Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84607 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84607 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
Yup, I definitely hated myself. I had to look away, and my ears felt hot. Fuck him for making me word vomit like that.
“And now I’m the mentor who backed off,” he murmured.
Shoot me.
This was my hell.
“Like I said, I knew why you did it,” I answered. “You can’t be friends with a recruit.”
It wasn’t his fault I took it so personally. That was my problem. My attachment.
He sighed heavily and leaned back against the cushions, and he draped his arms along the back of the sofa.
“Boundaries are important,” he confirmed. “Maybe I should have communicated that better, though. I didn’t take a step back because I didn’t enjoy hanging out with you. Once Alex came here, I felt the lines were becoming blurry, and it’s fundamental for Coach and me to assess the recruits from a wider perspective. If we stand too close, we’ll miss a lot.”
I bobbed my head and picked at a thread in the corner of my pants side pocket. That one was gonna bother me, so I pulled out my folding knife and cut it off.
“I hear you,” I said eventually.
“But those boundaries won’t always have to be there,” he said next. “Once you pass final selection, I’ll be the first to shake your hand and buy you a beer. You’re already weirdly easy to talk to, so I have no doubt we’ll be good friends.”
He thought I was easy to talk to as well? Interesting. But yeah, being friends with Beckett would be nice. I just had to get over my crush first, ’cause it was getting out of hand when the dominant feeling was disappointment.
Crushing on the straight superior, how fucking pathetic.
I needed to change the topic. “Is it true that final selection takes place in South America?”
His mouth twitched. “Did Tanner tell you that?”
I shrugged.
He nodded with a dip of his chin. “Ecuador, to be more precise. It’s why every applicant is required to have a valid passport.”
Made sense. No matter where it took place, I was going to be there. Tanner and I had made a pact to push each other toward graduation. Like me, he’d struggled to see his future for a long time. Then his brother had joined Hillcroft, and Tanner had wanted to follow in his footsteps.
“Tanner and I will be there,” I said firmly.
Beckett tilted his head. “You two have gotten closer, huh?”
I shrugged again. “Kinda.” The truth was, we’d bonded over two lame-ass attachments. Tanner had loosened me up with three drinks, and I’d stupidly admitted to being hooked on Beckett. Tanner, in turn, had lit up like a Christmas tree and confessed he felt the same about Operator Riggs. “You were right, I guess. I need friends.”
He smirked faintly. “Even friends who put you on lists?”
I exhaled a laugh. That was funny. Tanner and I were so incompatible that it was crazy. We literally wanted the same kind of man—evidently. We were great at bitching about it too.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I replied.
He narrowed his eyes a fraction, then nodded once and pulled out his phone. “I’m just gonna go check in on Alex. I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Okay.”
September 18th, 2024
Thank fuck, he was here already. I walked into the classroom and aimed for Tanner. As always, he’d snatched a desk in the back, and he’d saved me the middle desk next to his.
Our Cold War class was about to start, so I only had a minute or two. And I really liked our teacher; he was some old-timer—an actual professor who’d been to Vietnam—who everyone called Leg or Legacy. I kinda wanted to impress him. He knew so damn much.
“Hey, can I just double-check something with you?” I asked, keeping my voice down.
“Sure, what’s up?” Tanner leaned back against his desk, so I came to a stop next to him.
With our backs to the rest of the class, I opened my notebook to the dog-eared page about today’s test.
“All of his tests end with the same question—what we can learn from whatever situation,” I said. “And I’m racking my fucking brain. If this whole thing—the recovery of the Soviet sub—is the opening for the decoding class, the only link I can come up with is the Soviet’s radio transmissions when they tried to figure out what we were up to near the wreck site.”
Tanner scratched his nose. “I don’t think it necessarily has to be the decoding. They said intel is next, including decoding. But also, like, withholding information, resistance to interrogation, how to handle the public if shit blows up, and—”
“So, the Glomar response,” I deadpanned. “This whole fucking project about a sunken submarine just so we can learn how to say neither confirm nor deny?”
He grinned and tapped his nose. “That’s what I’m going with anyway.”
All right. Well, that made shit easier, but—