Chapter 18

With a view of the ocean,taking in the cool air, I couldn’t stop thinking about Annie and how I didn’t want to be near her. Guilt, worry, you name it, I was feeling it. How was I supposed to step into her life when I wasn’t anyone important to her? I mean, after everything I’d seen and done, what could I tell her that wouldn’t be drenched in blood?

Was Amos better for her? How did Amos have her affection when he was the worst of humanity, and me…

I was broken into pieces.

Was I better than him?

What if I spoke to Annie, and the two of us ended up moving somewhere quiet, and I pretended I’d never desired to kill so many people in revenge for her dad, or worse, for things I’d seen those people do. I was mortified I’d let my cock lead me to forcing myself on Ryder, but, standing there by myself, I almost thought letting out all that emotion didn’t make me weak. I felt strong, and it made me human. Breaking down in front of Ryder, showing that side of me, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing?

Maybe it showed it was possible to trust him.

But I still had to keep it together, at least until I figured things out.

For now, this quiet moment was what I needed. A bit of time to myself to think and get ready for what was coming. Like talking to the therapist about Annie. That was going to be tough, but I had to face it.

I heard footsteps and knew it was Ryder before I even saw him.

“Hey,” he said, coming up beside me. “Everything all right?”

I sighed—might as well be straight with him. “Not really.”

He didn’t say much, just stood there, letting me talk, and for some godforsaken reason, that was all I wanted to do.

“Sorry about that…”

“What?”

“Kissing you like that.”

“Don’t apologize for that.” He leaned in to bump shoulders. “It was…” He wrinkled his nose. “Is it wrong to say it was hot when you were clearly upset?”

“Probably.”

“It was hot though. I felt all big bad protective hero.” He smirked.

I wanted to shove him at first, but his humor pierced the introspection I had going on, and let some light in. “Yeah, it was.”

“I rock,” he teased, and we sat on the large rocks in companionable silence again.

“You know what scares me more than anything?” I blurted after a while.

“Spiders? Snakes? My sexy ass? I mean, I hate snakes, but why anyone would hate on my ass is another thing altogether.”

I side-eyed him, wondering if he were trying to make me snap out of this, but all he did was meet my steady gaze with curiosity and the hint of a smile, and something shifted inside me. I really wanted another kiss, because when he was kissing me, it was as if I didn’t have to think—as if he was caring for me, despite everything. Instead of kissing, I fell back on humor.

“Jesus, Army, what kind of soldier hates innocent little snakes?”

“Don’t change the subject.” Ryder let out an exaggerated huff, and we exchanged smiles. “So, Annie?”

“What if I talk to her and tell her about her dad, and she never remembers me?” I asked, feeling the words heavy in my throat.

Ryder didn’t try to sugarcoat things. “You knew her dad. You tried to help him. That’s gotta count for something.”

“I was only in their lives from just after her first birthday, six months is all, she was a baby.”

“But James and you were a couple, right?”

“What?”

“Fake-married, but I’m guessing you were together?”

My heart hurt. “It was easy with him,” I admitted. “Does everyone know about me and him?”

“Was it supposed to be a secret?” Ryder asked after a pause, worried. There wasn’t much in my official file, most of it redacted, and the stuff about James and Annie would have been buried deep—still, not deep enough for Ryder and this Shadow Team not to dig up. But the fact Ryder assumed this about me, and that others would judge me for something I was failing at, was too hard.

“Not to you fuckers it seems,” I snapped, and Ryder winced, and my ire slid away like it was nothing. It wasn’t fair for me to take it out on him. “Sorry.”

“I think you’re entitled.”

“Sleeping with her dad sure doesn’t make up for the rest of it.”

“What, you mean, the bits where you turned in a significant amount of the cartel to Sanctuary, or saving two trucks full of trafficked kids?”

“I didn’t… I…”

“Twenty-one kids,” Ryder said and leaned back on his elbows, tilting his head toward the weak spring sun. “Sanctuary found homes for the ones who didn’t have families and put the money in to make sure all the kidnapped kids got a good start in life. That’s on you passing the information to us. The rest… every person on that wall in there that you killed, well, that’s something you’ll work through the same as the rest of us bad guys who started out good and had to do things to survive that we’d never have contemplated before, and yeah… that’s all I have to say.”

We sat in silence again, and hatred burned inside me at Amos for thinking he had any hold over her, but amidst that anger, there was a flicker of determination.

“I’m not Annie’s daddy,” I muttered to myself, a mantra to remind me of my place in her life. James had trusted me to care for them both, and I’d let him down. “I want to make sure she goes to a good family, but… me? That’s not happening.”

I had to unravel the tangle of emotions that had built up over the past years. Maybe a counselor was a good idea, and if I could start the process of figuring out how to be in Annie’s life as a friend, then surely, that was a good thing?

After Amos was gone. After I put a bullet between his eyes.

“You and her, you’ll work it out,” Ryder said. “You’re not the same guy you were, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a good person in her life. It’s about how you go forward, not what happened before.”

He had a point. It was about what I did now, about trying to be there for her in whatever way I could. But it was also naive. I’d changed from someone who wanted to be one of the good guys to a man who was nothing but bad.

But for being in Annie’s life, finding something in that innocent connection? Maybe that could happen one day.

“Hey, Army?”

“Yeah?”?

“Thank you,” I said, glancing at him. “For listening. For just being here.”

He gave a small nod. “Always,” he replied.

“Not sure it fixes anything though, I mean, in my head.”

“I’m not a miracle worker, Navy.” Then, he snorted a laugh, and somehow, it lessened the hatred for Amos burning within me, only now amidst that anger, there was a flicker of determination.

“I need to go talk to Dr. Simmons.”

“Okay. You want me to go with?—”

“No, it’s cool.”

“Well, if you need more kisses, you know where I am.”

“Ass.”

We had an entire unspoken conversation about what I was doing next, and the last thing I wanted was to fall apart in front of him again, so I left him with a sketched wave and headed inside.

Every step through the building echoed, sounding too loud in my ears. My head was a mess. Thinking about everything with Annie, and then there was Ryder as well. The thought of seeing Annie again, seeing James in her eyes, was freaking me out; the thought of Ryder getting under my skin was doing the same. Every press on my senses was too much, and I felt like I was on the edge of losing it.

“Ryder messaged me,”Dr Simmonds announced from behind me, making me whirl in defense. He held up his hands in innocence. “Said you wanted to talk.”

“This is hard,” I blurted.

He gestured at his door, waiting for me to go in. I took a seat at the bench in the window, the ocean at my back, not wanting to sit in the damn chair facing the one he took.

“No one said it would be easy,” Dr. Simmons said. “What is this about?”

“Annie. And…” I sighed. “Everything else.”

“Okay—”

“I feel like I’m breaking apart.” I curled my fingers into my hair.

Dr. Simmonds’ eyes widened, then he nodded.

“Like, the idea of Annie growing up without really knowing I was in her life at all is a good thing, and then, a bad thing, both actually, at the same time. So, I stay away because it’s the easiest thing to do, because I have to take down Amos, and the blood on me…” I stopped, bracing my hands on my thighs. “Ethan showed me photos, like this fucking family album, of Annie with Amos, and when I see that she formed an attachment to someone as evil as him, I just want to lose my shit, because he’s evil, and I’m not as wicked as him, right? But I was just in her life for pretend, and I look at myself in the mirror, and I’m cursed.”

“Okay, so?—”

“Can you help Annie remember me? And help her forget about Amos and Clara?”

He took me interrupting him well enough, sinking lower into the plush chair of his and glancing at the glass ceiling, focusing there as he spoke. He was giving himself time to prepare an answer, and I tried not to interrupt to hurry him along, but what I really wanted was all the answers.

“Working with Annie, a child who’s been kidnapped and thrust into another life is a delicate process. It requires a combination of patience, understanding, and the use of therapeutic techniques tailored to the child’s age and emotional state.”

“And in layman’s terms?”

He continued. “Okay, in Annie’s case, we’re using a variety of methods. Play therapy is one approach, allowing her to express herself through toys and games, which can help her process her emotions and experiences. Storytelling is another tool we use to help her access her early memories and reconnect with her real father.”

“James,” I said, in a soft voice.

“Yes. Our primary goal is to create a safe and supportive environment where Annie feels comfortable expressing herself. Lizzie is our resident child psychologist, and she is working with Annie to help her understand her past, differentiate it from the false reality she was forced into, and ultimately, heal from the trauma she has endured.”

“Did Amos ever hurt her?” I forced out the question even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

“Surprisingly, no,” he concluded. “He gave her everything she needed, and we need to unravel that father figure approach he was using. There is some residual damage—she had a toy that Amos called Daddy-James, and he made her learn that the toy was bad and needed to be hidden away or punished.”

“That fucking asshole.”

“If that is the worst of it, then it’s something we can work with. This is a gradual process, and each child responds differently, but I promise you that with time and the right therapeutic interventions, we are trying our hardest to get her back to you.”

“Not me. I was just a temporary blip in her life. But a family? One I can know about first maybe, make sure it’s a good one?”

He frowned. “The ultimate aim would be to help Annie reclaim her true identity and connect her to James. Hopefully, through memories of you?”

“I’m fucked up.”

“We have therapies in place to help with your PTSD, as well.”

I reared back. “I don’t have freaking PTSD,” I snarled.

Dr. Simmonds flinched but returned my gaze steadily. I didn’t regret what I’d done. I was keeping this country safe, and then taking out the bad guys on home soil, so there was no freaking way I was scarred by any of it.

Sure, I had nightmares, but they were all about me messing up Annie’s life, not about the faces of the people I’d killed. Soldiers in war, the bad guys, the black and white of it all, I had a handle on it. I was good with what I’d done, reconciled it in the moral balance sheet I had inside me.

But then, why was I pushing Annie to one side? Why wasn’t I telling her who I was, and hugging her and telling her about things we’d done with her daddy? Making chocolate cookies? The trampoline in the garden. Watching kid’s movies? Why wasn’t I promising her nothing would hurt her again?

Because I’m ashamed that someone got to James.

Because I regret I was too late.

Because I haven’t come to terms with anything at all.

Because all I remember is fire and twisted metal and James dead, and imagining Annie in the car, trapped, and calling for her daddy.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“PTSD isn’t always obvious, it’s insidious and it colors outside the lines. It messes with your head, and so far, you’ve had it in a box, chained up, but bits of it, tiny tendrils, are creeping out and twisting your thoughts.”

I shuddered. What he explained was hard to hear because I was me, and I was okay being me. Wasn’t I? What was I doing? Closing down my heart to protect Annie from me, or to protect myself from the decisions I’d made?

He stared at me, kind of thoughtful, as the epiphany rolled through me.

“Kids are tougher than we give them credit for,” he said. “As she grows up, you can explain, you can be honest, show her the kind of man her dad was in the time you knew her. Then, when she’s old enough, you can tell her what drove you to find her, and why you want revenge, and you can get her to understand your thought process and the decisions you made and let her decide what she thinks.”

“She could hate me.”

“Or she could love what you tell her and hug you so hard that it makes you cry.”

That image was too much, a flare of hope in my heart, the guilt, and so much sadness it choked me, and I swallowed emotion. SEALs didn’t freaking sob their hearts out to brain doctors, they were strong, and fearless, and nothing stopped them.

“Does she remember me at all?” I asked.

“Bits,” he said, and there was hope again, stealing my breath. “She remembers her ‘Gust,’ but it’s random bits and pieces. We’re working on making those memories come forward.” He glanced at his notes. “She associates you with a toy called Buzzy-Bear. Does that mean something to you?”

Guilt and pain flooded me, and I couldn’t speak. I still had Buzzy-Bear, in a lockbox back home.

I could ask someone to send it to me. To send everything to me.

I wanted to give Buzzy-Bear to her myself.

“Do you think… can I ask you…?” I stopped and huffed at the fact I couldn’t even get my words out. “Do I even have a right to be in her life?”

Dr. Simmons gave it to me straight. “What you’ve been through, what you’ve seen and done, and the choices you’ve made, it’s huge,” he acknowledged, “but it never takes away from you being there for the last moments of her normal life.”

“Okay.”

“Did you have a physical relationship with James?”

I huffed. “Isn’t that in my file?”

He seemed confused. “No.”

Oh, so Sanctuary or Shadow Team or whoever hadn’t shared that with Doc.

There was a question there for sure. “I liked him. He was a good man. It hurt to lose him, and not just because it was on my watch, and I’d let him down.”

“I understand.”

Did he understand? I knew he’d served, so maybe he did.

“It’s not about what you think she deserves. It’s about Annie, and what she needs, and right now, she needs memories of her dad. You’re working on yourself, for her. That’s what’s important.”

“Okay. And what if I don’t want to start this until after we’re done.”

“Done with finding Amos? Completing the mission? Hopefully coming back alive?”

I winced at that, then lifted my chin. “Yes.”

Dr. Simmons didn’t curse me out, or judge me, or tell me I was wrong, and somehow, his silence was way worse, so I filled in the gaps.

“You think I should stop, and be here for her?”

He tapped the notebook in his lap. “Do you?”

That wasn’t fair, to turn the question back on me, because my head was spaghetti, and I had no freaking idea what I wanted

“Do you have fond memories to call on? Ones with just Annie?”

I shook my head, then a warmth flooded me when I realized that yes, I did have something. “I remember,” I began, my voice tinged with nostalgia, even though it hurt to recall the details. “it was warm. Summer, the last happy time, the day before…” I paused. “Before.”

“Okay?”

“James was in the house, and Annie and I were in the backyard, and she had this tiny plastic pool, it had these Disney princesses all over it, and the water in it couldn’t have been more than six inches deep, but to her, it was like a vast ocean. She was wearing a purple swimsuit with this flower pattern and a little sunhat, and she grinned so hard as she splashed around in the water.”

I could feel a smile tugging at the corners of my lips as the memory came to life, even though the despair still clung to me. “I sat on the grass, watching her, and she turned to me with curious eyes, same as James’s, all big and blue. She held out her hand, and I reached out to hold it. We sat there, just the two of us, in our own little world. It was a simple moment, but it felt like the most beautiful thing in the world. And then James came out,” I continued, my voice wavering. “He sat down next to me, and in that instant, I don’t know how, but it was as if I was being given this family.” Grief collected in my heart and trickled down my cheeks in tears. I’d forgotten this moment.

“Go on,” he encouraged.

“They were important to me, and James mentioned something about how when everything was over, maybe we could date for real,” I continued, my tone growing somber as I recalled my reaction to the suggestion. I’d been horrified, scared… hell, terrified. “There was no one who wanted Annie. His parents cut him and her out of their lives; there’s no cousins, siblings.” I paused for a moment; my chest tight. “He said he wanted to make sure that if anything ever happened to him, that I would protect Annie, find her a new home… But I stopped him from talking. I reassured him that he was safe, that it was me who was in danger, right? And then, the next day…”

The weight of those unspoken fears hung in the air. At the time, I couldn’t have imagined the series of events that would unfold, leading me down a path of danger and darkness. But I’d believed we were safe, and that I could protect us from anything the world might throw our way.

“So, you promised James you’d look out for his daughter?”

I glanced up at Dr. Simmons. “Yeah”

“And how does it feel to think you have to break that promise?” He wasn’t accusing me, he was asking me to consider everything, and his question hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d promised James I would do that, and this wasn’t about my own self-doubt or what I believed I deserved. Annie needed James, not me, but my journey to healing wasn’t just about me anymore. It was about being there for her, being someone steady in her life. Then, I asked an impossible question.

“Will you look after her until I’m back?” From killing Amos.

He sighed but nodded. “If you come back.”

“You think I shouldn’t go?”

“What do you think?”

I hated the questions with the heat of a thousand suns.

“I think I need a safer world for Annie.” I lifted my gaze to meet his. “No, I know I need a safer world for her, one without Amos in it.”

He had to be used to sitting opposite people like me because he didn’t even flinch. “And then?”

“Then, I’ll come back.”