by Elise Faber
Because my heart hurt, my fantasies had been stomped to dust.
Because . . . I wasn’t safe here, not in his arms, not when he might send sharp barbs my way again, not when he might make me feel even smaller than I already made myself, not when he might stomp on me again.
I struggled against him, shoving at his chest.
But he was stronger than me and bigger than me, and I wasn’t really capable of any true struggle, not when I couldn’t catch my breath, not when my throat was wounded, not when my heart was sliced so deeply.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry you got hurt. I’m sorry you did that for me. I’m sorry that I was such a dick. I’m sorry . . .”
He kept talking, but I tuned him out.
Apologies.
Easy words.
But I’d been taught often enough to not believe them. I might cling to fantasies, but despite that kernel of hope, I’d always known those imaginings weren’t real. I dealt in actions and reality, because when I’d dared to dream the slightest bit—spending the last few nights thinking about Leo outside my door, his mouth on my thigh, him leaning close before we’d been interrupted by Hannah, remembering the careful way he’d tucked my hair behind my ear, how his fingers had brushed mine and made me shiver—when I’d dreamed for one moment he might actually be interested in me (me!), I’d opened myself up to this agony.
Embarrassment and disappointment and a dose of leftover adrenaline.
It was a deadly combination.
Especially with his arms around me, with his soft words, with the weak seeping into my bones and keeping me there.
He held me like I was more than a friend.
Wiped my tears like a lover.
Spoke my name as though it were cherished.
More fantasy.
Exhaustion rippled over me like a tidal wave, and blackness tugged me under.
Chapter Fifteen
Leo
She was asleep in my arms.
She fit . . . perfectly.
And I was reminded all over again how fucking much of an asshole I was. I’d wiped her tears, held her back to my front, and listened to her cry herself into unconsciousness.
I’d like to think it was adrenaline let-down from the wound.
I knew differently.
She was hurting because of me.
Because I’d been doing things with her when I shouldn’t, keeping her close, making her think . . . I could give her something more than I could.
Even if I were finally removed enough from denial to understand that I could never look at her again strictly as a friend, as a teammate. I’d glimpsed the beauty of her I’d been too dumb to see before, and I could never go back from it, not now.
But I also couldn’t go forward.
Couldn’t claim her as mine.
Because . . . I didn’t do that anymore. Not since—
I closed my eyes. Not since blood had poured between my fingers, dripped down my arms, turning the earth crimson, leaving stains on my hands that never could be washed away.
Despite all that, in that moment, I couldn’t let Jess go.
Not when she rolled over in my arms, her limp body to mine, her warm breath on the bare skin of my throat.
Not when nothing had ever felt more right.
She shifted in her sleep, snuggled closer.
I drew her nearer, held her tighter, and knew that this was the one night that I would allow myself.
Then I would go back . . . to friends, to teammates, and if neither of those things worked, to nothing at all.
Chapter Sixteen
Jesse
Warmth woke me.
Smothered me.
My throat was on fire. My chest ached.
My eyes didn’t want to open.
But then they did, and my sharp inhale of breath made tears prickle. A slow inhale, an even slower exhale, steadying my heartbeat . . . because I was in Leo’s arms, pressed to his chest, his breath ruffling my hair, his spicy scent in my nose.
And it meant nothing.
Light flickered over the ceiling, shadows from the movie still playing in the background.
Exhaustion rippled through me, dragged me down. Every part of me wanted to burrow closer, to live in the fantasy, but I knew that I’d wake up in the morning and Leo would look at me, not the way I hoped for, not like I was the other half of his heart, not like he’d love every part of me, not like—
I meant something.
I froze, lifted my fingers to the bandage, the wound tender but so much less so than it would have been if I didn’t have the clotting agent, if Linc hadn’t been there to doctor me up. An inch either way, and I could have died.
I could have died feeling this bad about myself.
I could have died thinking that I might never mean something to anyone else, and seriously, how fucked up was that?
What was the point of surviving this long if I was just going to be miserable and alone and always thinking that I wasn’t worth something? I thought about Hannah, strong and confident, living a big life that was full of color. I thought about Lily, always finding the humor in a situation, even as she embraced experiences with open arms. They weren’t small or quiet. They didn’t care if someone didn’t like them. They were intrinsically themselves.
And I was so fucking jealous of that.
Because I didn’t think I knew myself.
“Fuck,” I said under my breath, carefully slipping out from Leo’s arms and moving through the quiet halls of the base, back to my rooms, letting the door shut behind me as I walked into my bathroom. There, I splashed water on my face, stared at the woman in the mirror.
Haunted.
A stranger.
I was twenty-nine years old, and I’d spent my life being another person, until I didn’t even recognize the reflection of myself in the mirror.
Who was I?
Who?
I wanted a simple answer. Funny and smart like Lily. Intense and never backed down like Hannah.
But every adjective that came to mind as I studied myself in the mirror wasn’t good. They were all toxic and slicing and, God, was I really going to live the rest of my life like this?
My fingers gripped the edge of the counter, and I hung my head, knowing I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t live like this, Leo or not. I couldn’t be this girl who hated herself any longer. It clawed at me, suffocated me until I felt as though the bandage around my neck was tightening, invisible fingers yanking at it, cutting off my flow of air.
Heart pounding, breaths coming in rapid gusts, I reached for the faucet, needing more cold water, needing a shock of cold to snap me out of this.
My hand bumped the little porcelain soap dish, knocked it to the tile.
“No,” I whispered, watching it fall and yet unable to stop it.
The dish shattered, pieces scattering in all directions, and for a moment, I just stared at it, sitting broken and ugly on the white floor. Then I bent, trying to fit the pieces back together, as though it would be fine if I could just grab every shard and force them back together.
Then no one would know.
And that was when I knew.
As I stared at the one thing I had from my mother, the one item I’d carried from house to house to house, from base to base, from my old life all the way through to this one, I knew that I’d been broken, the pieces long lost.
Never to be the same again.
Even if I clung to the fantasy of it.
I had to let the fantasy go. But could I? Was I strong enough?
I reached for a shard I hadn’t grabbed before, this one having slid beneath the vanity, and hissed when it sliced my finger, bringing the digit up to my mouth and sucking the injury until it stopped stinging.
Then I picked up the remaining pieces and plunked them into the trash can, slivers and chunks and shards, all pointed, all sharp, all able to wound. And I knew it would hurt, I knew it wouldn’t be easy.
But I also knew that I couldn’t live anot
her moment pretending.
Standing, I stared at my reflection, saw a flicker of the woman I wanted to be—not small, not wounded. I wanted Lily’s humor. I wanted Hannah’s take-no-bullshit. I wanted Linc’s strength in being heartbroken but then finding the courage to grasp tight to love a second time. I wanted Olive’s big heart and easy openness. I wanted Dan’s loyalty, Laila’s confidence, Ava’s perseverance, Ryker’s quiet steadiness.
And . . . I wanted to be me.
Now, I just needed to figure out who I was.
Chapter Seventeen
Leo
I woke to the sound of . . . nothing.
To an empty bed.
It was an instant awareness, one second unconscious, the next with crystal-like clarity.
I was in the infirmary, in the room that Jess had been given. Alone.
I’d slept in her bed, with her in my arms.
I wanted to do that again, do it every night for the rest of my life, albeit in a bigger bed. I wanted to wake with her, even though she wasn’t next to me. I wanted a do-over, so I could see what she looked like with morning sunshine on her cheeks, her eyelids slowly peeling back.
But . . . I couldn’t.
I just . . . couldn’t.
Inhaling sharply, I pushed out of the bed, my jeans feeling stiff and uncomfortable, my mouth like it had been home to a forest fire.
I should go back to my rooms, shower, and get to work.
If Jess was up and moving, she would be all right. I should get out of her space, leave her to her recovery, and put all my energy into finding the fucker who’d shot her. That was the one good thing I could do, the one thing I could salvage from this fucked up situation.
But after I’d made my way through the halls, had hesitated outside my door, I found myself turning and going to hers, seeing that the panel had shut, but not all the way because the lock hadn’t engaged, and . . . I was pushing through when the bathroom door opened, and Jess stepped out.
She stopped, hands gripping a towel that was around her breasts and hit mid-thigh, only an inch or two of the pink scar visible below the white cotton. The waterproof bandage still on her neck, standing out sharply in contrast to all that skin, still flushed from the shower. Her gaze came to mine, and the ice in her eyes chipped away something at me.
She’d changed.
Because of me.
“Jess—” I began.
Then found I didn’t have any more words left, not when her next action was to drop her towel.
I’d seen her in a swimsuit.
I’d seen her in a bra and underwear.
I’d seen most of her skin . . . and yet, it was as though I’d never seen her. Miles and miles of creamy skin, dotted with freckles, her pink-tipped breasts so fucking gorgeous, and her pussy—I felt my throat seize when I saw the narrow thatch of red hair, the rosy lips glistening, not from desire, but from the shower. She sniffed, derision in her eyes, and spun toward her dresser.
She yanked out a drawer. “I came to a decision last night.” She pulled a pair of underwear out and began tugging them on, her ass jiggling and all too grabbable. “I woke up in the middle of the night, in the arms of the man I’ve fantasized about forever, and I realized that nothing is real.” She yanked a sports bra out of another drawer, yanked it over her head, covering her breasts with plain white fabric that was no less tempting than her bare skin. Instead, it plumped and brought together, made my fingers itch to run beneath the hem. “Not our friendship.” A shirt came next, jerked down so hard I had to bite back a retort for her to be careful. “That only worked when you could put me into a box, one that was perfectly contained and fit into your expectations.” Sweats on her long legs. “It was all good until you realized that I have these.” She grabbed her breasts through her shirt. “And this.” She pointed between her thighs. “But, newsflash, Leo, I’ve been a woman all along, and I’ve spent too fucking long making myself small, trying to fit in somewhere—”
She was magnificent, beautiful, and filled with fire.
I reached for her. “Jess—”
She blew by me, striding to the bathroom, where she grabbed a hairbrush and began yanking it through her hair. “And so I woke up in the middle of the night, and I should have been over the moon because the man I’ve been in love with for fucking years was holding me like I was precious.”
I went still. “What?”
“I loved you,” she said, tossing the hairbrush onto the counter. “Or at least, I thought I did, and then you kissed my thigh and held me like I was important, and I hoped”—her voice broke—“I wished that you finally saw me as someone important.”
My heart was pounding; my hands trembled.
“And then I realized that if I kept waiting for everyone else to see me as important, then I would never see me as important.”
“Jess,” I murmured, taking a step toward her.
She shook her head, stepped back. “I should have been happy, and when I looked over at you, all I felt was this disgust for myself, the disgust you had for me.”
Disgust for her?
No.
Not ever.
It was at me, at myself. “I’m not—”
“And all of a sudden, it all made sense,” she said, talking over me. “You’re never going to make me happy.”
Those words were a punch to my gut.
Because I knew she was right.
“So”—she moved to the door, yanked it open—“I want you to go. To go back to your team, to leave me to mine.”
“Jesse,” I said. “I’m not disgusted with you. I like you. You’re my—”
I broke off, because I didn’t know what she was to me.
And she knew that.
She pointed out the door. “Leave me to my life, Leo.”
I swallowed, wanting to say something to convince her to forgive me but knowing there was absolutely nothing I could say. Because I hadn’t seen her beauty until it had clocked me over the head, and that had hurt her.
I had hurt her.
“I could have died yesterday,” she said, when I didn’t immediately move. “And all I could think as I was staring at you was that I don’t want this to be my life anymore. I’m done with being small and quiet and trying to making sure no one sees me. I’m”—a sigh—“done with you.”
I felt like I was the one who’d been shot.
Like all the blood was leaving my body, as though my soul had frozen and someone had taken a hammer to it, shattering it into a million tiny pieces.
But all I could do was nod and walk to the door.
I turned back, studied her face with the freckles I wanted to count, the nose I was desperate to kiss the tip of, the cute, little elven ears.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Her eyes darted away. “Goodbye, Leo.”
The only thing left to do . . . was to walk out.
So, I did.
Chapter Eighteen
Jesse
I didn’t know if I felt better or worse after Leo walked out of the room.
Better because I’d finally stood up for myself, that I’d found an inner wealth of fire inside me, and holy hell, had I just stripped down and marched buck naked across the room like it wasn’t a big fucking deal? Also, why did that feel so fucking good? To not be ashamed of my body, to actually be able to see the heat I’d seen in his eyes? He’d been attracted to me. Not someone else.
Me.
Me.
I felt a piece inside me slide into place, a hole being filled in chip by chip.
New me could be a badass. New me could be unashamed. New me could be anything that I wanted.
That was what had felt good, I realized.
Not the heat in Leo’s eyes, but the confidence in my heart, the conviction that I was doing the right thing.
Even if I had hurt him.
And that was where the worse in the whole better or worse thing came in, and I felt another sliver wiggle its way back into shape. Because eve
n though I’d wanted to be that strong badass who never backed down, I didn’t want to be the type of woman who went around hurting people—even if he’d done it first.
Unfortunately, however, in this case, it had to be done.
I’d woken and enjoyed his warm body against mine for a few precious moments, the spicy scent of him in my nose, on my skin, and I’d known I could lie there and continue pretending that everything would be okay.
I could accept the scraps.
I’d be safe and protected and perfect.
Until I got caught up thinking I didn’t deserve that protection. Until I looked in the mirror again and found myself unworthy.
Until he cycled back to asshole and made me feel like shit, and I unraveled any progress I’d made in trying to figure out who in the fuck I was.
Until I let him do it because I thought that was the only thing I deserved.
So . . . that was it then.
No more Leo.
No more heads in the clouds and pretending so the puzzle pieces of what everyone wanted fit into the gaps inside me.
Just me.
Only me in my brain, me trying to sort my head out, me trying to figure out the woman I would be going forward.
I’d survived hell, pain, and loss, and being hurt over and over again.
I’d survived it.
Now, I could live it.
And Leo would go back to his life, letting me move forward with mine. No more feeling deficient and broken, no more feeling inadequate.
I’d nearly died, and with my nose pressed to Leo’s throat, I’d realized that I would have left nothing behind. Just a shell of a woman who couldn’t stand the sight of herself in the mirror.
And so, I was going to finally do something about it.
I’d remember the way Linc looked at Olive, the gentle way he was with her. How he treated her like she was capable and yet something to protect. I’d remember Dan and Ava—both badasses in their own rights, and yet they’d take on the world for each other. I’d remember Laila and Ryker, who built each other up, who sacrificed in turn, who didn’t diminish but expanded each other. I’d remember Hannah and Lily and . . . I’d remember me.