Defending Hearts. Rebecca Crowley

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      He opened the door looking uncharacteristically scruffy in a loose T-shirt and athletic shorts.

      “What?” he asked without preamble.

      She held up her palms. “I come in peace. I saw the rest of the team in the restaurant, and someone mentioned you decided to stay up here and eat by yourself. I wanted to make sure everything was all right.”

      “Everything’s fine.”

      “Great. I’ll leave you to it.”

      She turned to go back to her own room, genuinely pleased with the relatively low level of hostility in that exchange compared to every other time she’d spoken to Oz on this trip. Given their accord at her office she initially wondered if he was putting on a disgruntled spectacle for his manager’s benefit, but after his third tirade against bodyguards riding on the team bus she stopped caring. Her job was to keep him safe, not happy.

      “Where are you going?”

      She glanced over her shoulder at his question. Oz stood in the still-open doorway.

      “To my room, for an exciting evening of pizza and HBO. Why?”

      His mouth curved in a half-smile. “There’s no pizza on the menu. I checked.”

      “You’re kidding.” She had her heart set on pepperoni and mushrooms.

      “Five-star hotel, five-star menu.” He nodded into the room behind him. “We’ll order one pan-seared salmon and one chicken and waffles, and the squad nutritionist won’t know who ate what.”

      “She checks your room-service receipts?”

      “She’s tough. Is it a deal?”

      Kate exhaled. Even without pizza, the thought of a long, hot bath, an hour of television and an early bedtime was tempting.

      And lonely.

      “Sure.” She let him hold the door as she crossed into his room.

      His room was only slightly larger than hers and equally unmarred by personal items, except his Skyline-branded suit hanging in the open wardrobe and an unzipped sports bag on a chair. The TV was frozen on what she guessed was a video game, with the muzzle of a rifle aimed into a wintry landscape, shown from the shooter’s perspective.

      Oz gestured toward the screen. “An old version of Outlaw Brigade, set in the Eastern Front during World War II.”

      “This is your system?” She indicated the tangle of wires and controllers on the floor.

      “I bring it with me when we travel. Sometimes I get post-match anxiety and insomnia. It helps me calm down.”

      She picked up the box for the game and scanned the bloody, violent images on the back. “You find this calming?”

      “It’s mindless. Distracting. Stupid, over-the-top death and destruction. Like a horror movie.”

      “I don’t like horror movies.” She put down the box and picked up the in-room phone. “Pan-seared salmon, you said?”

      He nodded, sat down on the floor with his back against the end of the bed and resumed playing. He muted the sound as he said over his shoulder, “Can you double-check there’s no pork in the chicken and waffles?”

      Kate spoke to the room-service operator and placed their order.

      “Twenty minutes,” she informed him, dropping onto the end of the bed. “Definitely no pork in the chicken.”

      “Thanks. I know it sounds paranoid, but pork always seems to find its way into Southern recipes.”

      “So tattoos and alcohol are fine, but pork is off-limits,” she mused aloud.

      “If I adhere to two of the Five Pillars in a week I consider it a victory.”

      “That certainly is a unique brand of Islam.”

      “No one gives Jewish people a hard time if they aren’t Orthodox, and I’ve met plenty of self-proclaimed bad Catholics. I prefer to think of myself as an imperfect Muslim.” He lifted a shoulder.

      “Don’t get me wrong, I met plenty of so-called Muslims in Saudi Arabia who were far worse than imperfect. What’s okay for them is most definitely not okay for their wives, you know? Like, being super devout is fine when it means your wife can’t drive or make any decisions, but if you want to stay out all night gambling and drinking illegal booze, no one better dare say anything about it.”

      He nodded, unmuting the screen. “Using religion as a tool of oppression is never acceptable, no matter what holy book it’s based on.”

      “Yeah. Exactly.” She bit her lower lip, mildly embarrassed that he could so easily and eloquently articulate what she struggled to get across.

      That’s what happens when you go to Harvard instead of scraping through a handful of distance-learning credits.

      The video-game soldier hiked up and down snow-covered hills, then wandered into an abandoned village. He peered into doorways, crouched behind burnt-out cars and then ducked behind a semi-destroyed brick wall as gunfire popped from around the corner. Oz’s soldier returned fire, manually reloading the rifle.

      She wrinkled her nose as red mist filled the air. Why anyone would pay to spend their free time playing games like this was beyond her.

      The frame froze and Oz twisted around to look at her.

      “Am I being an insensitive asshole?”

      She blinked. “What?”

      He tossed the controller on the floor. “I’m playing a shoot-’em-up war game with an actual war veteran in the room. Kate, I am so sorry.”

      “You’re fine.” She dismissed his concern with a wave. “I was in a transportation battalion—combat support, not combat.”

      “Still, you were there.”

      “The game doesn’t bother me. Honestly. I’d tell you if it did.”

      He looked at the screen, then back at her, and tapped the carpet beside him. “Sit with me. We’ll run a mission together. A non-gory one.”

      She joined him on the floor and lifted the spare controller while he scrolled through various screens. She tried her fingers on the unfamiliar buttons, squinting at the options.

      “Things have certainly moved on from Super Nintendo,” she remarked.

      “Hang onto it if you still have yours. Collectors will pay big money for those old systems.”

      “I’m sure my mom sold it years ago. It belonged to one of her boyfriends. He gave it to me and my sister, mostly to justify buying himself something better.”

      “Sounds like a great guy.”

      “On СКАЧАТЬ