Chapter 9

9

“Who’s Kira?”

Melissa’s question rang out, filling the room with a toxic energy. So much of it I felt my chest compress from the pressure.

My stomach tightened.

Fear crept in.

Anger took over.

“Garrett, who’s Kira?”

My hands balled into fists.

“A teammate.”

“Who’s Kira?”

The room spun as visions of Finn filtered through my mind.

“A coworker.”

“Who. Is. Kira?”

The room disappeared and I was transported back to our mission brief. Intel reports littered an old, scared metal table. Sweat dripped down my back from the arid July heat. Cash and Easton bent over a map.

Planning. Prepping. Calculating risks.

“Garrett!” Mellie snapped but it was too late.

I was there.

Back in that fucking room. All that intel. Pages of documents, interviews, satellite images. Everything we needed to plan and carry out a rescue mission.

Intel direct from Langley. All the I’s dotted, T’s crossed. Analyzed and ready to be acted on.

The CIA.

The fucking CIA.

“Garrett!”

CIA intel, the best of the best. Collected, studied, scrutinized before it made it to my team.

I felt a hand slide up my forearm—a soft, small hand. A gentle touch, yet it blistered as it glided up my arm and fingers wrapped around my bicep.

“Don’t touch me.” I yanked out of Melissa’s hold with more force than I intended.

“What’s happening?”

I shook my head trying to dislodge the memories, but they kept assaulting me. One right after another. Smith and Jonas arranging satellite images. Easton packing out gear. The normalcy, the routine, the repetitiveness of planning an op.

None of us knew what the next day would bring.

“Garrett, honey, what’s happening?”

Fuck.

My throat started to burn as I swallowed all the words I wanted to shout. All the fucked-up shit that was clouding my mind and clogging my lungs. It was so heavy I wondered how much longer I could carry it before I crumbled.

For ten fucking years I’d held it together, buried it, learned to live with the guilt. But now that my old team was back and with them Kira, I couldn’t hide from it.

“You’re scaring me.”

Mellie’s whispered words yanked me back into the present.

“I’d never…” I trailed off.

I’d never what? Hurt her? That was a lie, I had hurt her—more than once. I’d walked away out of anger and stayed gone out of stubbornness, and by the time I figured it out I was lying in the rubble of debris.

It couldn’t have been seconds after a roadside bomb nearly ended my life that Melissa had come to mind. Everything I’d stupidly thrown away. Every moment I’d missed with her. But all those thoughts disappeared after skin grafts and surgeries and hellish recoveries. I’d saved her from that. From the pain of watching her man almost lose his leg, from infections and drains and changing dressings.

“I’m not scared you’ll hurt me. I’m scared you’re in your head hurting yourself.”

It was too late for that. I’d already inflicted all the pain I could. And I was damn good at it. I wallowed in it. I picked at the wounds to keep them fresh.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “Everything’s fine.”

“Not sure if you remember this, Garrett, but you’ve never been able to successfully lie to me.”

Sure I had.

I’d lied through my teeth and told her I no longer loved her, and I never would again. I lied more when I told her I wished I’d never asked her to marry me. I lied even more when I told her that I never wanted to hear from her again.

And she’d believed all that bullshit.

She believed it and had done what I asked and never contacted me again. Which made it easier for me to pretend I didn’t miss her.

“Forget I said anything. We need to—”

“Oh, no. Hell no, we’re not forgetting anything.”

“Mel—”

“Who is Kira?”

Jesus Christ.

“A woman I work with. My friend’s fiancée.”

“That might be true but she’s not just someone you work with or a friend’s fiancée. She’s someone special to you.”

Special?

Kira Winters was the walking, talking proof I was a failure.

“I killed her brother,” I spit out the truth.

I heard Melissa’s swift inhale. I felt the oxygen in the room thin and my head spun with shame.

“Her brother was a…bad guy?” she whispered the last part with shock.

“Come again?”

“He was a terrorist?” she clarified.

A terrorist?

What the fuck?

“No, Mellie, he was in the Army.”

“Was he a traitor?”

“Fuck no. He was a good man, a good friend, brother, an excellent operator.”

Melissa’s brows pinched together as she looked me over.

“Then I don’t understand.”

No, it was me who didn’t understand why she hadn’t already told me to leave. To take my filthy, black soul and get the fuck out of her life.

“What’s there to understand? I killed him.”

Her eyes narrowed and she shook her head in…disbelief or disappointment or maybe it was in disgust.

“I don’t believe you.”

Ah, the naivety of this woman astounded me.

“You don’t believe me?”

“No, Garrett, I don’t believe you killed a good man, a good friend, a good brother, a soldier unless you had a very good reason. And any of those reasons would make him not a good person.”

Christ.

Why in the actual fuck had I invited this conversation in the first place? What in the hell had possessed me to open a door that I kept locked—that needed to stay locked.

In an effort to rectify my mistake, I went back to the reason for my visit.

“It might be good if you call Wendy and give her a heads up I’m gonna talk to Sam.”

“I’ll do that, right after you tell me about Kira’s brother.”

“Straight up, Mellie, Kira and her brother are not your business. I shouldn’t’ve even mentioned what happened with Cash. Unfortunately, he’s big on making an ass out of himself whenever he gets a chance so you’ll likely hear more.”

“Correction,” she returned quickly. “He said something heartfelt before he left; he didn’t make an ass out of himself. And you asked Kira to come here, so does that mean I won’t meet her?”

Fuck.

Holy fuck.

I hadn’t thought that through.

Actually, I hadn’t thought any of this through.

Melissa’s phone rang from the kitchen, and I wanted to fall to my knees in gratitude.

When she made no move to answer I suggested, “You should get that.”

Mellie gave me a long, assessing look before she turned and went for her phone. I can’t lie and say there wasn’t a part of me that didn’t contemplate taking the distraction as my first-class ticket out of Dodge. Run like the coward I’d turned into. Like always, indecision was the decision and when Mellie picked up her phone she frowned before looking back at me.

Too late to run like a bitch.

“It’s your mom,” she told me.

“My mom?”

Melissa’s answer was to pick up the call and chirp, “Hey, Marion, everything okay?”

There was a pause before, “Yeah, he’s here. Would you like to speak to him?”

With comically large eyes she continued, “Well…I’ve had dinner…but you can talk to Garrett.”

I glanced at the can of cheese and the tipped over box of crackers and lifted my brow in response to her asinine excuse for dinner.

“Mellie, baby, seriously?”

“What?”

“You’re no longer twelve. That’s not actually dinner.”

“Says who?”

I fought against the twinge in my chest. How many times in the past had we had this very conversation? This exact conversation. It had to be in the thousands.

“Me. Same as it was me back—”

“Sheesh, Garrett. Give up the ghost. I’m never gonna agree with…right, sorry, Marion.” Mellie gave me a filthy look as she handed me her phone.

I lifted it to my ear and greeted my mom with, “Everything okay?”

“Yes, son everything is perfect.”

I didn’t miss the emphasis and I wasn’t meant to.

“Mom—”

“I’m just leaving the rehab center. I stayed late and now I’m too tired to cook. Won’t you and Mellie Kate meet me at The Wild Buffalo for dinner?”

I ignored the invitation that was more scheming than wanting dinner with me and focused on something else she said.

“Why’d you stay late? Is Dad okay?”

“He’s fine, just bored, and you know how he gets when he has nothing to occupy his time.”

Indeed, I did know. My father was not a man prone to lying around and being lazy. Neither was he a man who had the patience to allow his body to properly recuperate.

Maybe it was the slight worry I heard in my mother’s voice, or maybe I was a closet masochist jonesing for the beating I’d take bringing Mellie to dinner with my mom. Or maybe I was willing to do anything to get out of a conversation I’d stupidly started, yet I wasn’t ready to leave Melissa.

“We’ll meet you at the Buffalo.”

No sooner had the statement left my mouth Melissa started shaking her head.

“Good.”

That one word from my mother was breathed out in relief. Another cold slap of a reminder I was a shit son.

“See you in a few, Ma.”

I pulled the phone from my ear but didn’t get a chance to do anything else with it before Mellie launched in. “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“Why’d you tell your mom we’d meet her at the Buffalo?”

“Because we’re gonna meet her at the Buffalo,” I stated the obvious. “Grab your purse.”

“I’m not going.”

That cute temper of hers flared. In my continuing theme of idiocy, I hoped she’d lost the tenuous hold she had over it and started throwing random shit at me again. Though taking the time to fuck the sass out of her would make us late and more than likely spur uncomfortable questions neither of us wanted to answer.

“You need to eat, Melissa. And cheese and crackers are not dinner as I pointed out tonight and five hundred other times besides.”

“I am not going to dinner with you.”

“You got two choices, Mellie. Grab your purse and walk your fine ass down to my rental…”

Melissa’s eyes narrowed dangerously, making choice two my preferred option.

“Or we can argue, you can lose it like I know you’re close to doing, and I’ll take my time getting you sweet. Though that’ll take some time and you’ll be sitting across from my mother with sex hair, something you never liked doing.”

“I can’t…” she trailed off and scowled. “I can’t believe you just said that to me.”

“Which part?”

Mellie blinked, stepped forward, and snatched her phone out of my hand.

“All of it. But specifically, the part about you taking your time to make me sweet.”

“Baby, you know the quickest way for me to get you out of a snit is to—”

“Stop talking,” she demanded.

I watched her unlock her phone and warned, “You call my mother back and tell her you’re not coming, I’m gonna bend you over my knee and smack your ass.”

Her attention snapped to mine while at the same time she lost interest in calling my mother back and both hands went to her hips.

I got in there before she could.

“Before you bitch, remember I got a good memory, Mellie. Haven’t forgotten how much you love having my handprints on your ass.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“You’re delusional,” she hissed out.

“No, baby, I’ve been disillusioned for the better part of twenty years. I’ve been blind and stubborn and a fucking coward. Now, I’m finally waking the fuck up.”

The expression on Mellie’s pretty face went from angry to confused in a nanosecond.

“What does that mean?”

I had no clue what it meant; I just knew it was the truth. For the first time since I’d left her, I felt like I could breathe. Like the two-ton weight that sat on my chest was a little less. Like the walls I’d built were cracking and crumbling. Like everything I kept locked away was fighting to come out.

“It means for the first time in a long time my eyes are open.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you need to grab your purse so we can leave.”

She opened her mouth to argue but I got in there first. “Trust me, Melissa, right now you don’t want to be alone with me.”

“You’d never hurt me,” she protested.

“No, but I think yesterday proved I have no control when it comes to you, and the way I’m feeling right now I hate to say it, but you’re safer with my mother present.”

Mellie smirked before she smiled wide.

“Like a chaperon.”

“Something like that. Now grab your purse.”

“I’m not—”

“Fuck it, you’re not paying anyway,” I cut off her useless objection then went in for the kill. “You know my mom adores you.”

Everything about Mellie softened at the mention of my mother’s love for her.

“You know she’s having a hard time,” I went on. “My dad’s restless and wants to go home. She wants him to stay at the rehab center as much as she wants him home. She’s torn because she misses him, but she also wants him to get what he needs, therapy-wise.”

“You’re right,” Melissa conceded. “But don’t you think us having dinner with her together might give her the wrong idea?”

“I’m not gonna throw you down on the table and—”

“You know what I mean.”

I did know and she was absolutely correct. Us having dinner with my mother would give her all sorts of thoughts—all of them would get her hopes up, all of them would be incorrect, and all of them had the possibility of blowing up in my face.

But I couldn’t bring myself to care.

Something was happening and it only happened when Mellie was close. The knot in my chest was loosening, the acid that swirled in my gut settled, the guilt that I carried was a tiny bit easier to cart around.

“You play dirty,” she mumbled, and moved to the small dining area to grab her purse strap off the back of a chair.

“It’s not dirty when what you’re playing at means something.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she continued muttering.

I didn’t have the first clue what the hell I was doing.

What I did know was, for years I’d been suffocating. But with Mellie close I could finally catch my breath.

I might’ve been a dumb fuck, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew why that was. I knew it was her. I knew it was wrong, but I needed her.

The bottom line was, Melissa was the only one who could smooth all the jagged, rough edges of my soul.

She was the only one who could soothe the ache in my chest.

It had always been her.

Just her.

I knew at thirteen she was the one, and twenty-five years later there was still no doubt.