Fighting Redemption(70)

Fin tried returning the smile and faltered. “How am I going to do this without him?”





Four days later

Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan



The C130 Hercules circled Bagram Airbase in the dark of night. Weather conditions were shit. Turbulence was knocking the plane around wildly as they waited for clearance to land.

Last time this happened they got sent back to the Arabian peninsula to wait out another night. Ryan just wanted to get this deployment the hell under way. The sooner he could focus on something other than Fin the better.

The load masters turned, and giving the thumbs up, yelled, “We’re going in!”

Ryan exhaled, closing his eyes in relief as the talk of fifty troopers around him became loud and boisterous.

“Ryan?”

“Hmmm?”

Monty elbowed him in the ribs and waved a bottle of water in his face. “Drink?”

Ryan scratched at his head and yawned. “Yeah, thanks.”

“You alright, mate?” he asked as Ryan took the water from his outstretched hand.

Fuck, no. This would be his first tour without Jake and it burned. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

Monty assessed him carefully and lifted his chin. “Good.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Kyle called from two seats across as Ryan cracked the lid on his water bottle and took a sip. “Kendall doesn’t even know how to handle his own dick.”

Water spewed out Ryan’s nose, laughs ringing out as he choked. “Sonofabitch,” he rasped with watery eyes and wiped at his face. “You handle yours so much it’s worn down to a stub.”

Kyle responded with a wink, but it was no joke. Sexual frustration after months of deployment on the front line was a bitch. They would all be suffering soon enough. All Ryan had to do was close his eyes and remember the taste of Fin and his dick didn’t just twitch, it flooded so hard it was almost painful.

He cursed silently. There was no getting her out of his system, not even here, and that was dangerous. Afghanistan was a hot zone of IEDs and enemy fire. He couldn’t afford to lose focus.

“Alright, troopers,” Monty yelled. “Move out.”

Kyle clapped him on the back as they both stood, and Ryan met his eyes. They glimmered with a fierce eagerness to get outdoors and into the thick of the action. “Let’s go do what Jake would want us to do.”

Ryan gave a short nod and then grinned. “Let’s f*ck shit up.”

After waiting for everyone else to head out ahead of him, Ryan shifted the heavy pack onto his back and moved down the ramp of the Hercules. He took a deep breath as his feet hit the ground, taking the dry air into his lungs and feeling a bittersweet excitement climb his throat at what the next few months had in store.

The next day Ryan’s patrol was already shipping out into the frontier of Eastern Afghanistan. Monty gathered them together and issued detailed verbal orders for the reconnaissance mission. Ryan’s eyes slid towards the new man on their team with a heavy heart. Their squadron commander had personally selected Nathan for this patrol, showing a high level of trust in the man’s abilities. Ryan knew Nathan well enough. He was young and cocky, but that was off the field. He’d witnessed Nathan’s fitness levels first-hand, and his self-discipline, honour, and reliability as a team player were intense—he wasn’t a weak link.

When the operation was completed successfully, they returned to Bagram Airbase and settled into a familiar rhythm of training. It wasn’t until a little over two months after arriving in Afghanistan when Ryan’s deployment began a steady decline into a steaming pile of shit.

In the late afternoon, Ryan made his way to the computer room to check his emails. Mike and Julie corresponded regularly, along with some of Ryan’s friends, but it was seeing an email from Finlay Tanner in his inbox that had him breaking out in a cold sweat.

Ryan stared at the email, feeling it taunting him with feigned innocence. It was bolded with no subject line, giving no hint to its contents. His hand hovered over the mouse. Shit. Reading that email would be a crappy idea. He closed his eyes for a moment. How much longer did he think he could keep doing this to himself? Why couldn’t he be selfish and have her any which way, regardless of the cost? He wanted to fight everything that stood in the way of keeping her with him, but he would only lose, because he couldn’t fight himself.

“Did the big, bad soldiers tucker poor little Kendall out?”

Ryan’s fingers jolted on the mouse. Opening his eyes, he found Kyle smirking in the doorway. Turning to face the computer, he shut his email down in hurried, jerky movements and logged out. “I could do with some sleep,” Ryan replied as he got to his feet. “No one gets any rest bunking with you, *. You snore like a wounded elephant in heat.”


“How would you know what a wounded elephant in heat sounds like?”

“Easy. It sounds like you.”

Kyle tipped his chin towards the computer. “Heard from Fin?”

Ryan raised his brows. “Why do you ask that?”

“You just got that look on your face.”

“What look?”

“The look you get whenever you’re around her or when someone mentions her name. You know—the puppy eyes.”

“Puppy eyes!” Ryan shoved Kyle into the doorway as he walked through to leave. Being a rock solid bastard, Kyle barely budged an inch, which for some reason only irritated him further. Puppy eyes his f*cking ass. “Fuck off, Brooks. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”