Authors: Katie Porter
“Don’t you think we said enough?”
“Not even close,” he said calmly. “But I won’t be the one to tell him to leave. You started this. It’s your call.”
Jake was silently assessing them. He ran his fingers through his hair—the most agitated she’d ever seen him. “Sunita, you said it yourself. It doesn’t make any sense to stay, not when you’re leaving anyway.”
The curl of Liam’s ruined lip was easy to read. He wanted to bite Jake’s head off. Smack it off. Kick it off. But he never broke eye contact with Sunny. “Is that what you said? Seems like taking the easy way.” He hooked a thumb toward Jake. “Running away with the next best thing isn’t what we’re made of.”
Jake laughed without humor. “Hey, I’m here to pick up the pieces. He’s right, though. You called me, Sunita, and I won’t be ‘next best’ for anyone.”
She was a horrible coward. Anyone with backbone would’ve kept this train wreck private. She’d hidden behind the idea of Jake, when she hadn’t thought of him as anything but a friend and colleague since returning to Vegas.
Helpless regret left her adrift. She turned toward him and spread her hands. “Jake. I’m sorry. I…I never meant to be…”
Own up to it.
She owed him that much.
“I’m sorry I called. I’m sorry for everything. Whatever happens here, you don’t deserve to be dragged along just because I got scared.”
“I get it.” He waved a hand between her and Liam. “Don’t worry. You’re not breaking my heart. I had hopes, but you never let me in. I guess I’ve seen this coming since you got back.”
“I don’t think I did.”
“DC tomorrow?”
“I don’t know that either.”
With a tight nod, Jake grabbed his keys. “Take care of yourself, Sunita.”
The front door closed as he slipped into the dawn, leaving her alone with Liam.
“That wasn’t a choice,” he said. “I chose to keep from making his face look worse than mine, which will remain one of the most honorable choices I’ve ever made. But you… You apologized—rightfully so—and he left. That doesn’t solve anything. I thought you were a fighter. Tell me to my face that I’m not worth fighting for. Then…”
She forced herself to keep from touching where he’d rolled the sleeves of his dress shirt. “Then?”
“Then I’ll know we’re done. I can’t trust my heart to a woman who won’t do her damnedest to protect it.”
First in the elevator. Then walking away from the taxi. Now standing in front of Liam with her head bowed—she let out a fierce sob.
“You can’t trust me.” It wasn’t a question. It was a painful, unavoidable fact.
He stood in silence. Her moment of truth. She was embarrassed and ashamed at her behavior, but she could put an end to it and prove she was better than that. Her heart and her mind, her body and her soul, were finally in agreement.
“Whether you’re Dash or Liam doesn’t matter. I’ve been blaming you for keeping your true self under wraps, when I’ve been just as two-faced and scared of everything. Paralyzed, even. I waded in here and said I wanted a divorce.” She inhaled and found the courage to meet his probing, agonized gaze. “Now I hope you’ll believe me when I say… You
are
worth fighting for. So am I. So are we.”
He let out a slow breath. His eyes still burned with shivering intensity, but the air between them became breathable again. Slowly, he approached her and reached out. His long, graceful fingers pried the rabbit statue from her grip. “You’re taking Bunny Foo Foo?”
She laughed. Helplessly, lost at sea, but at least it was a laugh. “Not anymore.”
“No?”
“No.”
His brows pinched together in a new, unfamiliar expression of pain. He turned the bunny over in his hand before carefully returning it to the mantel. “If you stay, Sunny, it’s gotta be for the long haul. Back to the basics of ‘for better or worse’, because I’m going to need your help.”
She followed him into the living room and sat heavily on the couch. “Help? I don’t understand.”
“Dash. Liam. It
does
matter. I don’t know myself anymore. What’s worse, I don’t
trust
myself.”
She shook her head. His hair was mussed, with little specks of what looked like grass. The sharp scent of blood and dirt and sweat clung to him. “What does that mean?”
He dropped his forehead to their tangled fingers. “I told you we need to talk. I’ve only realized that it has to do with more than us.”
Before he could explain, his phone beeped in his pocket. He glanced at it long enough for Sunny to see Major Haverty’s caller ID. Liam thumbed the ignore button. “He’ll call back.”
She gaped. “Did you ignore a call from work?”
“It was Fang. Leah probably reported the fight to him and he wants to check in.”
“Is that what happened to you?” Confusion didn’t relent, but she traced a gentle circle far around the cut on his cheek. “Some bar fight?”
“No, it was Mike. Like I said.” His mouth tweaked with a hint of a smile. “He wanted to knock some sense into me. Or let me knock it into myself. Same thing.”
She kept hoping that shaking her head might clear her muddled mind. It wasn’t working. He pressed his mouth as gently as possible to the inside of her palm.
Her phone rang. She twitched with surprise. “What the hell?”
She pulled her cell out of the jeans pocket—jeans instead of that ruined silk dress, jeans meant for a practical, hasty escape. Her stomach rolled again, just acknowledging what a coward she’d been.
“That’s a Nellis number, isn’t it?”
Liam peered at the display. “It’s Fang, I think. I didn’t realize he was calling from the office.”
“I should tell him you haven’t completely flipped.” She held it to her ear. “Sunny Christiansen.”
“Hello, ma’am,” said a grave voice. “This is Major Haverty. I apologize for the early call on a weekend, but is Captain Christiansen around?”
Fear nestled in her heart. The insides of her elbows prickled with sensation. She was too exhausted for terror. Whatever was going on…this wasn’t right. She locked eyes with Liam. His pale blue gaze was filling with his own rush of worry.
“Yeah, he’s right here.” She handed the phone over.
“Captain Christiansen.”
Most of the rest of the conversation was filled with “yes, sir” and “no, sir”. His eyes went wide and he sucked in a silent breath. The color leeched from his face. Sunny put a hand on his back and hoped he didn’t notice that she was shaking from head to toe. She wanted to lend him support, not add to his worry.
“When?” Finally he looked back at Sunny. “I understand. He’s got a brother in Detroit, and his mom and dad. I’ll try to get in touch with them.”
He turned off the phone and silently handed it back. “It was Eric,” he said. “He crashed just before dawn on the first Maple Flag exercise. I’m going to have to call back in a few hours. He should be out of surgery.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “Oh. Oh, God.”
“Sunny… He took my place. Remember? I should’ve been in Canada today.”
She thought she might vomit. Tremors turned to full-body shaking. Her tears resumed, streaming down her face. “It could have been you. Should have been you.”
He breathed her name and cupped her cheeks. He kissed away the tears from one side, brushed the other away with his thumb. “Jesus, Sunny. I can’t do this without you.”
“You won’t have to. I’m not going anywhere, not today or tomorrow.” She sniffled, rubbing the backs of her eyes with her palms. Her spine stiffened with resolve. “I’ll put on a pot of coffee. You have calls to make.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Four hours later, the sun had climbed above the horizon and skewered a shaft of light between living room curtains neither of them had bothered to open. Dash swiped off the display of his smartphone and hung his head.
He’d called Mike first, then Fang again to get clearance about what information could be released to Eric’s family. More hideous phone calls had followed. He hadn’t been able to get ahold of Eric’s little brother, Carey, who’d apparently been missing for three weeks. The kid had been in and out of juvie and rehab more times than Dash could keep track of, but surely he’d want to know.
The last had been a call back to Mike to get an update about Eric’s status. Throughout that Saturday morning horror show and well into the afternoon, they hadn’t used the names Kisser or even Captain Donaghue. Just Eric. Their friend. Their friend who had come within minutes, within a few feet, of death.
Sunny brought him yet another cup of steaming coffee and set it on the low table scattered with papers and notes. Phone numbers. Phone trees. Everyone in the squadron knew by now. It was only right. One of their own had fallen. Quite fucking literally.
“He’s out of surgery,” he said absently.
Perhaps it was the invitation Sunny needed to stay. He’d hoped she would take it that way. She had been his rock, never saying a word. Touching him as if by instinct when he’d needed to be touched. Backing off when something about his posture or voice revealed that he needed a minute. Generally those had been in the dreadful moments between phone calls, when he was left with a level of guilt he could barely begin to process.
She sat beside him and placed her hand over his where he’d threaded his fingers at his nape. Gently, as if giving him the chance to resist what she offered, she drew his hand into her lap and cradled it in both of hers.
“At least five months of physical therapy, and possibly two more surgeries on his legs.” He sounded as monotone as when he’d taken his set of calls on the phone tree. “But the skin grafts…”
She smoothed the hairs on the back of his hand until he could breathe again. The press on his chest was fatigue layered with guilt layered with the knowledge these terrible moments might be the last Sunny shared with him.
“In the cockpit.” The monotone was gone. Halting. Stripped. The man who used to be Dash was long gone. He was as busted as his voice. “He…he was trapped in the cockpit. Canopy hadn’t broken loose. Sunny, he burned…”
She pulled him against her chest, and he couldn’t hold back the anguish. He was exhausted. He was shaking. Head to toe, he was racked with shakes that wouldn’t stop. Sunny held his head with her cheek against his hair. She began to cry. Would they ever hold each other when the feel of her arms around him wasn’t hewn of pure desperation?
Yes.
They would.
For Dash to lie there and wallow in misery when he held heaven would be a flat-out insult to the friend he’d nearly lost.
Some luck into it. Some fight for it. You get to do both.
Had the air show only been Thursday? Two days earlier? Unbelievable. Eric had never opened up like that before, at least not to Liam. Now those blunt words echoed as if Eric was offering a benediction. Fighting for Sunny meant honoring the luck that had gone their way.
Liam lifted his head. Sunny wiped his cheeks but didn’t say anything so crass as to point out he’d shed tears. It was much easier to wipe hers away, to frame her face in his hands and kiss her. She tasted of coffee, of course, because they’d used it as lifeblood since he’d made the first call.
He dove deeper. He threaded his fingers into her unbound hair and pulled her onto his lap. On a quiet sob, Sunny looped her arms around his neck. She sank into his embrace, into his kiss. They consumed one another, but with none of the violence he’d come to associate with a kiss so powerful. This was the embrace he’d hoped for, longed for, every time she returned from business or he returned from fuck knew where. This was coming home.
“I’m hurting your face,” she whispered.
“Do you think anything on my outside hurts worse than what’s inside?”
She shook her head and kissed him again. The salt of her tears blended with the taste he’d been hoping to find. His Sunny. The ray of sunshine he’d found almost a decade previous and who’d dimmed with every year. She’d faded, and he’d closed his eyes.
A waste. Such a goddamn waste.
He pushed her back into the enveloping softness of the couch. His hands, his mouth—they worked. Nothing else did. Thoughts were blended. His heart barely beat, until she pulled the shirt from his waistband and yanked the buttons. Liam was so much taller, but she angled up to kiss the tops of his pecs, to suck and kiss again. Sharp nails bit into the skin of his back, clawing, pulling him closer.
“Need you,” she gasped.
“Sunny—” He was surprised to find he was hard when she slid her hand between his legs. “We need to talk.”
“Later.”
“You keep saying that.”
“And I keep meaning it. Liam, do this. I need you to be here, for me to feel you here.” She undid his belt and unzipped his fly as words poured from her mouth like water from a fountain. “Make me believe it, that you’re here and safe.”
Slender fingers encircled his prick. “Ah, fuck.
Sunny.
”
“Yes. Here. Now. Prove it to me. You on top of me and inside me. And not anywhere else. Dash, please.”
The desperation in her words reverberated beneath his sternum with such strength that suddenly
not
making love to her was impossible. He should be dead. He wasn’t. He had to prove that to himself too.