Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 31: Where Do You Want It?

Chapter 31: Where Do You Want It?

Okay, so he had me there.

"What do you need?" I asked, knowing that those words would be able to calm him down in a way that my lack of touch could not.

"I already told you," he admitted, dropping the two of us onto my bed. His arms were still tightly wrapped around me, but since we were not walking anymore, I understood that the tremors in his embrace were not from exertion but rather his fear. His fear that something had happened to me.

"You want to put a tracking device on me," I clarified. I really wouldn’t have a problem with that. We were a few months away from graduating, and then he was off to boot camp for almost six months. Then, he would be pushed into even more training and exercises that would eventually steer his course into becoming a General like his father.

And I wanted nothing to distract him from becoming the man he was destined to be.

"I want to put the device IN you," he muttered so softly that I thought I had misheard, but nope. He had said inside of me.

I once watched a comedian who, when asked what his spirit animal was, replied ’a bull’ because: "When I see a man waving a red flag, I run right to them."

Yeah, I was feeling that too.

I didn’t have red flags. I had Bai Long Qiang. If he needed me to have a GPS implanted in me to make him feel better, then let’s do it.

"Can you get your hands on one?" I asked, pulling back enough so that I could see his face for the first time since all this happened.

Instead of replying, he placed his hands in his front pocket and took out the tiniest tracking chip I had ever seen.

"It’s not so new that it is still a prototype, but it is new enough that no one has actually used it before."

"You know, your pockets are not the most sterilized thing in the world, right?" I lifted one of my eyebrows and looked down at the man who was easily twice my size. He had just turned 17 a few months ago, but he had definitely grown into his body.

"I am sure there are worse," he answered, putting the chip on the cover of my bed and went back to holding me with both arms.

"I am sure there are, too; it doesn’t mean that I am not going to sterilize the crap out of it, literally and figuratively, before I put it in."

My words must have shocked him because he quickly pulled away and stared at my face.

"Are you serious?" he demanded, his eyes piercing through mine. "You would do this for me?"

I know that I am not supposed to say things like ’I would do anything for you’ or ’Believe it or not, this device gives me just as much of a sense of security as it does you’ because that would be crazy, right?

"Will it help?" I asked instead. That was the problem with us right now. We were always dancing that line of what we could say and what had to be kept inside our heads. His dad and grandfather understood it the best, but everyone else always gave us weird looks.

To everyone, I was the kid sister who never really got the hint to go away. They didn’t understand that his not knowing where I was or actually being able to see me was enough to send him into a tailspin of uncontrollable rage until he found me again.

Hence, my destroyed bathroom door.

I am pretty sure that it was part of his PTSD from the time I was kidnapped two years ago, but given the fact he was not asking for more than I was willing to give, I was not going to argue with him.

Yes, I am sure that I should count this as yet another red flag, but to someone that always went overlooked, that type of dedication was like fucking catnip to me. Besides, I didn’t care what the outside world thought; all that mattered was him and me.

"It will take the edge off," he admitted, his eyes darting to the right of the room to avoid my own.

"Not an answer. Will it help you if you have the ability to see where I am whenever you want or need to?"

I felt his body under me go completely soft at my words as all the tension leached out of him.

"Okay, then let me up." I squirmed off his body and went to the bathroom sink, where I had a complete first aid kit with a few extras.

Pulling it out, I placed it on the counter and looked around. Not the place to be doing surgery, but I would need the mirror to be able to see.

Letting out a huff, I stormed into my bedroom and slammed down the kit onto his chest. "Hold that while I clean."

Not bothering to listen to his reply because I knew he would always do what I asked, I went into the kitchen to get the dustpan, broom, and bleach.

Cleaning up the mess as best as I could, I started scrubbing down all the surface areas with bleach.

"You need me to do this, right?" I asked.

"I do," he replied.

"Then I need you to do something for me."

"Anything."

"Get a second device, and I am going to put it in you." I straightened my back and looked at him. I knew what I was asking, and I was willing to back down if he said no.

He was destined for a term in the special forces. There were no two ways about it. And if that were the case, he would be sent to unknown locations for unknown reasons. I might not be as bad as he needed to see or touch me all the time, but...

I also needed to know that he wasn’t dead in a foreign land that he would never come back from.

I needed to know that even if he wasn’t safe. He was alive.

Because if he was alive, there was nothing on Earth stopping him from coming back to me.

He studied me for a second, and I tried to hold the tears back over the idea that he could be hurt or killed in the military at any point in time. But that was his path, and I wouldn’t stand in his way.

"I’ll get one for me tomorrow," he assured me. Standing up, he placed his palm on the side of my face, and I leaned into his warmth. This was how we said ’I love you’ without actually saying the words. Fucking fate putting me in the body of a fucking six-year-old.

I nodded my head and grabbed the case. Pulling him into the bathroom, I dropped the chip into a small dish of alcohol before turning to look at him.

"Where do you want it?"