Coop

I shook my head, trying to clear the fog surrounding my brain, but then I realized that it wasn’t fog. There was smoke filling the cockpit and the instrument panel was melting in front of me as flames took over. It looked like the whole front of the helicopter was on fire. I could see the flames licking at my feet, and it finally kicked in that I had to get my ass moving.

“Shorty,” I called out to my co-pilot. “Let’s move!” I fumbled with my harness, but it wouldn’t budge. “Shorty, get your ass out of here.”

He didn’t answer and I finally turned to see him knocked out in the seat next to me. Blood dripped from under his helmet, traveling in a river down his face. I reached out to him, but winced when I felt the heat at my feet. The fire was spreading closer and closer, moving to my legs. I glanced behind me to see one man down in the back of the helicopter, while the rest of the Special Forces team we were supposed to transport was setting up a perimeter around the plane.

I yanked on the harness again, but the heat in the cockpit was fucking with my head. I tried not to panic as the fire burned through my flight suit. I glanced at Shorty again, shouting out to him to move his ass, but he was out. The flames started to engulf his body, just as they were doing to me. I tried not to scream as I felt my skin melting away. It was so fucking painful, and that was all I could think about at the moment. I felt something metal burning against my skin and remembered my knife that was strapped to my leg. I reached down and pulled it away from my skin, almost vomiting out when I saw the melted flesh drip from the blade.

I took a deep breath and cut through the straps, noticing that the flames had already heated up the buckle on the harness, burning my hands as I touched it despite my gloves. The top of my flight suit slowly burned away until just shreds were left. Finally, I cut through the last strap and hurried over to cut out Shorty. My adrenaline was shot and my body shook so bad that I couldn’t even fucking cut the harness from his body. I collapsed to the floor as I watched my friend burn to death in the front. I only hoped that he was already dead.

“Hey,” someone said, appearing in my line of vision. “We’re gonna move you.”

Excruciating pain tore through my lower body as I was lifted out of the helicopter. Every movement was too much, causing the most horrific sounds to be torn from my mouth. When I was set down, I was a safe distance from the helicopter and being covered by one of the other men as two others raced back to drag Shorty out. I saw the helicopter explode, but the pain was too intense and I couldn’t stay awake any longer to find out what happened next.

I shot up, sweat dripping from my body as I shoved the covers aside. The nightmares didn’t happen often, but ever since I invited Becky into my life, I thought about everything more. She wanted me to stop covering up, and in turn, I was reminded of why I never took off my shirt or pants when we fucked. I bent over and rubbed my hands over my face, trying to shrug off the remnants of the dream. Looking at the clock, I saw that I needed to be up soon anyway. I went to the bathroom and splashed some water on my face, but paused to really look at myself. I had scars on my face that weren’t nearly as bad as the rest of my body. In fact, most of the time I forgot they were there. But down my neck and over my right side, it got worse and there was a particularly bad spot on my back that I never looked at. And then there were my legs. Months of skin grafting could only do so much for me.

Shutting off the light, I got dressed and headed to the training center to get in a workout before everyone else got here. Sometimes, I got in two to three workouts a day if I was feeling particularly antsy. Today was one of those days that I would need the extra workout.

It was days like today that I thought about ending things with Becky, but I had promised her that we would take this a day at a time and try and make this work between us. Honestly, since Christmas, we really hadn’t made much progress in our relationship. It was a series of fucking and eating dinner here at the safe house or her house. I refused to take her out to restaurants. Aside from never liking where they sat us, and always feeling like I had to constantly look over my shoulder, I also still had this irrational fear that Victor Adams was after me. Even months later, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that the danger wasn’t over, even though all our intel said that he was wiped out. Years of looking over my shoulder just couldn’t be erased.

I was just leaving the panic room to head through the tunnels over to the main building when I heard a door open at the end of the hall. It was way too early for most people to be up, but then again, maybe someone else was having trouble sleeping. I continued walking in the dimly lit tunnel until something about the figure up ahead had me stopping in my tracks. My jaw clenched in anger and it took everything I had not to lash out like I wanted to right now.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I shouted at Kayla.

She stared at me defiantly, her hair all bedraggled and her clothes wrinkled from staying out all night in them. “I’m going to bed.”

“You should have been in bed last night.”

“Dad, I’m seventeen. You can’t tell me what to do anymore.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I shouted. “You’re still a minor and you live under my roof. Until you get a job and pay your own way, you live by my rules. It’s not fucking safe to wander around at night, or have you forgotten the kind of people that are out there?”

“How could I forget? You had me on the run my whole childhood,” she snapped.

My cute blonde-haired, blue-eyed little girl had turned into a spitfire overnight. What used to be us against the world was now her against me. When had this happened? Had I been so blind since we came here that I hadn’t seen her changing? She was older now, and I knew I had to give her more leeway, but her body had transformed into a young woman’s, and the thought of some asshole taking advantage of her was more than I could take. I had seen how her mother threw her body around to get the attention of men, and I didn’t want that for my little girl.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t give you the childhood you deserved, but I was trying to keep you safe.”

“I was safe until you decided to put us all in danger,” she snapped.

I narrowed my eyes and walked closer to her. “So, you would prefer that I let Vanessa get carted off to marry some asshole that would do unspeakable things to her?” Her fierce glare dimmed slightly, but she held her ground. “You would prefer that someone else’s life was ruined because I was too cowardly to stop it?”

“How is it being a coward by protecting your family? When did I come first?”

“Kayla, you came first every second that we were on the run. Don’t you think I could have figured out something faster if I wasn’t hauling a kid all over the country with me?”

Something like hurt crossed her face, which wasn’t my intention at all, but if she wanted to behave like an adult, she was going to look at things from an adult perspective.

“Kayla, you want so desperately to be an adult, and I’m telling you that when you’re an adult, you have to make adult decisions. I know that I’ve sheltered you from a lot of shit, but you have also seen and lived through more shit than any kid your age. Look at this from my perspective. Your mother was dead and I was the only one that could take care of you and keep you safe. You were always my first priority, and you always will be. I know it took longer to get rid of Adams than I would have liked, and that robbed you of your childhood, but we play with the cards we’re dealt and we move on with life.”

“Like you have?”

“Excuse me?”

“We play with the cards we’re dealt, Dad? I don’t see you moving on with life.”

“Now, just-”

“No,” she said firmly, cutting me off. “None of this would have happened if it weren’t for you. Mom wouldn’t have left you if you hadn’t gone off to war, and she wouldn’t be dead if you hadn’t chosen Vanessa over our family. The difference is, I’m tired of living like this and I want to move on, but you’re not letting me. I’m not a kid anymore. You can’t stop me from trying to have just a little fun before I go adult.”

“Adult? What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means that I have to behave like an adult,” she said, like I was completely fucking stupid.

“It’s not…you don’t ‘adult’. You just go…you know, it doesn’t even fucking matter,” I shouted. “The point is, you’re not an adult and you’re not going to wander around and do whatever the fuck you want. You’re going to go to school and train. And when you’re not doing that, you’re going to be figuring out what you want to do with your life.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“What are you going to do? Go work at Burger King? No, you’re going to do something with your life. I don’t care what you go into, but you’re not going to just get some low paying job and pretend to be a member of society. You will actually be a functioning member that contributes just like the rest of us.”

“Whatever,” she said as she shoved past me.

“Go to your room and don’t come out until you’ve thought about what you’ve done,” I shouted as she ran down the hall.

I scrubbed a hand over my head and sighed. I was using my mom’s lines. Raising a teenager was hard, but in my circumstances, it was nearly impossible. I couldn’t figure out which way was up with her. Had I really fucked it up that bad?

“Was that Kayla?”

I looked up to see Cazzo walking toward me. “Yeah.”

“She looked a little…”

“I just caught her sneaking in.”

He nodded and then burst out laughing. “Dude, you’re so fucked. How did she sneak in when we have so much security?”

I thought about it for a moment and then shook my head in disbelief. “Who the fuck would help her get in and out of the property?”

“Maggie,” we both said at the same time.

“How the fuck is she still causing so many problems when she’s pregnant with triplets?” I asked.

Cazzo gave me a funny look. “Do you really need to ask that question?”

“It’s fucking five o’clock in the morning,” I groaned. “I don’t need this shit.” I glanced at Cazzo and it hit me that he shouldn’t be here either. “What are you doing in the panic room at this hour?”

“Oh, sorry, Mother, I wasn’t aware that I had to report my comings and goings to you.”

“But, why would you be in there? You don’t live in the panic room and it’s way too early to be here for anything other than a workout.”

He huffed out a laugh and slapped me on the back. “Adams is dead, man. Stop being so fucking paranoid.”

He walked off, still not having answered my question. I followed him over to the training center and got to work. With all the shit that just happened with Kayla, I found that I didn’t need the intense workout I thought I needed. Well, I still needed it, but for different reasons now.