by Nicole Helm
“They want to end the Sons,” Cody explained, as he’d had to explain to all of his brothers at one point or another the past two months. “It’s their mission to demolish the group. So, yeah, taking Ace down is part of it sometimes. But while he’s in jail, their focus is the Sons—not Ace, and certainly not his actual children. Personal vendettas aren’t their problem.”
“Personal vendettas? Is that what you’d call it?”
“No, I’d call it a psychotic episode. It certainly isn’t simple sociopathy. Regardless. It is personal. It’s not about the Sons. That group and their drugs and weapons, and trafficking of all that, and their attempts to get into human trafficking are the real target of the North Star group. By abandoning my mission and helping Jamison and Liza over the North Star mission, I got myself kicked out.”
“Did they expect you to turn your back on your brother?” Nina demanded incredulously.
“No. They didn’t. But expecting me to turn my back on my brother and being able to use me for their missions are two different things. I’m too personally connected now. They can’t trust me to do what they’re trying to do. Which doesn’t just jeopardize their mission, but the lives of everyone on any one of my teams.”
“It isn’t fair,” Nina replied, and it eased some of the tension in him that she sounded somewhat petulant. “It isn’t right.”
“It is to them, and for them,” he replied, his tone gentler than he’d intended.
He heard a sound—maybe her plopping back onto the chair—and a harrumph. “I hate when you’re all detached and reasonable,” she muttered. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“Because you haven’t been trying to take down anyone. You’ve been trying to keep our daughter safe.”
“She’s safe,” Nina said quietly, but there was a tremor to her voice. As if she was saying it to reassure herself. To seek his reassurance.
Which was the only reason he pushed out his arm, held his palm up. He didn’t know how to reach for her hand, or her. He didn’t have words. So he had to reach out and trust she would too.
Her hand slid into his. He squeezed it. “She’s safe. Our families will keep her safe.”
He wished he could see her. Judge if that gave her any reassurance. Was she pale and exhausted like she’d been back at the ranch? She hadn’t been knocked out like he’d been...maybe she hadn’t slept.
He opened his mouth to tell her to do just that, but she spoke first.
“How come nothing ever happened between you and Shay?”
Embarrassingly, he jolted. It was a pointless question, with an easy answer, and yet the way Nina asked it into this gray mist that was all that existed around him right now... It knocked him back.
Nina’s hand closed tighter around his, as if she was afraid he’d walk away.
If he’d been able to see, he would have. But of course he couldn’t. So he had to sit there.
“It would have risked our jobs.”
“That’s what she said. She brought it up. The whole you two not ever... Well.”
Cody really didn’t know what to say to that.
“I don’t buy it.”
“Excuse me?”
“On her end, maybe. But if there’d really been something there—something enough for Shay to mention it, and you to act tense about it when I do—there has to be something more than your jobs.”
“North Star wasn’t just a job. Not to me.” Which was true. Beside the point, but true.
“Maybe not.” She was quiet for so many seconds he thought he’d be able to pull his hands away and escape. He thought wrong.
“I know you, Cody. Maybe you’ve changed. I haven’t. I’ve been stuck in the same place, where everything I am is survival. The only parts of me that have changed are the lengths I’m willing to go to protect the people I love. But that’s not change. Not real change. I still know the boy you would’ve been when you joined North Star and it doesn’t add up.”
“You’ve always been bad at math,” he replied.
“I want a real answer.”
“Why? What does any of this matter?” He tried to ignore the simmering irritation, but this line of conversation, plus the throbbing pain in his body, and the situation that required him to sit here and wait made that very difficult. “What would it matter if Shay and I had a relationship? This has nothing to do with the task at hand.”
“The task at hand is to sit here and wait to see how we can make your father think we have our daughter,” Nina replied. “We can’t do anything until wheels are set in motion.”
“So...you want to what? Take a tour of our romantic detours the past seven years?”
“No,” she replied, the reasonableness in her tone setting his teeth on edge. “I’m asking you a specific question about a specific woman.”
“What do you want me to say?” Cody demanded, his frustration with everything bubbling over at this one thing she kept poking at. “That she looked like you? That sometimes out of the corner of my eye it’d be like a ghost was there. That I was never certain if that attraction I felt was her, or still wanting you? Is that what you want to hear?”
She was wholly silent. He didn’t even hear her breathe until she spoke. “I only wanted the truth,” she said quietly, a pinched quality to each word as if she was in pain.
As if she was in pain.
“Well the damn truth is it was still wanting you. It always will be. You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted.”
Chapter Fifteen
Every word Cody spoke seemed to strike her with such force that her breath got caught in her lungs. She couldn’t move for a good minute or so as she absorbed the words. Then it took another minute for her body to stop reacting to each blow.
She didn’t know why she’d suddenly felt she had to understand the whole Shay thing. The woman had said nothing had happened. That whatever attraction there’d been had been incidental, unimportant. So, why should Nina care what Cody had rightfully done in the seven years they’d been apart?
She didn’t care.
Okay, she didn’t want to care. And it turned out Nina didn’t care what Shay felt or thought or said about nothing happening or why. She only cared what Cody felt. Not then. Here and now. Was there any of this left over inside of him too? Could that be what had really held him back when it had come to Shay?
She’d wanted it to be true, but knew it couldn’t possibly be. She’d had to hear him say it to get rid of all that awful hope.
Maybe she’d secretly believed he’d say something about her being hard to get over or something vague but comforting.
She hadn’t expected anger.
She really hadn’t expected being the only one.
He’d said you’re like it was present tense. Like in this moment, she was his only one. It washed over her and through her, all that terrifying hope she’d been trying to avoid.
Wasn’t everything she hoped for always too good to be true?
Not Brianna.
Six years with that beautiful girl. They’d been terrifying years—always afraid the next move would mean she’d lose her. Because Brianna was too good to be true, and yet for six years she’d been true—and now Nina had so many people working to make sure it would be true. Period.
Brianna was still here. Still hers—and now theirs. Brianna finally got to have Cody, and Nina wanted to have him too, no matter how unfair it might be.
You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted.
“You’re going to have to let a blind man know if you walk out of the room, Nina.”
“I didn’t walk out,” she managed to reply despite how tight her throat felt. “I’m trying to...” Her breath shuddered out, betraying all the emotion battling it out inside of her. “I don’t...”
“You don’t,” he said flatly.
“No! No. I... Cody.”
She raked her hands through her hair trying to get a handle on the here and now and not her circling thoughts. She could cry if she wanted to. He wouldn’t see it. She could indeed slip out of the room and never have this conversation. She had all the power here.
But hadn’t she already lost seven years? Why wouldn’t she use her power to do something about that?
“You’re telling me after I left you the way I did,” she said, wincing at how her voice shook, and how much the memory still hurt. “After I lied to you the way I did, I’m still the only person you’ve ever wanted? We lost all that time. I kept Brianna from you.”
“Yes. You concealed her. We lost. Seven years passed.” He said that all in his detached way, but emotion was creeping into his expression, into each word. “Too much has changed and passed, and I can tell myself that from here to eternity. It doesn’t seem to change how I feel.”
“I never stopped,” Nina whispered, despite the fact that tears burned her eyes, that her throat felt as if someone was squeezing the breath out of her.
All he’d mentioned was want, not love.
“Stopped what?” he muttered, clearly irritated with the conversation, with himself, with being unable to leave.
But he actually couldn’t leave. Not easily in this unfamiliar cabin with a brand-new loss of sight. Which meant she got to say whatever she wanted. After seven years of not being able to tell him anything.
“I never stopped loving you.”
It was his turn not to speak, even as she waited, desperately wishing he’d say something. Anything. But his unseeing gaze was straight ahead and his expression gave nothing away.
There was just the oppressive silence in this weird little cabin that wasn’t theirs. This life that hadn’t felt like her own in seven years. How was it she was sitting next to him—both of them injured—having this conversation? Brianna secreted away on the ranch with Duke and Liza and all the girls and Wyatt boys and...
Now wasn’t the time, or the place. Brianna should be their focus. They should hatch a million plans until they were all safe and home.
Home. What’s home anymore?
She wasn’t sure she ever knew. It hadn’t been the trailer she’d grown up in. It hadn’t even been the Knight house, no matter how much she’d loved it. She’d been too afraid, always, to believe in home. A little too afraid to believe in a future—there, with Cody, with anyone or anything. She’d taken everything one day at a time—always so cognizant of how it could be lost.
Or that home was not for her.
And here she was, with so much to lose, every day. Every breath. She had lost these seven years with him. Because she hadn’t told him.
She stood by that decision. Neither of them had been ready for the threat of Ace back then. Not really.
But things were different. They were older. They’d weathered storms, and even a small taste of parenthood together for the last few days. Maybe seven years ago had been the time for caution.
And maybe now, with everything falling around them, but with their family sweeping it all up and stitching it together to protect them, out of love, out of duty.
Maybe now was the time to forget caution. Who knew what tomorrow would bring.
“There was no one else. There’s been...nothing else. My life stopped in that moment. A new life was born with Brianna, a new humbling, blinding love. But when your life is changed like that, taken over like that, it’s like... I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. It’s always been you.” She leaned forward, sliding her hands slowly over his, then up his arms. “That hasn’t changed. I stopped thinking it could, or even should. It is what it is.”
“You still love me.” He sounded so shell-shocked. Beyond disbelief, as if he’d been thrust into a new kind of blindness. “We were...young.”
“And dumb. So, so dumb. I don’t think being young matters. I felt what I felt—I didn’t know how precious that was, or how hard it could be. I didn’t even know how hard life could be then, and it wasn’t like I’d had such an easy life. I don’t think age changes love. It just changes how you deal with it.”
His face was tilted toward hers, but he couldn’t see. Because he would do whatever it took to save Brianna. Just like she would—and she had the bullet wound to prove it.
“Cody.” She cupped his cheek with one hand, studying his face. Bruised. Scratched. Bandaged.
Yes, she had always loved him—which made her think she always would—but more than that, here was a man who’d lay down his own life, not just to protect her, but to protect anyone he loved—most especially his daughter.
He shook his head against her hand, though she refused to take it away.
“Maybe you don’t know the man I’ve become,” he said, his voice hoarse. “What I did with the North Star group...”
“Cody, I’ve killed two men in the span of a week to save my daughter. Killed. Ended lives. I don’t know how I did it. I never thought I would.” She used her other hand to hold his face in place. She knew he couldn’t see her, but maybe he could feel what she meant if she held on. “It hasn’t changed us because we were born survivors. We have had to do what needed to be done ever since our doomed parents brought us into the world. So, no, these seven years haven’t changed who we are. And as long as Ace has a hold over us, we can’t change. We’re stuck here.”
“I should have killed him.”
He said it with such disgust she could only feel sympathy for him, and not wish so much he had. “Maybe that would have changed you, Cody. And for whatever reason you didn’t, or couldn’t. There’s no blame for that.”
“I’ve got plenty.”
Since she could see the misery on him, the guilt, and she understood that he couldn’t end Ace’s life, even when he’d wanted to, she brushed her mouth against his again. “I don’t,” she said against his mouth.
* * *
CODY DIDN’T KNOW what they were doing—what Nina, specifically, was doing. Talking about love and guilt and all manner of things that didn’t work to keep their daughter safe. Which was all he wanted to do.
Liar.
Something about the way she’d said survivors, the way she put the two of them on the same plane as such, the way she laid everything out and it somehow made sense.
They hadn’t changed. Love still wound around them, strong and true. Love pulsed here in this cabin, just as it had when he’d seen her being lifted into that ambulance.
Because he’d always known it was his job to survive, and so had she. They would do whatever it took—to survive, to protect.
Would they do whatever it took to love?
Maybe he’d blame all the emotions on being blind and walk away. Or ask to be led away since he wasn’t oriented enough in the room to know which way was which.
But Nina’s mouth was soft and gentle and it undid him, no matter how he tried to harden himself against it. Nothing had been soft and gentle for seven years, since she’d cut things off. He’d told himself he hadn’t missed it. The Wyatts didn’t do soft and gentle, and God knew North Star really didn’t.
But the longing of someone putting their arms around him, taking some care with how they touched him—it undid everything. He couldn’t think past Nina. Couldn’t worry that he was the reason they were here, and Brianna wasn’t. He couldn’t wallow in all that guilt and pain and the horrible, horrible impotence at not being able to end Ace.
Even when he’d had the chance.
Except that reminder pulled him out of the little dream her kiss could provide. He hadn’t done what he could to protect Brianna or Nina—even if he hadn’t known what would happen at the time.
He eased his mouth away from hers. “Nina. What is this?” He found himself trying to study her face, still oddly confused at the fact he couldn’t see. But that persistent gray shadow was all that was in front of hi
m.
Her hands still held his face, her fingers tracing his jaw and the corners of his mouth. “I don’t really know. What feels right, I guess. We lost...seven years. Even if we had to, they’re lost. But this moment isn’t.”
She kissed him again, and it turned out kissing her back was one of the few things he was capable of doing easily even without his sight. The sense that he wasn’t completely helpless was a comfort. Just like she was.
And no, she hadn’t changed. She felt and tasted exactly the same—the softness of her mouth a ghost that had haunted him all this time.
Maybe it had been some kind of subconscious penance to refrain from being with anyone else, and if it had been, didn’t he deserve what she so willingly offered?
It was a kiss, and it was comfort they could give each other. A distraction while they waited. It wasn’t wrong.
“Make love to me, Cody,” she whispered against his mouth.
He wanted to, his body pulsed with the need to have her—and a heart he didn’t want to admit was so soft desperately wanted to be with her again. “I... I can’t see.” A travesty to have her back, even if it wouldn’t last, and not be able to see anything.
Still she tugged him to his feet as she chuckled. “Last time I checked eyes weren’t a necessary body part for this.”
He stood—off-kilter not just because of his lack of sight as she led him forward, but because for all the talk about not changing—she had, in some ways. Maybe not who she was, but what she was willing to do and reach for.
Maybe she was nervous and he just couldn’t see it, but he wasn’t getting the feeling she was unsure or timid. She led him somewhere, and he’d follow her anywhere.
“I always wanted to lead.” She put gentle pressure on his shoulders until he sat on the edge of what turned out to be the bed. He scooted himself back, curious how far she would take this.
“So, why didn’t you? I probably would have been rather amenable to the idea.”
She laughed again, and the sound eased the black tension inside of him. She’d always been able to do that. Soothe, without even trying. She made him believe there was good, light, hope.