"What's this I hear about a press conference? You should have run it by me first. The media will eat you alive," he says coolly, but as I tear up, his stiff demeanor seems to drop. "I just don't want to see you hurt any more than you already have been, baby girl. I know I've been too wrapped up in this whole process to see that you have needs beyond seeing to my reputation. I'm sorry. You know I'll always love you. The presidency doesn't even matter at this point, I just-," he begins to ramble, but I cut him off with a hug, burying my face in his chest. He wraps his arms around me, brushing a hand through my hair.
"I have to do this daddy. Not just for you, or me. But for all of us. I know I'll likely be eaten alive, but I can't just let this ruin everything you've worked for. I can't let this ruin their football scholarships. I know it's strange, daddy, but… I love them," I say weakly, drawing away to look him in the eye. His eyes widen considerably and he looks briefly confused.
"Both of them?" He inquires, looking confused by the concept.
"Yes. I'll explain further at the conference, but… I just want you to know that I love you too. I'm sorry for giving you such a hard time these last few weeks," I murmur. He hesitates for a moment before nodding his head, leaning in to kiss my forehead before stepping aside. I slip out of the room, making my way downstairs before I lose my nerve. I know Jake and Jeremy are likely waiting for me at the football field, where we had decided to hold the conference. It's not the most formal of locations, but we thought that it might make the boys seem more relatable to put them in their element. I sit in the driver's seat of my car, inhaling a shaky breath as I touch up my makeup. This is it. This is the press conference that will either make or break all of us.
As I pull up to the college campus, I see dozens of media vans spread across the parking lot. As soon as I step out my car, I'm swamped, but I remain calm and collected in the face of their accusations. As soon as I spot Jeremy and Jake, I rush towards the two of them. They both gather me in their arms, kissing either cheek. I steel myself as I can see the steady flash of camera bulbs in the crowd gathered before us. I step up to the podium with the men on either side of me, looking up as the presidential vehicle pulls into the lot as well. My father lingers towards the back of the crowd, refusing to acknowledge the media presence. My mother stands at his side, smiling broadly and giving me the thumbs up symbol.
"Thank you all for being here," I begin, and I'm immediately assaulted with questions. I remain silent until a hush washes over the crowd, and begin to speak again. "I want to begin by saying I deeply apologize for the way I have gone about this entire situation. However, I refuse to apologize for my relationship with the men at either side of me. Though I should have been more discreet, I'm deeply disappointed in whoever decided to film what was intended to be a private moment. Considering the circumstances…," I trail off, looking to the men for support. They both take me by the hand, standing tall at either side of me. "Though I've been forced to come out regarding the issue, I will not apologize for my feelings. It may be unconventional, but the three of us are in a committed, polyamorous relationship." I announce. The crowd falls deathly silent for a long moment. The cameras continue to snap photos, but all at once I hear my parents in the back, clapping and cheering for us. To my surprise, the rest of the gathered crowd soon joins the suit. We get several questions, but most of the response we get is a positive one for our openness. I look at the men with bright eyes, and deciding to end the conference on a positive note, I pull both of the men in for a tender kiss. Once more, the crowd erupts in applause. My father's cheers are perhaps the loudest of them all.
Days later, he ends up winning the election by a landslide. More important to me, however, is my growing relationship with the star athletes and the reinstatement of their scholarships. While I know we have a bumpy road in the limelight ahead of us, I'm confident we'll make it through.
Perhaps being in the spotlight isn't so bad.
War Times
~Bonus Story~
A Military Menage Romance
Jenny is a nurse working in a war zone. She’s eager to help the wounded, and when commander Barnes asks for a volunteer to come into one of the towns where some civilians are in need of help, she leaps to the task. She also does it because there’s a wounded soldier in the field hospital, who wants to know the fate of the two missing men from his platoon.
She finds these men, Alex Baker and Jason White in a makeshift bunker. They immediately take to one another.
But there’s a lot in store for them. The insurgents are closing in, and they may be running out of time…
* * *
Chapter One
I signed up to save lives. Sometimes, though, the horrors I see make it hard to keep going. There’s a reason why not so many people make it in the medical profession without growing a backbone made of steel. You need the steel in order to cope with the things that pass your eyes every day.
I wanted to do more than just work in a hospital, though, in the middle of a nice city. I wanted to help like my father and mother did.
That’s why I’m halfway across the world, operating in a field hospital that’s little more than a small base full of green tents, looking after all the injured within the region. Any injured. Our soldiers. Their soldiers. Their children, terrified civilians caught within the grasp of war.
And it’s not pretty.
Right now, my case is an Algerian soldier, part of the joint forces that operates with America to track and deal with insurgent activity in the area. He’s young, barely more than twenty years old, and I’ve needed to extract a bullet from his shoulder, and make sure he gets enough rest and is clear of infection. I’m aware about his platoon. I’m aware of how his convey got caught on a roadside bomb, and in the chaos, were fired upon.
Poor kid has it rough. All I can do is smile, give them the best care possible, and wear the mask so they don’t see the horror reflected upon my face.
He’s not been awake long, so I know I’ll have to tell him about the fate of his platoon eventually.
“Thanks, nurse,” he says, as I hand him a glass of water, and place my hand over his forehead to check his temperature. The other nurses tend to their charges as well, including a few wide eyed kids, one with an anxious father hovering over him.
“Call me Jenny,” I reply with a smile, noting the pale, shivering sheen of his face. I don’t think it’s something I can help with. It’s a deep seated shock that infects the mind, but I offer him painkillers anyway, which he accepts.
“Jenny. Pretty name. I’m Isaac.” We shake hands. Isaac flinches at the sound of a distant explosion, and I reassure him that it’s okay. He dismisses my help.
“It’s not. You know where I was when I got hit?”
I shrug, though I know the soldiers usually patrol the nearby villages, and sometimes the plateaus, where the insurgents use the caves and the hills to travel from place to place, keeping silent. The soldiers in the hospital can be pretty chatty, possibly because of the fact there aren’t so many women out here, or because they get lonely, being stuck in the bed instead of the barracks with their comrades. I don’t know.
“We were patrolling an area not so far from here. Just over the hill that you can see from the camp. It’s a lot deeper than the enemy’s gone before.” His hands twitch nervously. “I think they’re scouting. Testing out our defenses. There could be a big one coming any day now, and you guys are gonna have your hands full.”
A shiver flickers through my spine, though I dismiss it as best as I can. Another distant boom rumbles. It’s hard sometimes to not be frightened, to wonder what kind of horrors you’ll see, the screams you’ll hear.
“We’ll be alright,” I reply, and I see the question building in his eyes now, as he looks around the inside and notices it’s only a few civilians being treated within the tent.
“Jenny… how many made it back with me?” There’s a sliver of fear in his eyes. My heart scrunches. I don’t want to be the one to t
ell him. But no one else deserves to be burdened with the problem, either.
“You’re the only one.”
“I’m…?” I see the panic, and my heart nearly breaks. Hell. I don’t know what’s worse. Finding out about the dead, or having to break the news and watch their faces crumple.
“You’re the only one they found alive. Two more are missing, unaccounted for. Jason White and Alex Baker,” I add, and his eyes shimmer.
“They could be alive?”
“Maybe. We won’t rule it out.”
Isaac Magdy grabs my hand tight. “Please. If they make it back, you tell me. You get me. I have to see if they’re okay.”
“Of course,” I say gravely. I’ll happily tell him. If they ever do come back.
I see him retreat into his own head, and I leave him with those thoughts, checking in on the kid who almost needed his leg amputated, simply because the local villages didn’t have access to antibiotics to fight the infection inside him.
About an hour later, commander Barnes enters the medic tent, and he draws the attention of all the nurses. The head surgeon greets him, and the commander wastes no time in getting to business. His dark eyes own the room, he stands tall and proud, his girth jutting slightly from his uniform,
“I’m here to recruit one of you for a mission. If any of you are feeling a little brave, we could do with an onboard medic. There’s a town thirty-five miles south. We need a volunteer.”
We all exchange glances. None of the nurses or surgeons in this field hospital have ever left base. We’re in a U.N sanctioned area, with sufficient defenses and full support from the local government. Going out to an outlying town means entering the potential line of fire.
When the silence presses on, he clears his throat, mustache bristling. “If no one steps up, I’ll be forced to choose. I’m not going there without a medic.”
I stare at Isaac, whose eyes are wide. I suspect the place is near where he got ambushed. If his friends are alive, which I’m unsure about, they may have taken shelter in such an area.
It’s speculation, really, but that thought leads me to step up and volunteer. Barnes gives me a huge smile, his square jaw set.
“Ah. That’s the spirit. Your name…?”
“Jenny Willard.”
I shake his hand, he thanks me for my bravery and sacrifice, and I can’t help but wonder what’s waiting for me on the other side.
We’re not exactly in Disneyland, after all. We’re in a small corner of hell, and it’s accepting people early.
Chapter Two
We drive part way, and walk the rest. I’m stuck in a small convey with around twenty other soldiers, a small platoon with me as the sole medic. Eighteen of the twenty soldiers are men, and although a few give me sly glances, and nudge one another, the rest are focused upon their mission.
The dry wind whips into my face. There are spots of green in the otherwise arid land. The mountains are tall and beautiful, stunning backdrops under the heat of an oppressive sun. The beauty seeps into my soul, but it’s a distraction from what’s really going on. I stare at the buildings that are decrepit and abandoned, knowing they can be rebuilt. There are tanks, stripped and riddled with holes.
One less tank in the world is one less engine of destruction. However, all the ruined buildings and vehicles speaks to me of something. How many lives must have lived here, and been lost? I don’t want to know. It hurts my heart to think, to even picture people living their lives as normally as they can, before everything changes under one blast of terror.
I’m not good with death. It’s why I try my hardest to prevent it.
We leave our vehicles a few miles before we reach the town, and we’re made to walk the rest of the way. My feet sink into dusty earth, and the sun beats down upon us.
Barely twenty minutes into the walk, Barnes suddenly barks for us to get low and find cover.
Before I register what’s happening, one of the soldiers has pulled me to the ground behind a small bank, and the others have also fallen flat on their bellies.
Overhead, planes whine and thrum overhead.
When the danger appears to be clear, we’re made to keep moving. My heart is hammering frantically at this point. I have no idea if the planes above were friendly or enemy, and neither, it seems, do the men.
“Better to be safe than sorry,” Barnes growls at me. “If you so much as think you hear a plane, yell it out. It’s not worth the gamble waiting to find out.”
I swallow the nervous lump in my throat, already regretting my choice to volunteer.
I don’t show it externally, though. I don’t want anyone to think I’m a coward. “Duly noted, commander.”
We reach our destination two hours later, trudging through the heat, sweat pouring down our bodies. The town unveils around us. It’s a dilapidated collection of ruins. War has desolated this place. I imagine it once thrived as a beautiful, bustling town, with all the shops and their gleaming windows and the produce they try to sell. Now, all the windows are shattered or gone, most buildings have collapsed onto themselves, and there’s far too many places to hide for my liking. There could be many rebels stuffed along the cracks, and the first we’d know of them is when they start firing.
Barnes directs the platoon, and he appears to know what he’s doing and where he’s going. Eventually, he stops by a wall that has overlapping triangles drawn upon it in red spray-paint, and he unleashes a high pitched whistle, piping it four times in quick succession.
Nervous, we all wait. When two soldiers emerge from the rubble beyond the wall, the platoon instantly trains their guns upon them. Their response is quick and professional, if dominated by high nerves – because the two soldiers are not dressed in traditional camo, or are wearing any kind of identifiers.
“Relax,” Barnes says, and his soldiers, to their credit, obey him without hesitation. “And nurse. These are your missing two men. Jason White and Alex Baker. We caught intel on them when they managed to send a messenger to our base.”
“That’s right.” Jason salutes smartly. I catch a glimpse of his face through the grime. Blue eyes sparkle under a mop of dark hair. He has strong, definitive features, with a menacing aura about him that shows he knows how to fight. He’s damn handsome, honestly. Alex Baker’s not so shoddy himself, with that waspish blonde hair, and dark, dark eyes – and my heart thuds faster at the sight of them. Isaac would want to know this. Isaac was so fearful that he was the only survivor of his platoon.
He’s not.
“We’ve got a bunch of people underground in the makeshift bunker under the buildings,” Alex says in a deep, growling voice. “a lot of them are in need of patching and we don’t have the supplies or medical knowledge to help all the cases.” His dark eyes rest on me, and the conspicuous bag I have on, and the medic sling resting on my side. “Perfect,” he says.
I repress my blush and say, “I’m here to help. Jenny Willard. Take me to the civilians.”
“Sure thing, ma’am,” Jason responds, and we follow the two formerly missing soldiers into the underground shelter.
The entrance is deftly concealed under a lot of rubble and a trapdoor, and we walk into an expansive basement where there’s about fifty people crammed in there.
Shit, I think. I’m not sure if I have enough supplies for all of them, and I need to gauge who is in dire need of assistance first. My heart sinks when I see the grubby images of families, children and adults slumped together in huddled fear and despair, despondent because of the carnage wreaked on them from above, or the furtive lives they’ve had to lead. It’s horrible to see the victims, when all they’ve tried to do is live as peacefully and normally as they could in the land of their mothers and fathers, and many more before them.
I don’t have time to focus on White and Baker’s tales, how they survived the ambush and found their way here, but I notice how they follow me with their eyes as I make my way around the room, briefly instructing some of the soldiers on the easier cases
, the ones that don’t need my expertize at all.
I do not speak their language, but I feel their pain, every scrape and bruise and dead eyed stare as a physical blow, and I do what I can to make these people suffer less. I cannot take it all away. I cannot remove the scars from their minds.
The soldiers converse, and Jason and Alex both confront me upon my break, thanking me for my service, for coming all the way out here to help these people.
“I’m always happy to help,” I reply, mustering up a smile, though frustration is rife. I should never have to be put in this position in the first place, to help others through their pain, to wipe away the physical wounds of war, and only watch as they contort themselves inside. There is a little boy, six years old, numb and speechless, with these eyes that penetrate your soul with horrific clarity. He has seen more than most see in a lifetime, and it’s etched onto his eyeballs, locked inside his mouth where he keeps the screams frozen.
It messes me up, honestly, but I don’t want to admit it. I don’t want to show these people I’m weak, because there is little respect for those who can’t control their emotions here. If you let them spill, you’re a liability. You’re a danger.
“Bullshit, but I see that you genuinely care about everyone you’ve been tending to. You’re not numb to their pain. Seriously, thank you for coming out here again. Let me grab you a drink,” Jason says. I nod gratefully, and he walks off to grab a bottle from the canteen area. He flickers a smile at me which I return. When he comes back and I accept the water, Alex leaps in with his question.
Bad, Very Bad Shifters- The Complete Mega Bundle Page 122
