Chapter 5

FIVE

Cooper

I sleep for almost twenty-four hours. I’ve been debriefed and stitched up and fed and cleaned up. Then I sleep like the fucking dead. I almost think I actually died because the next time I open my eyes, the most beautiful girl I know is standing in the doorway of my hospital room. It takes me a minute to realize that not only am I still alive, but that Natalia is really here.

“Well, hey there, beautiful.” I smile.

“Hi.” She looks gorgeous in a pair of faded jeans and a Star Trek T-shirt. Her hair is down, swept over one shoulder, thick and shiny, and her big brown eyes shine with excitement.

“Come give me a kiss,” I say softly, holding out my hand. She reaches me in two long steps, resting her hand in mine. Then she presses her lips to mine and they linger for several long, decadent seconds as our eyes lock.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she whispers, her eyes getting a little misty. “I was really scared.”

“I hate that it impacted you.”

“I hate that you were captured.” She pauses. “Tortured. Hurt .”

“I’m okay.”

“We both know it’s not that simple.”

“It has to be.” I lace my fingers with hers. “I don’t have the luxury of letting it impact me.”

“It’s going to change you whether you think it will or not. I know this first-hand.”

“Are you still fighting your demons, baby?”

“Being back at the palace is harder than I’d anticipated,” she whispers.

“I figured it would be. I’d been planning to reach out but, you know, kidnapping and torture and all that kind of screwed everything up.”

“I thought you’d ghosted me.”

“Aw, baby, you should know me better than that. If I hadn’t planned to stay in touch, I would never have done what I did in that storage locker.”

“We did that together.”

“I guess we did.” I look at her. “I’m really glad you’re here, Nat.”

“I had to see you.” She sinks into the chair next to my bed. “I had to see for myself that you were okay.” She reaches out to run her hand along the scruff of my jaw.

“I need a shave,” I say absently, somewhat mesmerized by her touch. I lost myself in memories of our night together while I took those beatings, hoping Natalia’s face would be the last thing I thought of before I died. Instead, I survived and have another chance to be with her.

“The scruffy look is kind of hot,” she’s saying, smiling at me.

“How long can you stay?”

“I have about forty hours of leave left.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be out of here before then.”

“That’s okay. I don’t mind sitting with you.”

“Seghin and Passero are here too.”

“I’ll stop by and say hello later.”

“Are you hungry?”

“I could eat.”

I reach for the button to call a nurse.

Natalia scoots a chair closer to the bed and rests a hand on my leg. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks as we wait for someone to come in.

“Being tortured?” I shake my head. “Nah. I’ve been debriefed and told them everything. I don’t want to relive it.”

“Were you scared?” she asks softly.

“Yes and no. There was a part of me that was afraid, but it was more about not wanting to die than actual fear. Mostly, I was pissed. Remember those women we helped get out of Baghdad? Fatima’s husband is the one who took us. I guess someone saw us talking and he was watching, waiting for a time he could get me.”

Her eyes widen. “Oh, crap. What did he want? To know where she is?”

I nod. “Basically. And I was damned if I was going to tell him shit.” My chest tightens a little as memories of the torture come rushing back. I unconsciously dig my fingers into the sheets, trying to forget the sound of his voice. Yusef’s face. That awful little room.

“I’m sorry.” Natalia puts one of her hands over mine. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just thought you might want to talk.”

“Not now.” I look up as one of the nurses comes in. “Hey, Claire. Is it possible for us to get some food?”

The nurse who’s been taking care of me today nods. “Absolutely. Let me put in an order and see what we can come up with.” She bustles out and I glance over at Natalia, who seems lost in thought.

“Nat?” I wait a few seconds and then squeeze her arm. “Natalia?”

“What?” She blinks, as if she’d been a million miles away.

“You’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, honey. Seems to me you’re the one that needs to talk.”

She shakes her head. “It’s more like I need to listen, understand. I don’t know who I am anymore, Cooper.”

“How come?” I don’t know what’s going on with her but worrying about her is better than all the craziness in my own head. I don’t want to talk about what happened in Iraq because I can’t. I’m still struggling to wrap my head around it and it’s going to take time to process it all.

Focusing on someone else is a hell of a lot easier. But maybe it will make more sense to her, and to myself, if I articulate some of it.

“I’m so lost,” she whispers.

“Me too,” I say. “But one thing I know is that we have to work through these kinds of issues on our own, and at our own pace. It’s too new, too raw for me, but you’ve had time to process whatever it is that’s bothering you. So maybe it’s time for you to admit it, or at least try. It might make you feel better.”

“I don’t know what I feel,” she says. “It’s like I don’t belong anywhere anymore. I’m a woman, but also a Royal Protector. And now there’s a part of me that’s also a marine.”

“Is that bad? It’s okay to be all those things.”

“Yes, but I’m not sure it’s sustainable. I feel pulled, like I have to pick one and can’t.”

“Don’t you want to be a Royal Protector anymore?”

“I don’t know.” Her eyes meet mine guiltily.

“Because Logan died?”

“Maybe.”

“From what you told me, there was nothing anyone could do. Wrong place, wrong time… he knew what he was getting into.”

“But I didn’t!” She throws up her hands. “I knew, intellectually, that there was risk involved, but I thought… I don’t know. I guess I thought with the proper training and skills, we would be invincible. That the Royal Protectors couldn’t just die like that.”

“Knowing something intellectually is different than seeing it firsthand. And your intimate relationship with him made it that much more intense.”

“I don’t know that my relationship with him made a difference.”

“It had to. That’s the nature of who we are and how people like us react to this kind of thing.”

“People like us?”

“Soldiers. Marines. Royal Protectors. Whatever title you want to give it, it boils down to people like us. We’re bound by duty, ready to sacrifice everything for a greater cause. My country, your royal family. We take oaths and then have to learn to live with them. Sometimes it’s a lot.”

“Is it a lot for you too?” She looks so lost I instinctively reach for her hand. Natalia rarely shows vulnerability, so it catches me off-guard, but I like that she trusts me enough to open up.

“Yeah, but not for myself. It becomes a lot, maybe even too much, for me when it impacts my men. Watching Passero and Seghin potentially die was the part that scared me the most. I didn’t care what they did to me, but I needed to protect my men.”

“And now that it’s over?”

“Now I’ll beat myself up for almost getting them killed. For not being able to protect them.”

“Even though it’s not rational?”

“Even though it’s not rational.”

“So everything I’m feeling is irrational?”

“No, honey, it’s human . For people like us anyway.”

“I don’t know if I’m one of us people anymore.”

I pause, unsure what she’s trying to tell me. “Are you afraid you’re going to die?” I ask after a moment.

She makes a wry face. “It’s not that I’m afraid to die—it’s that now I’m much more afraid to live.”