Possible pregnancy aside, he was leaving.
Stalling despite the ticking clock, he was leaving.
Fighting a visceral craving for more of her, more of them, he was leaving.
He was. Really.
As soon as he could make himself do it.
Matilda was the boost he needed to move his ass out the door and down the road.
“You’ve got lady balls, Tessa. To leave Mac at the last minute,” he murmured, hating what he was about to do. “Even though it came with a shitload of cleanup, you knew you were about to make a mistake and you stopped it from happening. I’m trying to do the same thing here. I can’t drag you down with me. Believe it or not… I’m not—” His voice cracked, and he swallowed, tapping his chest. “I’m not unfeeling. I’m trying to find somebody. Someone I hope has been waiting for me.”
Face pale and stricken, the adorable freckles she worked so hard to conceal with makeup stood out.
“A woman?” she croaked.
He nodded reluctantly.
“Oh, my God.” Turning away, she clutched her stomach. “I’m gonna be sick.”
“Stop. It’s not like that. At all,” he emphasized, wondering why the hell he’d used Matilda as his scapegoat.
She wasn’t someone in his life.
She was an image in his head. She was words on paper.
Phrases that made him smile. Sentences that made him laugh. Letters that made him feel, and not forget. Feel like he belonged, if only to a girl who knew his unique childhood pain. And not forget, their common tragedy experienced from opposite sides of the same coin.
Finding her was his first mission upon retirement. At least it had been.
Until he’d met a girl with a golden pussy.
Christ, even sex with her had been too much to handle. It was sensory overload of the emotional kind. The deeply bonded, mentally connected, two halves becoming a whole kind that he’d learned young could destroy a person. Or two people.
Three, if he included himself.
If one-half of the whole went away, it left behind something with no reason to exist. His mother was a testament, Jason, a casualty.
And that was only the beginning of why Tessa was better off without him. There was a laundry list of reasons why she was too kind, too decent, and too goddamn sweet to be tainted by the likes of him.
“You said you weren’t attached.” Her wounded voice interrupted his dark thoughts. “I specifically asked if you had a wife or a girlfriend. You said no. You lied to me over pizza.”
“I wasn’t lying. I don’t have either.”
“But you waited until now to tell me you’re pining away for someone? And that she’s been waiting for you? While you’ve been—we’ve been…” She gestured toward the unmade bed. “Jesus, how could you do that?”
“Because it’s not like that,” he repeated, enunciating each word slowly, as if that would make the truth easier to believe.
“What’s it like then?” she asked, throwing his precise enunciation back at him.
“I don’t know her, okay? I haven’t met her.” Staring at the ceiling, he ran a hand over his head, knowing this made him sound crazy. “I mean, I know her, but we’ve not met in person. She’s a loose end more than anything.”
“A loose end?” It was obvious she questioned his sanity.
He nodded. “Probably nothing. And I’m emotionally unavailable anyway. Diagnosed by you as a dude with abandonment issues.”
“A spot-on assessment,” she replied, yanking open another drawer. “So, is this like a single white female thing? eHarmony? One of those websites where you fall in love, sight unseen? Because I’d bet my life she’s lying about her weight and the balance on her credit cards.”
“Nope.” God, she was gorgeous when she was angry. Cheeks flushed, chest heaving, mouth full of sass.
“A mail order bride from Russia?”
“A correspondent,” he hedged.
Her mouth dropped open. “From Russia?”
If the situation wasn’t so fucking awful, he would’ve laughed. Instead, he felt a lot like crying. Like those bread-baking wives and sticky-faced kids who clung to their person before sending him off to his potential death.
It reminded him of the reason he was walking away. The real reason.
“There’s no other woman in my life, Tessa. Not really. This is about me knowing my limitations.” He pointed at himself. “Not relationship material.”
Needing physical distance as much as emotional, he laid a hand on the doorknob, watching as she heaved her suitcase onto the bed, her robe falling off one shoulder.
The creamy skin it revealed was almost as tempting as her offer of love.
“In other words,” she said, yanking on the zipper, “you’re giving me the old ‘it’s me, not you’ excuse. What a load of bullshit.”
“It is me. It’s not you.”
“It’s you running scared. Too scared to open up. Too scared to cross a line. Too scared you might want more from me.”
“I’m not scared of those things. I’m not scared of anything.”
Her face softened. “You’re scared to leave the Navy. It’s given you a place where you belong and once you walk away, you’re afraid you’ll be lost again.”
She looked at him with empathy. All he saw was pity.
“Wrong again.”
“I can be your place. You don’t have to be alone. We can be a pair.” Cupping her forehead, she dropped to the bed with a groan. “Or a trio, if I’m as fertile as my sister. Holy shit.”
The more she rocked, the more worried he got. “I’m better off not knowing how fertile your family is. It’s not helping my blood pressure.”
Looking over her shoulder, she smiled. Then frowned, a tiny crease marring her forehead.
“Stay. Don’t go,” she whispered, the words a trembling order.
There was zero chance he was obeying it.
“What do you think I do for a living, Tessa?” Time for the unvarnished truth.
“Find bad people. Protect good people.”
“I kill people. I’m a killer.” Blunt, but accurate. “Bad or good, doesn’t matter. If it needs to happen, it happens.”
“No. You’re a warrior. Sent to do a warrior’s job,” she corrected, using the same palatable, pretty words they did on TV and in military recruiting materials to justify his actions. “Don’t you dare vilify yourself to me. I won’t allow it.”
“I kill them, and I enjoy it. I slice their flesh and watch blood pool around their body, bright red and iron-scented. I gain strength from it. It feeds me. It makes me feel good to take somebody’s father or husband away from them.”
“Stop it.” Shaking her head, she denied his words. “You’re just saying that so I’ll be afraid of you. I know it fits your badass image, but you don’t scare me and you’re certainly not this person you make yourself out to be. Not on the outside and not on the inside.”
“Tell that to the guy whose throat I slit last Tuesday. Before breakfast, mind you, because that’s how I roll. He was still warm and slumped over the kitchen table when his children woke up wanting their Cheerios.”
Tears filled her eyes, though spurred by pity or repulsion, he didn’t know. Didn’t care, either. He was accustomed to both.
“That was done to me and I do it in return, and it feels fucking fantastic. Like filling up a gas tank, I can go for a thousand more miles with every kill. And my knife is my best friend, Tessa. Shooting someone doesn’t even do it for me anymore.” He shook his head in wonder. “I can’t even get off taking someone out with a bullet these days.”
“No! Stop talking like that,” she demanded, walking toward him, arms open. “Stop talking like you’re an animal. You’re a human doing his job.”
He shook off her touch, stepping away.
“I have to see the blood. The same blood that filled the bathtub, that stained the tile floor, that soaked through my jeans. Jeans I still carry with me to this day, like a perverse fucking memento.”
“You were traumatized as a child! You still have unhealed emotional wounds. Of course you’re going to have flashbacks when you see a reminder. It’s normal.”
“Fuck unhealed wounds! Fuck flashbacks! That’s psychobabble bullshit! As long as there’s blood to shed, to clean up, I still serve a purpose. Once it’s gone, I become invisible again. I might still have a pulse, but I’m no longer a SEAL! I’m no longer a son!”
The truth bomb reverberated off purple walls, echoing in his ears.
He shook his head to clear them, but it didn’t work. They were out there, in the great wide open. Where they could taunt him. Hurt him.
I’m no longer a son.
Dots began to connect in his psyche, and for the first time ever, the root of what drove him materialized. It was a revelation.
But with clarity, came fear.
Then panic. Clammy hands, cold sweats, and the need to flee.
Tessa stared at him, her cheeks damp, her gaze soft with understanding. Her mouth moved, but he couldn’t hear the words she was saying. He could only hear his heart pounding.
Taking a quick, jerky step backward, he was off balance as the walls closed in.
This wasn’t panic. This was terror.
This was his future playing chicken with his past.
Like distant headlights in a heavy fog, he could either squint and take action to avoid the oncoming bus, or he could close his eyes and accept his prophecy, bracing for impact and the subsequent devastation.
Action was rigorous emotional work. It took an organ he’d not used since he was twelve, and didn’t feel like starting now.
Bracing was mere brute strength. It took a fortress, and damned if he didn’t already have that built. He was accustomed to bracing.
“Jason.” Tessa stepped toward him, offering safety.
“No.” He help up a hand. “Back away. Don’t come near me.” If she touched him, the fortress would crumble.
“You’re not invisible to me—”
“I said, no!” Staring at the carpet, he took deep, silent breaths.
“You are a SEAL, and you are a son,” she demanded, undaunted. “Nobody can take that away from you. And if you’d bother to look around, you’d see that you could be so much more. You could be my… shit, I don’t know. My… my—” She stammered, a classic sign of panic. “Jesus, boyfriend sounds juvenile. Husband will make you go ape-shit. How about teammate? You understand that, right? We’ll be teammates with benefits. You already call me bud,” she said, her watery voice cheerful and promising. “It’ll be no different than the last three days. We’ll play cards, eat pizza, and have really great sex while living life as members of the same team. We can snap wet towels at each other like football players in a locker room, if you want.”
The air crackled as she waited, hopeful.
“That’s the problem. I’m no different than before. I’m still the same hollow guy, sitting on a barstool in the Last Stop, counting the hours until I can be a SEAL again. And wondering what dipshit let a woman like you get away. Now I’m that dipshit. There’s your karma.”
“Commit to maybe,” she pleaded in a rush, sensing his imminent exit. “That’s all I’m asking. The possibility of you and me, maybe.”
“I can’t.”
Her responding sob pierced his chest like a gunshot at point-blank range, stealing his breath.
The bus was upon him now, its horn blaring a warning signal. Get out of the way, stupid!
Holding his line, a familiar chant sounded in his head.
Brace. Brace. Brace. “Goodbye, Tessa.” And prepare for impact.
As he closed the door behind him, it rattled violently in its frame, the flying fertility god hitting the heavy wood dead-on. It was the only thing within her arm’s reach that could’ve made such a ruckus. Two seconds sooner, and he’d be missing his head.
Punishment well-deserved. He wasn’t using it anyway.
Less than five miles of two-lane highway passed before the truck skidded to the shoulder, spewing sand, gravel, and regret. Hunching over the steering wheel, he cupped his head in his hands and blocked out reality.
The gravity of what he’d just done was overwhelming.
Eyes closed to the outside world, Tessa’s precious face took center stage, a mix of righteous anger and naked anguish his final memory. Solely responsible, it was guaranteed to torment him for life.
Hurt, before she hurts you. Leave, before she leaves you.
Greedy excuses, but ones he clung to. He needed to.
Just like he needed to forget that her skin smelled like vanilla. That her kiss tasted like sweetness and liberation. That she was the softest thing he’d touched in years. Ever.
And that she made him believe in things he’d never thought real.
Like love and family.
Like heart and soulmates.
Letting out the emotion he could no longer hold in, tinted windows and blasted Metallica hid his guttural reaction to their parting, any passerby blind to the pathetic fallout of his own doing.
When he finally found the courage to raise his head and blink the desert into focus, it was just as he suspected.
All color gone, it was back to inhospitable beige.