Chapter Twenty-seven: Hold Me While We Wait

Mac

HOLD ME WHILE WE WAIT

Performed by Lewis Capaldi.

I was in the middle of talking through another interview with some news station in the Midwest when I saw my dad walk into the office. Senator Matherton's office had been abuzz all day. It felt, in some ways, like what I'd experienced in the war room at the Pentagon when an op was going down.

It was where I thrived.

What I didn't thrive on was the sly remarks made about my sister and Guy after they'd stood on the Capitol steps and given a press conference. I didn't thrive on the well of politicians who were trying to distance themselves not only from Fenway but also from Matherton because he'd stood up for Dani. It made my stomach turn and made me want to pound something…anything…maybe even a person.

When I hung up, Dad was at my desk, hat in hand, flipping it around in circles—a tell of my father's that I hadn't seen in a long time. Not even this past weekend over everything that had gone down with Dani. Then, he'd been all action and anger. Now, he seemed wary. Sad.

"What's up?" I asked.

"We've lost contact with a squad," he said quietly.

My heart stopped, Darren and Nash flashing before my eyes. Darren's hands around Tristan's waist, kissing his baby on the top of her head. Nash flirting with Georgie and my sister, all sly smiles. No. Not them.

I shook my head. "Not Silver Squadron―"

He nodded.

My mouth went dry, and my heart crushed into ash. "What happened?"

"An op in the South African Republic. Looks like they were ambushed. We know we lost their leader, but that's all we knew before they went completely dark." Dad's voice remained hushed, not only because he was riddled with his own distress and sadness, but also because he was telling me things in the middle of an unsecured office on Capitol Hill.

Bile filled my throat. Anguish. We lost their leader. Darren was their leader. We lost Darren. And the anguish was swirled with anger. The op. The goddamn op that I'd been opposing for months. The one Nash had told me they were trying to resurrect. The one I wasn't there to prevent. Now, Darren, and maybe more, had given their lives for a stranglehold in a place that I'd told them wouldn't work. That I'd told them was full of literal and figurative bombs.

They'd risked everything. They'd given everything. For nothing.

I closed my eyes as the tears threatened to spill. Tears of loss and pain and anger. They'd sacrificed it all while I hadn't sacrificed shit. I'd gone straight for everything I'd ever wanted, leaving Darren, Nash, and the entire team exposed to the stupidity of those at the DoD.

I'd walked, and it had cost Darren his life. Maybe Nash, too. Maybe others.

I was just like every fucking politician who had sauntered into this office since I'd joined, asking "What's in it for me?" without a care in the world as to what it was costing everyone else. And it had cost Darren his entire world.

I got up, ready to go bruise my knuckles on some more faces. Ready to gut myself along the way.

"Robbie," Dad said, stopping me. He pulled me to him in an embrace I didn't deserve, and I had to fight harder against the tears. I had to fight against the knot that had built in my chest and my throat and was threatening to cut off my air.

I pushed him away, and he let me.

"I'm so sorry, Son," he said.

"What the fuck happened, Dad?" I asked. "I told them a goddamn hundred times that operation was fucking impossible without losing men. I told them…" My voice cracked, and I stopped, wiping my hand over my face.

"An IED followed by gunfire. They knew we were coming," he told me.

An IED had exploded a world away from me, but it was as if it was right here in the room with me. Taking everything. Changing my world in a way that I wasn't prepared for .

"I want to go to the Pentagon," I told him.

He hesitated and then nodded.

Dani came into the room, took one look at our faces, and dropped the papers that were in her hand. "What happened?"

"We've lost contact with a S.E.A.L. squad," Dad told her because I couldn't say the words. Wasn't sure I'd ever be able to say the words. We hadn't lost them. I had. I'd given up. Walked out. Run away. Chased dreams so stupid, na?ve, and ridiculous that they weren't worth the clouds they rested on.

"Oh my God." Dani sat down, putting a hand on her stomach. "Nash? Darren?"

"The leader. The others we don't know yet," Dad told her. But I knew…Darren…maybe more. I walked out. I couldn't deal with Dani's emotions. I couldn't risk seeing her tears on top of everything else she'd dealt with over the last three days. It was too much. Too much at once. Too much pain and anguish. Too many times I hadn't been there in the moment that people needed me. Dani. Georgie. Darren. Nash. The faces flew across my mind.

I knew one thing for sure. I wanted someone to pay, even if that someone was me. I wanted to face the fucker who'd rubber-stamped the op after reading all my reasons for not doing so. I wanted to see his face when he shouldered the guilt with me.

? ? ?

It was close to midnight when I entered the apartment. I expected it to be dark. Instead, the lights were ablaze, and there were boxes sitting in a pile at the foot of the loft stairs. Another goddamn loss that I didn't know if I could take. I wasn't sure it mattered now, anyway, if she moved out or if she stayed. I wouldn't be here to coax her back to me piece by piece, even if I'd been able to.

I wasn't sure I deserved for her to come back to me.

Dani looked up from her spot on the couch, throwing her hands in the air. "I tried. I've talked to her until I was blue from lack of air. She won't listen to me."

She moved toward me, and before I could stop her, she hugged me. "Have we heard anything more?" she asked.

I shook my head. "Still dark. I'm heading down to SOCOM tomorrow. Hopefully, we'll know more then."

"I wanted to tell her, but I didn't know what I could," she said. If I knew my sister at all, she'd wanted to use it as one of the reasons to get Georgie to stay, but I didn't want her to stay because she felt sorry for me. I wanted her to stay because she loved me. I wanted her to stay because we fit. God help me, I still wanted her. I wanted her even more than I ever had. I wanted to bury myself in her skin and lose my guilt and anger there.

Dani let me go. "I'm heading to bed now that you're home. But come get me if you need me. Or if you hear anything. I'd like to know."

I let her go, gathered myself, and then headed up the stairs.

Georgie heard me coming and stopped to stare at me before returning to the box she was filling with books.

"Where are you going?" I asked, trying desperately to hold onto my emotions.

"To Theresa's. She has an apartment over her garage she said I could rent."

I just stood, hands in my pockets, watching her. And maybe she'd expected me to fight her more. Maybe she'd thought that, after my refusal to grant her favor this morning, she'd have to push me this evening. And she should have had to. She should have had to stop me from dumping her box out on the carpet and restocking the shelf she'd emptied. But instead, I stood there mute, watching as the woman I loved thought she was moving on without me. Maybe, because of all of that, it was my silence that stopped her more than my words and actions would have.

She looked up, taking me in. My face. My stance. My heartbreak. And her hands stilled.

"What is it? Is it Dani?"

"We lost contact with a S.E.A.L. squad today," my voice cracked.

"Oh, no, Mac…not…" At my curt nod, she gasped, rising from her feet and heading for me.

Tristan's smiling face and their tiny baby haunted me. Nash's and Darren's smiles and jokes. They were men I'd promised an oath to defend and hadn't. The guilt took my heart in its hands again, squeezing.

Georgie wrapped me in her arms, and I buried my head in her neck. Her hands were at my back, rubbing in soothing circles.

"Wh-what happened? "

"They were on an op that I'd repeatedly shot down," I mumbled, trying hard to breathe, to concentrate on her hands and her scent. "This time it got approved, anyway."

"That's hardly on you. You weren't there."

"That's just it," my voice broke as tears finally hit my cheeks. "I wasn't fucking there."

Both her hands came to my face, wiping the tears as I fought them again. "This isn't your fault."

"But it is. Darren died because I decided my dreams were bigger than his. Maybe Nash, too…" My throat clogged as I begged that it wouldn't be more. That it wasn't all of them. "He died because I wasn't there to fight for him. To remind the fuckers pushing it that it was a death sentence."

"Mac―"

I pulled away. "Don't. Don't defend me, or them, or any of it. Just like you can't defend Senator Fenway for trying to take what he wanted. Just like you can't defend Malik for being a weasel and leaving you to take the hit for him. I left my fucking unit. My brothers. And some or all of them have lost their lives because of it."

I moved away from her, picked up her desk chair, and shoved it with all my might at the wall where it clattered and broke. The noise and exertion were better than tears. But it didn't ease the fury pouring through my veins. It didn't even come close. Everything in my life had come apart in the last three days, like layers of strata being pulled apart by an earthquake. Dani. Georgie. The squad.

I put my hand in my hair and let out a deep howl of grief. I turned to her windows. To the Capitol Building, lit up and sparkling as if nothing had changed, when really, everything had. I sank down onto the bed, head in my hands, and I felt her stop in front of me. She tentatively pulled me toward her so that my head was buried in her stomach, and the tears flowed, finally unstoppable. She brushed her hands through my hair.

I circled her waist with my hands, wishing I could just keep them there but knowing that I couldn't. Knowing I wasn't ready to walk away, because when I'd told her I couldn't imagine letting her go without having tried everything I could to make her mine, it had been the truth. But also knowing that I wasn't sure we could survive the things the last three days had thrown at us.

I'd already spoken to Dad and put into motion things that I couldn't back away from. Come hell or high water, I was going to be on a flight to Florida and the Special Operations Command the next day. I was putting my uniform back on, and I wouldn't be taking it back off. I wouldn't be the reason some other squad got lost to the moneymen. To the greedy politicians. This was how I was supposed to change the world and keep it safe. I just hadn't realized it until now, until it was too late for my friends.

So, even though I wanted the time to make her stay, I didn't have it. All I had was this moment to show her that I loved her before I left. I didn't deserve the moment. Tristan hadn't been able to kiss Darren one last goodbye. She hadn't been able to make love to him with sorrow and grief in her heart, but I couldn't stop myself. I needed Georgie's touch. I needed it more than I'd ever needed anything .

I placed my lips on her stomach. Kissing. Pulling up her shirt and touching my lips to her skin. At first, she resisted, as if the touch was too much to bear, but then she gave in, straddling me, and pulling my lips to hers, and kissing me with such fervor that I thought we'd somehow lose our individual souls to something bigger and brighter than either of us. Our hands weren't gentle. Our kisses were like brands―fire―marking us as we gave ourselves to the passion and the intensity that was begging for relief.

After, we lay tangled in a pile of arms and legs. It was hard to see where mine ended and hers began. Skin. Hearts. Souls. But not lives. Our lives were being pulled, layer by layer, into different directions. Her family. My guilt. I wanted to reject it all. To demand to the universe that it let us be together like I'd said we were fated to be.

I kissed the top of her head that lay on my chest, my hand pulling at the white streak, letting it filter through my fingers. I finally found my voice and said quietly, "I'm leaving."

My heart cracked at her stuttered breath and the word that came from her as if I'd stabbed her. "What?"

"I've reenlisted. I leave tomorrow for Florida."

She turned so I could see her face, and there was so much pain there as well as another emotion that I wanted to label as love. I wanted to name it that way so I didn't have to feel it alone. So it would make this time together more real.

"I have to figure out what the hell happened while we wait to see if any of them make contact."

She still didn't say anything. She just watched me with those damn beautiful eyes of hers that were golden tonight. That, no matter what color she wore, showed her emotions more than any facial expression and more than any tell.

"I never wanted this," I said, my voice cracking again. "I never wanted to love someone and leave them like Dad always did."

She swallowed. "You love me?"

And I couldn't believe that she doubted it. That she hadn't taken every moment of the forevers I'd spoken, every moment my lips had been on her body, every moment my soul had sat next to hers, and just knew, but she didn't. I touched her lips and said, "It isn't the best time to tell you, as I'm leaving, but I also didn't want to leave without saying it."

"Mac―"

"Don't. Don't you dare say you don't love me. I know you do." The words were harsh coming out of my mouth. Harsh because I couldn't have stood it if she denied it. I couldn't have stood one more fucking heartbreak.

"Loving you doesn't fix everything. It doesn't magically wave away the things that aren't right about us," she said softly.

I nodded. "I'm just asking… I'm just hoping that you'll let me figure it out with you when I get back. I just don't know when that will be."

"Wouldn't it be better to just use this time for what it really should be? Time for us to move on, to walk away before we both are left so hurt that we can't recover?"

It was too late for that. I wouldn't recover if she left me now or later. If I lost the one thing in this damn world that could still give me hope. "You'd give up on us that easily?" I asked.

"On an us that shouldn't have been. We were weak to give in to it to begin with. I should have moved out as soon as I knew you lived here."

"You asked me to grant you the favor I owed you earlier today. And now I'm asking you for mine. Don't give up on us yet. Don't walk away just as we're saying I love you. The story doesn't need to end here."

I wasn't sure I deserved for her to agree. I wasn't sure I deserved a happily ever after when I'd cost Darren his, but I also couldn't leave D.C. without at least asking. Without, in some way, tying her to me. It was cruel. But I'd given up on thinking I was a decent human being. I was selfish. And I'd be selfish one more time if it meant a chance at her not walking out of my life.