Until the World Stops - L.A. Witt Page 0,11

and as soon as he was gone, I exhaled and rubbed my tired eyes. Chief and I had never liked each other, but up until the day I’d turned in the paperwork to have Tristan listed as my dependent, we’d just had mutual “not your biggest fan, but whatever” feelings. The instant he’d realized I’d married Tristan—or more to the point, that Tristan would now have access to most of the benefits the CO had yanked from him—the hostility between us had turned a lot more venomous and a lot less subtle. Which was super awesome when this was the fucker who’d be writing my evals until one of us transferred out of here.

And there was another drop in the bucket of resentment toward Tristan: marrying him was starting to tangibly hurt my career.

The brass wouldn’t say it out loud, but they didn’t like my arrangement with Tristan at all. That he was still getting military and VA benefits after the CO had explicitly taken them away from him? Oh, that did not go down well with the people who wanted Tristan to burn. It didn’t take a mind reader to pick up that they were pissed at me for defanging his punishment, and it didn’t take a psychic to guess that was going to hurt my chances of promotion. I was up for chief next year, and I had a feeling I was already persona non grata within the chief’s mess. I’d flown through the ranks to E-6, but I would be stunned as hell if I ever put on those E-7 anchors, because you didn’t just make chief by having solid evals and high exam scores. If you fucked over a chief, or a chief didn’t like you, well, you better get used to the idea of retiring as an E-6.

I didn’t think my plan through, did I? Fuck.

“What’s Chief’s deal with you two?” MA2 Colby asked suddenly.

I turned to her. “Hmm?”

“Chief.” She gestured at the door. “It’s like every time he comes near you, he has to make some snide comment about you and Tristan.”

With a dry laugh, I sat back in my chair again and propped my boots up on the desk journal. “He’s Chief. He’s always making snide comments about something. When he’s not going on and on about…I don’t know, whatever conspiracy he discovered the night before.’

Colby laughed. “Ugh. I’m serious—it has to be exhausting to live in that man’s head.”

“No kidding.”

She studied me. “So, snide comments from Chief aside, how are things with Tristan?” Her forehead was creased the same way it always was when she asked about my marriage. She was the only one who knew there was trouble in paradise, even if she didn’t know the whole story.

I sighed, rubbing my stiffening neck. “Well, people weren’t lying when they said marriage is hard.”

“So you’ve said.” She sipped from a can of Monster. “But is it getting better? Worse?”

“It’s…” I thought about it, wishing like hell I could tell her the whole truth. “I mean, it’s not like it was when he was still in the Navy. He doesn’t work for me anymore. We’re equals. That makes a pretty big difference.” Except it kind of didn’t, since he was more dependent on me than either of us had anticipated, especially lately. “But it’s an adjustment, I guess. And even after this long, I think we’re still adjusting.” Badly, I didn’t add. “It’s also kind of rough right now because his hours keep getting cut at work.”

Colby grimaced. “Oh, right. Because events are getting canceled?”

I nodded. “Which means money is tight. He pulls his weight around the house, so it’s not like he just sits around with his dick in his hand, but…yeah, money is tight.”

“But he’s contributing. My ex didn’t do shit at home because he worked.” She rolled her eyes. “Like I didn’t, you know?”

“Ugh. Tristan’s not like that. Thank God.” I could say a lot about him, but even with the dryer-as-laundry-basket thing and both of us forgetting to empty the dishwasher, I couldn’t deny that he was good about that side of things.

“It’s funny—I never imagined him being all domesticated like that, with you or anyone else.” She smiled fondly. “It’s actually kind of adorable.”

I chuckled. “Eh, he’s not so bad. He just doesn’t like people telling him what to do.”

“Did he maybe think about that when he enlisted?”

“I know, right? But he had his reasons for joining. I can’t blame him. The Navy wasn’t a good fit for