Page 36 of Collateral Damage
"Had to build a lot of things overseas. You pick up vocabulary."
“Did you pick up an adze too?”
He chuckles, and I find it impossible not to join him. For a while, the walls of the cabin feel less like a bunker and more like a vacation home.
But as the game goes on, my focus starts to splinter.
The clinical part of my brain is taking notes, but the rest of me is reacting to the sheer, masculine weight of his presence.
I try to keep my eyes on the wooden tiles, but they keep gravitating back to him, drawn by a magnetic pull I can't switch off.
My intellect and faith have always been my compass, but right now, my biology is screaming over the top of it. At thirty-four, I see it for what it is. It’s a hormonal ambush.
I look at my rack. I have the letters for CRANIAL. It’s the perfect word. Professional, high-scoring, and an easy anchor for my wandering thoughts. Cranial nerves. Keep it medical, Ava.
Still, I find myself tracing the hard, uncompromising line of his jaw, shadowed by a dark, rough-hewn stubble that catches the amber glow of the fire.
I reach for the tiles, my eyes still fixed on the hard, elegant line of his cheekbone. I'm spelling it out in my head—C-R-A-N-I-A-L.
I place the letters one by one, clicking them into place.
Silas’s voice drops into a low, dangerously amused register that makes the fine hairs on my arms stand up. "Interesting choice," he says.
I look up, meeting his eyes. He isn't looking at the board. He's looking at me with smoldering heat in his gaze that makes my breath hitch.
"What?" I ask, my face starting to burn.
He gestures to my play. I look down, and my stomach drops to my toes.
I didn't play CRANIAL. I played CARNAL.
It’s sitting there, hooked into his word STORM. A word that feels like a shout in the silence of the cabin. I have two I’s still sitting on my rack, useless. I’ve effectively stripped away every bit of my professional dignity in six letters.
"That's..." I scramble, my voice failing. "I was going for something clinical. A neurological term. Cranial. I must have been… distracted."
"Cranial," he repeats, the word sounding like a low vibration in his chest. He leans forward, just an inch, his gaze dropping to my mouth for a heartbeat before locking back onto mine.
Our eyes lock, and I can’t look away. My heart is tripping over itself, a chaotic rhythm that I’m sure he can hear in the silence.
"Or tired," he says finally.
I don't look at the board again; I can’t. I’m only looking at him, feeling the crushing weight of everything we haven’t said pressing into the small distance between us.
"Yes," I breathe, my voice trembling just enough to give me away. "That must be it."
Silas
Ava settles onto the couch with a medical journal, her posture as rigid as the spine of the book. While she tries to disappear into a world of science, I bring war into the kitchen. I spread the dark, scent-stained oilcloth across the table and begin the slow, rhythmic disassembly of my Glock.
The routine is ingrained habit—fieldstrip, inspect, clean, reassemble. I’ve done it in the Monsoon season in Somalia and the humidity of the Sahel. But tonight, my hands—hands that can take apart an M249 in the dark—feel heavy. Unreliable. Every time I stroke the bore brush through the barrel, my mind drags me back to the Scrabble board.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure," I say. My voice is flat, the "Green Beret stare" firmly in place, even though my pulse is spiking.
“Does the violence of what you do bother you?”
"Every day," I say.
