by Brynn Hale
Bronson’s Battle
Red Star Rebel Squad Book 2
Brynn Hale
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Copyright © 2020 by Brynn Hale
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contact Brynn at [email protected] for more information.
A big thank you to Raylene H for suggesting Coldplay’s “Fix You” for a song. It fit wonderfully and if you listen to the lyrics it’s mind-blowing how deep and entwined they are with the story.
Visit the Red Star Rebel Squad Series playlist here!
Contents
BRONSON’S BATTLE-Red Star Rebel Squad Book 2
1. Bronson, A.K.A. Kyler Hanlon
2. Kyler
3. Neveah
4. Bronson
5. Neveah
6. Kyler
7. Bronson
8. Neveah
9. Kyler
10. Neveah
Epilogue
Also by Brynn Hale
About the Author
BRONSON’S BATTLE-Red Star Rebel Squad Book 2
He’s never looked back. She’s never looked forward. But when he’s hurt in a covert operation, can he count on her again?
Bronson
I watched from a distance through a scope as they lowered the casket into the vault. I cursed myself as she crumbled to the ground when everyone was gone.
Neveah knows me as another name and her best friend and confidant. I’m still the same guy, but I don’t think she’ll see it like that.
I know her past and I helped her through the darkest days, except for one…the day I died.
The day I realized that she loved me like I loved her.
And now I need her again and she’s the only person I can trust.
I never stopped loving her. I’m going to find out if she feels the same.
Neveah
I opened the door and realized the last five years were a lie. His life is a lie. And I don’t tolerate liars—he knows this.
Looking a dead man in the eyes is like seeing into heaven. But when he speaks, I feel like I’m in hell.
Every wish, every dream, every wanting moment comes rushing back to me.
I can’t do this again, especially if he’s returning to his ghostly status after these two weeks.
I’ve hid too much in my life, but I’ll continue to hide my feelings to protect my heart.
He thinks he can return from the dead and sleep in my bed. Hell to the no!
If he wants back into my life…he’ll need to bring not only his best moves, but also the truth. The latter will be the harder for him.
The Red ★ Rebel Squad series are fast-paced, sweet and steamy short stories of ex-military men turned contract for hire and the confident and sassy women who can live without the complications of a relationship but will find they can't live without the love.
1 Bronson, A.K.A. Kyler Hanlon
I’ve been staring at the doorbell for ten minutes like it’s going to shock me if I push it. It might. God might actually strike me down for even considering what I’m considering. It’s not something I’m taking lightly.
I look to the skies and ask for a little guidance, but all I get is a burst of Colorado sun in the eye.
Maybe that was a sign.
No matter what I say or do, it’s probably going to be rough to come back into someone’s life after they buried you. Right? I mean, my buddy Murphy did it, but maybe he’s the exception to coming back from the dead. I shake my head.
Do I have any right to ruin whatever my best friend has? Her happiness? Her feelings of safety? Her world? Especially after I spent years building those things in her life. I turn in a circle and growl at myself.
I’m not scared. Hell, in my profession as soldier-of-fortune for a dark company, Black Ice, I have to go into places that would make 00-fuckin’-7 scream like a schoolgirl. And they would make that Bourne dude faint on the spot. I know people say real life is weirder than fiction—and they’ve got that right. Totally right.
And I’m dead living proof. Five years ago, I signed away my life to Black Ice. And when I did, I basically nullified any relationships with friends and family. Black Ice claimed I’d been tragically and heroically lost in a firefight with insurgents—their ability to make up a shitty story was definitely not great fiction.
They told us that dying would be better than making family wait for years to see us again. And the team believed them, but I think some of them wanted to be gone. Their lives worse than dying.
Like my buddy Patton from the same SEAL team as me. He jumped in with both feet, signed on the dotted line with his eyes closed. Me, I had to think about it for a few days. The opportunity was huge, and I wanted to be a part of the team that did what no one else could. But pretending to be dead?
I had a long talk with God. We are close friends. And he told me that I might have to temporarily hurt some to eternally help others.
I lean back against the opposite side of the door. Away from that doorbell that has a forcefield on it.
The street she lives on reminds me of the one we grew up on in Chicago, but this is Denver, Colorado. Mile-high, and man the air smells like it sometimes. Just walking from the corner, where I made the Lyft drop me off, I got a buzz. But it didn’t settle any part of me. If anything, I’m wired and edgy, and for a sharpshooter, a shaky hand is a bad hand.
It’s why I never drink coffee…or alcohol. I need to be clean and focused.
I stare at her mailbox, a small label says “Hart”. And she has that. Neveah was my best friend from ten years old on. She knows me as Kyler Hanlon, and she knows all my secrets—except this one—and that thought almost takes me down. I told her I’d never lie to her. I was wrong.
The urn they put into the vault wasn’t me, obviously. The company suggested we set a bonfire and burn effigies of ourselves to create ashes. Patton had the fire roaring before I had my cut-out finished. In a way there was something cleansing and releasing in dying but still living. It was like we were all given a second chance. But little did we know, burning away our pasts only created a robot-like existence.
Now the team knows why the contracts are for five years. Burnout. Ironic. Apparently unless you’re a narcissistic and hardhearted person, it’s normal to start to feel for the victims—the ones that live and the ones that don’t.
I’ve started to feel again and that’s part of why I’m here. But I’m also here because after getting shot three times in the gut, having my spleen taken out, and half my insides moved around to sew up holes, I’m feeling a lot of pain as well as caution when it comes to returning the squad.
All twelve of the squad members are starting to wonder if we’re going to keep going. The only one I can truly see trudging through is Halsey, but he thinks that his shit-don’t-stink. I’ve taken a dump in the jungle after him. And he’s wrong. Easy to tell that Halsey and I don’t g
et along. It’s nothing he’s said. It’s everything he hasn’t said.
Patton, Fremont, and Murphy—they’ve been there for me every day for over eighteen hundred days, in a row. But now I need someone else to be here for me.
“Please, Neveah, I need you to understand.”
I rub a hand down my face. It’s been twenty-four hours since I slept, and I need a place to chill out for a few days. Take some time to heal and get some perspective.
She isn’t married. She isn’t seeing anyone. And it doesn’t appear she ever has.
I step back in front of the door and think I hear a noise inside. I raise my hand to knock. That doorbell isn’t going to happen.
I rap once…
Neveah
I saw him walking up to the door from my spot in my favorite reading chair. I’ve never been visited by ghosts, so I’m going to assume Bronson Hanlon has a doppelgänger in this world. There’s just not another possibility.
But if he’s a ghost, I’ll go all Supernatural on his ass. I stand and go to the kitchen, grabbing the salt, and the iron from the cabinet—hey, it might not be real “iron” metal, but it’s got the same name!—to whizz his ass away. I walk to the door, quietly.
I can hear mumbling on the other side of the door.
Ghosts don’t mumble. Right?
It’s his voice. The sound makes my heart lurch into my throat.
He says something about “Neveah” and “understand” in the same sentence.
He did not just say that. Ghost or not, he might be getting an iron to his face either way.
But the worst part is…I hear him. I feel him. And worst of all, I care for him.
Kyler’s alive?
I have to lean back against the door to steady myself. It was a lie. His death was a lie to all of us who…loved…and still love him.
My distress rolls through me like the blizzards in a Denver winter, growing speed and fury.
The door rocks behind me with a hard thump behind my head, and I let out a screech, spilling the salt, but keeping ahold of that iron.
I open the door and as I’m swinging the iron, a hand catches it mid-air.
I freeze as I feel the warmth of his fingers on my wrist, not squeezing, just holding the iron in the air.
I hate how he looks. He’s different, but better. Better than ever. He looks like he could use a shower and a shave, but he’s definitely alive.
His walnut brown eyes flash at me. “Neveah, it’s me.”
I pull away and the iron crashes to the tile entry. “You lied to me, Kyler.”
He nods but says nothing. And I feel everything.
There’s some pain in his dropped gaze, and maybe it’s physical by how he’s holding his side.
But can he see the hurt in me, too?
2 Kyler
She keeps backing farther away. “I don’t understand.”
I still stand in the doorway, not inside, not outside. In limbo, like always.
“Give me a chance to explain. Please.” I reach out and she looks at the palm of my hand. It’s the same hand that used to hold hers when she would tell me the stories. The stories of how much she needed to get out of where she was.
I pull it back slowly.
“I get it. It’s not every day a dead man shows up on your doorstep.” I wink and try to lighten the mood.
“Don’t. Make. Jokes.” Her jaw tightens. “And don’t you wink at me Kyler Jaysen Hanlon.”
Shit, I just got full named. That’s when you know shit has hit the fan.
“Neveah, it’s me. It’s still me.” I reach out and my fingers glide across her cheek.
A long shockwave tremors through her body. Either my touch isn’t enough to prove it…Or it’s too much.
“Can I come in? Please?”
“No. I don’t think I’m ready for that.”
My stomach burns, and not because of her words, but because of the stitches across my lower belly. I reach down and my hand comes back wet and covered with blood.
“What the hell? Kyler, are you shot?”
I lean against the doorway as the world starts to spin. “I…I was shot. Now I’m healing.”
She steps closer and lifts my shirt. “That’s not healing!”
Without hesitation, she grabs my hand and drags me inside. She points at a kitchen chair and I take a seat. Her nursing instincts kick in. She cleans the area, redresses it, and closes her eyes while she’s squatting in front of me.
I reach down and lift her chin. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s going to take a lot more than sorry to fix this.” She stands and walks away.
I’ve been through battles. One-on-one types and one-on-a-hundred, and I’ve won at both. It doesn’t matter who has more weapons…it’s all about strategy and endurance.
When it comes to Neveah strategy might not be enough to win at love. Especially since I never let myself fall for her. I couldn’t. But now… now I can.
With my heart beating sure and my brain clearly ready, it’s a battle I’m ready to win.
3 Neveah
I head to take a shower. The place where I can think and wash his blood from my hands.
As the water on the floor turns pink, I remember back to the carnations of the same color on a standing spray beside his urn, draped with a banner saying, “My Best Friend.” He never knew how much I wanted that to be “My Love.”
I remember that July day, not so much unlike this one. Hot, muggy, and just oppressive sadness that sat on my skin like the air.
People filed by his urn to say their goodbyes and I waited until they were all gone. Until it was only him and me. I watched as they lowered him into the vault and capped it. I paid for it all. His parents couldn’t. His six brothers and five sisters wouldn’t. They said that he never did anything for them. That’s because he was always doing for me.
And I could do this. He left me with a nest egg. A lawyer showed at my door and declared me to be his heir. No one argued. I don’t know if they didn’t care, or they didn’t have the funds to fight it in the courts, so I gave him a proper funeral and burial.
And then when everyone was gone. I laid on his grave, my head next to his stone and I sobbed. And even as the heavens poured tears in the form of rain, I stayed curled next to him, my hand holding onto that stone, holding onto him. Praying that God would take me, too. Just a strike of lightning and I’d be with him, painless and quick. But it didn’t happen.
And now, I wonder, was Kyler there. He’d been trained in the military as a SEAL to be the one that stayed invisible. But that would mean he heard me screaming his name and never came to rescue me. He would have watched me lay there through the night and into the morning. Only rising when two police officers were called and insisted that it was time for me to go.
So I left. And I never went back to that Chicago cemetery. In fact, I moved a thousand miles to the west a month later, and I thought I moved on.
I was wrong. Very wrong.
Sure, I’ve always been protective of myself. If you had my shitty childhood, you would be too. My dad was an alcoholic who had a fast temper and even faster backhand strike. My mother tried to be there, but with five mouths to feed, she gave up on us right after we were old enough to help ourselves and then some of us started giving up, too.
I tried to keep my four brothers on the straight and narrow, but opportunities were slim, and even working two jobs, I couldn’t be enough, couldn’t earn enough, couldn’t make enough good choices. But through it all, Kyler supported me. He had his own large family, like really big, but he wasn’t in the same situation. His parents demanded he become something. They pushed him hard and I watched him break from the pressure.
We both had hit our wall as teenagers, so we left our families. We lived in a rundown VW bus behind a rundown convenience store, showering at the school, and working two jobs to save money.
We never kissed. We never slept together. We barely got past high-fives to hugs—and I can only th
ink of a few of those. I couldn’t stand to be touched, even if it was with a loving hand. And he wanted to just finish high school and move on to the military. The day he could, he signed up.
We celebrated with a small cake that I saved up to buy and I did my best to be happy for him.
But I cried myself to sleep that night.
He paid for me to get an apartment in a nicer part of town, until I got my degree in nursing and a good paying job. And now I do very well for myself as emergency department staff. I love my job. I love Denver. But I never stopped loving him.
I’m not going to let him in without him proving he understands what he did to me, who I am now, and what I need from him. Not what I needed five years ago. His money, although funding the new start in Denver that I needed, isn’t what I need. His jokes and his smile are nice, but they aren’t what I ultimately desire.
Kyler Hanlon was my past. Before I needed his protection, his security, but now I need more for the future.
But is he going back and am I only a steppingstone until that day comes?
I step out of the shower and hear snoring.
Oh, hell to the no. His ass is bound for couch-city. My bed is mine!
But when I step out and he’s curled up into a small ball, so much innocence for a man who could probably kill someone with his pinkie, I cave for now.
I make sure he’s truly asleep and then I slip into my pajamas. I’ll read for a while longer and then I’ll wake him up to have him move.
I stop at the doorway and whisper, “You bleed on my bedding and I’ll kill you in your sleep.”
My eyes widen when he lifts a hand with a raised thumb.