Page 7 of Badd B*tch

"Coffee's on," he muttered without looking at me. "Mugs in the cabinet above."

"Thank you," I said, pitching my voice low. "You always up and working before five?"

"Ha, no, not hardly. I'm not a morning person." He did sit back and look at me, then, putting a mug to his lips and slurping noisily, much to my annoyance—I have a murderous case of misophonia. "You, uh, had a nightmare. And my room backs up to yours."

I didn't allow myself a reaction, instead focusing on pouring coffee into a mug so big I had to use both hands to cup it. I settled into a chair on the opposite side of the oval six-person table.

I took a sip; the coffee was good, not too strong. Finally, I met his waiting gaze. "I apologize, Linus. Hazards of the job."

"Who's Luke?"

Just hearing his name sent a lance of pain through me so sharp I hissed, covering it with another gulp of too-hot coffee, burning my throat. I welcomed the pain of the burn, however, because it was easier to handle than the emotional garbage. "Someone I cared a lot about who came home in a body bag."

His eyes lingered on mine for a moment and then slipped away, back to his screen. No further questions, no empty words of sympathy; this did more to earn my respect than almost anything he could have done or said. He just let it be—saw the pain I was hiding and just…let it go.

I sipped coffee and thought about anything that wasn't him, and then.

When my coffee was gone, I rinsed the mug out and put it upside down on the drying rack beside the sink, thumbing in my earbuds on the way to the door.

"Tea?" His voice caught me with my hand on the knob; I turned and arched an interrogative eyebrow at him. "You can't outrun grief."

I had no answer, so I offered none. I pressed play on my favorite 90s/2000s hip-hop playlist I’d chosen for my run, hit the sidewalk, and started running, holding myself back to a slow lope.

For the first couple of miles, I just made a few exploratory loops of the immediate area, gradually widening my circuits until I reached a main road.

As usual, by the time my watch told me I'd gone just about three and a half miles, I felt my muscles loosening and let myself open up my stride. I swung my arms in a wider range of motion, because if your arms go faster, so will your legs. Most runners ignore this, clenching their hands into tense fists and barely moving their arms, and then wonder why they tire out so fast. Swing your arms, dummy. As an officer and a fitness fanatic, I've led PT more times than I care to count, and that's the running mistake I've seen more than any other, and I’ve said that—"swing your arms, dummy"—to everyone from ensigns to admirals.

The admirals don’t like it, especially when it fucking works. I'm kidding: one simply does not call an Admiral "dummy" for any reason, ever, unless you like peeling potatoes in the brig for the next fifty years. Nor is there any conceivable scenario where some random pilot would lead an Admiral on a run. Just jokes, everyone. Relax.

Now that I'm warmed up and feeling loose, I can really dial in. I let my legs churn and my arms swing, hands loosely fisted, keeping my breath timed to my footfalls—four breaths in for four paces, four breaths out for four paces. I put Luke's face out of my mind, and Linus's question, and all the feelings that go along with that giant bag of shit. I just run. Tight loops around a block, meandering across a playground with its stilled swings and dew-damp slides.

Mile after mile cruised under my Brooks until my watch told me I'd hit ten miles in just under ninety minutes. At the ten-mile mark, I rounded a corner and put on speed, forcing my arms to pump as fast as possible and pushing myself to the upper limits of exhausted speed, holding a flat-out sprint until dark spots danced at the edges of my vision and my stomach started cramping and my lungs cracked inside my chest in protest. I let myself slow to a jog and then a trot and then a walk, dabbing sweat off my face with my shirt and panting as I made my way back toward the B-and-B.

When I entered the house, it was full of life—voices chatting and laughing in the kitchen, the scent and sizzle of pan-frying bacon, a wooden utensil scraping on cast iron, a bark of male laughter accompanying the snap of a towel and a laughing feminine shriek.

The layout of the house meant there was no way for me to sneak upstairs unseen, and I desperately needed a glass of water.

Fuck.

I mentally girded myself and entered the chaos—Linus, still in the robe, was chasing a stunning young woman around the island with a twisted hand towel. The young woman, his daughter, was his spitting image in every way, except she had reddish-gold hair. She was laughing breathlessly as she dodged this way and that. An older man and woman sat at the table together, sipping coffee and watching the shenanigans with small smiles; a tall, heavy-set young man was at the stove, flipping bacon with one hand and stirring a giant pan of scrambled eggs with the other. Her fiancé, I assume; he’s an attractive man, her fiancé, with thick, broad shoulders and a head of curly, shaggy blonde hair.

I slipped through the scrum, got a glass, filled it from the sink, and took it with me. I almost escaped…almost.

"Tea!" Linus stopped the chase and straightened, grinning as he tossed the towel onto the island. "Good run?"

I nodded, swallowing a gulp of water. "Yes, sir."

He gestured at his daughter. "Lt. Commander Tea Tiernan, this is my daughter, Helena. Helena, this is Tea, my new pilot."

Helena rolled her eyes. "You're so bougie, Dad, my god. You have to have your own pilot?"

"As I'm not ready to trust my life to an A-I pilot yet, yes. I do. And you should know damned well why I don’t fly commercial, and it’s not because I'm precious about shit." He met my eyes with a roll of his own.

She looked me over. "The last one crashed. Dad makes light of it, but it was a close one."

"I've been flying since I was a child. And if there's one thing I know, it's that if you walk away from a crash, you owe the pilot your life." I met his gaze. "Crashes leave a mark on you."

"I've told you a million times, Helena, that was not Captain Mark's fault," Linus said. "It was a mechanical failure no one could have predicted or prevented. It happens." he looked at me, then. "Right, Commander?"