Page 160 of Malice and Surrender
If it weren’t for the fact that I really did have shit I needed to take care of, calm wouldn’t have been my first response. I rolled my eyes to Wilder and wondered if this was a good idea. Asking Wilder for help with anything seemed like it could turn into a movie. I was already running through possible titles like Wilder and Me, Fifty Shades of Wilder, and my personal favorite, Throw Wilder From The Train.
“You sure you’re good with Roach meeting you?” I looked out the window to see the man in question pulling into the driveway.
“Of course I am. You act like I’m paranoid.” I wanted to yell you are paranoid as Wilder clamped a hand down on my shoulder. “A road trip with my friend and his friend. This will be fun.”
“You do know this is not a road trip, right?”
“We will be in a vehicle and on the road. By definition alone, that is a road trip.”
Shaking my head, I decided this was a terrible idea, but I couldn’t back out of it now. The Wilder wheels were in motion, and that truck planned on rolling until it crashed. Grabbing my leather jacket off the hook, we walked to the door and stepped outside as Roach honked the horn.
“What the fuck, man? Are we in high school? You picking me up for a date?” I yelled at Roach’s open window.
“Only if you plan on sucking my cock,” Roach yelled. Roach’s eyes darted to the man practically skipping beside me like a fucking golden retriever out for a walk.
“What are you doing?” I stared at Wilder in his black fatigues with a massive bag slung over his shoulder that I knew was loaded with every gun man had created. He smiled wide, the look so fake that it seemed painted on his face. He was only missing the clown nose and little car to ride in to complete the picture.
“I’m happy. Isn’t this what people do when they are happy?”
“Sure, when you're five or if they’ve had too much LSD,” I said.
“Oh. How do I show my enthusiasm properly?”
I stopped walking before we reached the truck. Taking a deep breath, I asked the question I’d been dying to ask since the first moment he decided I would be his ask-it-doll. “Wilder, you were in the military, so I need to fucking ask you. How the hell did you get by without being kicked out?”
“Because I was good at my job.”
“I don’t doubt that, but how do you have so little life experience to know what is proper? You were around other soldiers all the time and must have had to go to school and had parents.” His face remained blank, like he didn’t understand the question. I pinched the bridge of my nose and decided never to do this again. Dealing with robot Wilder was like a computer that kept putting up an error box without reason. “Dude, why are you so awkward? Emotions or not, you’re older than me. How is it possible no one has taught you about emotions or proper reactions? Have you never asked these questions of anyone?”
“Are you two getting in or are you going to grab each other and make out?”
“Gimmie a minute,” I chirped back at Roach.
“No, I did not ask these questions of anyone,” Wilder answered, his voice softer like he might be able to experience sadness.
“Why?”
“I had no one to ask that I wanted to ask. My parents didn’t want me after I stabbed a kid.” My eyes went wide. And people thought I was the bad apple. “But the guy had it coming. I was placed in military school and excelled in the field, but the others avoided me until I became a Green Beret. I did ask some questions and learned to pleasure my body.” Okay, that was a visual I never needed swimming around in my head.
“You’ve never dated, never had a friend?”
“My unit were my brothers, so you could call them friends, but we did not speak much, and when we did, it was about the missions we were assigned.”
“And they are the ones that died?”
“Yes, they were all killed on a mission, and now you are my friend.”
I wasn’t sure how to feel about what he’d just told me. “Yes, I’m your friend, and I’ll answer your question. We would give each other a fist bump, maybe smile a little more, and offer to buy a round of beers if we needed to stop. There is definitely no fucking skipping.”
“I wasn’t skipping. That was my happy walk.”
“That’s how you walk? Okay, never mind, whatever it was, don’t do it.” I grabbed his arm before he could skip off to the truck. “And Wilder, we need some fucking boundaries because that shit this morning was not right, and it can never happen again.”
“You had a problem with your shit?”
My brow furrowed. “No, I mean with Raine.”
“You had a problem with Raine’s shit?”
