All for You (Paris Nights #1)(13)

Failure.

It slammed at him from every direction, boots in the ribs, driving Joss down into the mud. The adjudant grabbed him by the back of the head and shoved his face into that mud. “Abandonne!”

No. I won’t give up, you f*cking bastard.

He’d joined the Legion so he wouldn’t be a failure.

But if he failed, he could leave. Take back this stupid decision he had made, go back to a life in which failure now seemed by far the most comfortable option. He could go wait for Célie outside her bakery, and see her run across the street to him, with her face alight and something delicious held up in her hands. See that look on her face as she pressed her hands to his chest and said …

“Tu es nul!” the adjudant-chef shouted in his ear. Joss’s muscles had long since turned to limp spaghetti, his will crushed like an earthworm under weeks of abuse and no sleep and tasks no man could do. Somewhere in his head he knew they were just trying to break him, and he had to fight through it, but he still felt broken. “Worthless! Weak! De la merde! No good!”

God, the man sounded like his mother, whenever she exploded at his father after the job loss and the alcohol took him. The way she even, as the bitterness grew and Joss kept bringing home crappy grades, exploded at Joss. Not good enough! What’s wrong with you? You’re just like your father! You won’t even try! If Joss turned his head, he’d probably find that same lobster-red rage on the adjudant’s face.


“Give up!” the man screamed in his ear, spittle adding to mud. “Abandonne!”

Give up. After only one month. Give in. Go back to that girl who put her hands on his chest and said …

You can do anything.

Brown eyes, rich and true in a way this mud could never be. Thank God he hadn’t told her what he was going to do. Thank God she couldn’t see him like this, ground down to nothing, already failing.

Goal. Focus on the goal. Brown eyes, bright smile.

“Give up!” the adjudant-chef yelled, shoving him down again.

He could hit the instructor and then crawl home. Home to her. And he could eat, for God’s sake. Sleep ten years.

Be a failure.

Célie wouldn’t mind.

She’d settle. After all, she’d been so desperate for a man to look up to that she’d even looked up to him.

She wouldn’t know how he’d failed, because he’d made sure she couldn’t see it. Only he would know.

She’d take what he could manage, as he folded in on himself. She’d take less and less, as they grew older and he never made her dreams come true, as that light faded out of her eyes, as she stopped believing and turned into every other middle-aged woman in that HLM.

You can do anything.

She’d stop saying that.

Maybe she’d even stop saying it to herself in the mirror. Dull-eyed when she looked at herself, all the light gone out.

“Non.” He gasped it, in the first breath he could take free of mud.

“What did you say?” The hard grip on his neck shoved him down into the mud again.

He forced himself back up on arms that thought they had no strength left, struggling for breath. After five days with three hours sleep and one ration pack for food, he’d just finished a ten-mile race in combat gear, followed by an impossible obstacle course, and was now on his three hundredth push-up in the mud as punishment for having slid back down a mud-coated rope on a mud-slick incline before he made it to the top. He had an infection crawling up his right arm from a scratch that made even slight movements flame like fire and something wrenching his stomach inside out because he’d cracked and drunk water from a creek on yesterday’s twenty-mile march. He hated this bastard with everything in him—but he didn’t have much left. Why the hell am I doing this? I could quit. I could give up. I could go back.

You can do anything. Chin in the air, heart in her eyes.

“No.” Joss spat mud out of his mouth.

“Non?”

You can do anything. He braced himself out of the mud. Fire lanced through his arms. His stomach heaved again. Mud coated his face. “Non, mon chef.”

“Tu es s?r?”

Oh, f*ck, here came more. It always did, when they asked if a recruit was sure. But … I can do anything. I am not a failure. I will do this. “Oui, mon chef.”

“You think you can take it?” the man asked contemptuously.

Joss gritted his teeth. “I can take it.” Here it came. A blow, a kick, a shove into the mud. The order to climb to the top of a mountain barefoot. Anything.

The hard hand released his nape. The fifty-year-old career bastard who was their instructor stepped back, with a small moue on that merciless face. A maybe you’ll pass muster moue. “Then you’d better get up and get back in line.”

***

Well, she’d certainly made a fool of herself today, hadn’t she? Célie thought, her face pressed into Joss’s leg. Probably so traumatized him he’d abandon any plans of looking up any other old friends.

His thigh felt so good under her cheek, though. His arm over her back, his hand curving over her head. Warmth and strength and so much himness that it was all she could do not to turn her head toward his crotch, not to open her mouth there and shock-destroy all his defenses so that she could crawl into him, bury herself in his arms, get held close and hard.