Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Every morning I come outside I’m thankful. For all of it. But it’s almost impossible to miss what I’m trading this safety net for because all I have to do is look down the driveway where Collin and Amon are living the real dream.
I will never have that. I’ll never have a son. Or a girl. There’s not gonna be a wife, or a house, or a puppy. Because this place—the safety, the men, the permission to be who I am—it’s addictive and necessary. And I don’t have my own house at the end of the driveway. I bunk with six other men.
There’s no place for families.
Not for us. Not unless we want to leave.
And of course we won’t leave. No one is officially ‘deployed’ at the moment. The contracts are local. Couple hours away, at the most. So even if some of the guys are staying in hotel rooms, they’re coming back.
I haven’t heard a single guy here say they can’t wait to work outside the compound.
They joined the military for a reason. They’re here for a reason.
And honestly, I think Collin Creed and crew might actually be a bunch of geniuses—because this isn’t a job they gave us.
It’s more than room, and board, and seventy K a year.
It’s a life.
So thinking about Olive is a waste.
Because I just got here and I can’t think of a single thing that could make me give it up.
The new week begins with Amon’s boy, Cross, and his puppy, whose name is Jagger. Cross is my new little sidekick since we’re assigned to the same puppy. He goes to school, but the bus pulls right into the compound and picks him up from the porch of Amon’s house, so he uses every spare minute from the time he wakes up to the moment that bus driver opens the door to hang out with the men.
He’s the first one lined up for PT every single morning at five am. And by Tuesday, I find myself becoming number two, since I know he’s already out there and he and I are partners. He stands under the flagpole in the dark like this is what every thirteen-year-old boy does before school.
No one eats before morning PT, so after PT he goes home to shower, and I go back to the bunkhouse to do the same, and when I walk into the mess at seven-fifteen, he’s saved me a seat.
He shovels food into his face as fast as he can and then he waits for me so we can go to the kennel together so he can spend the next fifteen minutes giving me instructions on what to work on with Jagger while he’s gone.
Then he salutes me, calls me soldier, and leaves.
He’s such a bossy little fucker, you can’t help but find the whole thing funny.
By Wednesday, Cross and I are best buddies.
By Thursday, we’re old friends.
We’re standing in the kennel with Jagger on the leash, and Cross is scribbling down tracking instructions on a whiteboard in purple marker. “See,” he says, tapping the marker on the board where he’s drawn a picture of a scent pad. “This is food. Food, food, food. All these little marks are food. You throw them down on the scent pad and tell him to ‘such.’ That’s German for seek. You tell him ‘such, such, such.’ Real fast like that. And then you let him eat most of it, but pull him back before he finishes so we turn him into a little such-ing fiend. Got it?”
I do my best not to chuckle because he’s dead-ass serious about his dog training. “I got it.”
He checks his watch—which is, of course, military-grade—and sighs. “The bus is gonna be here any minute. But I got something for you, Shep. Come to the house with me so I can give it to you before I go.”
“All right. Lead the way.” I pan a hand to the door.
We walk outside where the sun is just barely rising, and he jogs ahead to his house. He stops on the porch. “I’ll be right back. Don’t leave.”
“I’ll be here,” I say. Then he goes inside and I take a seat on the steps and look down the driveway as a bus pulls in, stopping at the guard house. How the hell they got a bus driver to pull into the compound, I don’t understand, because it’s a hassle. No one comes in or out without stopping at the guard house. But down the driveway it comes, rumbling and filled with kids.
Inside, I hear Amon’s woman yellin’ for Cross to get his butt on the bus, then Cross yellin’ back, but I can’t make out what he’s saying.
Since Amon’s house is at the bottom of the driveway and it’s a turnaround, it literally pulls up in front of me. The door opens and the bus driver—an older woman—salutes me.