Chapter 463
[ 493 words ]
Chapter 463:
He ignored the offering, his eyes boring into her. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. It was more menacing than any shouting.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” he finally bit out, his voice a low, dangerous rasp.
She looked up at him, her expression one of genuine confusion. “About what? Thank you for bringing me lunch?”
She was trying to de-escalate, to inject a note of normalcy into the charged atmosphere. It was like throwing gasoline on a fire.
His jaw clenched. The muscles in his throat worked once, hard, while his damaged left fingers twitched uselessly against the splint, as if his body wanted a fist and could not make one. “About what just happened,” he ground out through his teeth.
Caroline put down her spoon, her attempt at levity gone. She looked at him seriously. “Oh. The nurse. You handled it well. Very professional. I doubt she’ll bother you again.”
She meant it as a compliment, an expression of her absolute faith in him, in his ability to manage such a trivial annoyance. But to his ears, her words sounded detached, clinical, and dismissive.
A harsh, bitter laugh escaped him. “Professional? So that’s all it was to you? A professional matter to be handled?”
“What else would it be?” she asked, her incomprehension total. “Did you want me to march over there and start a fistfight? To pull her hair like some jealous shrew?”
Her logic was flawless, and it backed him into a corner. He didn’t want that, not really. But he wanted something. He wanted a reaction. He wanted the fire he felt for her to be matched, to be reflected in her eyes. He wanted her to show the world that he was hers, and that any attempt to trespass would be met with fury.
𝘕𝖾𝘸 𝗐𝖾𝗲𝗸ly c𝘩𝖺𝗽𝘁еr𝗌 𝗈n 𝘨аlո𝗈vе𝗅ѕ.с𝗼𝘮
He couldn’t say that. The words were too vulnerable, too needy. The Colonel in him, the man who was always in control, couldn’t admit to such a weakness.
So the rage, with nowhere else to go, found a new target.
His gaze dropped to the unopened MRE pouch tucked beside the bowls. For one violent second, it looked as if he meant to grab it and hurl it across the tent. His left hand jerked toward it, then stopped short, the splinted fingers trembling with pain before they could even close. The failed motion made his humiliation sharper. With a low, furious sound, he kicked the leg of the bench instead. The heavy wood scraped against the floor with an ugly screech.
Then he spun on his heel and stormed out of the mess tent, leaving a stunned silence and a bewildered Caroline in his wake.
She sat alone at the table, the entire camp’s eyes on her, staring at the spot where he had been standing. What in God’s name had she done wrong?
The whispers started almost immediately, a low buzz of gossip filling the void Jarrod’s angry departure had left. Every eye in the mess tent was on Caroline.
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