Текст книги "Collateral Damage"

Автор книги: Kaylea Cross

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Wentworth nodded at him and Liam nodded back, wiping at his face with a towel while the other man approached him. “Hey, man,” he said to Liam, pausing next to him. “Heard I missed some excitement yesterday.”

“Yeah. You just get back in?”

“About an hour ago.” He twisted the cap off a water bottle and took a pull. “So, Honor hopped on the minigun, huh?” At Liam’s nod he grinned. “Knew I liked that girl.”

Liam knew he didn’t mean anything by it, and was well aware that Wentworth’s loyalty lay with Ace. He still didn’t like hearing him talk about Honor with that kind of intimate tone. “She did great.” And he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Wentworth tipped his chin at the leg press. “May I?”

“Sure, be my guest.” He shifted from one foot to the other and tried to think of a segue that would allow his next question to seem nonchalant, but came up empty, so he just went with it. “You hear anything else about her? How she’s doing?”

The CCT shot him a funny look as he seated himself at the machine and rubbed a hand over the reddish-brown scruff on his face. “Thought you were with her at the hospital yesterday.”

“I was, but I left before the doc could see her. Sounded like she might have a concussion on top of everything.”

“That’s what Ace said, yeah, but it’s mild and you know Erin’s gonna be all over her like a mother hen for the next few days.” He added another plate to the weights. “Other than a bump on the head and some stitches, she’s okay. Just lying low for a day or two, until she gets clearance to go back to work.”

Liam disliked having to find that out from someone else, let alone someone who barely knew her. He made himself nod, pushing back the irritation that was slowly driving him insane. He could compartmentalize with the best of them but yesterday’s events had messed with the locking mechanism in his brain. All he could think about was how close she’d come to dying.

“That’s good.” He didn’t know why he was still standing there, hoping Wentworth would feed him another crumb of intel about her. Freaking pathetic.

“You know,” the other man said slowly, setting his feet on the metal plates to begin knocking out his first set of reps, “if you wanted some privacy to see her for a while, Ace could make it happen. I’ll talk to her about it if you want.”

Liam’s gaze sharpened on him, the beginnings of a scowl creasing his forehead.

The other man kept his eyes on his quads as he kept pumping out reps. “Just saying. Ace could figure out the logistics and I could pass it on to you.”

Liam stared at him, the scowl deepening. “Why would I want either of you to do that?”

At that Wentworth raised his hands in a pacifying gesture. “Whatever, man, it’s your business. I was just offering.” Liam opened his mouth to tell him he didn’t need or want help where Honor was concerned, but the man’s next words made the retort die in his throat. “It’s just…if you were willing to go to the hospital and stay with her, then I figured you’d probably want the chance to see her again before she leaves,” he added with another shrug, like it didn’t matter to him one way or the other.

“Leaves?” Liam echoed, a wave of dread washing over him. He hadn’t thought her injuries were severe enough to warrant sending her stateside.

Wentworth looked at him, legs still pumping. “Yeah, Ace said her whole unit’s being sent back to JBLM in another week or so. You didn’t know?”

“No.” And dammit, even though he didn’t want that to change anything, it did. No matter how much he wanted to deny it, they had unfinished business to settle once and for all and now it seemed the only way that was going to happen was to take care of it before she left.

“It was a last minute change, by the sounds of it.”

Liam nodded then gave himself a mental shake. “See you later,” he said to Wentworth.

“Yeah, man, take care.”

Liam headed for the gym door, his mind racing as he walked.

Yeah, seeing Honor again was unavoidable at this point. He just needed to get into the right headspace first. Getting her alone in her hut was dangerous though. He still wanted her, and he knew she still wanted him. Or had until yesterday, anyhow.

He hadn’t slept with anyone since her, for various reasons, and he and Honor still had the kind of chemistry that burned hot as a phosphorous grenade. But it couldn’t have been as good as he remembered, otherwise she never would have dumped him in the first place.

No. He needed to wind up that chapter of his life and move on without ever looking back. There was only one way forward now. Her heading back stateside was exactly what he needed in order to put her behind him once and for all.

He’d see her one last time but keep his guard up. All he had to do was remember the night she’d walked out.

In ripping his heart out she’d taught him a lesson he’d never forget.

Chapter Nine

Nineteen months earlier

The drone of the next-door neighbor’s lawnmower drifted through his open bedroom window, the warm spring breeze bringing with it the smell of freshly cut grass. Liam added the last of his tightly rolled up T-shirts to his Army-issue duffel and shut the top drawer of his now empty dresser before pausing to look around his room.

His place was always tidy but now it felt almost sterile in its emptiness. Twelve hours from now he’d be on a plane for the long flight to Germany, then on to Bagram for his second combat tour in a row.

And suddenly he was weary. Bone-deep weary.

He knew once he got over there his mental state would switch gears and his head would be in the game. But right now the thought of leaving for another long deployment made him feel exhausted in every sense of the word.

It’d been four days since he’d seen Honor at the hospital. Four days and three nights without being able to see her or talk to her in person, let alone do something to help the situation.

He was a fixer, a doer. He knew she was going through hell with her family but there was nothing he could do if she wouldn’t even see him. Honor had called to give him a few updates about Charity, informing him that she was going to be okay and that she’d been admitted into a psychiatric facility for intensive treatment until they found the right mix of meds and therapy to help stabilize her mental state.

Within days of meeting Charity at the bar that first night, his internal radar had already been alerting him that something was wrong.

Like, really wrong.

Right from the start she’d seemed overly clingy, texting or calling him constantly, way beyond what he considered normal for the stage they’d been at. After a few hours in her company he’d seen she was needy too, and those were all deal breakers for a relationship with him anyway. Hadn’t taken a genius to see Charity had problems, even back then.

He’d already been planning to end things with Charity because of her borderline obsessive behavior with him, but meeting Honor had clinched it. She’d blown him away with her poise, confidence and sweet personality. That she’d been a rotary wing aviation maintainer in the Air Force almost seemed like an unbelievable coincidence. They liked the same things, had similar beliefs about life. Both of them were low key and dedicated to serving their country. After ending things with Charity they’d become good friends long before he’d ever revealed his true feelings for her.

Liam ran a hand over his face. He just didn’t understand how things had gotten so blown out of proportion with Charity and her parents. Exactly what was the big fucking deal about their practically non-existent history, anyway?

They’d only gone out a couple of times and he’d never done anything beyond kiss her. Yet Honor’s family seemed to think he’d broken some sacred vow to Charity when he’d ended things. Their batshit reaction to finding out about the engagement was beyond ridiculous. He’d made a clean and decisive break from Charity long before making his feelings for Honor known. Months, in fact. It wasn’t like he’d cheated on Charity, or that Honor had gone behind her sister’s back. And comparing a few casual dates with Charity almost two-and-a-half freaking years ago to what he and Honor had together now was fucking crazy. Jesus.

Honor was still refusing to see him after the other night, claiming she needed to be with her sister and help her parents through this. He could tell from the exhaustion in her voice that she wasn’t taking care of herself properly. After twenty-four hours of being shut out like that he’d gotten desperate and driven to her place a couple of times but she hadn’t been home. Seeing her porch light on in the middle of the day was a dead giveaway that she wasn’t staying there.

She had to be staying either at the hospital or her parents’. Him showing up at either location after the other night would only result in another total clusterfuck. Even with a deadline looming for him and Honor before he left and as much as he wanted to see her and make her talk things out, he knew causing more friction with her family would just alienate her further. That left him with no other option but to wait for her to come to him, and every hour she didn’t was slowly driving him insane.

It hurt like hell that she would shut him out this way and leave him in limbo hell as far as the current status of their relationship was concerned. She’d taken the ring off, the one she’d cried over when he’d gotten down on one knee and proposed.

Yeah, she’d told him she’d done it in an effort to hide it from her parents, but the fact that she’d taken it off in the first place spoke volumes to him. He knew things had moved fast between them but he’d thought they were both ready for the next step. Were they still engaged, or not? Were they even together right now? Didn’t feel like it. Fuck, he didn’t know what to think.

She knew damn well he was leaving tomorrow. Was he just supposed to go off to war, and assume everything would work itself out in time? Because there was no way in hell he could do that and she shouldn’t expect him to.

He zipped the bag shut. It scared the shit out of him that he might have already lost her. The worst part of all this was knowing he was losing her, yet being powerless to do anything about it. The combined uncertainty and worry were torture. He hadn’t slept much since that night, had barely eaten. The Honor he knew—or thought he’d known—would never do this to him. How could this be happening, when even in the face of his upcoming deployment they’d been so happy up until the call about Charity?

Since it had been at least twelve hours since he’d forced himself to eat he went down to the kitchen and nuked some leftovers from a couple days ago. Six bites in, his phone rang with Honor’s special ringtone. The food seemed to congeal into a hard ball in his gut.

Setting the spoon aside he pulled his phone out and took a deep breath. Now that she was finally calling he didn’t know what to say, but he also knew he couldn’t go on like this. He needed answers and reassurance that they were going to work through everything. Most of all he needed to see her. To hold her, make love to her and sleep with her in his arms tonight, so he could take that memory with him for the lonely months ahead.

“Hello?” He made sure his tone was even and tried to ignore the pounding of his heart.

“Hey.”

From her subdued response he could already tell that this wasn’t going to be good. “Hey.” He gripped the edge of the counter with his free hand, waiting for her to say something.

“What time’s your flight tomorrow?”

“Oh-seven hundred.” Which she already knew and there was no way she’d forgotten. Honor didn’t forget details like that.

She paused. “I’m outside. Can I come in?”

Liam blinked. She was outside right now and seriously thought she had to ask? The slight bit of hope he’d been holding onto all this time burst like a popped balloon.

He drew himself upright, all his instincts urging him to retreat emotionally, protect himself against what was coming. The grinding sensation in his gut worsened. But dammit, no matter what she’d come to tell him, he still had to see her and have his say. The constant uncertainty was killing him.

She was waiting on the front doorstep when he opened the door. Dressed in dark, fitted jeans and an embellished bright pink tank that showed off the curve of her breasts and the toned muscles in her arms, she searched his eyes in silence. The lack of a smile didn’t bode well either, but when he looked down he saw she was wearing his ring.

Some of the tension inside him eased and he could breathe again. She didn’t reach for him though and given the way she’d been treating him he wasn’t going to be the one to initiate physical affection.

Keeping his expression carefully blank, Liam stepped back without a word and let her in. Following her to the kitchen where she took a seat on one of the barstools at the island, he went to the opposite side, folded his arms and stared at her, waiting. She was acting so cool and distant and the level of dread inside him was growing exponentially by the second.

She glanced around the kitchen rather than look at him. “I’m guessing you’re all packed up?”

“Yes.”

At his clipped tone she met his gaze and swallowed. When she didn’t say anything else he lost his patience. “So you just wanted to drop by and say goodbye before I left, or what?”

“Partly,” she acknowledged with a nod, looking uncertain. She knew he was angry and had to understand why.

“Then why else?”

When she hesitated again the anger that had been simmering below the surface burst free. “Then how about you start by explaining this whole cold shoulder routine you’ve been giving me,” he demanded. Goddamn it, it wasn’t like her to be cruel or play games.

Honor dropped her gaze to her lap, her posture stiff. “Liam, you don’t understand.”

“You’re damn right I don’t.”

Her mouth thinned at the verbal jab and she took a deep breath before continuing. “You have every right to be mad at me, but you don’t have the first clue how miserable I am right now. You have no idea what it’s like to be in my position at the moment, okay?”

Because she wouldn’t fucking talk to him! “Don’t I? I was there, Honor, I heard what your dad said to you.” He’d never liked the asshole in the first place but the other night Liam had lost what little remaining respect he had for the man. The sooner Honor was out from under that man’s influence, the better.

She shook her head, adamant. “Yes, and you know how important my family is to me—how huge a part of my life they’ve been and still are, but you can’t ever relate to it because you’ve never had it.”

“I thought I finally did,” he fired back, staring at her. He’d finally had that sense of bone-deep connection and unconditional love, with her. He’d given his heart away and for the first time in his life he’d actually felt like he belonged with someone. Did she get that? Did she understand how huge that was for him? He’d thought so but maybe he’d been wrong.

Jesus, maybe he’d been wrong about a lot of things where she was concerned.

“We’re talking about two totally different things,” she insisted with a shake of her head. “Your family was never there for you when you were growing up in Tucson, and you don’t even have contact with your father or step-sister anymore. Not that I blame you for making that decision after the way they treated you,” she added.

He raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to point out the hypocrisy of her statement but she kept going. “I know they’re not the easiest people to get along with and I know they have issues. But they’re still my family and I love them anyway. I’m sure you think I should just cut my family off after my father’s threats the other night, but that’s not the way I work, so I can’t. God, Liam, I can’t, okay? And I don’t know how to explain my reasoning to you or make you understand why.” Though the pain in her voice was real, it was the grief in her eyes that sent a shock of fear through him.

In that moment he realized the truth of why she’d come here. And fuck him, but one look at her face and he knew she was actually prepared to go through with it.

It left him reeling. He couldn’t move.

Stunned, not even remotely ready to face this even though he’d known for the past few days that this was a possibility, he could only stare while his heart seized in his chest.

Honor stood and raked a hand through her hair, looking tortured as she went on. “If we got married it would literally kill Charity, and my parents as well. I can’t do that to them, but especially not Charity. I know you don’t have much respect for her, and now less than you did before, but she’s the only sister I have left. I love her.”

Didn’t take a genius to decipher the underlying message there. The punch line: Charity was more important to her than he was. So Honor was breaking up with him.

He wouldn’t accept it.

Somehow Liam found his voice, striving to stay calm, to hear what she was saying and try to understand. “I get that, but how does that mean I automatically take last place in your life?”

She blinked and frowned at him in apparent confusion. “You don’t.”

He didn’t? Her reaction threw him for a second. So she wasn’t here to dump him? Liam stared, certain he was missing something. “Sure looks that way to me.” Felt that way, too.

Honor shook her head, her hair swinging gently against her cheeks. “Liam, I love you, you know I do. But she needs me right now, more than she ever has. Once we get her through this I’ll be able to fix the rest and everything will be okay.”

Liam sincerely doubted it. “So what are you saying?”

She hesitated a moment before answering. “I want to keep things quiet for a while, until everything settles down.”

He didn’t think he liked where this was going. “Quiet as in how?”

“You and me. We’ll just keep doing what we were doing before all this happened and my family doesn’t have to know.”

Oh, hell no. His jaw clenched. “You want to lie to your family and everyone else and pretend we’re not together.”

“Nothing will change between us,” she said quickly, her aqua-blue eyes wide and pleading. “It’s for the best. Just until this whole situation blows over and I figure out how to smooth everything out.”

Liam rubbed a hand over his face and looked at her. “I don’t believe this.”

Alarm sparked in her eyes. “Just for a little while,” she stressed, taking a cautious step toward him.

“You seriously think that’s gonna help the situation?” he asked, frustration clear in his voice.

“Well it won’t hurt it. I know the timing’s shitty with you being deployed, but this is only for the short-term.” She seemed sincere and truly surprised by his reaction, as if she couldn’t fathom why he wouldn’t simply jump at the chance to go along with her plan.

That only made him angrier.

After everything she’d put him through the last couple of days, knowing that they’d be separated for at least another nine months, this is the best she could offer? “Dammit, Honor, after the other night I can’t believe you’d even ask that of me!”

She drew her head back slightly, her eyes widening at his show of anger. “What?” she whispered, looking stricken.

With a growl of frustration that came from his gut he spun around and took two steps toward the stove before turning back to face her. She was still staring at him, her expression incredulous.

His temper snapped. “Seriously?” He couldn’t fucking believe this. “I’ve lived for months like that already, feeling like some dirty secret you were ashamed of.”

She gasped and paled. “I never treated you like that!”

“Yes you did. We had to constantly sneak around so your family wouldn’t find out, back before we were both deployed last time—hell, you told me even your friend Erin didn’t know we were together until a couple months ago.”

“Well what was I supposed to do? I told you what would happen if my family found out, and the truth turned out to be even worse than I imagined. You were never a dirty secret to me though.” She sounded insulted.

She didn’t get it. “But you have no problem expecting me to keep doing that, even though we’re engaged. You want me to go back to only dropping by your place late at night so no one will see my truck there, and not eating at local restaurants together in case someone saw us and told your family. How would you feel if I treated you like that? Acted like I was ashamed to be seen with you?” He’d goddamn hated the sneaking around from day one, but he’d gone along with it to ease her mind. Now that he understood how toxic it was to enable that kind of behavior, he couldn’t do it anymore. Not after she’d promised to marry him.

When she didn’t say anything else he pushed out a breath. “For how long this time, Honor? You think Charity’s gonna be stable enough to ‘handle’ us being engaged in another six months’ time? A year, maybe? Because the reality is she might never be ready to face it. So how long am I supposed to go on living like that, walking on eggshells to make sure we don’t upset her, waiting until you decide it’s safe for us to come out into the open and then get married?”

“I don’t know,” she fired back, raising her chin and glaring across the island at him, “but what the hell else do you expect me to do?”

He gave a humorless laugh. “If the answer isn’t already clear to you, then me saying it is a waste of time.”

She made a frustrated sound. “What, you expect me to just flaunt you in front of my family now? Wave my ring in their faces after all this? Make Charity want to finish the job next time and kill herself for real when they let her out?”

A chill settled deep inside him. “Your family’s never going to accept me. You knew it, knew it all along, and now that the shit has hit the fan, you want to hide everything, including me, and hope it’ll all work out in the end. It won’t, Honor, not the way you want it to, and you know it.”

At that the anger drained from her and she swallowed. “You don’t know that,” she said quietly, a hint of uncertainty in her voice.

“Yeah, I do know that. And you do too, if you’re honest with yourself.” He watched her, waiting as the tense seconds ticked past, the blood rushing in his ears.

“So you’re giving me an ultimatum too? It’s either you or them?” Her voice caught.

“No. Goddamn it, don’t put words in my mouth.” Liam hated to cause her more pain but he couldn’t let her run from this and couldn’t wait for her to realize that by hiding their relationship for now she was just delaying the inevitable. Awful as it was, in the end she would eventually have to make this same decision. “I’m saying at this point you either want to marry me or you don’t, no matter what anyone else thinks.”

“Easy for you to say,” she snapped. “How can you stand there and say that to me after everything that just happened? All I’m asking for is time. You’re leaving tomorrow, which will give things a chance to settle down and—”

“Glad the timing of me being sent to a war zone for another nine months worked in your favor,” he said, sarcasm dripping from each word.

She stared at him for a long moment, then shook her head slowly, her eyes full of hurt. “You asshole,” she said in a choked whisper.

He didn’t give a fuck if he was being an asshole right now. She needed to see the truth, before it was too late. Right now they were rushing toward the edge of a cliff and he had to keep them from sailing over it.

He stepped toward her, determined to get through to her. “Think, Honor. Think about what you want. You want a lifetime of giving in to their demands, feeling guilty and resentful the rest of your life? Because if you cave on this, they’re just gonna keep controlling you, for the rest of your life, and you’ll have no one to blame for it but yourself. And if you really think they’ll ever come around and accept, let alone support the idea of us getting married, then you’re lying to yourself.”

Drawing a deep, unsteady breath, she shook her head and blinked fast, her eyes flooding with tears. “They might, you don’t know that for sure. Once you’re overseas and Charity’s stronger I can get her to see my side of things, and then my parents will understand—”

“They won’t,” he insisted. “Goddamn it, Honor, wake up! This is your life you’re talking about. It’s not a dress rehearsal, we only get one shot at this,” he yelled.

“Then stop trying to force me to make that kind of decision,” she shouted back, her face flushed, eyes blazing. “I can’t choose between you and them!”

Liam went dead still at the uncharacteristic outburst, his heart seeming to freeze in his chest. He wouldn’t give in on this one. Couldn’t. It was too important. For their relationship to work he had to matter as much to her as she did him. She had to be strong enough to stand with him, not hide him.

They stared at each other in silence across the kitchen, but the small distance might as well have been miles. An invisible and unbridgeable divide he didn’t know how to cross.

Heart thudding in his ears, he held her gaze. Fight for us, he begged her silently, too proud to voice it aloud. For me. “I can’t do it, Honor. God, I’m leaving in thirteen hours.” Liam dragged a hand through his hair. “I can’t live like that, not knowing what’s going to happen,” he finally said instead. He couldn’t go back to Bagram in this kind of suspended hell. Liam dragged a hand through his hair again.

Her eyes glistened with tears. She blinked and one rolled down her cheek. He wanted so badly to go to her and pull her into his arms, stop this fight before it was too late. She wiped it away before he could move, her expression full of bewilderment. “Then I guess I really don’t have a choice.”

The bleakness in her voice hit him like a sledgehammer. Liam couldn’t answer. His entire body was in knots, nausea swirling in his belly.

He watched in disbelief as she reached down and slid the aquamarine ring off her finger. The gem sparkled in the kitchen lights as she set it on the island countertop. She was still crying silently, her anguish clear on her face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Sorry? He might have laughed at the absurdity of it if his heart hadn’t been cracking into a thousand pieces. It felt like someone had shoved a baseball-sized rock down his throat, all but cutting off his airway. His body wouldn’t move. There was no goddamn way he was taking the ring, because taking it would mean he accepted her bullshit decision.

No fucking way.

He looked from the ring on the shiny brown granite and up into her eyes, steeling himself against the grief there, his entire body rigid with denial. “No.” The word was a low rasp, the single syllable all he could force out.

Another tear rolled down her cheek and she dashed it away angrily. “I gotta go,” she choked out, and turned to leave.

Anger surged up, hot and bright, mixing with the panic exploding inside him. His hands squeezed into fists beneath his armpits to keep from reaching for her. “You would seriously just walk away from me and everything we have together?” It was unbelievable. She must be too pissed at him to think straight at the moment, it was the only explanation.

Honor stopped and threw her hands up in helpless frustration before looking back at him. “Do you think this is easy for me? It’s breaking my fucking heart! I feel like I’m being torn in two right now! I can’t…” She paused, sucked in a shuddering breath. “My sister almost took her own life because of us. I can’t take losing another sibling, Liam, and you know why. Please, please try to understand that. All I’m asking for is some more time. Just give me that much.”

Liam’s attitude softened slightly. She’d lost her younger sister Faith to leukemia at five years old, and Honor had never gotten over it. No one in her family had, which is why Charity’s suicide attempt was even more painful for them.

Liam wasn’t willing to lose Honor over this though. If she wanted time, if she truly thought it would help, then he’d give it to her, even if he knew the end result would be the same. But on one condition.

“I have no problem with giving you time as long as I know you’ll stand up for us. As long as I know you won’t lie about us just to spare their feelings. And this isn’t all just because of Charity,” he pointed out quietly. Her parents, especially her father, would continue to be a huge problem. Maybe she didn’t see it that way, but they would. “Don’t back down from this, and don’t lie to them. Let them try to adjust to the idea of us getting married if you want but don’t hide the truth and pretend we’re not spending the rest of our lives together. I won’t live like that.”

Honor lowered her hands, her expression becoming shuttered despite the tears on her cheeks, more remote than he’d ever seen it. It made him want to punch something. “You want me to lose my family forever, maybe be the reason my sister kills herself? I can’t live with that, so don’t ask me to.”

“And what about us?” he snapped, the anger taking over again. “You wanted time, I just gave it to you. But no way in hell am I willing to back away from us because of them.” This was it, the moment of truth. Either she wanted him, no strings attached, or she didn’t. He still couldn’t believe she’d actually been willing to walk out that door.

Her face fell, her eyes brimming with disappointment as she shook her head slowly. “I never thought you’d be like them. Not ever.” It was clear she meant her fucked-up family, who had forced her into this miserable situation. He didn’t appreciate being lumped in with them.

“I’m nothing like them, and you know it. I’m trying to protect you and make you open your eyes. Can’t you see that?”

She snorted. “How is making things worse between my family and me protecting me?”

This was so fucked up he didn’t even know where to begin. He continued to stare at her, the tension in him winding so tight he felt like he would snap. “So instead you’re going to sacrifice your own happiness and do what Charity and your parents want, out of guilt? Jesus, are you hearing yourself right now? Calling off the engagement and walking away from me isn’t the answer, Honor. It’s not going to make her better.”