Page 21 of Trigger Discipline

“He didn’t?—”

“I’ve been in enough dick measuring contests to know exactly what he was doing.” Blake smiled, a small dimple flashing on his cheek. “He was testing me.”

Gabriel was once again speechless, completely surprised by Blake’s understanding. To the outsider, a military squad might look like a bunch of uncivilized, insensitive apes. And they were. But there was a culture to it—a language, religion, and hierarchy all of their own design. Phin didn’t know Blake, so he didn’t trust him. And like it or not, they were stuck together. Phin wanted to know if he could trust Blake at his back.

And Blake had risen to the challenge.

“I’m going to go check on Tommy,” Blake pushed off the counter, pushing his hair out of his face. “But thanks for stepping in.”

He walked away, pausing at the doorway. Looking over his shoulder, there was a smile on his face, eyes twinkling mischievously. “I’d hate to embarrass one of your soldiers,Commander.”

Gabriel stared after him with a dry mouth.Fuck.Blake was so much more than pretty. He was a fucking geode—hard as arock on the outside, equally tough on the inside, but goddamn did he sparkle once you got a peek. Gabriel couldn’t help but let his eyes linger on his ass as he walked away. It was a damn fine ass in those tactical pants.

“Stop drooling,” Phin groused from across the room, nursing his wounded pride.

Gabriel flipped him off. “You try that shit with him again and I’ll adjust the sight on all your guns."

Phin gaped at him. “You wouldn’tdaretouch Betty.”

“Talk about his dick again, and I’ll Betty Boop her right out of alignment.”

CHAPTER 8

DIDDY BOPPER

The sun was fading fast as Blake and Gabriel made their way toward the cellular tower. Everything was quiet—something Blake thought he would find reassuring, but it made him nervous. Every scuff of their boots or crunch of broken glass made him jump. He tried hiding it, tightening his hands on the straps of the backpack he’d pilfered from the station locker room, but he didn’t think Gabriel was fooled.

When he was a student on his first clinical, his preceptor told him, ‘In the truck, only one of you is allowed to freak out, and it’s never your turn.’ His classmates told him they faked it. That inside, they were a quivering mess of nerves.

Blake didn’t have that problem.

One of the biggest reasons he turned to emergency medicine was the adrenaline. The constanttick tick tickas he raced the reaper. His hands had to move faster than his brain. Where others found stress, Blake found calm.

As a kid, his father had called him a human lie detector. It had been said with a laugh. A funny quirk his kid had. But he had seen the tight lines around his father’s eyes. The twitching of his fingers. To someone else, they were subtle signs, but to Blake, they were as loud as sirens.

It wasn’t that Blake had some kind of supernatural gift or power. There was nothing special about him. He justnoticedthings. A lot of things. Quickly. And in noticing those things, he could put a picture together. A vivid understanding of the things unsaid. Body language never lied.

People did.

The things a person said weren’t always what they meant. His mother read him the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. His teachers had cutesy posters with ‘honesty is the best policy’in gold foil. He didn’t understand the difference between good lies and bad lies. Treading the line between what heknewand what someonesaidwas exhausting.

And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t turn it off. Even now, he wondered if Gabriel saw the scraps of bed sheet hanging out of a third-story window fluttering in the wind. Or the body slumped by the garden bed. Vertical lines down their arms rather than a molten hole through their skin.

There was probably a time when he was younger that he tried to fix himself. Tried not to acknowledge the things he was saying. Believed the shapes and sounds someone’s lips made. Hell, he’d even tried locking himself in a dark bathroom just to get a few moments of peace.

It was the summer his mother made him go to camp that he finally figured it out. He’d spent the bulk of the first couple of weeks sulking in the corner, desperately trying to ignore theloudthat seemed to come with kids his age, when he stumbled upon a discarded book. It was some cheesy vampire romance. Completely ridiculous, implausible, and terribly written.

And Blake couldn’t put it down.

When he had his nose in those pages, it was like his brain was so busy absorbing the story it was being told, it didn’t have time to make one of its own. The words on the page were louder than the ones around him, and Blake finally found peace.

From books to TV, movies, and video games, anything he could sink into. Where he could disappear into someone else’s head to see what they see andonlywhat they see.

Blake had once tried to explain to his parents why he spent so much time with consumable media. He tried to make them understand, but they didn’t, and it was the last time he’d attempted it. If his own parents hadn’t been able to get it, how could anyone else?

So he stopped trying.

It made things like dating near impossible. He’d stopped trying that after a while, too. His romantic interludes were limited to one-night stands with his senses dulled by alcohol and low lights. It wasn’t satisfying, but it worked.