Camouflaged (Hiding From Love #0.5) Read Free

I’d pieced together who she was, I realized quickly that she wasn’t getting enough money doing translations. She was half starved and living in a shack with no heat. There weren’t exactly a lot of jobs she could get paid for as a woman. She and I never discussed her situation, but she seemed to enjoy being with me, and I did what I could to make her little shack more comfortable. You could hardly call chocolate bars, a blanket, some kitchen utensils, and a little manual labor big help, but my options were nearly as limited as hers.
    Sometime into the third or fourth month after we’d started sleeping together, it became apparent Natalya was confused about the nature of our interactions. When she told me she loved me as she came one night, I tried to blow it off as the heat of the moment, but then the questions and the hints started. What was I going to do after my tour? Did I have a girlfriend at home? What was my family like? I had to put an end to that shit fast.
    She handled it well and acted like it was all good, so I kept visiting every Thursday night. But having sex with her got more and more difficult when I knew there were emotions involved—her love, and my guilt. When she finally told me to get lost, it was mostly a relief. Except to my dick, which was sorely disappointed.
    “Hey, Thompson!” Benji’s voice woke me out of my haze. I gave him a chin lift in greeting. “Did you hear about the UN group coming through?”
    I stayed on the ground next to the truck I was checking out. There was nothing worse than the thought of being off-base, where we were always vulnerable, with a vehicle that was broken down. Consequently, before we drove anywhere, we checked them thoroughly.
    “Nah, I wasn’t paying attention when Davis started into all that crap. Melanie was telling me about how she beat Corbin in poker last night. That was a lot more interesting.”
    “Well, homeboy,” he said, a giant grin spreading across his face. “We’re getting a contingent of UN Human Rights inspectors in to see the conditions in the area, and included in the group are a couple of dozen college interns, homey. As in college girls! Yjola , bro. I used to watch those college girls from USC in South Central. Man. Those were some fine women, and they looove to take a walk on the wild side, my friend.”
    I snorted at his enthusiasm and his barrio slang that only came out when he was really amped about something. Standing up and wiping my hands on the grease rag I had, I said, “Dude, take a chill, will you? Number one, you don’t know if there are any women in that group. I mean, how many rich American parents would let their little princesses go to Afghanistan in the middle of all this? Number two, why do you think they’d be interested in your hairy ass?”
    “Fuck you, Thompson. I try to bring you a little good news to brighten up your pathetic day and you can’t even be grateful. $50 says there’s women in the group, and another $10 says I can bang one of them.”
    I laughed. “You’re a lot more confident in the odds of there being women than you are in your chances of bagging one.”
    At that point, he degenerated into a litany of insults in Spanish and stomped off to the DFAC. I went back to checking the truck and filled out the requisite paperwork, detailing my inspection. I was about to head to lunch before going on my scheduled patrol when I heard a big commotion from the main courtyard. I made a sharp left and headed between two of the bunk tents, walking into the middle of chaos.
    In the dirt plaza were six trucks flying United Nations’ flags. There were people pouring out of the transport trucks, and many of them had already begun unloading cargo. Someone bumped my shoulder on the way by and said, “Get working, Thompson. These trucks won’t unload themselves.”
    I looked around and headed to the last cargo truck being opened. As I stood waiting for them to get the tarp rolled up, I heard a girl’s