Authors: Sosie Frost
“Would you? Now?” Heaven’s tone was too sharp for a girl I let copy from my homework all freshman year. “You don’t need us. Why would help out your so-called friends when you could sit up in your mansion and fuck your brother?”
“Don’t you dare!” I groaned. “Look, I’ll do whatever I can, but you guys
know
my trust hasn’t kicked in yet. I don’t have the money.”
“How do you afford the house?”
“My
dead
father’s estate pays for the upkeep.” I gritted my teeth. “You really think I’d deny you guys? Well, Heaven, you can screw yourself, but you three…” I swallowed. Azariah, Layna, and Nikkole had the decency to look away. “When you said to come out tonight…you weren’t trying to help me with Professor Sweeten at all. You just wanted…money?”
Heaven sipped her water. “Told ya’ll.”
“Know what?” I dug through my purse and found two crumpled twenties. I tossed them on the table. “There. That’s everything I have on me. Divvy it up. I’ll sell off a fucking rug or something tomorrow. You can have whatever you need.”
Azariah tossed her purse to Layna and tried to follow. “Shay, wait.”
“I gotta go,” I said. “Thanks for the invite out, but I should get back to my
brother
.” I eyed Heaven. “Make sure he survived our
fucking
last night.”
Yeah, that wasn’t a good thing to shout in a crowded restaurant. People stared, but I was too mad to be ashamed of my behavior.
None of this made any sense. I didn’t do anything wrong. Did they really think I was flaunting my money by
not
flaunting how fortunate I was?
Did they even know how ridiculous it felt to get my father’s fortune? It was random—like a lottery I didn’t enter. I hardly knew Dad, and what I remembered wasn’t great. He was a man who lost his temper with Momma most nights at dinner and a father who missed his child’s every recital, school function, and birthday.
And maybe they were right. Maybe I shouldn’t have cared where the money came from.
Except the ache in my heart was a loneliness that cash and investments couldn’t heal. Momma was gone. Dad had never been around. I had no real family, and my friends couldn’t understand just how deep the scars ran.
Only one person ever saw through my pretense. He’d felt the same way, tried to comfort me, and was either my last bit of family or the beginning to a scary and exciting relationship.
So why did I keep running from him? I wouldn’t blame him if he gave up on me. He asked for a chance to make something happen, moments beyond shamed nights when I needed comforted. He came to talk to me, and I hadn’t listened. I took what I needed and left.
I wouldn’t do that to him again.
Zach was either my step-brother, which made him family, or he was…
I didn’t know what else he could be, but I hoped for something amazing.
I drove home and braced myself for the relationship talk of all talks. Epic levels of mushy-stuff, heart-to-hearts, and every cliché the French ever discovered. My stomach twisted. This was the one conversation I couldn’t afford to mess up.
I parked in the garage, checked my makeup, and hurried into the house. Zach wasn’t in the gym or theater. I dropped my purse on the kitchen counter. A bottle of aspirin overturned on the island. I tucked it in the cabinet.
And froze.
Two wine glasses rested in the sink.
One smudged with the barest pink of lipstick.
My heart knotted itself into a pretty little bow of innocence and naivety.
Was I that much of an idiot?
Her voice carried from the parlor. I didn’t know what I expected to find or why I didn’t just turn around and walk out of the estate.
I rounded the corner into the parlor. Zach laughed on the couch—fully-clothed, a goddamned miracle. He spread his legs wide, and the pretty little blonde who owned the red Porsche sat on the coffee table. She smiled and patted his knee.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, but my heart pounded itself into a million flaking pieces.
It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since I hopped into his arms, and he was already sexing up some other little tart the
instant
I left the house?
Her smile faded as she spied me in the doorway. She gestured to Zach.
He turned, those striking green eyes capturing me in a wide-eyed blitz of panic.
“Shay!” He swore. “I…didn’t know you were back.”
Chapter Fifteen - Zach
Son of a bitch.
What was she doing home so early?
“Shay.” I stood. “I thought you’d be out for a bit longer.”
“Imagine that.”
Shit.
She was pissed, and her anger was another vice trying to crush my head from the inside.
I called to her when she retreated from the room. “Shay, it’s not how it looks.”
She tried to be mad, but her words trembled instead. Her lip quivered. Fuck. I’d kick my own ass for hurting her.
“Save it,” she said. “I should have known better.”
“Let me explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” she said. “It’s not like…like we were…”
Dating. Exclusive. Made for each other. Fucking perfect together.
“Shay!”
And she was gone. Storming upstairs.
Why was she back so goddamned early?
And how was I supposed to reveal who Gretchen was without fucking everything up?
I groaned. I’d paint the bulls-eye on my ass now. Shay would kick me to the curb, and I didn’t want her aiming too low.
“The little missus is jealous.” Gretchen leaned on the coffee table. It didn’t help that she was
all
fucking leg in the skin-tight cocktail dress she wore for the house-call. “I’m assuming you haven’t told her about me.”
“What’s to tell?”
Gretchen shrugged. “I’m always trying to drum up business.”
“Stick around. She’s loading a shot gun. You can stitch me up.”
She stood, tucking a blood-pressure cuff into her bag. “You’re lucky I like you, Zach.
Please
promise you’ll take care of yourself. No more working out for four hours a day.”
“Two.”
“Zach.”
“Three and a half.”
“You’re
healing
,” she said. “I know you refuse to believe it, but you aren’t one hundred percent healed yet. So use your brain and be glad it still works right.”
“I am.”
“No, you aren’t. If you had an episode that scared you bad enough to call me during my
date
.” She wagged the doggy-bag from the Italian restaurant. “Then you’re overdoing it.”
“The appeal is in two weeks.”
“All the more reason to
rest
. I already lost my brother in this war. I’m not going to lose his best friend too. Okay?”
“I hear you.”
“Go rest.”
Gretchen shouldered her purse and bag. “And, for Christ’s sake, go talk to Shay. Tell her what happened. She won’t judge you for getting injured overseas. She looks sweet…as long as she doesn’t rip your innards out first.”
“If she hasn’t yet…”
Only one way to find out. I escorted Gretchen to her car to delay coming clean to Shay. Even if she forgave Gretchen, she wasn’t going to be happy about my condition or the truth about my extended leave.
I knocked outside her bedroom.
No explosions. No gunshots. So far so good.
She didn’t answer, but I didn’t expect her to welcome me with open arms and legs. I knocked again and edged inside.
“So…you came home early…”
Nothing.
The room was empty. Bathwater hummed from behind the partially closed bathroom door. I watched as Shay shifted at her vanity, but I didn’t say anything. Just stood there like a damned idiot, without a single fucking idea of how to start my apology or explanation.
The bathroom door opened. Shay shrieked.
She hadn’t tied her silk bathrobe, and the pink graced her dark curves with a hypnotic beauty.
I stared. Who the fuck wouldn’t?
The softness caressed her full breasts, and the hint of her slit peeked between the short pleads of the robe. She wasn’t quick enough to hide from me. Even better, she missed the hem of the robe and revealed more. She screeched and turned to tie it. The pink silk barely kissed the bottom curve of her perfect ass.
“Zach!” She pulled the robe’s belt tight, either to shield her nudity or because it’d be a felony to knot it around my neck. “
Knock first
!”
“I did. You didn’t hear.”
“Then don’t come in!”
“Let me explain.”
“Don’t start with me.”
Shay wove her curls into a quick bun, a little too violent for the clip she jammed against her head.
“I’ve had a
horrible
night,” she said. “I don’t want to hear any excuses. You’re free to hump whoever you like.” Her eyes widened, dark and brimming with tears. “But my father
ruined
his family because he strayed bed-to-bed. Don’t you dare make me into some
other woman
.”
“Other woman?” Christ, she thought I was
dating
Gretchen? I took her hand before she escaped to her bath. “Gretchen isn’t my girlfriend.”
“I don’t need the specs on your petty officer’s latest mission.”
“She’s my
doctor
.”
Shay stilled. I pulled her business card from my wallet.
“Dr. Gretchen Mahoney,” I said.
“Internal Medicine?” Shay flipped the card over. Her voice softened. “Why did you have a doctor in our living room?”
Our
living room.
Fuck. I snuck into her heart with all the subtlety of a boot to the door and a flash grenade. If I blew it now, I’d wish the shrapnel had finished the job on me.
“It’s a long story,” I said.
She stared at the scars on my arm. “I want to hear it.”
“I wouldn’t dream of interrupting your bath.”
Shay hesitated, holding my gaze for any reason to stay. I held my breath as she returned to the bathroom. The faucet turned off. My chest ached in relived agony.
She leaned against the doorway. I knew she debated if she could trust me. No reason to lie then.
“I gotta come clean,” I said.
She swallowed. “I figured that was coming.”
“I’m not fucking around with Gretchen. She’s just a friend, helping me because I served with her brother. She took on my case as a favor.”
“Your case?”
I sat on the bed and patted next to me. Shay’s eyebrow rose like I unzipped my pants and offered her a seat on my cock.
Why was this so hard? It wasn’t like I was still in the hospital, pissing through a tube and waiting for them to glue my skull back together. I made it out of the fucking desert alive. I healed. I
survived
.
Would she see it as a miracle?
Or would she see the same man I saw in the mirror?
Weak. Frail.
Aimless
.
“I’m not on leave.” The words stung. My hands curled into fists. Six months ago, I couldn’t even do that. Progress. “I was medically discharged.”
Shay frowned. “You said you were going back to the SEALs in a few months.”
“I know.”
“You lied?”
She bit the word. It felt like a slap across the cheek.
“I am going back,” I said. Hope healed more than the migraine meds Gretchen tried to shove down my throat. “Now that I’ve recuperated, I’m appealing the discharge. I’m meeting with te doctors for a physical in two weeks. If they believe I’m fit to serve, they’ll issue me a medical waiver. I’ll reenlist.”
“What do you mean
recuperated
?” She asked. “What happened to you?”
Like she hadn’t seen the scars. I could pack muscle on top of more muscle, but all people saw were the purple, fading scars where my guts tried to blast out of me.
“IED.”
Shay edged closer to the bed. “So you were…hurt.”
An understatement. “Yeah.”
“How badly?”
“A couple fractures short of entering a classified Navy SEAL cyborg program.”
“Zach. Talk to me.”
I sighed. Shay slipped to my side. I smiled as she tugged the robe over the sinful darkness of her thighs. That little silky reveal was enough to refuel me for another tour.
“It was bad,” I said. “I’m…not at liberty to tell you where I was or what I was doing there. I can say I’m damn lucky that I made it back to the helicopter. I should be another bloodstain in the sand.”
Her eyes widened. She traced a shiny scar over my wrist. “But you’re okay now?”
“Of course,” I lied.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were on a medical leave?”
“Because there’s a chance they won’t grant me that waiver. They might not clear me to re-enlist. If that happens…”
I eyed the master suite. The estate grew on me. I still couldn’t find my way through it in the dark, but a man got used to living every day as a fantasy.
Especially when the most beautiful woman in the world caressed a scar that came from a fireworks accident when I was fifteen, not the explosion that nearly ripped my skull apart.
I brushed her hand with mine. The simple contact was better than any morphine they shot in my veins at the VA hospital. “Last night, you asked me what would happen if the one thing you wanted in life was taken from you?” I met her gaze. “I understand that fear. Completely.”
“You want to go back to the SEALs?”
“More than anything.”
“But it almost killed you.”
“It’s my life. Wanted it since I was a kid. I didn’t have much of a family, and I thought my dad was a soldier. It seemed a natural life for me.”
“Do you like it?”
“I did,” I said. “I liked the travel and excitement. Never had a reason to stay at home.”
Until now.
I didn’t say it. Probably should have.
“I’m sorry.” Shay looked away. “Oh hell. I sounded like an idiot downstairs.”
“I didn’t tell you Gretchen was my doctor when you first met her. I didn’t want you to know I had been hurt overseas.”
“That was dumb.”
Yep. Especially after I realized a girl didn’t get that jealous for nothing. “I promise. Nothing’s happening between me and her. Gretchen’s engaged. I have more to worry about than you.”