Chapter 11

11

I don’t knowhow long I’d been aimlessly driving around town when my ringing cellphone pulled me from my daze. I nabbed it out of the cup holder and without looking, I answered.

“Yeah?”

“Went by Steve’s place,” Cash launched in. “Got lucky and he was leaving. Got luckier when he went straight to a farm.”

“Ran’s house? The St. James Farm?”

“Yep. And guess who else was there?”

I stopped at a red light and realized I was only a block away from Melissa’s apartment building.

Unconsciously drawn to her—that was my fucking problem. One of the many reasons I stayed away from Blackhawk. Every time I’d come home to visit my parents, I’d sought her out. Not to talk to her. Not to apologize for being a dick. Not to ask her how she’d been. No, like a creepy, fucking stalker I watched her from a distance, needing to catch a glimpse of her. It was easier and better for everyone involved for me to stay away. I knew if given the opportunity I would do exactly what I’d done. I knew that if I was forced to spend time near her I wouldn’t be able to fight the pull of our connection—I’d find a way to be close to her. I’d use any excuse to worm my way back into her life, uncaring about the pain I’d cause.

My need outweighed rational thought.

“Did I lose you?” Cash asked.

When you left me, I didn’t just lose you once.

I lost you every night when I went to sleep, every morning when I woke up.

Fuck.

“Garrett?” Cash snapped.

The sharpness of it wore off to a dull throb, but it’s still there.

Every day, Garrett, I live with the loss of you.

My hand tightened on the steering wheel and dots danced in front of my eyes.

“Garrett, brother, where are you?”

“Here,” I croaked.

“No, where are you? What’s your twenty?”

Without thinking about what I was doing, I gave Cash my location.

“Is there a parking lot you can pull into?” he asked.

Christ, he was coming to me.

“No need. It’s all good. Tell me who else was there.”

The light turned green. I made a left into the gas station parking lot just after the intersection, needing a moment before I continued to drive while seriously distracted.

“Easy or hard?” Cash weirdly announced. “You can tell me where you are so I can come to you, or I can wake up Kira and ask her to track your phone.”

It was cute Cash thought Kira could track me. She couldn’t, but she’d still get out of bed and try.

“Really—”

“Tell me where the fuck you are, One.”

I didn’t know which was worse, hearing Cash call me “brother” or him using my old callsign.

“Exxon station across from the fairgrounds.”

Cash mumbled something I didn’t catch before he muttered, “You dropping me a pin on your location would be easier, just saying.”

“That would require my phone to have navigation and you damn well know all that shit has been stripped out.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m a block away. Be there in a minute.”

Cash disconnected and I stared out the window wondering what the hell I was doing.

Not just with waiting on Cash but what the fuck was I doing with my life—with Mellie, with Kira, with Cash and the rest of my old team. Hell, where the hell did I fit in at Z Corps as a whole? Kira could almost do my job now, and with a few more months, I could teach her to do it all.

Was it time for me to step aside, let her take over? In recent years Red Team had stepped back and let Gold Team take most of OCONUS work. That was, until all of the guys got married off and Blue stepped up, letting Red and Gold handle the day-to-day operations at Z Corps. And after the last mission went sideways, getting Cooper shot, things were changing even more. No, they started changing years ago, but Zane going out into the field and getting taken hostage along with Kevin was a game changer. All of the men were attached, they all had women waiting for them at home, most of them had children. The dangers of our line of work had been underlined in a way that no one could ignore.

But I wasn’t attached, I had no woman waiting for me. I could go back out in the field and do it knowing if something happened to me, I wasn’t leaving a wife and children behind. Kira could take over intel. She was good, and she’d only become better over time.

I heard a car pull up next to me and watched Cash exit his rental car. He rounded the hood and came to the passenger side door. I jabbed at the button to unlock the door, already unhappy about a conversation we hadn’t engaged in yet. I knew where it would go and I did not want to have a heart-to-heart in the parking lot of an Exxon.

No, scratch that; I didn’t want to have a heart-to-heart ever.

Cash got in, slammed the door, and immediately shifted in the seat, pinning me in place with a glare.

“Enough,” he gritted out.

“Come again?”

“You know,” he started conversationally. “You’re one of the best friends I’ve ever had. You, Easton, Smith, Jonas, and Theo. But before Theo it was the five of us. There’s nothing I wouldn’t trust you with. Hell, there’s nothing I haven’t trusted you with. And that used to go both ways. I know who Melissa Rivers is. I know what she means to you. I know you regretted your decision to end things with her and I know you still love her. I know all of that because you told me. I remember all of it, everything you told us about her. Now, what I don’t get is why the hell you’re out driving around instead of at her place righting the future.”

Fuck.

I almost wished he’d started in on me forgiving myself for abandoning him and the team.

“Cash—”

“Nope. I’m not interested in your bullshit. Enough, Garrett. You’re one of the five best men I know. I cannot for the life of me understand why you’re not on your knees begging that woman to take your sorry ass back.”

Now I was getting pissed.

“You ever been in love?”

“Never.”

“Right. So how about you come back and we have this conversation after you fucked up and lost the woman who you wanted to spend your life with.”

“Gladly,” Cash shot back. “I ever fuck up so royally I give up the woman I want to spend my life with, I’ll give you a call. And I expect you to be right where I am now—at my side, telling me to get my head out of my ass and fix my shit.”

Jesus.

He was serious.

“I don’t—”

“We can sit here all night,” he interrupted me again. “You know me. I’m like a dog with a bone with this shit. Plus we got a debt to settle.”

That was the unfortunate truth. Cash would happily sit in the car all day and all night until I broke. Human intel was one of his specialties. The man could simply outwait you.

“What are you talking about, what debt?”

“A life for a life, brother.”

I clenched my jaw as the heavy conversation between us weighted the air.

Before I could slam the door closed on this particular topic, Cash went on. “You carried my broken and bloody body two miles. Didn’t stop once. Just hoofed it like you weren’t ruckin’ with an extra two-hundred pounds over your shoulder. You saved my life. It’s time I repay the favor.”

My already tight chest constricted further until it hurt to breathe.

“Since I know the story, I know she’s your life.”

“You can’t fix me,” I mumbled.

“You’re right, I can’t.”

I shifted my gaze from the cinderblock exterior of the gas station to Cash.

“So you know this conversation’s pointless. Tell me what happened tonight out at the farm.”

“No, what I know is, I can’t fix you, but Melissa can.”

I went back to staring at the wall, not giving Cash the opportunity to see the truth of his statement.

“We should be doing this in front of a fire with good bourbon present,” he noted. “But instead, we’re gonna do it now in the dimly lit parking lot of a gas station, fogging up the windows like a couple of teenagers hoping the cops don’t show up before they get to third base.”

Without my permission my lips twitched at Cash’s stupidity. I quickly schooled my expression, but it was too late.

“Glad to see I still got it,” Cash said. A thread of humor laced his comment, but it was gone when he asked, “What do you need from me?”

I felt my stomach churn and my throat clog.

“I’m good,” I lied.

“What do you need from me?” he repeated.

“Nothing. I got it in hand.”

“What the fuck do you need from me, Garrett!” Cash snarled.

“I need you to fucking forgive me for being such a motherfucking piece of shit,” I exploded, and once that goddamn wall crumbled there was nothing preventing the rest from spewing out. “I need to understand how the fuck all of you could come back after all these years and not look at me like the fucking coward I am. What the fuck is wrong with all of you? I left. I packed my shit and left the team to clean up the mess. And Kira, what the fuck do I do with her? She bops around smiling at me, spouting crazy shit even though I’m responsible for Finn’s death—”

“Stop!” Cash demanded. “Stop fucking saying that. You are not responsible. You’ve said that shit to yourself so many times you now believe it. Serious as fuck, Garrett, how goddamn arrogant are you to think that you should’ve magically known there was a sellout? A CIA traitor. You’re not the Almighty. Christ, Garrett, none of us could’ve known.”

“I was—”

“One,” he spat. “Team leader. Who the fuck cares what position you were. You’re not fucking omniscient. And none of us thought you were a coward. We were and still are pissed you didn’t turn to us, but we got it. We know you, Garrett. We knew you’d feel Finn’s death the deepest because that’s you. That’s who you are. You kept us human. Your empathy is what kept the rest of our jagged asses from becoming apathetic. We thought we’d give you a day or two to process. We wanted to give you what you always gave us.”

Jesus fuck, I couldn’t breathe. The oxygen I was inhaling felt thick and burned as it filled my lungs. My hand went to the controls on the door. I fumbled until I found the button, and I jabbed at it until the window unrolled.

What the hell was wrong with me?

“Breathe, brother.”

“I can’t,” I choked out. “I can’t fucking breathe without her.”

I was well aware I’d opened the door that should’ve remained bolted, but fuck me, I couldn’t stop it.

“She’s right down the street, G.”

Physically, yes, Melissa was a block away. Emotionally, she might as well have been a million miles away.

“No, Cash, she’s gone for me.”

“Bullshit. You can’t breathe without her? Open your eyes, brother; that woman is suffocating without you.”

“I fucking did that, Cash, remember? I left her. She told me tonight that every day she lives with the loss of me.”

“I bet she does. So what I don’t understand is why the hell you’re out here driving around instead of back there with her taking that pain away.”

“I. Did. That. To. Her,” I rapped out each word. “She begged me not to. She was all but on her knees in front of me begging me to give her more time. And like a motherfucker I walked away.”

The pain of that memory lacerated every inch of me. Mellie’s red face, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her pulling at my arm as I walked out of our bedroom with a duffle over my arm. Her barring the front door of our tiny one-bedroom apartment pleading with me to stay and talk, to listen to her after another argument. I didn’t stay and listen. At the time I didn’t want to hear why she’d signed another six-month lease on the apartment after she promised she was moving to California to be with me. At the time I couldn’t see beyond my disappointment. My heartbreak. My anger.

My dad was righter than he knew; in my impatience I’d thrown away my future. But worse, I’d broken Mellie.

“You can make this right.”

“Yeah, how?”

“Tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“That you still love her. That you never stopped loving her. That you were wrong. That you should’ve waited for her. That you were young and stupid.”

Young and stupid didn’t begin to cover it nor did it make what I’d done right. There was no reason I could give that didn’t boil down to me being a selfish asshole. And after the damage had been done, life happened. And now was now, and Melissa still hadn’t moved on from the pain. Not only that but nothing had changed; her family needed her even more now than they did back then. The difference was, I now understood the depths of her loyalty. I understood it back then, too. I loved my family; I would do anything for my parents. But I didn’t truly understand because neither my mother or father had ever needed me the way Katherine and Jeremy relied on Melissa.

It wasn’t until my first deployment that shit sank in. The lengths a person would go to have their brothers’ backs. That commitment so deep, so ingrained in your soul, there was no second thought.

Melissa had been torn.

Me or her family.

“There are some things in life you can’t fix,” I told him.

“What if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not.”

“Jesus, Garrett, so fucking stubborn. You said it yourself you can’t breathe without her. She’s it for you, always has been. The reasons why you’re back home are jacked, but you’re here. She’s here.” Cash paused and reached for the door. “Said my piece, but I got one more thing to say. The Garrett I know, the man who fought by my side, the man who saved my life, my brother would stop at nothing to protect those he loved. He’d scorch the earth and go to battle for his team. You would give your life if it meant saving one of us.” Cash cracked the door open. “Your woman is bleeding, and you are the only one who can stanch the flow. You had not one thing to do with Finn Winters’ death. Not one fucking thing. But Melissa Rivers, this is all on you, brother.”

With that, Cash got out and slammed the door.

I didn’t watch him walk back to his rental. I didn’t stare at the cinder block exterior of the Exxon station. I closed my eyes and heard Mellie.

Every day, Garrett I live with the loss of you.

Same, baby. Every fucking day I live with the loss.

But worse, I live with the knowledge that I’m the asshole who destroyed everything.