a great friend. But that Zac dude is not your friend,” he states matter-of-factly. “If he’s hanging around, it’s ‘cause he wants to fuck you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Babe, you know I’m right.”
Feeling hot all of a sudden, I gather up my hair and sweep it to one side of my neck, closing my eyes as I fan the other side with my hand. “Don’t call me that.”
“What's wrong with ‘babe’, babe?”
When I open my eyes, his are molesting my neck. “It’s how you bikers address every woman you come in contact with. I hate it.”
“What would you rather me call you, then? Bae? Boo? Baby? Sugar? Peach? Browning? Yams?”
A small smile tugs at my lips as I dare to meet his wicked gaze. “Ley will do just fine.”
“Yeah, think I’ll call you ‘yams’.”
“Ley,” I stress.
“Sure, yams.”
Whatever. Makes no sense fighting with him, I’ll never win.
Hiking up on the other bar stool at the high table, I sweep my hair to the other side this time, fanning. “Jeez. Is it just me or has the temperature skyrocketed all of a sudden?”
“Nope. Just you,” he replies with a self-satisfied gleam. “Your body wants me, but you keep fighting it, so things are a little heated inside right now. Your desire for me and your restraint are dueling.”
“Seriously? Were you reading romance novels in Afghanistan or something?”
His face splits with a grin, and it’s like a scintillating starlight. “A shit ton. We read whatever books that were donated, and roughly eighty percent of those were romance novels.” A shrug. “You’d read a damn grocery list when you’re bored.”
“You get bored over there?”
He snorts. “Like you’d never believe. Got a lot of downtime when we didn’t have missions. The scale of military deployment goes between extreme boredom and extreme terror. It was kind of a struggle to find balance between the two.”
“Wow. That’s something I’ve never actually thought about.”
He studies me for a long beat, then, “Can I ask you something?”
I pause to think on this, not sure I want to say yes. Back when we used to talk a lot on the phone, he’d always start with that. Can I ask you something? And before I knew it, I’d be spilling my guts and catching feelings. I don’t want to catch feels for Scratch again. Not that the old ones have gone anywhere—they’re dull and abated now, under control. I can’t risk him breathing life back into them. It’s dangerous to feel anything for him.
His threat to beat down Isaac is proof that he’s still the same Scratch. And if he’s still the same Scratch, then he’s still a manslut.
I’m not about to get myself caught in that mess. Nope. Not happening.
Still, I reply, “Go ahead.”
“Your dad,” he begins, “did he have a crescent scar under his right eye?”
I go still. “How do you know that?”
Papà wasn’t a people person. He dedicated his life to his job and his family and didn't mix or mingle. Scratch couldn’t have known him...
He seems to be looking through me rather than at me when he says, “Not superstitious or anything, but I believe he came to me in a dream.”
Well, I believe in superstitions, and Papà also believed in our loved ones visiting us in dreams. He told me that mom dreamt him all the time. “Are you serious? When? How? What did he say?” I ask anxiously, eagerly.
Did Papà see all that was happening and gave him a message to pass on to me? Is he releasing me from the burdensome promise he made me make him?
Scratch merely shrugs. “Nothing.”
“What do you mean nothing?” I half-shout, borderline on anger. “The dead don’t visit you to just say nothing.”
But he’s still staring through me. “Sometimes when we’re deep inside enemy territory, we dig these holes for ourselves in the ground, to sleep. Like the dead. One night, maybe I was sleeping, maybe I wasn’t, but this man came and sat at the edge of my hole in the ground. A black-haired Hispanic with a crescent scar under his right eye, wearing a blue sweater with the word Mañana on the front. He just sat there and watched me. I asked him who he was and what he wanted but he never replied.”
“Oh my God,” I gasp, feeling both joy and sadness. “I bought him that sweater after he was diagnosed. He wore it to bed every night as a promise to us that he would still be alive mañana.”
He nods. “I remember thinking