Free Soldier's Choice by Morgan Blaze Page A

happened?”
    He stared at the table. “My father.”
    “Oh, God,” she whispered. “He hit you?”
    “Yeah, he hit me.” He made an abrupt sound that was almost a laugh. “It was his second favorite thing to do. After hitting my mother.”
    She was silent for a moment. Then she reached across the table for his hand.
    Without thinking, he flinched away.
    Damn. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not you. I just…”
    “It’s okay,” she said gently.
    He knew it wasn’t, but he appreciated the effort. “That night, he…” Reese lifted his head slowly. The pain in Luka’s eyes mirrored his own, and what he said next would only make it worse. But all he could do was go on. “He found out about you and me,” he said, his voice emerging flat and toneless. “I wasn’t hiding it from him. But he’d never given a shit about anything I did, until he got it in his head that I was throwing my life away with you. Because of your…reputation, I guess. So he decided to remedy that.”
    A few tears slipped down her cheeks, and his heart broke. “He hit you because of me,” she whispered.
    “No,” he said firmly. “You were just a convenient excuse. My father informed me that I was enlisting, and let me know in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t, my mother would pay for it. Then he beat the hell out of me. With his fists, and his belt.”
    Luka stared at him. “How could he…Reese, that’s awful. I am so sorry.”
    “I couldn’t tell you. Not then.” He had to look away as his hands clenched into tight fists. “He’d been getting worse, having more episodes. Most of the time I could get him to come after me instead of Mom. But I was terrified he’d start on Georgia.”
    “Your little sister,” she said.
    He nodded once. “They locked him away while I was in Basic,” he said. “At the VA—the hospital. Not prison. If that hadn’t happened, I don’t know what I would’ve done. They wouldn’t have been safe without me for five years.”
    “So…” She drew a trembling breath. “Your father told you to break up with me, and then forced you to join the Marines.”
    “Yes.”
    She said nothing for so long, he started to think she didn’t believe him. Then she rose slowly and walked around the table toward him. His body wanted to stiffen, but he forced himself to relax as much as possible. He didn’t want to hurt her again.
    When she reached him, she stooped beside him and gestured at his clenched hands. “Can I…”
    He gave a slow nod.
    She took his hand gently, and her warmth flowed into him. “Thank you,” she half-whispered. “I know how hard that was for you. I could see it in your eyes. But you did it anyway, and I understand now.”
     “Luka, I…”
    “It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to say another word.”
    He shuddered. “Stay with me tonight,” he rasped. “Please.”
    “I will.”
    He stood and embraced her. For a long time he didn’t move, as if holding her could somehow change the past and create a new future—one where they didn’t have to be apart. Where he wasn’t damned to live in the shadow of his father’s rage. But the present, the reality, marched on unchanged.
    Eventually he led her back to the bedroom. And with Luka in his arms, he finally fell into real sleep.
     
     

Chapter 8
     
    For Luka, sleep didn’t come easy, or fast.
    She laid there until the first light of dawn stained the windows, wondering if the pain would ever stop. Imagining the hell he’d been through—not just that night, but for years after with what must have been brutal training, and being shipped off to a war he never wanted to fight. Being separated from a family he needed to protect. All because of her.
    Because she was trash, and everyone knew it.
    At last she fell into a fitful doze, fragmented with unremembered nightmares that made her heart race and her breath freeze. When she woke fully, she was alone.
    It stung to find him gone. She should’ve expected