Authors: Cristin Harber
“Her name is beautiful.”
“Is. Was. I’m not sure if she’s alive. It’s better if she’s not. But her name is not close to how pretty she was.” Words shaking, he took a step back, needing a deep breath. “But Delta. I was a street fighter with intelligence on South American cartel traffickers.”
“Is or was?” Sophia’s teary eyes were wide, and she hadn’t switched subjects along with him.
“I can’t talk about it.”
Nodding, she whispered, “Okay.”
Javier swallowed around the rock in his throat. “Brock found me. Knew I had skills, trained me for weeks. He broke me down and built me up. Made me as good with an AK as I am with my fists.”
“Wow.” Her tongue ran over her bottom lip as she processed the toughest years of his life. “That’s… crazy. Are you okay?”
“I am if you let me talk about Delta.”
Sophia nodded.
Thankful that she didn’t push it, he continued the genesis of how the Brazilian street fighter was part of an elite American private security team. “Brock found the one guy with a hard-on for fucking up a cartel in South America. Crazy. But that’s Titan. They could find anyone they want, anywhere. They found me.”
“Just like you found me and Hana.”
“Yes, paixão. But I promise you I didn’t need Titan or Delta to back me up when I went after you.” Javier nodded and sat on the bed, patting next to his thigh. “Sit.”
She snuggled into his side, and Javier shifted, wrapping an arm around her. “Whispering Willow. The PC. What are you actually doing out here anyway? You’re, what? Intelligence?”
“Something like that.”
A different tightness in his muscles made his chest ache return. She faced risks, probably more so than he already knew. He’d be gone within days, off to fight the good fight somewhere else in the dark world. Sophia would be here without him, maybe walking into city scuffles, maybe unaware of the danger of political climates. There’d be no one to haul her out of trouble and take her home when he was gone. No one was as passionate about her safety as he was. “Promise me something, Sophia.”
“Hmm?”
“Whatever you’re doing, make sure it’s worth it. And, paixão, walk away. Walk away when you see the ugly, when you realize you can’t stop the hell. Turn your head and pray if that’s what helps you, or curse if that’s how you’ll survive. Cry and scream, but Sophia, please don’t do what you did today. Don’t try to protect Hana.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Can you do that for me?”
Sophia nodded, tucking her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around her shins. “I screwed up. I know.”
“Huge,” he said quietly.
“They were going to kill her.”
“You too, and that’s reality in this part of the world. You know that.”
“But I
know
her. She trusted me. I was the reason she was in danger.”
He stiffened. “No. The reason she was in danger is because that’s how she lives her life. With the Primeiro Comando.”
“Life doesn’t give us the choices we want, Javier.”
“No one knows that better than me, but it doesn’t matter, Soph. You have one person to look out for in Honduras. That’s
you
. Everyone else is secondary.”
Her head tilted as she studied him, and he knew that whatever was about to spill from her pink lips would be his hell. “What?” he asked.
“If that was you?” She tugged her lip with her teeth, letting the question hang. “I’d walk over again. I’d drag you out, somehow. I’d stand by your side if we couldn’t leave.”
His heart imploded as though forced to cave under a rain of shrapnel. “Soph—”
“How is that different from what you did for me?”
Because we’re clearly feeling each other in a way you and Hana can’t.
But that wasn’t something he could share because he didn’t know what it meant. “I’m trained. That’s what I do.”
“So, none of it was about me?”
Damn. Right on the bull’s eye. All of it was about her. “You’re too good for out here.”
She lurched back as though the words had been an assault. “That’s a double standard.”
Whatever she wanted to call it. “Promise me you’ll watch out for yourself when I can’t.”
“I did just fine before you got here, Javier. I’m not changing what I’m doing,
which is important to me
, just because you asked nicely.”
There it was—the famous Cole family stubborn streak that was rooted in patriotism, just as her brother and father had. Javier should respect it, but the idea of her in the line of fire made his palms itch. “Fine.”
“Fine?” Her beautiful eyes narrowed. “Just that simple?”
“Ha. Hardly.” She was the only thing walking this earth that he wanted to protect and keep alive. Her eyes pinched, back to angry and annoyed. He would have given up the hunt for the PC cartel to ensure Sophia walked away unscathed.
Wait—what?
His stomach lurched. Guilt and realization twisted in his mind, forming an instantaneous headache.
She
was the
higher
priority?
No question.
She was.
Shit. What the fuck was he supposed to do with that realization? Javier pulled at his collar and tried to swallow the boulder of guilt closing his throat. He coughed, failing to clear the discomfort, and stood abruptly. “Alright.”
“Alright?” Sophia’s surprise mocked his own.
How could he do that to Adélia’s memory—to the very reason for his agreement to join Delta? His knuckles bunched. Irritation scraped down his spine, like nerve-ending-coated nails down a raw chalkboard. He needed to get out of this room. The ceiling was falling, and the walls were collapsing. Decades of fighting, living, and surviving became a crushing weight as he spun helplessly in a room that was losing oxygen. “I have to go.”
Sophia’s confusion couldn’t have been more apparent. “What?”
His gut swam with a nausea he refused to accept. Anger rapidly joined guilt, and the speed of his emotional transition nearly knocked him on his ass.
“Seriously? You’re leaving?”
The only thing that kept him standing was the need to run away from Sophia and toward the memory of Adélia. “I’m done with this conversation.”
Hurt darkened her face, along with shock and surprise, disappointment and devastation. “Just like that?”
“Yeah. Sorry.” This was why he didn’t need a personal connection. Everything about him was screwed up. Seriously, how did a guy go from
never
sleeping next to a woman unless he wasn’t ten kinds of screwed up to
this
? Whatever this was.
This was her. It was perfect. It was something people wanted, searched for, and dreamed of.
This
was
never
supposed to happen to him. Never.
Javier rubbed his temples. Therapy would’ve been a good thing a decade ago, but the streets had given him their own version of how to deal. And now he was hurting a girl because he needed to run back to their memory, where blood and brawls would center him, where he could find peace in a search for vengeance. How else could he survive with not protecting his sister?
Javier stood up, hating every fiber of his being as he rose off the bed. He didn’t want to go but couldn’t stay. His skin crawled; his mind tumbled. Panic and tension grasped his throat, squeezing the oxygen and sanity away. “I have to go check in with my boss.”
“Wow. Okay, then.” She pressed her lips together. “See ya.”
He stepped into his boots and felt Sophia’s mental daggers slice into his back. Every painstaking sting was deserved.
This
was why he never slept with a woman more than once and why he didn’t spend the night and play house: he didn’t need the judgment or confusion. He didn’t want the ache residing in his chest.
“Bye.” His boots might’ve well been soldered to the ground for the effort it took to move from her. More than a decade of a tight focus, one goal, and a pretty girl came along to shake his world up and make him want something else?
Nope. God, he needed this job done so he didn’t hurt Sophia anymore and so he could become a ghost and disappear until Delta was called up for duty again. Fists bunching, he needed to fight and fight and fight until everything but the pain and his reason for breathing disappeared.
Right before the door shut behind him, he heard the faint whisper of her good-bye.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Go time.
For the first time, Javier leaving a job location physically hurt. There’d been jobs he’d had to walk away from before, when he thought they’d find intel or learn something but he came up dry. But this was the first time the job was finished and a personal reason had him dragging his boots.
But leaving was part of his deal. Delta did jobs. They came in fast and left when the mission had been accomplished. Simple. Or they’d leave when there was a larger job to do,
which there was
. Mass chaos was breaking out across the world as the ramifications of US intelligence leaks manifested. Delta had been lucky to have been in Honduras when Whispering Willow was compromised. Javier’s presence had been fortunate for Sophia’s sake.
All Titan teams were expected to clean up Uncle Sam’s mess, and Delta was on their way out. Dread thumped through his veins. Not once, not
ever
, had he wanted to stay on the job, but especially, he’d never wondered whether saying good-bye would ease the discomfort of missing a person.
Not. Ever.
The guys he’d grown up fighting with in Rio had never crossed his mind. He didn’t know who half of them really were, how they lived, where they lived, what they did outside of their brawls.
His Delta teammates? Javier could say “peace out” to his bros and not think twice, because they’d always be there when it was time to work again.
But Sophia? She was upstairs—or wherever—feeling hurt and angry at him. All of which he deserved. It sucked. He was a ghost operative, and she was stationed all the way in Honduras, not wanting to leave. So the idea of this—of
them
—happening for longer than just a few days was impossible.
“Brazil?” Brock’s voice boomed down the hall where Javier had posted himself against the wall, teetering on the edge of a mental moment.
His tongue pressed to the top of his mouth, thick, with too much to say and nothing worth trying to explain. “Yeah.”
Brock’s boots echoed at an angry pace before he marched into the room. “Get to the room.”
“Yeah, coming.” As with tearing off a bandage, Javier needed to act fast. He cleared his throat and followed as ordered to their group rendezvous, where Ryder and Grayson sat, bullshitting.
Brock’s phone rang, and when he answered, all eyes watched, waiting—Javier’s stomach churning—for their team leader’s final report. Brock gave a thumbs-up. “We have a green light. Let’s roll.”
This was it. He was leaving Sophia, maybe never seeing her again—unless there was another Cole family event the team hit up, and even then, he shouldn’t go. Not after how he’d left things with her.
“Brazil, move your slow ass.”
Javier turned to Brock, but his muscles ached as though he’d gone thirty rounds with a heavyweight. His mind was equally heavy. “Shit. I need a minute.”
“Goddamn it,” Brock muttered while Ryder and Grayson chuckled, and everyone knew where Javier was going.
They knew it before he did. His mind was at war, but his boots were hauling ass. He bounded up the stairs, not bothering to knock on Sophia’s bedroom door. He burst in.
Empty.
“Soph?”
No answer. Retracing his steps, a panic gripped his thoughts as he rushed without a plan. “Sophia?”
The dining room? Also empty. The kitchen maybe? He pushed through the door—
There she was—
Cristo
. Her eyes were red rimmed, and Janella gave him a look that would make a lesser man take a step back, guarding his balls as well as soul.
“Soph, can I talk to you for a minute?”
Her gaze dropped to the floor, and her cheeks heated pink as she shook her head, hair draping over his view of her sweetheart face, trying to hide the heartbreak and hurt. “Just go. I’m fine.”
“Yeah, well.” He wasn’t fine. “One minute?”
She wouldn’t look up. “Say whatever you have to say, and go. Okay. I get it. I’m a big girl.”
Janella made an “mm-hmm” noise of agreement, still glaring as if to say he was a dick. Which he was, so the noise and look were deserved. But still they stung.
“Can we have a minute?” he asked the source of the unrelenting eye daggers.
Janella smirked, not sheathing or slowing her deadly glare. “Not a chance, honey buns.”
He took a deep breath. He wasn’t one to like an audience unless they were strangers howling at his street fights, but instead of leaving, Javier inched closer to Sophia. “You’re
here
whether I like it or not.”
Her chin came up, but her tear-stained eyes rolled. “Yeah, we’ve been over that.”