Page 10

Troy huffed. “Can you deal with this?”

Dean winked at Sloane. “Answer the nice man’s questions so we can get on with this.”

Sloane rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and kept them there. “I’ve been sleeping fine. No weird pain or thoughts. My mood is the same as it’s always been, and no, I haven’t wanted to kill myself. Happy?”

Troy perked up. “And have you had any dietary changes we should know about?”

“Yeah, I’m a fucking vegetarian now,” Sloane said.

Troy looked down at his tablet, nodding. “Right, no changes there. Alright, then I’ll leave you in Dean’s capable hands and go busy myself as far from your evil glare as I can without getting my ass in trouble.”

Dean glanced down the hall toward the front door of the clinic. “You mind sweeping?”

Troy’s steps hesitated. “Again?”

“I’ve already done it six times today. You’ve done it once,” Dean pointed out.

“You and your obsession with keeping the sand out,” Troy huffed.

Sloane closed his eyes, and Dean waited until Troy had hurried out of sight before speaking.

“You know he’s just doing his job.”

Sloane eyed him. “If something was different, I’d tell him. Don’t know why we have to do this every time I come in here.”

“Because the military likes their lists, and they like their lists to be followed, or we get our asses chewed up one side and down the other.”

“You could always fill it out for me. No one would know any different.”

“Yes, but then how would I terrorize him and annoy you?”

Sloane grunted. “Fine, mission accomplished.”

Dean chuckled, motioning to the nearest curtained cubicle. “C’mon in.”

Sloane walked to where Dean had indicated and began pulling at his clothes before Dean had drawn the curtains. Dean didn’t bat an eye, used to service members and their complete lack of aversion to nudity. Basic training destroyed most of the modesty a soldier might have, and deployment took care of the rest. Most men he treated or looked over were no different from Sloane, stripping down to nothing without thinking about who might be around. The clinic's privacy curtains were as far from their minds as it got.

By the time Dean had drawn the curtain around the cubicle, Sloane’s shirt was off and he was shimmying out of his pants. Dean realized he’d left his tablet back at the desk but shrugged it off. Even at first glance, he could tell not much had changed about Sloane since the last exam, and Dean would have heard about anything abnormal from Sloane’s lips beforehand.

“At least you wore underwear this time,” Dean commented, waiting for Sloane to hop on the table.

Sloane smirked. “Wouldn’t want to make Troy feel bad again.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “That’s my favorite thing about you, how humble you are.”

“And you had me thinking it was my sunny personality.”

If there was anything Dean could say about Sloane, it was that his friend possessed great self-awareness. Sloane knew he was a surly bastard, he just didn’t care. Yet, he also knew he wasn’t lacking in the looks department, but didn’t particularly care about that either. Despite his beautifully bronzed skin, a mixture of his time spent in the sun and his Latin blood, a musculature that was both impressive yet not too much, andfeatures that were rugged without being blocky, Sloane was never arrogant or stuck on himself. In truth, sometimes Dean wondered if Sloane was even aware how attractive he was.

Thankfully, in this setting, Dean was immune.

Dean snagged Sloane’s arm, turning it so he could look at his forearm. “Got more done?”

Sloane glanced down, blinking in confusion before nodding. “Oh, yeah, just some shading.”

Sloane’s entire left arm was a canvas of ink. Dean had alternated between watching the tapestry of tattoos spread across his friend’s arm to not seeing Sloane for days or weeks at a time and being surprised by the sudden appearance of another one. Sloane wasn’t a man for symbols, so most of his tattoos were animals, snakes twined around the barrel of a firing gun, tigers leaping from the depths of vibrant flames, and a huge hawk materializing from thick clouds of smoke. Just about any majestic predator Dean could think of was there, starting just above Sloane’s wrist and working their way up his arm and over his shoulder.

“You’ve run out of arm,” Dean noted.