Page 76 of Trigger Discipline

Tommy watched him before speaking again. “You were having a nightmare. I didn’t want—you were getting loud.”

Phin froze, staring down at his knee. Gabriel could see the muscles in his jaw working.

The grenadier didn’t like to talk about PTSD—his or anyone else's. Not even to Gabriel. It was a few years after he was discharged that Gabriel learned just how bad it was for Phin.

They’d had a late night watching a game and eating junk food, so Phin had crashed on his couch. The big man woke Gabriel up at four am when he shattered his balcony door, screaming about insurgents. Gabriel had to put him in a chokehold to get him to stop.

Even after that, Phin still refused to talk about it. Not even to Gabriel. He was so tight-lipped about it that sometimes Gabriel wondered if he’d dreamed the whole thing—but his lost security deposit and the nasty voicemails from his landlord were real enough.

Phin didn’t talk about himself much, but Gabriel suspected he grew up in the kind of household where people were seen and not heard, and problems were meant to be swept under the rug. It was all he could do to get Irving to hire him at all. A liability, he’d called him.

But thatliabilityhad saved his life more times than Gabriel could count, and whatever issues he had, there was no one Gabriel would rather have at his back. And when the day came when he couldn’t fight his demons alone anymore, Gabriel would stand by his side.

Until then, they tiptoed around the subject.

Well, everyone but Tommy, it seemed.

Gabriel was ready for Phin to lash out; he set his coffee down, ready to intervene, but Phin surprised him by just grunting something unintelligible and staggering to his feet. He limped to the bathroom, body tight with pain.

Tommy didn’t even come up to Phin’s collarbone, and he had to weigh less than most of his armament, but the little guy had some kind of power. Gabriel watched him adjust thebaggy shirt he’d borrowed from the apartment drawers and shuffle toward the kitchen, cheerfully greeting Victoria while he got something to eat.

He was saved from saying anything by Blake. Predictably, he looked grumpy. His eyes still soft from sleep, with lines from the pillow on his face. He scowled at Gabriel, storming up to him.

“You’re an ass,” he hissed, his bare feet brushing against Gabriel’s boots.

Blake’s hair was flattened on one side, and his lips were twisted up in that scowl he had. His nose was wrinkled in irritation. It was so cute—Gabriel couldn’t help but lean down and give him a quick peck.

“Morning, sleeping be?—”

“Finish that sentence. Go ahead.” Blake’s cheeks were red. “I dare you.”

“There’s coffee in the kitchen.”

Narrowing his eyes, he gave Gabriel one final glare before shuffling off to find caffeine.

Gabriel watched him go, his lips curling in a grin. He couldn’t help it. Blake looked cute when he just woke up. And there was something about that thin surly coating over his soft gooey center, it was just so fun to crack.

“Really?” Phin broke through his thoughts. He looked over to see the big soldier leaning against the wall, a sour look on his face. “End of the world and you’re thinking with your dick?”

Gabriel crossed his arms. “You’ve only got one good knee left. You really want to run your mouth?”

They stared at each other for a long moment. There was a thin veneer of snark hiding their true intentions—Phin was worried. It was there in the fine lines around his mouth, the dark way his eyes bored into Gabriel’s. He had put his trust in him and wanted to be sure Gabriel wasn’t distracted. That he was still capable of leading them to safety.

At this point, Gabriel wasn’t sure. But he was the only one volunteering for the job.

Phin seemed to find what he was looking for. He grunted and pushed off the wall, stiffly walking toward the kitchen. Gabriel joined him to find the kitchen packed.

Someone had pulled everything out of the cabinets and had spread it out over the counters. They’d even found some medical supplies, nothing fancy, but there were some bandages, over-the-counter painkillers, and an expired bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Tommy bit into a banana as he organized perishable foods from non-perishable and what was too heavy to carry.

Everyone else was gathered around the round kitchen table. It was a rickety thing with a lot of life behind it. But it held as Judd opened a map of DC and began studying it as if this was the first time.

Gabriel joined him, leaning his hip against the table. “You find us a way out of here?”

Judd shrugged. “Since I only have a vague understanding of where ‘here’ is and I have no idea what parts of the city have been blown to bits, no. I haven’t found us a way out.”

“A way out?” Blake asked as he pulled out handfuls of cereal from a box. “We aren’t going to try and establish communications?”

“There’s no point,” Victoria answered from the other side of the table. She’d combed her hair and tried to tame it back into its previous severe bun.