“If anything gets close enough to pose a danger, I’ll fill it full of holes, okay?”He brushed his fingertips up and down her arm in what he hoped was a comforting gesture.“Now relax and get some sleep.It’ll be daylight before you know it.”
“I don’t know if I can.I’m wide awake now.”
“Try counting sheep.”
She snickered softly.“Sheep?Seriously?Who even does that?”
“I have no idea.It was just a suggestion.What do you normally do to get sleepy?”
A few more suggestions sprang to mind, most of them crude and highly inappropriate, but he had enough sense to keep them to himself.
“Most of the time, I read a book or watch TV, but those aren’t options out here.”She blew out an audible breath.“Maybe if you talk, it’ll help calm my nerves.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.”She paused as if thinking it over.“How about a story from your time in the Army?”
“Those would give you nightmares.”Well, most of them would.The rest, like his suggestions, were highly inappropriate.
She shifted position, and even though he couldn’t see her in the darkness, he could feel her eyes on him.
“In that case, why did you join the military?”she asked.“Was it born from a deep-seated desire to be all you can be?”
There were so many bullshit answers he could give her, ones she’d likely accept without question.That he’d felt a desire to serve his country, a need for purpose and belonging.That he’d yearned for adventure within a structured environment, while learning valuable skills he could use in the civilian world.And yeah, he supposed those were true to a certain degree, but they hadn’t been the deciding factor.
And because he couldn’t bring himself to lie to her, he offered the unvarnished truth.“I didn’t have much choice after my father disowned me.”
There were a few long moments of awkward silence before she finally spoke.“Okay, I wasn’t expecting that.I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about.It’s not like you had anything to do with it.”
“Yeah, but still…I’m sorry.Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, not really.”But his mouth refused to shut the fuck up.Guess she was going to get a story after all.“My father was—still is—known as the Debt King of Kansas.He operates one of the largest debt collection services in the Midwest.It made him a millionaire many times over.He expected me to follow in his footsteps and take over the business when he retired.”
“I gather that wasn’t what you wanted.”
“Nope.”He stared at a tiny gap in the roof of their shelter, where a sliver of the moon was visible.“When I was old enough, he gave me an entry-level job at the office.You know, scanning documents, running errands, stuff like that.He wanted me to work my way up the ladder like he did when he was my age.I didn’t have a problem with that…never had a problem with working my ass off.That part of the job I enjoyed.”
“What happened to change your mind?”she asked.
Navarre mentally cracked his knuckles.“The old man promoted me to account collections during the summer before I started my junior year of college.That opened my eyes to what the business was all about.Up to that point, I assumed they just went after deadbeats who didn’t want to pay their bills.And yeah, there were people who fell into that category, but there was more to it than that.A lot of them were just regular, decent, everyday people who’d fallen on hard times and were struggling to make ends meet.But with the sky-high interest and fees on top of fees, the hole they were in kept getting deeper and deeper until there was no way out.
“It didn’t take long for me to realize I didn’t want to earn a living by making other people’s lives miserable.I tried, I really did, because I knew it was expected of me.Hell, I was even a finance major my first two years of college.Made the dean’s list and everything.But I couldn’t imagine doing that kind of work for the rest of my life.I would have ended up hating myself.I wanted to forge my own path, pursue my own interests.”
She rested her chin on his chest.“Doing what?”
“Back then, I wanted to be an engineer.I’ve always enjoyed building things, or figuring out what makes them tick.”Nowadays, he scratched that itch by restoring classic cars.He enjoyed the work, and the finished product gave him a sense of accomplishment.He could probably earn a decent living that way, but he enjoyed private security even more.“About a week before the fall semester of my junior year, I finally mustered the courage to tell the old man that I didn’t want to work for him anymore.”
“I take it that didn’t go over well.”
“That’s a diplomatic way to describe it.”He let out a humorless laugh as the grand finale unfolded in his mind.“My father isn’t the kind of man who takes ‘no’ lightly.Things turned ugly fast.Long story short, he kicked me out of the house and cut me off financially.He said if I was so determined to forge my own path, I’d be doing it without his help.So I left with my car, the clothes on my back, and a few hundred bucks—nowhere near enough to pay for tuition and books.I had to drop all my classes that semester.Eventually, I ran out of couches to crash on and ended up sleeping in my car.I was flat broke and I couldn’t get a good job because my only work experience was at my father’s company, and he refused to give me a reference.The way I saw it, the military was my best option.”
Looking back, he’d made the right decision.God only knew what would have happened to him if he hadn’t joined the Army.Probably stuck in some dead-end job, barely making ends meet, too exhausted from working nonstop to realize just how shitty his life had become.Now he had a career, stability.Friends.A life he’d built from the ground up; that he’d fight to the death to defend.
“Going from rich boy to Army grunt had to be a bit of a culture shock,” Sloane said.
“I was too pissed off to really notice.I was so damn determined to succeed at all costs, to prove I could do it on my own.I think it’s what got me through boot camp.”It was there that he’d discovered a natural ability with a rifle, which placed him on the path to eventually becoming a sniper.
