even the shittiest of bad days but considering this one hadn’t even started, he was more than a little shocked that Olivia’s day was as bad as her workout indicated.

Her skin was slick with sweat. Her hair clung to her face, her clothes to her body.

But it was the torment etched into her features that gave him pause.

He’d showered and started to leave the headquarters. But instead, he’d detoured down the corridor and headed back to the gym.

He’d planned on telling her why he hadn’t processed Zittoro’s packet. He didn’t want her telling the battalion commander. He didn’t want his boss breathing down his neck, micromanaging him, limiting his ability to command.

If he was going to do this, he was going to do it right. And that meant doing something good for his soldiers when he could.

But getting Zittoro his GI Bill benefits would only happen if Olivia didn’t tell the commander. And as much as he resented the hell out of her threatening to go over his head, he couldn’t discount the chance that she might actually listen to him if he tried to explain.

He didn’t have to do this. But there was some part of him that needed someone to acknowledge that this was the right thing to do. Ben was doing the best he could but he didn’t know how to do this.

He needed an anchor. Someone to make sure he didn’t lose his soul in this job fighting the demons.

But Olivia had her own demons. Watching her then, seeing the violent, haunted emotion on her features as she worked out, shutting down the world and lost in her own thoughts, something else pushed aside his selfish need. Concern.

Olivia Hale was running from some powerful memories.