But what? He drove all this way… to check on me? Drive two and half hours away… for me?
Yeah, right.
“You turned around at the ridge then?” he asked as he covered my elbow with a big Band-Aid.
“Yeah,” I told him sheepishly. “It was a lot harder than I expected.”
He grunted. “Told you it was difficult.”
He remembered? “Yeah, I know you did, but I thought you were exaggerating.”
He made a soft sound that might have been a snort… coming from anyone else… and I smiled. He didn’t see it though. Fortunately.
“I need to train harder before I try this again,” I told him.
Rhodes took my other elbow. His hands were nice and warm even through the gloves. “Probably a good idea.”
“Yeah—oww.”
His thumb brushed right below the wound of my elbow, and his eyes flicked up. “Okay?”
“Yeah, just being a baby. It hurts.”
“Mm-hmm. You scraped them up pretty bad.”
“It feels like—owwie.”
He snorted really softly again. It was definitely a snort.
What the hell was going on? Did he take his chill pill again?
“Thank you for doing this,” I said once he’d tenderly—and I mean tenderly—put another Band-Aid on my other elbow.
Rhodes took my hand then, flipping the palm up and setting it on top of my leg. “How were you planning on driving home?” he asked softly.
“With my hands,” I joked and grimaced when the pad of his index finger grazed one of the puncture-like wounds. “I don’t really have another choice. I figured I’d just cry and bleed all the way home.”
Those gray eyes moved toward my face again.
I smiled at him as he took ahold of the solution again, working it over my hands. His thumb grazing over the tiny wounds there like he was making sure there was nothing else embedded in my skin; then he poured some more. I gritted my teeth and tried to get my mind off what he was doing. So I did what came second nature. I kept on talking.
“Do you like your job?” I asked, making a face he didn’t see.
His eyebrows knit together as he kept on working. “Sure. More now.”
That distracted me. “Why now?”
“I’m on my own now,” he actually answered.
“You weren’t before?”
One gray eye peeked at me. “No, I was a cadet.” He didn’t say anything for so long, I didn’t expect him to say more. “I didn’t like starting over and having people tell me what to do again.”
“They really treated you like a rookie? At your age?”
That had his head jerking up, the funniest expression on his handsome face. “At my age?”
I pressed my lips together and lifted my shoulders. “You’re not twenty-four.”
Rhodes’s mouth twisted before he lowered his gaze once more. “They still call me Rookie Rhodes.”
I watched his fingers on my palm. “Were you… in charge of a lot of people? In the military?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“How many?”
He seemed to think about it. “A lot. I retired a Master Chief Petty Officer.”
I didn’t know what that was, but it sounded pretty important. “Do you miss it?”
He thought about it as he again, gently, put a big Band-Aid over my wound, his fingers slicking the edges down so that they adhered well. “I do.” The corners of his mouth whitened as he took my other hand. His were a lot bigger than mine, his fingers long and blunt as they stretched the material of the gloves. I could tell they were nice, strong hands. Very capable-looking.
It wasn’t any of my business, but I couldn’t help myself. This was the most he’d talked to me in… ever. “So why did you retire then?”
His full mouth pinched. “Did Amos tell you his mom is a doctor?”
He hadn’t told me much of anything. “No.” I’d just settled for imagining a beautiful woman that Rhodes had once loved.
“She’s wanted to do this Doctors Without Borders-type program for years and got accepted. Billy wouldn’t want her to go by herself, but Am didn’t want to go, so he asked if he could stay with me.” He glanced at me. “I’d missed so much of his life because of my career. How could I tell him no?”
“You couldn’t.” So not only was his ex more than likely stunning, but she was smart too. No surprise there.
“Right,” he agreed easily. “I didn’t want to be gone if he needed me. I was up for reenlistment and decided to retire instead,” he explained. “I know I’m gone a lot, but it’s less than it could have been.”