“Little Miss JTT?” Gray snorted. “Is that really the best you can do?”
“What?” Adam shrugged. “She doesn’t have a name.”
“Yeah,” Grant said, coming to Adam’s defense. “Little Miss JTT seems fitting, considering she’s about to join a merry band of black ops buttfucks.”
“I like it,” Cody piped in. “We should get it printed on a onesie.”
“What the fuck is a onesie?” Gray asked.
CHAPTERNINE
Out of morphine,Jamie had been eating his way through the pain meds in his medical kit like candy from a PEZ dispenser. Unfortunately, they barely made a dent in his constant aches and pains, and by Saturday afternoon, his mood had gone from bad to worse.
“You hungry?” Samuel asked, straightening after another fucking round of incision care and cleaning. Hands on his waist, he stretched his back before collecting the litter.
“Starving.” With a frown, Jamie threw the bed sheet over his lower half. He didn’t want to look at his knee anymore. Didn’t want to think about what his injury meant or what his future held.
Food.
After two days of water, half a grape Gatorade from the vending machine located in the hotel’s office, and a couple of Life Savers, he wanted a big fat juicy steak. A plate of fries bigger than his head. And a glass of rum to wash it all down with.
“Me too,” Samuel replied despite the three empty cans of Pringle chips standing sentry next to the old box TV on the sagging dresser. “Maybe there’s a pizza joint nearby?”
Jamie cocked a brow. “As my surgeon, shouldn’t you be discouraging the consumption of fatty foods so soon after removing a huge ass chunk of my liver?”
“It was barely a quarter off one lobe, plus it’s been over thirty-six hours since your surgery.”
“And?”
“And you should be eating by now. Doesn’t matter what. If it’s food. It’s fuel.”
“Is this your way of saying you want a greasy wheel?”
Samuel shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
“Since when do you eat pizza?” he huffed, surprised by his father’s choice. He used to be a lot more careful about what he ate, forever cautious about fueling the machine with therightkinds of food.
“A lot has changed in the last year.”
Yeah. No shit. Thanks to Jonas Johnson, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, the JTT had gone from running a government-sanctioned black ops mission to being a group of wanted renegades on the run from every federal enforcement agency out there.
His estranged wife had gotten pregnant after having an affair, sent him divorce papers, then been killed in a domestic terrorism event nobody saw coming. A senseless tragedy. Not the first in Boston, and unless their elected officials did something about it, not the last.
And his heartless father—the impenetrable, stoical, no time for family man—had done a complete one-eighty after a career-ending Parkinson’s diagnosis. Close to resembling a decent human being with plans to move with his wife to England to teach medicine at London’s Imperial College, Samuel wasn’t the same self-centered person he used to be.
What the actual fuck?
Jamie had no room left to process anything more. He was full and empty at the same time. Angry and exhausted. In pain, mentally and physically, and all he wanted to do was shut down. Disappear. Fall off the radar. Nurse his bad knee and his black mood somewhere else.
Somewhere warm. With a decent rum.
“Heads up.” Samuel tossed one of the burner phones toward the bed, and he caught it two-handed. “I’m going to shower. You call for a pizza delivery, and I’ll answer the door when it arrives.” Still wearing his hospital scrubs, he looked tired, rumpled, and completely out of place as he rummaged through a bunch of restaurant menus in the desk drawer. “Here’s one.” He crossed the small space between them and handed off the flyer. “Sal’s Pizza. I’ll take anything with meat on it.”
“Pineapple?” he asked, curious if his father had gone completely insane or if there was any hope for a relationship between them at all.
“Hell no.” Samuel scratched his fingers through his beard stubble before he turned away. “Pineapple on pizza is an offense against humanity.”
On the same side of the great pizza debate, the corner of his lip lifted. Maybe there was a chance for reconciliation after all? “You’ll find some clean clothes in my go bag,” he said without raising his gaze from the menu. “And a travel kit if you want to shave.”
