ROUGH RIDER Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t have anything like that to fall back on. It was either that or get tangled up with the mafia and I figured my chances of staying alive were a lot better if I stayed out of that scene.”
    “Right,” she replied, slowly taking a drink of her beer. “So what did you do in the Army?”
    “Jumped out of planes. Lived through a few battles, thankfully. Did a tour in Afghanistan. Did another one in Iraq.” Dammit. There it was. That steeliness that returned to my voice, the ropy muscles in my neck tensing painfully - it always happened when I talked about the service.
----
    “ T hat must’ve been hard ,” she said, her green eyes filling with concern.
    “It sucked,” I nodded. “It fuckin’ sucked big time.” The last thing I wanted to think about was my time overseas. None of it was good.
    “Enough about me,” I said, shaking away the haunting memories of screams that I never wanted to hear again. “Let’s talk about you, Gabby. Tell me something interesting about your life.”
    “Oh, my life isn’t as interesting as yours,” she replied, smiling back at me, her long lashes fluttering as she blinked. “Tell me more about the guys.”
    My eyes landed on her bottom lip, the urge to kiss her overwhelming me. I wanted to forget everything she was asking me about, in fact I was done talking altogether… But I knew if I went too fast, it would scare her away.
    “Well,” I began, calling on all my reserves of patience. “I told you about Italo and Alonzo, the twins. There’s Giovanni - we call him Gio. He’s a cool guy. You’d like him. He’s half black and half Italian. His Ma died when he was born, so he was raised by his father’s Italian family. He makes these meatballs that I swear are better than my Grandma’s. Unfortunately, his dad got mixed up with the mob and was killed when Gio was eighteen.”
    “That’s awful,” she said, a look of horror crossing her face.
    “Yeah, it’s another reason I went a different direction after high school. It kind of turned us all around, seeing Gio go through that shit.”
    “I see,” she said quietly.
    “I told you about Romeo,” I continued. “And then there’s Angry Bobby and Bats. Angry Bobby is the sweetest guy you’ll ever meet.”
    “Why do you call him Angry Bobby then?” Her eyes flashed with amusement, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her beauty. She was breathtaking. Her long black hair framed her gorgeous face, her high cheekbones made me want to reach out and trace them with my finger. I studied her like a painting, committing every line and curve to memory.
    “Yeah, that’s the thing,” I answered. “Once, when we were in Afghanistan, one of the other guys in our squad said something nasty about one of the local women, and Bobby went off on him. He was totally out of control, off the chain pissed off. Thought he was gonna knock the other guy’s head off. We’d never seen him like that before and the nickname stuck.”
    She nodded, her eyes watching me intently. I hadn’t had such a rapt audience in quite a while and it made me feel good. I wanted to make her smile again, to make that light shine in her eyes all night long so I could keep watching.
    “And Bats? What’s his story?” she asked, taking a drink of her beer. She was loosening up now, and she hadn’t looked at the front door in five minutes at least.
    “Bat’s story is pretty fuckin’ sad. Bats was the star pitcher on our high school baseball team. He was one of the greatest. He was recruited by all the best schools, and offered a full-ride at Princeton. But instead of going off to college, he chose to follow us all into the Army. Some really violent shit went down,” I said, my voice lowering as I remembered it all. All the fuckin’ blood. The blood-curdling screams. The look on his face when he realized what had happened. The memories would haunt me forever. “He lost his arm in a roadside bomb. I feel completely responsible.”
    “That’s