Read Online Convicted (Entangled Ignite) by Dee Tenorio - Free Book Online

convince himself she was simply an intruder he put up with. Once he sat, he had to admit he wanted to be around her.
    Now he regretted it. Regretted every word he’d let himself say to her.
    “You have to talk to someone,” she replied, matter-of-factly. “Keeping this all inside is killing you.”
    No, it wasn’t. He was too dead to die. “I don’t have to do shit, you hear me?”
    “The whole world can hear you.” Her resolute stare dared him to look toward the park and find out if she was right.
    Well, she could wait for a cold day in hell before he’d do it.
    “I’m not going to judge you. You know that, don’t you?”
    Yes, she would. He did. Every goddamned day.
    She sighed as if she’d heard him. “Some days, I swear I’m getting through to you. Then things like this happen—”
    This being her asking about his time in ForceRecon/MARSOC. Tell me what it was like in Afghanistan was how she put her question. “These things wouldn’t happen if you’d stop pushing.”
    “Oh, like I was the one who pushed you on Saturday?”
    Fuck . He should have seen this coming. “I was doing my job.”
    “Your job is not to knock the shit out of the people you arrest!”
    No, it wasn’t. But no one could claim it didn’t work.
    “Did you even feel better after?”
    Better wasn’t the word. He could breathe after. Something he hadn’t been able to do when he got circled by five guys on Saturday, a fact she didn’t seem to be taking into account. Once that choking sense of the world closing in on him had set in, the panic went off and he was back in that last battlefield, fighting for his life while the sun burned everything to dust. Most of the time, he could keep that feeling at bay. Most of the time, he stayed in white-knuckled control. If she thought he enjoyed losing it, she was out of her damn mind.
    “I’m not saying you have to tell me the scary stuff,” she continued. “Shit, start with the weather.”
    Oh, sure, the easy stuff…
    “Anything. Little things that don’t matter. Because pretending the last ten years of your life didn’t happen sure as shit isn’t working for you!”
    He bristled, the muscles in his neck tight, his hands balled up under his folded arms. “Fifteen.”
    “What?” Her reply was still a loud yell, softened at the end only when she realized he wasn’t arguing with her.
    “Years. Fifteen years. Not ten.” His throat threatened to close on him, but the words managed to get out.
    She blinked—she couldn’t be any more surprised than he was—but got her bearings pretty quick. “You were a baby when you signed up.”
    He thought back, remembering himself as he’d walked with his father into the meeting with the recruiter. So proud of himself, that everything he’d been working for, dreaming of, was finally about to begin. Failure never even crossed his mind. “You couldn’t have told me that back then.”
    She smiled. “No one could tell me much of anything when I was eighteen, either.”
    “Not even your parole officer?”
    “Ha. Ha. The Ice Man joketh.” But she laughed and added slyly, “Not even him.”
    It was bizarre for him to feel the urge to smile at the memory. Feeling his father’s pride like a mantle as they shook hands before he left home for boot camp. Those times were untainted in his mind and as a result, he’d nearly forgotten about them. His mother’s care package of food for the bus trip from Seattle down to San Diego. Sandwiches. He closed his eyes, tension slipping the smallest bit from his shoulders. Two ham, one turkey. And a tin full of two dozen chocolate chip cookies for his sweet tooth.
    “That all seems like a million years ago.”
    She leaned back, sunlight peeking through the leaves above her. “Can I ask you a question, without you biting my head off? Nothing about your experiences, I promise.”
    He thought about it, weighing what she could possibly ask. “All right.”
    “What made you want to join the Marines? Why