It's Always Been You

by Jessica Scott

  She entered the quiet house, turning the radio on to a quiet country song as she left her files in the kitchen. She turned on the shower, letting steam fog up the mirror.

  She didn’t look down at her body as she stripped off the weight of the day and left her uniform in a pile near the sink. She didn’t look in the mirror.

  She didn’t need to see the scars on her body to know they were there. They would always be there, a constant reminder that people would always let you down.

  The scars tracing over her ribs no longer ached but the memories threatened to morph into something darker as she thought of Escoberra and his daughter.

  Hailey thought she wanted her father home. What she needed, though, was an advocate: someone to stand for her when she couldn’t stand for herself. Olivia breathed deeply as painful memories crashed over her, her scars throbbing as she saw again that lost little girl standing in the flashing lights of the ambulance.

  No one had stood up for Olivia when her own father had tripped the final line.

  No one had believed her when she’d first gone to the police. The officer had told her she shouldn’t put marks on herself like that. She hadn’t gone back a second time.

  She should have been happy when her father had finally left her alone. But she wasn’t.

  Because it meant that she was alone.

  Always alone.

  He’d loved her. She knew that, just as Hailey knew her dad loved her.

  But love wasn’t enough when the rage exploded.

  She stepped into the shower, letting the heat sluice over her body, washing the memories from her flesh.

  The house was silent when she stepped out of the shower some time later.

  Always silent.

  She dressed and padded to her kitchen, ignoring the lingering ache in her ribs. Funny, she’d once thought the pain would eventually stop.

  But it hadn’t. And in the silence, the scars on her ribs throbbed as old memories surfaced and reminded her that no, she could not fail.

  * * *

  Ben watched her walk away, her directive to keep Escoberra away from his family echoing in his ears.

  She didn’t know he’d told Escoberra to go home.

  And she didn’t need to know.

  He knew in his soul that Escoberra hadn’t hurt Hailey.

  Keeping him away from his family was the worst thing right then and his meeting earlier with Carmen had confirmed his decision. So was hearing that Hailey had gone to see Olivia.

  The army was wrong on this one. The restraining order was meant to give people a chance to calm down. Escoberra was calm.

  His family wanted him home and damn it, what was the point of this job if Ben couldn’t make that happen? He’d take the ass chewing if the battalion commander found out. But he wasn’t going to.

  Ben hadn’t been able to keep Escoberra out of trouble when their base had gotten overrun but damn it, if he could help him now, that’s exactly what he was going to do.

  If Ben was going to command, damn it, he was going to make some decisions.

  Chapter Five

  Ben pulled into the commander’s parking spot the next morning, grateful at least that he no longer had to worry about finding a place to put his truck in the mass confusion that was PT traffic on Fort Hood.

  It had been so long since he’d actually come to a PT formation, he was a little thrown off by the fact that it was five-fifty a.m. and he was conscious and at work. He was usually one but not the other. Now? Now responsibility dogged his every waking hour. He’d used his insomniac powers for good last night, getting all his required policy letters and other requisite paperwork updated.

  Because nothing said “cover your ass” like a good set of policy letters.

  He wasn’t sure why he was even doing all this work. He didn’t want the job and he was confident that any day now, LTC Gilliad was going to figure out that he’d made a huge mistake and tell him he could go find himself another job.

  Ben could only hope.

  His phone vibrated on the seat next to him.

  He let that sink in for a moment.

  It was five-fifty in the morning and his phone was already vibrating. He parked the truck and looked at the text message.

  Sir, this is PFC Walsh. The new first sergeant is here to meet you.

  “Huh, how ’bout that.” Yesterday had been absolute chaos. He was reasonably certain that every soldier in the company, half their wives, and at least three ex-girlfriends had stood outside his office, looking to either piss on his leg, whine about the previous commander, or kiss his ass.

  He didn’t have a lot of patience for any of that. Especially the ass-kissing part. He’d been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people parading through his office and all he’d been able to do was take notes and try to put faces to names. His lieutenants hadn’t been anywhere to be found, either. The last thing he was going to do was walk into his boss’s office and cry about too many people. Ben wasn’t a religious man but damn if he hadn’t prayed that the gods of war would send him a first sergeant.

  Someone he could count on. Someone like Escoberra or Reza.

  Because if God had meant for captains to run companies by themselves, he wouldn’t have made NCOs.

  He grinned in the darkness at the phone. It looked like the gods had decided to answer his prayers. He killed the engine and headed into his company ops.

  Five minutes later, Ben wasn’t sure where the army had dusted off his new first sergeant, but he was more than a little impressed.

  He’d heard of people described as six feet tall and bulletproof but they rarely were. First Sarn’t Gale Sorren was built like a bear—a big one. Six and a half minutes into their conversation, Ben suspected that Sorren might be the myth turned reality.

  His hand swallowed Ben’s and Ben was reasonably certain he’d felt bone break.

  “Glad you’re here,” Ben said.

  “Damn glad to be here, sir.” Sorren’s voice was deep, rumbling from some dark abyss that produced born leaders. Hell, Ben wanted to follow the guy’s orders. But that wasn’t how this relationship was supposed to work.

  “Where are you coming from?” Ben motioned for his first sergeant to sit and took his own seat across from him at the conference table in the middle of the company ops.

  “Fort Lewis,” Sorren said. “Just got the word that this job was open so I jumped at the chance.”

  “They got you here for this job that fast?” The army never moved people that quickly. Ever.

  Sorren grinned and the smile creased his entire face, from the corners of his mouth to his nearly black eyes. “I was already on my way here. Sarn’t Major asked me to sign in from leave early. Said something about keeping you from fucking things up too badly.”

  “Sergeant Major Cox is the president of my fan club.” Ben laughed out loud and leaned back in his chair. Some of the fatigue from his not-sleeping habit receded. Just a little but enough to be noticeable. “I’m glad to see my reputation precedes me.”

  “I’ve heard your name before.” Sorren snapped his fingers. “You were Escoberra’s platoon leader.”

  Ben nodded, picking at a ragged nail. Just like that, a wave of crushing uncertainty and anxiety washed over him. “Yeah.” He frowned. “You know Escoberra is here now?”

  “No shit. I’ll have to look him up.”

  “Here’s the thing.” Ben sighed heavily and folded his arms over his chest. “He’s kind of in our company. But he’s in trouble.”

  Sorren scowled. “What kind of trouble?”

  “The kind involving Child Protective Services.”

  “What the hell happened to him?” Sorren muttered. “All right; well, we’ll deal with that later. The family is safe?”

  “Yeah. Escoberra stayed in the barracks all day yesterday.” That part was the truth. He didn’t know Sorren from Adam and he wasn’t going to start off by letting him know that Ben was playing fast and loose with the rules right then.

>   “That really sucks. Escoberra was a good dude.” Sorren rubbed the back of his neck. “Guess we’ll have to take the paperwork and get this ball rolling.”

  “I already did the paperwork.” Not entirely true. He’d meant to do the paperwork; he just hadn’t gotten around to it because every time he thought about it, his lungs tightened until he couldn’t breathe. “It doesn’t bother you?”

  Sorren tipped his chin and looked at Ben, his expression hard and unreadable. “We have a job to do, sir. Whether it bothers me or not is irrelevant.” He sighed, then stood. “I guess that’s enough with the warm jaunt down Memory Lane. I’ll need your help getting the lay of the land, sir.”

  “That eager for the bad news?”

  “Oh yes. There’s nothing you can throw at me I haven’t seen before.” Sorren grinned, a gleam of anticipation burning in his dark eyes. He glanced at the clock over Ben’s head. “But first we’ve got to hold formation and do some PT. You a runner, sir?”

  “Yeah, I run.” Who in the infantry—hell, the army—didn’t run?

  “Good. I figure we’ll put in a good six miles this morning. Give us a good assessment of where the formation stands.”

  Ben took a deep breath, glad he hadn’t been drinking last night. There was nothing quite as terrible as puking the remains of a good night up onto Battalion Avenue and then getting back in formation, stinking of stale alcohol, sweat, and vomit, and finishing the run anyway.

  “Good times,” Ben muttered, following the massive first sergeant out of the company ops.

  * * *

  Olivia loved running. She didn’t care that she had to drag her dead ass out of bed long before the sun came up; she loved the feel of her feet pounding on the pavement and the sound of formations around her.

  It was something sublime, like being part of a whole.

  She stretched with a couple of the other staff officers and saluted the flag when the cannon went off at the corps headquarters.

  She wanted to run at least five miles today. It wasn’t like the battalion commander expected her in her office, so she had the time. He’d instituted a new policy that staff officers would do PT. She’d heard that he’d caught a couple of captains in the operations office skipping PT in order to get a briefing done about a week ago.

  It had not been pretty.

  She turned down Battalion Avenue and started running, soon losing herself among the blur of grey and black-clad bodies, the rhythmic pounding of feet in formation pounding on the pavement. A mile into her run, she crossed over Clear Creek and headed toward the golf course.

  A formation ran by, singing something bawdy and loud that probably contained fifteen EO complaints.

  Then the silence and the darkness ran together, bleeding into one another until the only thing she could hear were the sounds of her own hard breathing and her shoes crunching on the leaves of the PT trail. She didn’t usually encounter many formations out here on the trails behind the golf course. A few pairs of runners now and again but it was much less crowded. It was peaceful, a different kind of being than out on Battalion.

  “Come on, Zittoro. Stay with me, man.”

  She knew that voice, knew it all too well. She rounded the corner on the trail. Ben walked with a skinny kid who couldn’t be more than a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet. He looked up when she ground to a halt nearby.

  Ben met her gaze, grim determination in his eyes. He quickly looked away and focused back on Zittoro, who seemed to be having trouble breathing. “Come on, man, you got this. Let’s finish strong.”

  Zittoro’s lungs heaved. “Just leave me, sir.”

  “Not gonna happen. The way I see it, we got two options. You can walk in or you can run in, but whatever you choose I’m doing, too.”

  “You just took command. You can’t walk during PT,” Zittoro said.

  “Then do we have our option?” Ben grinned. “And I’m sure Major Hale would love to finish the run with us.” He looked at her, the dare clear in his eyes.

  “Sure would,” Olivia said. She had no idea what was going on in Ben’s head but right then, if he wanted her help to motivate the kid, then so be it. It had been a long time since she’d run PT with soldiers. She missed it sometimes.

  Zittoro looked between the two of them, then spat onto the dried out leaves. “All right, let’s do this.”

  Ben looked at her, held her gaze a moment too long. Then she fell into step with the two men and they were off.

  Zittoro was not a strong runner. Not by a long shot. Olivia probably could have walked faster, but a look at Ben was all she needed to see that there was more to this than just making sure the kid finished the run. His name was familiar, too, but at the moment she was drawing a complete blank.

  In the end, she didn’t get in her five miles. She probably got closer to three, but by the time they made it back to the headquarters parking lot, the sun was already creeping over the corps headquarters. Olivia swiped her forehead on her PT uniform sleeve as Ben gripped Zittoro’s shoulder. “Good job today.”

  Zittoro shrugged Ben’s hand off and looked sheepish. “Nah, you and I both know you’re blowing smoke up my ass,” Zittoro said.

  “Well, we all need a little something now and again to lift us up. Don’t be late for work call.”

  “Whatever, sir,” he said with a grin. He paused then looked back at Olivia and smiled. “Thanks for finishing the run with me, ma’am.”

  Olivia smiled. “No problem.” And then she was alone with Ben. “So you want to tell me what that was all about?”

  Ben stuffed his hands into the waistband of his PT shorts. Olivia didn’t miss the way his sweat-soaked shirt outlined the lean, hard muscles on his chest or the way the uniform stretched tight across his shoulders. There was a hint of a tattoo beneath the edge of his short sleeve PT shirt. It drew her gaze like a compulsion. She had the deep, driving urge to push his sleeve slowly up that smooth, muscled skin and look more closely at the intricate design.

  She gave herself a mental shake. Since when did she like tattooed men?

  She breathed out deeply, thoroughly distracted by the idea of tracing her fingers over his forearm, then lower, to thread with his.

  “Zittoro’s one of the kids we talked about yesterday,” Ben said.

  Just like that, the name connected with the memory. It was always harder to put a name with a face. “He’s the kid I recommend immediately separating.” Her voice fell with the realization.

  And there was something deeper here, something heavy beneath the way Ben had encouraged the kid, refusing to leave him.

  Any other commander wouldn’t have tried to keep the druggie kid in the formation. Another commander would have left him, treated him like shit.

  Despite Olivia knowing what the norm sadly was, to her there was something admirable in the way that Ben had stuck with Zittoro. Her mouth went dry as she studied him.

  She licked her bottom lip, seeing something in Ben Teague she hadn’t expected. There was something deeper beneath the sensual, dark exterior. Heat radiated off him from the run and she caught a hint of his scent, something spicy and warm that made her want to step closer than she should. “Yeah.” His voice was thick, throaty.

  He met her gaze then, watching her watching him. The world fell away until it was just her, just him, and she was tempted, far too tempted, to take a single step toward him. To feel the heat from his body wrap around her and draw her closer. To feel his heart beat beneath her cheek and feel his arms surround her. The need was strong, so strong.

  She inhaled deeply as her heart slowed, blinked to break the thrall that held her there. “I’m sorry, Ben. I know you want to help him but I just don’t think you can.” She wiped her forehead again and took a single step backward. “I highly doubt the brigade commander is going to let you retain him, even if you wanted to. There are too many soldiers testing positive these days.”

  “I know that,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Ben pulled hi
s t-shirt out of his shorts and wiped his face. Olivia tried and failed not to notice the narrow band of hair on his belly or the deep golden tone of his skin against the black of his shorts. But it was the ragged scar running down the center of his abdomen that drew her attention.

  Time stood still, moments ticking by with painful slowness. Deep pink against the tan skin of his belly, the scar traced down his stomach and curved along the top of his hip bone. She hesitated, curling her fingers into her palms to keep from reaching out to touch it with the tip of her finger. She looked up and knew in an instant that she’d been caught staring.

  His eyes darkened but he didn’t look away. His throat moved as he swallowed. His lips twitched at the edges. Just a hint.

  “You know, if you keep undressing me with your eyes, I’m going to need to file a sexual harassment complaint.” He lowered the shirt with deliberate slowness. It hung at his sides, untucked and out of regulation. “I feel violated,” he whispered.

  “Ben.” His name caught in her throat. She swallowed, badly needing space from this man that made her lose her composure. “That looks like it hurt,” she said simply, trying to catch her breath.

  He didn’t move. He stood a little too close. Her skin was a little too warm, craving that human connection that she missed. “It still itches sometimes.”

  “How did it happen?”

  There was a darkness in his eyes now, a tension tightening the muscles in his neck. One fist bunched by his side. “Shrapnel when our base was overrun.”

  “Our?”

  “Me and Escoberra,” he said softly. His eyes darkened, his mouth a flat line.

  “That explains a lot,” she whispered.

  “You have no idea,” he said. “He’s like family to me.”

  “I’m sorry you have to do this,” she said simply. Because she was. She’d never faced something like this—she’d never had to process actions on someone she cared about.

  “Thank you,” he said. He studied her quietly. “You haven’t deployed, right?”

  “I have,” she said softly.