Chapter Twenty-one
“She’s stable,” he told her. “They’ve upgraded her condition, and they’re moving her into a room.”
Elizabeth’s heart clenched. “Is she awake? Can I see her?”
“No and no. Doc says a few more hours. Her parents just arrived, though, so they’ll be here when she wakes up.” There was a tremor of emotion in his voice. “So that’s the news. Sounds like she’s going to make it through.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Thank you, God. “What about Jamie?” she asked.
“Still the same. They’re watching her. I’ll call you if we get anything new.”
“Please. No matter how late.”
She got off the phone, and Derek was staring at her in the dimness.
“Doctors say she’s stabilized.”
“She awake?”
“Not yet.” She handed him the phone, then walked around to the passenger side to climb in. She stared numbly at the dashboard.
Derek climbed in, too, and pulled shut the door. He looked at her. “You all right?”
“Yeah.” But she sat there, motionless, replaying the news. She’s going to make it through. Suddenly, her lungs constricted, and she couldn’t breathe. She clasped her hand to her chest and realized she was shaking.
“Liz?”
“I was so sure she was going to die.” She covered her face with her hands, but that didn’t stop the hot flood of tears.
“She’s going to be okay.”
She turned away.
“Hey.” He leaned across the console and pulled her into his arms.
“I was so sure,” she said against his shoulder. “People die. It happens. They die in the line of duty or doing something careless or stupid or for no reason at all.” Her voice hitched. “I can’t believe I wasn’t paying enough attention, and it’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Her arms tightened, because she wanted so much for the words to be true. She rested her head against his neck, and at the first scent of him, it was over. The tears just came. His chest was hard and solid, and his arms felt so strong wrapped around her. How many times had she dreamed of him holding her like this?
She wished things were different. She wished they could be like other people, normal people. But they couldn’t. They weren’t.
“Sorry.” She pulled back, but he wouldn’t let her go.
“Look at me.”
She wiped the tears away.
“You weren’t responsible,” he said. “They were. Get that straight.”
She nodded. But the look of tenderness on his face made her eyes well again. He reached up and gently brushed her cheek with his thumb, and his eyes were intent in the dimness. And then he leaned over and kissed her forehead, and she just . . . lost it. There was no other way to describe it. Whatever hold she’d thought she had on her feelings disappeared, and she reached up and dragged his head down to kiss him. It was wet and sloppy, and she would have been embarrassed, but he pulled her right across the console, practically into his lap.
And then everything went into overdrive. His hands were everywhere. Hers, too. She tried to get her balance as he shifted her on his lap. When she looked up, his eyes were dark with desire, and a shiver of anticipation moved through her as all the memories rushed back. She wanted him so much she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think—with the exception of one persistent thought that wouldn’t go away.
Why does he have to leave?
His hand slid under her shirt and found her breast, and heat speared through her as every thought left her except that she wanted him. She twisted closer. He gripped her hips and pulled her firmly onto his lap until she was straddling him and her knees were wedged against the console and the door. It might have been painful, but she was too distracted by the warmth of his hands and his thumbs rasping over her nipples. She kissed him and kissed him and arched her body against him, and then he pushed her shirt up and went for her breast.
She combed her fingers into his hair and tipped her head back. She loved his mouth, his hands, the roughness of his beard against her skin. He’d been growing it out for days now, and the friction of his face against her sent a shot of lust through her.
She pulled off his T-shirt and tossed it away and pressed closer to kiss the hell out of him. She loved the sharp taste of him and the way every time he kissed her, it was a battle of wills.
His hands slid down her back and dipped beneath her clothes. He pulled her against the rock-hard bulge in his jeans, and she was so turned on her skin felt tight, like she was about to burst.
She broke the kiss and pulled back. “Where’s the hotel?” she gasped.
He looked dazed.
“The hotel? How far?”
“I don’t know. Fifteen minutes?” A look of dread filled his eyes.
Fifteen minutes. It may as well have been fifteen hours.
She reached for his belt, and his look of relief was so intense she felt giddy. She fumbled with his buckle and his zipper as he pulled her against him and wrestled her shirt over her head. Then he flung it to the floor, and they were skin-to-skin, their mouths fused, as she slipped her hand inside his jeans.
“I have to touch you,” he said, doing it through her clothes as he kissed her until she was dizzy.
She squirmed away from him, then leaned back against the other seat as she kicked her shoes away and struggled to get her pants off. He helped, jerking them down her legs along with her panties and tossing everything away. In one swift motion, he levered his seat back and pulled her on top of him.
“Condom,” she squeaked, but he was a step ahead of her, digging one from his pocket and tearing it open with his teeth. She darted her gaze around, amazed that they were doing this here, in public, in the front seat of his truck, where anyone might come along—
“Hold on.” He gripped her hips and pulled her down, and she gasped at the pure, shocking pleasure of it.
She braced her hand against his shoulder as he moved under her. The denim of his jeans rubbed against her thighs. His hands were on her breasts, shoving the lace of her bra aside, and then his mouth was on her.
Everything was happening together, all at once, and it felt so good, so perfect, so right. But it was going way too fast.
“Derek.”
He pulled her closer, pressing deep inside her, again and again, and the friction was mesmerizing. She rode the wave of it, higher and higher and higher, until she couldn’t stand it, couldn’t go another second. And then everything broke, and she felt the powerful thrust of his body as they crashed together.
She slumped against him. Her pulse pounded. She rested her cheek against the dampness of his skin until the pounding subsided. Their breathing slowed, and she could hear the cicadas again.
He sighed deeply.
She smiled and looked up at him in the darkness. His eyes were closed, his head tipped back against the seat.
A faint humming noise reached her. Not insects but—
He sat up. “Car.”
Lights flashed across the dashboard, illuminating everything in blinding white as she dived into the passenger seat.
Derek swiveled and cursed.
“What are they doing?” she asked, scrambling for her shirt. She found it on the floor and dragged it over her head. The lights grew brighter and brighter, then dimmed.
“Turning around, looks like.”
The inside of the truck glowed red. She darted a glance in the mirror and saw the taillights receding down the road. A punch of relief hit her.
He levered his seat up, and she heard the rasp of his zipper. She felt around in the dark, searching for her clothes.
“Sit tight,” he said, and shoved open the door.
When he returned from the trash cans, she was dressed again but still groping around.
“They’re gone,” he said, pulling the door shut. He started the engine and buzzed the windows up, but it was too late to keep the mosquitoes out.
He glanced at Elizabeth. She was still looking for something. He felt around on the floor until he found her shoe and handed it to her.
“Thank you.”
Polite. Not a good sign.
He paused a moment, watching her, then followed his instincts and put the truck into gear. She didn’t seem like she wanted to hang out and enjoy the view anymore.
He made a three-point turn—just like the car that had rolled up on them—and headed back down the road.
She kept squirming in the seat.
He glanced over. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t find my underwear.”
He braked and switched on the light. He checked the back, and there they were: Elizabeth’s white lace panties draped over his hiking boots. He handed them to her, and her cheeks flushed an even deeper shade of pink as she shoved them into her pocket.
He switched off the light and drove on. Silence settled over them as he neared the highway.
He felt the regrets coming, fast and furious. Not only had they had sex after she’d announced her intention not to, but they’d done it in his truck in a public place.
“It was probably just a couple of teenagers,” he said. They’d probably chosen that road for the same reason he had.
She looked out the window. “I can’t believe that just happened.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because my friend’s in the hospital, and I’m getting off in some car.”
He turned onto the highway. His brain was still a little scrambled, but he knew better than to argue with her right now.
She shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“How about having some fun?”
She snorted.
“What? What’s so bad? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you actually liked it.”
“Of course I liked it! That doesn’t matter. If that had been a cop back there, he would have asked for your ID and mine, too. And then it would have been a mess. I can see the headline: ‘FBI Agent Arrested for Public Lewdness.’ ” She grabbed her shoes off the floor and shoved them onto her feet. “I told you, I’m not cut out for this.”
“Cut out for what?”
“This.” She waved her hand at his truck as if it were a rolling brothel.
“You’re trying to make it into something shallow so you can push me away.” He looked at her. “We both know what’s really happening here.”
“Oh, yeah? Tell me, Dr. Phil, what’s really happening here?”
“Forget it.” He trained his gaze on the road.
“No. Please enlighten me. What would you call this?”
He took a deep breath and swallowed down his temper. He didn’t want to fight with her. Not tonight. Not on his last night home, probably for months.
Shit.
He definitely should have told her he’d been called back early, but now it was too late. If he told her now, she’d think he’d kept it from her on purpose.
Which, truth be told, he had.
Fuck.
“I’m going back tomorrow.”
No response. He glanced over, and she looked as though he’d reached out and slapped her.
“They called us back early. Everyone. I have orders to report at 0800 Thursday.”
She cleared her throat. “Is it training or—”
“I can’t talk about it.”
She looked away. Her cheeks flushed again, but this time it looked like frustration. She’d asked him a simple question, and he couldn’t answer it.
There was nothing good to say, so for the rest of the drive, he didn’t say anything. He just drove, feeling more and more miserable the closer they got to her hotel.
He didn’t know what to do about this relationship. Because no matter what she said, it was a relationship. Granted, they’d gotten off to a rocky start, because she’d been investigating his teammate. And yes, it had been punctuated by months and months where they hadn’t even spoken to each other, much less been intimate. But that part was over now. They’d crossed a line. There was no going back, and her stripping her clothes off in the front seat of his truck was proof. She’d probably think it was crude and even egotistical, but the fact that she couldn’t keep her hands off of him after telling him in no uncertain terms that she wanted to call a halt to the sex proved he had a chance with her. She didn’t think he was relationship material? He’d show her she was wrong.
Starting now. Tonight.
He pulled into the parking lot of her hotel and found a space near her door. No sneaking around anymore, and if that got her in trouble, too bad.
“Elizabeth.”
She looked at him, and he saw the hurt in her eyes. He didn’t know what to say. He’d done a shitty job handling this up to now, but he could do better. He had a chance with her, and he was determined not to blow it.
He reached over and took her hand. “I went about this all wrong tonight. I should have insisted on taking you to dinner.”
She looked down at their hands together. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispered.
“I do.” He leaned over and gently kissed her mouth. “You’re inviting me in.”
Still awake?
Luke pressed send and stared down at his phone, half wanting, half dreading an answer. Finally, it came.
Yes.
And two seconds later: Where R U?
He took a deep breath and typed: Downstairs.
He watched his phone. Piano music wafted over from the bar behind him as hotel guests drifted in and out. He shifted on his feet as he waited for Hailey’s response.
I’m in 623.
He waited for the fear to hit him, and smack, there it was, a quick pop in the gut. He gripped his phone in his hand and tapped a reply with his thumb: Meet me in the bar.
As countermoves went, it was pretty good. Direct but not rude. Simple and to the point. It would have been the perfect response if he’d bothered to send it, but instead he got on the elevator.
The sixth floor was at the top, and it was every bit as pretentious as he’d expected. He made his way down the too-quiet hallway. He stopped in front of the door, and as he stood there staring at it, it hit him.
Holy, holy, holy shit. What was he doing? Before he could come with an answer, the door swung open.
Instead of a yoga outfit, she wore cutoff shorts and a flannel shirt. She was freaking barefoot, and he forced himself not to stare at her legs.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hey.”
Her makeup was smudged and her eyes looked pink from crying, and that right there should have been his first cue to leave, but his feet stayed planted.
“You want to come in?”
She pulled the door back, and his feet unplanted themselves and stepped into her room.
“I’m surprised you came,” she said, closing the door.
“Me, too.”
She looked up at him, and his heart did a little tap dance. Even with her eyes puffy and her makeup smeared, she was beautiful. “Want something to drink?”
“What do you have?”
“I think everything.”
She turned and led him across the room, and he glanced around. The suite was deep and spacious, and he could have parked about three of his closet-sized apartment right there in the living room. He followed her past an overstuffed sofa to a tall wooden cabinet that held the minibar.
Great. Just what he needed. He’d sobered up some on the way over, so why the hell not?
“Let’s see.” She opened the fridge. “Heineken, Guinness, Corona—”
“I’ll take a Corona.”
She handed it to him. “No limes, sorry.”
“I’m good.”
He glanced around, suddenly noticing the blanket piled at the end of the sofa. He caught a glimpse of a huge-ass bed in the adjacent room.
“Nice balcony,” he said, stepping over to take a look. The slider was already open, and he stepped outside, as far away as he could get from that unmade bed.
The balcony had an ocean view, and a full moon shone down on the Silver Strand. A pair of lounge chairs faced out, and on the table between them was a room-service tray and one of those insulated coffee pots. Hailey reached down and poured a cup.
Luke stepped to the railing and squinted in the direction of the base. No nighttime PT happening, but it was still early.
She came to stand beside him and rested her cup on the railing.
“No wonder you can’t sleep,” he said.
“It’s decaffeinated.” She smiled slightly. “I was never much of a coffee drinker, but it was the first thing they gave me back at Bagram. It tasted like heaven.”
He shifted his gaze out over the water, the exact location where he’d spent countless hours doing boat drills and night swims. Down the beach was the pile of rocks that had nearly knocked him unconscious during BUD/S.
He turned to look at her and forced himself to man up.
“So you can’t get to sleep?”
“I get to sleep okay,” she said. “It’s the staying asleep that’s hard.” Ignoring the lounge chairs, she sat down on the concrete and leaned back against the wall. “You ever get that?”
He didn’t want to tower over her, so he sat down beside her and rested his beer on the concrete. “It’s been a while.”
The breeze picked up, and she wrapped her hands around the coffee cup. “I keep having these dreams.” She paused. “Or maybe flashbacks would be a better word.”
He watched her profile. The yellow glow from inside spilled onto the balcony, and he realized every light in the suite was blazing.
“It’s always the same.” She looked at him, maybe giving him a chance to change the subject. “A burst of gunfire. The SUV skids to a stop.” She looked down at her coffee. “I never knew, before that moment, that fear has a taste. And all I can think is that this can’t be happening, but it is.”
He watched her, feeling sicker by the moment.
“Then they throw a hood over my head and stuff me into a truck. All around me, I can hear them shouting and cursing. And then we’re moving again, and I can’t see anything, but the fear is suffocating, and I realize my whole life—all of it—has been reduced to two things: I’m American and I’m female. And the terror’s so thick it’s like I’m drowning in it.”
He took her hand and held it. His touch seemed to steady her, and she took a deep breath.
“That’s the flashback I keep having. The moment it started. I think the worst of it’s still blotted out. I don’t know.” She pulled her hand away and curled her fingers around her coffee mug. “New pieces are coming back, though. Voices. Faces.”
He cleared his throat. “Any names?”
She looked away and seemed to think about it. “Rasasa. I remember Khalid saying it. I don’t know if it’s a person or a thing.” She put her coffee aside and pulled her knees to her chest. “I don’t know anything, really. It’s all so fuzzy. Maybe the opium was a good thing.”
He watched her, wanting her to keep going and also wanting her to stop.
She turned to look at him. “Do you know what happened to him? Khalid?”
The question surprised him. “There’s a lot of people looking for him, last I heard.”
She shook her head. “You wouldn’t think I’d care, but . . . he was the only one who showed any spark of humanity. It’s ironic, really. The whole reason I went there was to help children. Kids not much younger than him. Looking at it now, it seems so naive. So much has changed. I feel . . . warped, in a way. Because of fear. And I hate that. I don’t want to be a slave to fear the whole rest of my life.”
Luke tried to just listen, tried to dial down the anger inside him. He hated the pain she was feeling—and the men who had caused it, he hated them more. “In BUD/S training,” he said, trying to sound calm, “they use fear to make you better. They throw it at you every way they can, physically and mentally. Whatever you’re afraid of—drowning, diving, jumping out of a plane—they figure out what it is, and they hit you with it. They do everything they can to bring your darkest fears to light, because that’s when you tap into your deepest survival instincts.”
She looked at him, and he knew he had her complete attention.
“They push you to your breaking point. Then push you some more. Starting out it sucked, and I kept thinking, ‘Focus on tomorrow. Just make it to tomorrow.’ And then it got worse, and I thought, ‘Just make it to the next hour.’ And by the end I just wanted to make it to the next minute. One minute at a time, you survive. That’s how I did it, at least.”
She gazed up at him, and he wondered where she’d gone in her head all those days she’d lived in that hole. “So what was yours?” she asked. “Your fear when you started?”
“I don’t know.” He paused. “No, that’s not true. I do know. It was HALO jumps—high altitude, low opening. I’ve never been a big fan of heights, and the first time I got up there, my heart damn near stopped.”
“What about now?”
“Now?”
“Yeah. What keeps you up at night now?”
A lump rose in his throat, and he looked out over the water. He wanted to say something glib and lighten things up, but he couldn’t think of anything. “I’m afraid of letting people down.” He looked at her. “Not being there when one of my brothers needs me, maybe because I’m injured or out of the op for some reason.”
She stared up at him for a long moment. A tear slid down her cheek, and she brushed it away. “God, you must hate me,” she whispered.
“Why would I hate you?”
“Your friend died because of me.”
“Whoa. Back up. Not because of you. Because of some Taliban fuckhead with an AK.”
She flinched at the words.
“Sorry.” Shit. “I’m just—”
“You’re angry. It’s okay.”
He clenched and unclenched his teeth. “I’m angry, but it’s not because of you.” He looked at her and tried to explain. “I’m angry because the last few years, it’s like we’ve been fighting the enemy with one hand tied behind our backs. I’m angry because some people seem to think the war’s over, we won. Let’s pack it in and go home. Meanwhile, the enemy is out there flourishing, and the people trained to fight are being held in check. And all the spin doctors create this illusion that it’s safe for aid workers and relief orgs, and it’s a fucking lie.” He shook his head. “Sorry. I’m pissed off at things I can’t control.”
She choked out a laugh. “Yeah. I think I’m in touch with that emotion.” She wiped her cheeks and took a deep breath.
“Didn’t mean to rant.”
“No, it’s good,” she said. “You should say what you believe. I think you’ve earned the right to have an opinion.”
She rested her head on his arm, and his heart did a little flip. He looked through the bars of the balcony and tried to focus on the waves.
“Were you really afraid of heights?” she asked.
“I was. Nearly booted my guts up on that plane.”
The wind picked up. She shivered, and he resisted the urge to put his arm around her.
He stared at the surf and wondered again what the hell he was doing here.
“I’m afraid of the dark,” she said softly.
“Do you sleep with the lights on?”
“Yeah.”
Her head felt warm against his arm. He looked down at the pale wisps of her hair, and his pulse started to thrum.
“I don’t want to do that forever, though. It feels, I don’t know, irrational. Like I’m giving into fear.”
“Give yourself a break,” he said. “You just got home. You need time to get your life back.”
She pulled her head away and looked up at him, and the expression in her eyes made his chest hurt. “Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For talking.”
He leaned down and dropped a kiss on her forehead. It was a friendly kiss, barely a kiss at all. Any other girl, any other moment, it would have been no big deal, but the second he did it he knew it was a mistake. She slid her arms around him and nestled her head against his chest, and panic spurted through him.
He couldn’t do this. He could not stay out here another minute with her, not without doing something truly dumb.
“It’s late,” he said. “I should get going.”
She nodded against him. “Can I ask you something?”
No. No, she could not. “Sure.”
“Will you stay here tonight?” She tipped her head back and looked at him. “Please?”
Elizabeth lay beside Derek, tracing a pattern on his chest. She ran her finger over the scar there and then trailed lower, to the one along his rib cage.
Her throat tightened, and she stopped tracing. Instead, she slid her thigh over his and nestled closer. His body felt warm and solid, and she tried to keep her mind in the present. If she could focus on his arms around her, she might actually get some sleep tonight.
“People do it, you know.”
She turned her head. “What?”
“The long-distance thing.” He eased his arm out from under her and propped himself on his elbow to look at her. “It’s tough, but it works. Not always but sometimes.”
She slid her leg away and rolled onto her back to look at the ceiling. The bathroom door was ajar, letting a wedge of light into the room. “I don’t want a relationship like that.”
“With me, you mean.”
“With anyone.” She sat up against the headboard and pulled the sheet up.
“What’s so bad about it?”
She stared at him. “We’d never see each other, for one thing.”
“We would when I have leave.”
“That’s what? A few weeks a year?” Frustration welled up in her chest. Why did he want to talk about this right now?
“That’s a cop-out, and you know it. You just don’t want to try.”
She looked at him there in the dim light. He was propped on his elbow, staring at her, all muscular and perfect and scarred and determined.
Her heart felt sore. He thought she was weak. And she wasn’t. But she knew herself a lot better than he did, and she wished he’d at least try to understand.
She reached out and brushed her finger over his knuckles. “Have you ever been to a place, and it’s so different from what you’re used to—you’re not there that long, but it’s so different that you notice every detail?” She watched him. “Maybe somewhere exotic, like the Himalayas or the rain forest or, I don’t know, somewhere underwater?”
He nodded slightly.
“That’s what it was like with you. I memorized every detail. And then you were gone, and it was really hard.” She met his eyes, and her nerves fluttered as she let the words come out. “I missed you so much. It took me a long time to deal with that and accept that we were too different. The circumstances were too impossible. It was hard to face up to, but I did it. And I don’t want to have to go through that again.”
She saw the frustration in his eyes, and she could tell he still didn’t get it. He’d always been the one to leave, not the one left behind.
“There was so much waiting and worrying,” she said. “I would have these moments of panic every time I watched the news. And I’d read in the paper about some suicide bomb or some helicopter crash, and I’d look for some hidden clue that it was or wasn’t you involved.”
His brow furrowed, but she kept going.
“I know how you are, how when there’s trouble you run to it, not away. I knew you guys were in on that raid before Gordon even told me. I knew it in my bones, Derek. It was so dangerous—who else would they send?”
“This isn’t really about me, is it?” His voice had an edge. “This is about your dad.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “Maybe in a way. I know what it’s like to lose someone important. The hurt is so deep I can’t even explain it. And I know how hard it is after. I don’t want that kind of fear in my life again. It’s taken me years to get away from it, and I know that’s not what I want. Can’t you try to understand that?”
He held her gaze for a long moment. “I understand fear better than anybody. Part I don’t understand is giving in without a fight.”