“I guessed as much.” Jake sighed. He untangled himself from Blondie and turned to Tia with concern. “I hate leaving you, but will you be okay?”
Tia’s insides warmed, damn them, at the protectiveness in his voice. He was going to face getting his ass kicked and he cared about her. Tia really, really, hated Monday. “I’m sure Blondie and I can find plenty to talk about.”
He kissed her lips lightly, despite the Monday rule and how pissed she’d been at him. It felt so good to have him kiss her in front of Blondie. Possession
was
nine-tenths of the law, and she felt for that moment that she was his.
“Then I’m going to down to judgment day.”
Chapter Seventeen
Jake walked down the stairs to Chase’s finished basement, every step a torture. He hadn’t felt this way since the day when he told the priest in confession he’d put a dead fish in Maria’s lunch box because she had put frogs in his shoes the day before. Only now, he was confessing adultery. God help him, he hadn’t wanted it to be true, but at least he could say with a clear conscience Chase had nothing to fear. Jake’s love for Kate was back to second-cousin status, like before she’d died in his arms.
Chase was on the treadmill, bathed in sweat, running like he was possessed. That’s how he always ran, like he was fleeing something or running to something. This time it was definitely flight, because when he saw Jake at the bottom of the stairs, he turned up the speed and ran faster, harder.
He shot Jake a glare that would have made most people turn and leave, but Jake knew him too well. That glare bespoke anger and mistrust, but he was using it to hide the pain and fear. Jake was most afraid of the pain. His control-freak friend didn’t do changes of emotion well. How fucked up was it to be worried about Chase’s mental status when the man was ready to kill him?
“I’m here. You can kill me now,” Jake said over the thunder of Chase’s footsteps. He held his hands up in mock surrender.
Chase turned off the treadmill and stopped, his breathing labored, the mask he usually wore neatly in place, hiding any hint of emotion. “You and Kate, you’ve always been alike,” he managed between pants. “Just because I was a sniper doesn’t mean there weren’t rules about who I killed. There was an objective, and unless I was damned sure and I had witnesses, it didn’t happen. Sometimes, knowing when not to kill is smarter.”
“You know I’m armed,” Jake said softly. He didn’t go anywhere without a gun. Chase knew that. “But you don’t have witnesses.”
“Oh, Kate made sure I have witnesses.” Chase wiped his face with a towel. “She had the tech team come out and wire the house with surveillance equipment after her scare with being tailed. The whole house, inside, outside, the grounds…” He pointed behind him. The camera wasn’t visible, but obviously he knew it was there. “Wave to Kate. Or at least, wave to her tape.”
Jake frowned. Kate didn’t do things like that because she was afraid. He’d have to take her aside later and find out the truth. There was more to this, and it worried him. “That’s not like her.”
Chase cocked a brow. “Yeah, well, it’s not like you to piss in my yard.”
“She’s yours.” Jake raised his hands again. “I don’t love her.”
“Right now, I don’t know who she belongs to, but it’s not me.” Chase tossed the towel onto the treadmill. “And if you expect me to believe you just up and stopped loving her, forget it. Love doesn’t work that way. I just feel bad for Tia, that you’d use her like that. I don’t know her well, but the way she looked at you…” Chase shook his head, and Jake wanted to ask, how? What did he see? What does she feel? “Bad, bad idea, Anderson.”
Jake thought for a moment. Chase had a point. Love didn’t just change. “Okay, you’re right. I do still love Kate. But what I thought was romantic love was something entirely different. She’s still the second cousin I’d like to fuck, and that’s it. If I were to be honest—and I’m trying—then I starting falling for Tia the day after the debriefing only I was too scared to admit it. We had met at the club before Kate’s first mission and got to know each other. But the day after Kate’s debriefing, I spent the entire day with her, and I know you remember what that means.”
“If you found the woman of your dreams, you were going to fuck her for eight hours straight.”
“Yep. Only at that point…I thought I was running from loving Kate.”
Chase glared. “You never said anything. I had thought Kate was with you that day.”
“You never asked me. And honestly, I don’t think I would have shared that I was with Tia in any case. I didn’t understand how I felt about her then. I knew I felt…something. Except for the two ménages with you and Kate, I’ve been exclusive with Tia since the debriefing. You know that’s big for me.”
Chase nodded reluctantly. “It doesn’t change the fact that you want to fuck my wife.”
“Wanted,” Jake corrected. “I won’t deny being attracted to her. Hell, I was your third. You know we have chemistry. Honestly, I don’t know what I felt in Paris. I knew I loved her, but also I knew it didn’t feel like the romantic love I’d felt in the past. I also knew it was wrong only I didn’t know how to tell you. It’s not like I can come up to you and say, ‘Buddy, I think I love your wife, but I’m not sure. Let’s discuss.’” Chase didn’t look any less angry, though. Jake sighed. “How’d you find out?”
“I became suspicious the minute Kate said she hated Paris. I was too busy planning her pregnancy to keep an eye on you. You went under the radar. But she wouldn’t talk to me after she came home, and that’s not like her. That evening, my part blew up when she started throwing up again. When you asked for time off, I started digging around, asking her questions, because you only run away to the house when you’re under stress.” Chase’s gaze became iceberg cold. “And why would my best bud run unless he was afraid of fucking my wife?”
It seemed Chase had connected the dots very concisely. “You could have just called my bluff when I called you.”
“Yes. But I wasn’t sure until right now. It’s hard to be sure when your buddy calls with his exhibitionist tricks. And you went on my errand way too easily. Usually you put up more of a fight.” Chase gave him a frosty smile. “Funny how when I was convinced you were fucking Kate, you weren’t. And the minute I trust you…”
“I never crossed the line. I never touched her.”
“But you would have.”
“I don’t know.” Now he wasn’t so sure what he would have done. “She wouldn’t have allowed it, anyway. What you did was a deal breaker in my book, and she had every right to leave you if she wanted. And yeah, I was afraid if she left you, she’d come to me. I couldn’t do that to you, so I went home. But,” he raised a finger as Chase took a menacing step toward him, “she made it quite clear that she would never leave you for me, so don’t take this out on her. It was all one-sided. As much of an ass as you are, she still loves you.”
“And Tia?”
“Kate told me in Paris I had to find my own woman. Her mission for me was to seek out someone I had slept with and see if I could make a connection. If you hadn’t made her my partner, I would have gone to the farm alone and sought her out when I got back. Tia owed me for what she did in Paris, but it was more than that. I’m not lying when I say, besides those two ménages, I’ve only slept with Tia. And I felt guilty about the birthday ménage afterwards, even though Tia never said we were exclusive.”
Chase closed his eyes for a moment as if counting to ten, then opened them on a glare. “Kate warned me once that threesomes were a bad idea. As usual, she was right.”
“It didn’t start then.”
Chase laughed in a way that was just as deadly as when he folded his hands on his desk. “Sure, buddy. Fucking my wife didn’t make you go weak in the knees?” He snorted and turned away.
Jake swallowed. He’d thought that, too, once. And Chase had to know. This was it. He had to tell him the truth about Kate or lose him forever. How odd that the pain you tried to spare someone had to come around and bite you in the ass later?
“She died, Chase. Kate died. On the helicopter. I never told you, because I knew it would hurt like hell, but that’s when all of this started. The feelings for Kate. I had lost the love of my life to death when I was eighteen, and I couldn’t do that to you, even if yours lived.”
“The fuck she did,” Chase said, his voice low and gravelly as he turned around. It almost would have been kinder for Jake to just sucker punch him, or kill him, or kiss him again, like in Paris. Chase breathed hard now, and it wasn’t residual from running. Anger gave way to fear dressed in panic. It was in his eyes, his stance, the way he turned just a little green around the corners of his mouth.
If he wanted his friendship to survive, though, he had to come clean. So Chase would get it. “It’s easy enough to find out if I’m telling the truth. You know it. I told the medical team and Mac not to tell you. You wouldn’t have handled that well.”
“I’m not handling it well now.” No, he wasn’t. Chase had turned five lighter shades of pale, his jaw clenched. The problem with Chase wasn’t that he was emotionless. It was that he felt way too damned much and had to hide it all. Only hiding it meant he never learned to control it, deal with it. Jake sighed.
“Things changed when she died. I had run an IV and started fluids, I had stopped what bleeding I could, and for the first time in years I was praying hardcore, wanting to scream at Mac to fly faster when he was already at top speed. And then she died, despite everything I did. I just held her for a moment, because I couldn’t believe—I felt helpless again.”
Jake shook his head, clearing the fog that wanted to overtake his mind. Memories were a bad thing. “I was terrified for you, because I knew you hadn’t told her what you needed to say. And she had already told me she loved you. I went numb, and you were screaming you wanted on the chopper over the radio. I snapped back enough to tell Mac to tell you to just go to the hospital, because if we paused, she would have stayed dead. I started CPR and I breathed air into her lungs. It felt like the longest time until the trauma team boarded, but they had the equipment and training to bring her back.”
Chase’s Adam’s apple bobbed, his hands shaking ever so slightly. Jake swallowed, too, because it hurt like hell all over again.
Jake took a deep breath and caught Chase’s scent, his cologne, and shuddered with another memory. “You know, I can still smell her blood. I was soaked with it. I know you saw my shirt, but they had cleaned me up some. My hands were covered, my arms. My face. I’d picked her up and fireman carried her to the helicopter, and I had practically bathed in her blood.
“She had made me wear your cologne that day, so I also smelled you, mingled with her blood. Sometimes when I’m in your office, I’ll get a whiff of you and flashback to the chopper, and see her lifeless form in front of me, and I feel that panic.”
“Stop.”
Jake shook his head. “The only other time I held someone I loved like that was when Maria died. I never told you about her, because in my mind, it was over. She was as far from my life as I could get, and I didn’t see the need to open old wounds. But when Kate died… I remembered Maria again, for a moment, and how it felt to lose a wife. We weren’t married—only engaged—but to me, I was married. I thought I was sparing you that pain.”
“Kate became your Maria.”
“As weird as that sounds, I think so. Yes.” Jake was glad he didn’t have to beg Chase to get it. “I couldn’t save Maria, but I could save Kate. And that, teamed with how good she is for you, how much you’ve changed, how happy you’ve been since she’s come into your life…” Jake shrugged, unsure. “I don’t love Kate, not like you do. I know this now. I’ll do whatever you need me to do to make this right. I’ll quit. I’ll move. I’ll…I’ll submit on my knees, like I did for you in that fucking hole of an apartment because that asshole had his gun to your head. I will do whatever it takes. Just don’t hate me.”
Chase stared for a long time, the air so thick between them. Jake stood but wondered if he should kneel. Or offer something else. Or—
“Will you tell me about Maria? I’ve heard her name, because you talk in your sleep. One night you talked about her and you woke me up with a hard-on in my ass. I couldn’t beat the shit out of you because we had guests.”
Jake remembered that night in Paris well, though not the hard-on part. Their targets had partied with them and crashed on the pullout couch. They’d had no choice but to follow through with their cover story of being lovers.
They’d had a great time faking the sex. Chase slammed the headboard against the wall and moaned. Jake tried to get a few smacks in on Chase’s ass, but Chase had threatened in a hushed whisper that he’d snipe Jake. However, they’d been forced to sleep naked together, because someone might have peeked in. Poor Chase had been mortified, but had done it. Jake hadn’t cared. Chase was hot, and Jake could sleep through a war if he wanted.
Chase swallowed hard on the same memories, ones they had never discussed. “So I had no choice but to lay there and suffer your dick in my crack. Then you begged me not to go, and you sounded like a freaking soap opera star, near tears. So I forgave the stiffy and decided to let you live.”
“Thanks for sparing me.” That cover had been horrible for Chase, yet he’d done it for them to live. Jake admired his strength.
“So tell me about Maria, so I can replace the memory of you spooning me with something more meaningful.”
“Deal.” So Jake told him about Maria, and how beautiful she’d been, even in death, and found the second time was much easier. Chase listened patiently, and when he was done talking, his friend came to his side and did the unthinkable—he pulled Jake into a one-armed grasp and hugged him. It wasn’t long. Chase wasn’t a hugger. But it was long enough to let him know that Chase felt his pain. Was still his friend.
Maybe it wasn’t unthinkable. Maybe Paris did that to a person, made them do the unthinkable.
When they broke apart, Jake ran a hand through his hair and swallowed his pride. “I don’t love Kate. Not like you do, Chase.”
“I believe you.” Chase seemed to finally find his voice. “What about Tia?”