Article 5 (Article 5 #1)(50)

I snorted, thinking of my mom telling the soldiers to get off our property.

“He got in some trouble.…” Chase waved his hand, indicating that this part of the story was inconsequential. “After that he was a real pain. Arguing with everything the instructor said. Refusing to follow orders. Kid couldn’t even fill out the correct paperwork for an SV-one.”

I frowned. I didn’t want Tucker to have rebelled against the MM, because that’s what I had done, and I didn’t want to have anything in common with that blond-haired, green-eyed coward. I motioned impatiently for Chase to continue.

“It wasn’t that he couldn’t get anything right. It was that he purposefully tried to get things wrong. He kept sneaking off base, then getting caught and thrown in the brig. Getting his pay docked, his rank stripped. He was sort of used to calling his own shots, and he had … uh … ties he couldn’t cut at home,” he added.

“Have to dedicate your life to the cause, right?” I feigned indifference but remembered with a pang what Rebecca had told me in the reformatory. How convenient for you, I thought bitterly, that your ties were so easy to sever.

“Yeah,” he looked mildly relieved. “It’s standard procedure to break off any previous relationships. Women are a distraction, temptations of the flesh and all that.” He laughed awkwardly.

An acidic taste crept up my throat. It seemed unthinkable that he would follow such a ridiculous rule, but his compliance made the transformation seem even more real. The thought that Chase had changed so quickly after being drafted made me feel like I’d never really known him at all.

I was beginning to think that maybe I’d gotten the wrong impression of Tucker, and that any hope I’d harbored for the return of my old Chase was about as likely as me going back home and finishing high school. But these thoughts felt just as wrong as what Chase was telling me now.

“So my CO—my commanding officer—made Tucker and me partners. He told me I couldn’t make rank until he passed all his courses.”

“And that’s what you wanted?” I spouted. “To move up?” I tried to picture Chase as MM leadership, calling the shots in an overhaul, charging people for Article violations. He couldn’t be that heartless, could he?

“Got to be good at something.” The sound of his voice was as foreign as the look on his face when he’d taken my mother away. I shivered.

“He didn’t go down without a fight. Fought me a few times at first. Then he started fighting everyone. He fought so much that the other guys harassed him just to see him lose it. Like it was funny.”

I tried to ignore the wave of pity I felt for Tucker.

“The officers even got into it. They started setting up matches for him after drills at the boxing ring on the base. Word spread. Lots of guys came to place bets. If they bet on Tucker, they usually won. That’s when our CO got it in his head that Tucker would be good leadership material.”

“How’s that?” I asked, confused. “I thought they hated him.”

He shrugged. “Maybe they did at first. But when he fought they started to see the soldier he could be. Vicious. Unstoppable. But still too much of a liability.”

Chase cleared his throat then and scowled, and I felt a wash of relief that he seemed to struggle with this concept. There was still some humanity inside of him.

“Our CO offered him a deal. If he would just dedicate himself, work hard, be the damn poster boy for the FBR, then they would stop the fights. They’d put him on the fast track to captain, which normally takes years, but they were going to make it happen in months if he just played nice.

“It was a double bind. The harder he pushed, the more they wanted him. The more he conformed, the more they wanted him. He couldn’t win. They started rigging the fights, to try to break him.…” He trailed off.

“How?” I asked.

“Nothing terrible,” he said, the color in his face rising. “Sometimes they’d make him run before a fight. Or wouldn’t let him eat that day. They started setting him up with bigger guys. He got knocked around a lot more and … it got worse. He quit trying. He took their deal. After that he didn’t really have anything to fight for.”

Nothing terrible. Right.

I chewed my lip, quietly making sense of the last few minutes. Feeling a fresh sense of grief for not one, but two good people.

“He’s jealous of you.”

“What?” Chase’s head shot up.

“Tucker’s jealous. You got out. You’re free. He doesn’t want you to have what he can’t.”

Chase considered this.

“What I don’t get,” I said slowly, “is why you’re jealous of him.”

“Why would I be jealous of him?” Chase blinked, taken aback.

“I don’t know. Maybe because all you wanted to do was move up, but he was the one chosen.”

“He paid for it.” Chase’s shoulders rose an inch.

“I know, that’s the part I don’t get,” I said. “It’s pretty sick to be jealous of someone that was practically tortured. Even if he did want to be a soldier.…”

“He didn’t!” Chase said with sudden vehemence, slamming his fist down on the table. My spine straightened.

Silence.