Authors: Katie Porter
He walked to the street and sat heavily on the curb. Dash joined him.
The front door opened with a squeak of hinges, followed by the light smack of a screen door closing. Dash and Mike turned. One day, Leah Girardi would inherit command of the 64
th
Aggressors, but at that moment, she wore a bathrobe and looked incredibly ordinary. Her shoulder-length brown hair was unbound and slightly mussed. She’d been sleeping too. Dash had called, woken them both and jumped into their lives, fists swinging.
“Great,” Dash mumbled.
His head throbbed, and the last thing he wanted was a tongue-lashing from Princess. He already knew he was in for one from Mike. It was either that or drive off in his Evo, feeling like a hit-and-run coward.
Yet Leah surprised him. She knelt and placed two items in the space between them on the curb—a first-aid kit and a six pack of beer.
She took her guy’s chin in hand. “You ran into a bull, Michael. I bet that hurts.”
“Yes, ma’am. Wait up for me?”
She offered a small smile and a nod. She gave Dash’s shoulder a little squeeze. Then she was gone.
Dash cracked open two beers and handed one over. “Tell me you’re going to press charges.”
“Piss on that. I owed you from Basra.”
“Then tell me to go.”
“Again, nope.” Mike opened the first-aid kit. He removed a few wads of gauze, but the T-shirt had stopped most of the bleeding.
Dash took over. It felt so damn familiar—more old skills coming to the fore. How many times had he patched up a buddy after something went wrong in country, or after a friendly bar brawl? He used an antiseptic wipe to clear away the rest of the blood, then used three narrow bandages on Mike’s split brow.
“These will hold for a while. You’re going to need stitches.”
Mike winced. “Thought as much. Later. Because you never answered my question. What’d you do?”
“She left.” The tightness in his throat made swallowing almost impossible. “And I let her go.”
“You’ve always been dumb as shit.”
“So I keep hearing.”
He waved off Mike’s unsaid offer to play nurse in return. Dash only grabbed the ruined T-shirt and found a clean spot. Press. Stop the bleeding. Ignore the pain.
In halting phrases, he was able to fill Mike in on the basics of the previous few weeks—while glossing over the full extent of their sexual awakening.
“Wait, wait.” Mike shook his head, which must’ve hurt like hell. “You mean some guy who’s been making a play for your wife is here in town, and you’re not with her? Jesus, Dash. It takes some serious stones to think you’ll ever get over losing a woman like her.”
Dash didn’t want to go down that road, although neon signs pointed the way. They flashed
no going back
and
FUBAR, dumbass
.
“You know why I stopped fighting in tournaments?”
Mike made a noncommittal noise. “Thought it was because of Sunny. Married life. That maybe she’d asked you to.”
“She didn’t. She couldn’t understand why I stopped. Hell, I only realized it a few days ago.” He squinted at the streetlights, briefly wondering if the neighbors would be ambitious enough to call the cops. “That first tour over Afghanistan,” he said. “Where we met.”
“Good times.” Mike’s mouth was twisted into a sardonic mash. “Or fucking not.”
“How many scrapes did we get out of with only skin and a couple rattled thoughts?”
A quick smile. “I don’t remember.” He pointed to his temple. “Rattled thoughts, then and tonight.”
“I remember. Too much.” Dash exhaled heavily. “When I got back, Sunny was finishing up her law degree at Berkeley. She’d taken the weekend off to fly out to welcome me home. We spent the whole time in bed. But she had to be back there on Monday.”
“So you spent, what, weeks without her after returning from your first tour? Fuck.”
Dash only nodded. That was a place he never wanted to return to, even in his mind. The confusion. The utter sense of being alone—and knowing she was just as alone. Life had been tearing them apart for years.
“I passed the time training for a tournament. And I won.”
“Of course.”
“Says the man who just kicked my ass.”
Mike slid his lower jaw from side to side. “Doesn’t feel like it on this end.”
“I stood there in the ring,” Dash said, his mouth dry. “And I looked down at my last opponent. I’d taken him out. The ref held up my hand and the crowd cheered and they handed me a trophy. All I could think was, what the hell was it worth?”
“Because Sunny wasn’t there?”
“No, man.” He scraped blunt nails across his scalp. “Because we’d spent three months obliterating targets. What were a few well-placed kicks from a two-thousand-year-old fighting style when compared to our firepower? Grace or discipline or etiquette. All bets were off. None of it mattered anymore.”
Mike only nodded. “And you never told Sunny?”
“Like I said. Recent realization.”
“And you’re telling me now because…?”
“You’d understand.”
“Yeah.” Mike pinched his lips together. “Yeah, I do.”
Dash leaned back on his hands. Everything about him hurt. There wasn’t a place in his body or mind to retreat to anymore. “I think that’s where it all went wrong. Between her and me, I mean. We kept going through the motions, fulfilling the plans we’d made practically since our first date. She looked happy. I looked happy. So why mess with it?”
“The jester and the badass lawyer. It seemed to fit.”
“Instead I want to teach karate. Have kids. Stay home and raise them. See her in a job where she doesn’t have to sacrifice her morals for a paycheck.”
“You want out.”
A heavy sigh pushed from Dash’s chest. He’d nearly admitted as much to Eric. He’d tried to admit as much to Sunny. Even Fang had opened the door to the possibility. But there on a curb in the middle of the night, sipping a beer, with a dismantled first-aid kit at his hip, he could finally admit it to his best friend.
“I want out.”
Mike grinned. “To raise babies.”
“Fuck off,” Dash said, starting to stand.
A strong hand grabbed his wrist and pulled him back down to the curb. “Take a joke, man. And get a thicker skin.
Quick.
Because what you want won’t happen without you putting up a shield against a whole ration of shit.” Mike tongued his lower lip, which was swelling by the minute. “You want to do what I could never think of doing. My hat’s off to you.”
“You’re the one giving me shit now.”
“No, I’m not. Do you want to fly when Fang gives you permission again?”
“No.”
The answer was so sharp and strong that Dash shocked himself.
“Then there you go,” Mike said. “Eric was right. Give that spot to someone else.”
Dash snorted on a quick laugh. “You two still talking about me? You’re like girls on a playground.”
“Man, you’ve given us plenty to talk about. Leah knows. And Tin Tin knows. And Fang sure as hell knows. We just didn’t know where you’d go from here.”
Ducking his head into his hands, Dash groaned. “So
I’m
the last to know?”
“No, I think Sunny is. Have you talked to her about all this shit?”
“No.”
“Then why did you let her walk out? In fact, why are you here?”
“Better your face than—”
Fuck. Just, god
damn
.
Their hotel room had been a tournament ring. He’d let her go because…
Over the last few weeks, his aggression had found an outlet. He and Sunny had made the rules—as satisfying as a massage or a midday nap. That sounded so incredibly wrong, considering what he’d done to her, what she’d encouraged him to do, but that had become their sanctuary in the middle of a paralyzing storm.
Had they stayed in that hotel room… He wouldn’t have played by the rules. He’d felt capable of betraying her trust that way, as surely and irrevocably as if she’d slept with another man. So he’d backed away and let her go.
The realization cut him to the core.
Christ. He’d wanted to shake her and make her stay.
Making
her stay had never been an option, even if, somewhere dark and deep in his subconscious, he’d planned their session with that hope. He’d wanted to control her in every way, as compensation for how he’d lost control of his thoughts, feelings, reactions.
“You’re more fucked up than any of us thought. You need help, Dash.”
“I know.”
“I can see you raising kids. You know that? I really can. But not where your head’s at right now. Can you? Can you put all this away and hope a cute little baby will fix everything?”
Dash shook his head. “I have to finish out my commitment.”
“Yup.”
“Doesn’t mean it has to be in a cockpit.”
“Nope.”
“But yeah. I need help. And Sunny needs to know that. I can’t… Hell, I don’t deserve her if I can’t own up to that and honor it.”
“Good.” Mike stood and grabbed the gear. “Then it makes me wonder why you’re still here with your stupid ass on my curb.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
It was amazing what objects a person rescued when the ship was sinking. Packing a bag was something Sunny had done every other month for two years, but it had never carried this sense of import. She’d been drowning as she moved through her home.
She stopped in the living room and gently lifted the porcelain rabbit that lived on the mantel. Liam had bought it for their six-month anniversary because it reminded him of a picnic they’d taken during their early weeks as college lovers. A bunny the same shade of brown had hopped right up to them and all but begged a nibble. They’d thrown him a baby carrot, only to watch him scatter and run.
Like Sunny was running now.
She scrubbed tears away with the back of her hand and scooped her favorite throw blanket off the sofa.
It was almost seven a.m. She wanted out of the house before Liam came home, which could be any minute now. Better to leave than to face repeating their hotel goodbyes—even if leaving meant staying with Jake.
Just for a day.
He sat at the kitchen table, so put together even at this ridiculous hour on a Saturday morning. With his blond hair neatly combed, he wore a respectable sweater and Dockers.
She’d called him… She’d called him because she wanted it to be the last decision she made. Ever. The path of least resistance had seemed a good idea when she’d stumbled out of a cab, sobbing as she unlocked the bungalow’s front door. She and Jake would return to Washington the next afternoon, and that would be the end of everything.
She shuddered. Did that mean this wasn’t the end? This hurting? But there was more to come, including the moment the plane’s wheels would lift off the runway…
“You all right?”
She gave a hysterical chuff of laughter. Another tear slid down her cheek. She was flat-out leaking. “No. God, no. I’m not.”
He stood from the table and tried to wrap an arm about her shoulders, but her skin prickled with dread.
Great.
Users didn’t deserve comfort from any quarter. She wanted to be anywhere but in her own skin.
Shaking her head, she pulled back. She used the corner of the fleece blanket to wipe her tears but couldn’t erase the pain.
What had she done? She shouldn’t have called him, and she shouldn’t have… Too many things to name.
There had to be a way to escape this heartache, but every way involved Liam—whom she’d hurt, and who’d hurt her so badly that she couldn’t imagine pulling free of that misery.
“I’ll be back in a second.” She ducked away to finish packing but froze when the front door lock scraped.
Her feet welded to the tile floor. The spot where her neck joined the base of her skull felt slammed by a knuckle punch.
“Breathe,” Jake said. “He doesn’t have to be your problem anymore.”
When the door opened and she saw Liam’s ravaged face, she gasped. His eye was swollen. Blood dotted cuts on his lip and high on his cheekbone. Her stomach tossed over in a lurch. She took two steps toward him before she managed to stop herself.
“Liam,” she breathed. “What happened?”
“Mike.” He shrugged, as if that helped explain his answer. His gaze darted from her to Jake and back again. “So this is him?”
The air had escaped her lungs, leaving two little stones in her chest. She managed to nod. “We’re flying out tomorrow, so I thought I might as well…”
“What, Sunny? Might as well what?”
“Be gone. Now. Stay at Jake’s place.”
Liam tongued his swollen lower lip. His blue eyes were the hearts of twin flames. “No.”
“No?”
“You heard me. You’re staying here. At least today.” He jabbed a finger toward Jake. “He doesn’t get dibs on your time.”
She was exhausted. She couldn’t fight anymore. It would be so easy to float away on the possessive, authoritative tone of Liam’s voice and let him make her choices.
He closed the distance between them. If he lifted a hand, he could touch her. “We need to talk.”