by Casey Hagen
Put yourself out there and be vulnerable. These are the people you can do that with.
Isabella’s words played through her head. It was now or never.
“What, Kinsley doesn’t have a treat back there for me?” Chloe said, forcing some humor into her voice as Zane stepped back to let her in.
His hard eyes took a break from their censure and softened. “Well,” he said before clearing his throat, “I think you might be over the height limit, but there’s one way to find out.”
She let out a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding and gave him a small smile before following in the direction of her kids. She found them in the kitchen, sitting at the table, each with a cookie in hand.
“Your aunt spoils you,” Chloe said, smoothing her hand over Tyler’s hair.
Kinsley passed the milk to Zane and grabbed a couple of glasses. “I hope you don’t mind. It’s become kind of a habit. If it makes you feel any better, they’ve never not eaten their dinner.”
Because when you’ve worried about where the food will come from, you make sure you eat what’s in front of you every single time.
Kinsley didn’t say it. She didn’t even look at Chloe like she was thinking it. But the words played on Chloe’s sense of guilt anyway, and her stomach pitched.
Chloe swallowed hard and nodded. “I don’t mind.”
Zane and Kinsley kept their focus on the kids throughout most of the dinner with just brief questions about her job, how she liked it, if she’d made new friends, pretty much the standard, polite questions you’d ask anyone from new acquaintance to whatever Chloe was to them.
But then, it had always been that way. If they focused on the kids, on niceties, and left her alone for the most part, nothing went wrong.
Everyone seemed relaxed. With their plates all pretty much empty she took a chance. “I’ve taken a hard look at my budget now that I’ve been through a couple of pay cycles, and I’ve made a few decisions,” she said, pushing around the last bite of the pasta on her plate.
“Okay,” Zane said with a hesitation in the deep rumble of his voice.
She set her fork down and took a sip of her water. “I can easily afford to take over the utilities in the house, the groceries, and the kids’ needs, so I’m going to start setting that up next week.”
Zane wiped his mouth and tossed his napkin on his plate. He leaned back, his gaze first going to Kinsley as they silently communicated some nonsense between them before he turned that steely-eyed charcoal stare on her. “There’s no need to just jump right in taking on all that stress. It can wait, Chloe.”
It can wait, Chloe?
Who the hell did he think he was…Dad? “I wasn’t asking. I’m telling you; I’m taking over the bills. And, I’m going to make monthly rent payments to you to go toward the cost of the house.”
He jutted out that stubborn chin of his and crossed his arms. “I won’t accept them.”
“Zane,” Kinsley said, putting a hand on his forearm.
“What?” he asked, uncrossing his arms and throwing his hands in the air. “She’s going to do what she always does and stretch herself thin until it all falls apart. The whole point of buying the damn house was to make sure that didn’t happen again, remember? After all, you came up with the idea.”
“Zane!” Kinsley admonished, her cheeks flaming with the telltale red splotches of embarrassment.
“Are you guys going to fight?” Tyler asked. At one time, he’d been terrified to speak, to ask that question, but now he glanced between them genuinely curious and completely without fear.
“We might fight a little, the same way you and Brielle do. Sometimes your uncle needs to be reminded that he’s not the oldest,” she said, cupping his chin. “Kinsley, would you mind taking them in the other room while I have word with my brother?”
“Sure thing,” she said with a nod before turning to the stubborn man in question. “Zane, be good. Listening ears just like you always tell the kids,” Kinsley said, giving him a look.
Chloe waited for them to head into the den and pushed her plate away. “I need this, Zane. I need to be independent.”
He snorted. “You’ve needed that before, and we all know how that turned out.”
“That’s not fair,” she said, biting back a profanity-laden retort.
He scraped his fingers over his close-cropped hair, agitation vibrating so hard within him that he couldn’t sit still. “What’s not fair is you running around doing whatever the hell you want, leaving messes left and right for me to clean up.”
Be willing to hear him. Think before you reply.
“I’m grateful for all that you’ve done,” Whoa, listen to her sounding all adult, “but this is not the same thing, and we both know it. I have a great job. I’m doing well. I’m in therapy. But I want to be proud of my accomplishments, and I can’t be when I’m not paying my way.”
“So, buy the kids clothes. Take care of their school stuff. Get a few groceries. I’ve got the rest.”
“No,” she said, slapping her palms on the table. “I’m doing this, Zane, with or without your support.”
“Is this all because you’re still pissed at me for going off to the military?”
Count to ten and don’t kill your little brother.
“One has nothing to do with the other,” she pointed out.
“Bullshit. Everything you’ve done or said in regard to me since I became a SEAL has been caught up in my decision to go.”
“You left me, Zane,” she said quietly.
“For a career. Are you telling me you would have been this resentful if I’d just gone off to college?”
“You don’t get it. You’ve never gotten it.”
“So explain it to me, dammit!”
“When you left for the SEALs, you took my best friend with you, and he never made it back. Do you get that? You took him, and while you’re still here, that easygoing guy with the funny jokes, he never made it back. How am I supposed to feel about that?” She made sure not to raise her voice. To be clear. Be vulnerable.
“Well, for one thing, it’s not supposed to be all about you, Chloe. Did you ever think about that? You were my older sister…did it ever occur to you to act like the older one?”
“That’s not fair.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said that. You know what’s not fair, almost dying for your country and coming home to a sister who looks at you with the same disdain she would dog shit on the bottom of her shoe. I’m lucky to even be here, and you never once asked what happened to me. You never once tried to understand that maybe what happened to me was so vicious, I didn’t dare utter the words and make them real for you.” He pointed toward the den. “That woman in there, luckily, she didn’t just assume what you’d told her about me was true and asked me what they’d done to me over there when my own sister never did. And if she hadn’t done that, if I had been the shit human being you made me out to be, where would Tyler and Brielle be right now?”
Her hands shook in her lap as she battled to keep her mind from going there. “I didn’t want you to dredge it up.” God, it sounded so stupid when she said it, but she really did think he could bury it and find his way back. She’d never considered what happened to him was so horrendous that maybe there was no coming back from it.
Because if she acknowledged that sometimes, despite our best intentions, we can’t find our way back, how would she have ever moved past what had happened to her in that shipping crate?
“No, you didn’t want me to dredge it up. You just wanted to persecute me for it over and over again. Well, dammit. You want reality, Chloe?” he asked as he started to undo the buttons on his shirt.
There’d been a time she would have pointed out that Zane was doing the exact thing he accused her of, but she fought to remember Isabella’s advice. They were finally getting somewhere as long as Chloe kept control of herself, like a big sister should.
The irony was not lost on her.
“Fine, reality is what you’ll get,” he said as he pushed out his chair and stood, rocking the edge of the table with the force of his jerky movements.
Something told her to look away. She didn’t want to see this. This was one of those moments that would change both of them. Even grasping for the familiar bickering and distrust seemed preferable to the uncertainty that came with the last button sliding from the hole of his dress shirt.
But she didn’t. She wanted to prove she was up to the task of living, being responsible, the business of thriving, and that meant she couldn’t avert her eyes to the hard shit. No more cowering in fear.
His shirt fell away, and her lungs seized in her chest and her heart pounded in her ears. She bit her bottom lip until she tasted blood in an effort to keep her chin from wobbling as her eyes filled with tears. She heard a whimper, thought one of the kids had come back in, but with one glance toward the doorway, she realized it had come from her. Her stomach dropped out, and for precarious few seconds, she worried she might just bring up her dinner right there. Not because of what she saw, but for the fact that at some point years ago, he’d suffered endlessly half a world away, and she hadn’t known. How many minutes did he lie there, while the enemy carved him, tortured him, and made him howl with pain until shock set in?
How was he even standing before her right now to fight with her? At the same time they’d been mutilating him, she was angry, resentful, and writing him right out of her life.
Curved, raised ridges bubbled from his skin along his ribs. Scars—although the term seemed wildly inadequate. Mangled skin formed a familiar pattern, but she couldn’t quite figure out what they reminded her of.
“Gills,” he said, his voice thick and rough. “They sliced me to the bone, and that was just the beginning of what they did to me, Chloe. So, while you’re angry that the easygoing kid you missed so much never made it home, you should be grateful there’s any part of me left. I almost died. More than a dozen times I almost succumbed to their torture. You can’t know how many times I prayed for death, but they’d just cauterize the wound until they were ready to slash at me again. Can’t have me bleeding out. They needed to keep me alive for weeks like that, with maggots eating my flesh.”
“Have Mom and Dad seen…” she trailed off with no more air to squeak the words past her tight throat as she gestured to his chest.
“No. I hadn’t even looked at them until Kinsley.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered feeling incredible stupid for saying such trite words.
“Don’t feel sorry for me, Chloe. Just understand that what you see might be the best you can get. I’m just not that guy anymore. But I love those kids and would do anything for them. And I love you. I’ve always loved you even when you’ve pissed me off to no end.”
She stood next to him and took his hand. The first time she’d touched his hand in so many years. “Can you love me enough to give me a chance, Zane? Please? Give me a chance to become a mother and provider I can be proud of. One my kids can be proud of.”
His eyes drifted shut, and he sighed. “You’re asking me to go against my every instinct.”
“Not at all,” she said, squeezing his hand until he opened his eyes and looked at her. “I’m just asking you to trust mine. I’ve got this, Zane. For the first time in a long time, I know it. Look at me. Do I look terrified to you?”
“You look…ready,” he admitted.
“I am. And I know that if I ever need anyone, you’re there. Kinsley’s there. There’s never been a safer time for me to try this.”
“Okay,” he nodded. “Okay.”
With her heart aching with about as much emotion as she could handle, she struggled to put them back on safer ground. “I’m going to need that in writing,” she said swiping at her damp eyes.
He let out a laugh. “Don’t push it, Chloe. I’m meeting you halfway here.”
“Not quite half, but I’ll take it. I’m going to need you to repeat it in front of Kinsley though. I need a witness.”
“Fine. Anything else?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, pointing at his chest. “Put your shirt back on; your nipples are looking at me.”
“Smart-ass,” he muttered with a smile as he slid his shirt back on.
“Zane?”
“Yeah?”
“How did you get out of there?”
His dark eyes locked on hers, and if she wasn’t mistaken, a look of total hero worship filled his eyes.
“Lucas.”
Chapter 5
“Interesting place for a meeting,” Dylan said, climbing into one of the fifteen hatches that accessed the tunnels and bunkers under New Hope.
This one just happened to be in the janitor’s closet outside the kitchen.
So, Lucas had been hiding again. Okay, not hiding, he’d been getting the electrical in order and the lasers. Technically, he needed to walk the members of Fierce through to see just what they had paid for so they could sign off on his final payment and the bonus for the guys. The fact that this job offered a way for him to keep his distance from Chloe while he waited for any word on Sorelli kept his ass from having to muster up a whole lot of willpower he wasn’t feeling.
“You guys needed to inspect the tunnels anyway, and with the foot traffic throughout the day, this was the best place to enter.”
“It feels like I’m climbing in a fucking sub again,” Cole grumbled. “Put that on the list of shit I didn’t miss.”
Lucas waited for all the guys to work their way down and led them to the largest of five bunkers, one for each wing of New Hope. He spread out the blueprints on a folding table in the center of the room.
“You guys are here,” he said, pointing to the center bunker under the registration and triage center. “This room sleeps one hundred and fifty-one cots. Three tanks along the east wall hold provisions to last at max capacity for three weeks.”
“Nice work. The bunker is a damned transformer,” Slyder said, a satisfied smile on his face while running his hands along the seams of steel plates and hinges along the wall.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Lucas said, ready to impress them. Sliding open one of those wall panels, he accessed the main control hub. “If you guys don’t mind grabbing that table and moving it to the west wall.”
Zane and Dylan each hooked a hand around the end and carried it off to the side. Slyder, Cole, Jake, and Evan followed along. The minute Evan’s foot cleared the edge of the furthest cot, Lucas clicked a series of three buttons and one hundred and fifty panels opened up, flipped, and rose out of the floor. Just like that, each bed was ready to use, each with a clean set of linens strapped to them.
Slyder whistled and moved in closer, crouching beside the cot. “You have safeties in here in case these malfunction? I don’t want to be sued because a resident got sucked into the floor.”
“Four steel pegs lock into place, two on each side. The beds aren’t going anywhere.” Lucas clicked a button, and the pins released, then the cots flipped and retracted.
Slyder fell back on his ass. “Remind me to keep my eye on you,” he said with a hard look.
Lucas smiled and rocked back on his heels. “Probably a good idea. We’ve got four bunkers to go and hundreds of more tricks up my sleeve.”
He showed them multiple compartments in each holding area where they stored the food reserves, toiletries, medicines, refrigeration, and enough equipment to do medical procedures underground if necessary.
Depending upon the invasiveness of the medical procedure, their three-week window to stay underground would diminish by a week or so, but still be open long enough to handle whatever went wrong topside that drove them to safety.
“And I saved the best part for last…this one’s going to tickle you in your no-no places,” Lucas said while punching a code into the grid to the sound of the guys laughing behind him.
The lights went out, and lasers jumped throughout the room seeking body heat. In seconds, they homed in and rolled over their contours, measuring and identifying each of them. He held up his phone, the volume all the way up as the program identified them all by name and security clearance. “No need to pull out a laptop or access the central computer system. Zane wrote an app for that. The best part, the app only opens with a retinal scan.”
“This is some damn impressive work. Brilliant,” Jake said, clapping Lucas on the shoulder. “Thank you. Really. It’s incredible. My mother would have been so proud to see this come to life.”
They’d told Lucas about Jake’s own violent past in a house with domestic violence and the gruesome way she died at the hands of Jake’s own father. To see what he’d turned into despite his shitty childhood had been Lucas’s first real sign that no matter how dark the past, there was always a way back.
Maybe even for him.
“Happy to do it,” Lucas said.
Cautious pride filled him. This didn’t give him bragging rights. There were plenty of times he hadn’t been able to protect his loved ones, friends, and his team. But this was a start toward, what? Worthiness, peace, maybe something more than just existing.
“Not bad for a medic,” Slyder said, issuing a well-deserved dig after the way Lucas fucked with him earlier.
“Hey, that’s Special Operations Combat Medic to you. If one of those cots ever malfunctions and your bottom half gets sucked into that floor, my ass will keep you alive,” Lucas said with a laugh.
“Yeah, well, let’s not test your skills, okay?” Slyder said with a narrow-eyed stare and a tap of his foot on the corner seam of the first row of cots.
“Without Lucas, I would be dead,” Zane said quietly, all but subduing the banter between them. “There was a time I would have welcomed that. Lucas had other plans though. We’d be lucky to have him as part of our team.”
Lucas shuffled on his feet, his ears burning with the telltale heat of embarrassment. He could feel their eyes on him.
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