Rising (Anderson Special Ops #2) - Melody Anne Page 0,53
so it didn’t really hurt until later.”
Brackish slowed and exited the freeway, turning toward Mt. Rainier, a little under an hour away. When Erin saw the sign, she smiled.
“We’re going to the mountain aren’t we?” she asked, her worry wiped away as excitement took its place.
“You’ll soon find out,” he told her. “Now, tell me more about you.”
She sighed. “I always dreamed of growing up in a home with both parents and a handful of siblings. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted nine siblings, but I wanted noise and chaos, and family trips. We didn’t do a lot of that.”
“There was both good and bad with having so many siblings. One bad thing, I always dreamed of growing up with brand new clothes and shoes instead of hand-me-downs. My mom bought a lot of neutral clothes, so yes, I got hand-me-downs from my sisters. It sucked. I was grateful that my feet outgrew theirs pretty fast so my mom was left with no choice but to get me new shoes, but most of those came from Goodwill instead of a shoe store. But I understood why we had to be on a tight budget.”
“Were you resentful for having that many siblings?”
“No. You’d think I would’ve been, but I love my siblings. We’ve gone on with our lives and don’t often talk, but I see the strength, determination, and abilities of each one of them, and I can’t imagine this world without a single one of them in it.”
“You seem too good to be true,” Erin told him. “Most people would have some resentment at least.”
“It really doesn’t matter where you are in life, you’re guaranteed to find someone who has more than you, whether it’s more ability, more money, more charisma, more of anything. If you focus on what others have instead of focusing on what you can achieve, you’ll lose every single time,” he told her.
They neared the mountain as their conversation paused. Erin was obviously contemplating his words, while he was thinking of his past. There had been a lot of good and bad, and he was who he was now because of where he’d come from. He wouldn’t take any of it back.
The radio was playing quietly in the background and as their conversation paused Brackish could hear a Luke Combs song that was one of his favorites. He reached over and turned it up as his hands tapped on the steering wheel. He smiled over at Erin just as the chorus sounded inside the truck. Then he sang out loud to her.
There’s no stopping me once I get goin’
Put a can in my hand, man I’m wide ass open
The tick tock of that clock is like a time bomb
By half past ten I’m half past tipsy
At quarter to twelve, man I’ve done had plenty
The countdown’s on when the first beer hits me
Five, four, three, two, one, Too many
The song ended and Brackish turned down the radio, catching his breath from singing so hard and loud. Erin wore a grin as she chuckled.
“You really got into that one,” she said.
“I swear that song was written just for me,” he told her.
“So you were a wild child who drank too much?” she asked. “It doesn’t sound like you had time to be that way.”
“No, I was a disciplined child . . . until I went to college. Then I was certainly wild, and for a lot of years, yep, I did drink too much.”
“Do tell,” she said. They had no awkwardness together. From the second they were together till the moment they had to part, they could talk and talk. It felt natural and right. It was great. He could literally talk to this woman all day and night and still want to talk more. That was highly unusual for him.
“I don’t want to scare you away, but when I was in the Army I worked for a very select group, the US Army Intelligence Support Activity. I was free from the farm, and working far less hours than when I’d been at home, and I had a lot more time on my hands, which I found out was dangerous. You might’ve noticed I get a bit energetic and need to burn it off or I go crazy.”
“You do have a lot of energy,” she said with a chuckle.
“I can’t give details of missions, but I was assigned to an operation in Maracaibo, Venezuela, and as luck would have it, they have a bar or two with music,