by Zoe Dawson
It was time to go home. Finally, time to lay all his ghosts to rest and maybe, just maybe find the other half of him he’d left behind six years ago.
“Hey,” Saint said from Aella’s hospital room door.
She clicked off the TV and smiled. “You’re leaving, then?”
“Yeah, two weeks are up, and we’re headed back to San Diego. How’s the leg?”
“Doing amazing according to the doctor. He said you saved it. It could have been a hard recovery if it wasn’t for your skill in the field.”
He shrugged.
“He thinks once you get out of the Navy, you should become a doctor.”
Saint chuckled. “Yeah? He said that?” He approached the bed and without invitation settled on it. With a smile he gently tucked her hair back from her face. “I don’t need to be an MD to play doctor to your nurse.”
She gazed at him, her eyes dark and slumberous, licking her lips, and Saint’s pulse skittered and caught. He wondered if he would ever get enough of her.
Aella’s gaze shifted to his mouth, and she leaned over and kissed him. “That’s the best medicine for recovery.”
Saint gave a huff of laughter against her mouth, then pulled away. He leaned back and shook his head slightly. “You are a piece of sass. What my momma would call a sassbucket.”
She gave him a slow half smile that was a come-on if he’d ever seen one, but there was a glint in her eyes that wasn’t at all sensual. She rubbed the back of his neck with her fingers, sending a tingle of sensation down his spine. “Would that saying be on par with…if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen?”
Saint grinned. “See, pure sass.”
A sparkle of amusement appeared in her eyes, and she tipped her head to one side. “I need to give as good as I get. It’s my competitive streak. I’ll try to work on that.”
“No, I like that competitive streak,” he said gruffly. “I’m glad that I could save your leg. But I have no doubt with or without it you would have continued to kick ass.”
She looked down and heaved a sigh as if she were trying to contain tears. He hoped like God she won that fight. It would shred him up to have to leave her teary-eyed.
Lacing her hands together behind his neck, her gaze turned solemn. “I’m going to miss you, West Virginia.”
“Me, too, darlin’. You kick ass out there,” he said, his voice wavering.
“You, too, babe.” She abruptly hugged him against her, and her chest expanded unevenly against him. Cupping his hand under her jaw to nestle her head closer, he felt her swallow hard; then she nodded. Affected by her emotional struggle, Saint drew her deeper into his embrace and rested his cheek against the top of her head. “You stay safe, very Special Agent Aella Mikos.”
She nodded. With all the gentleness he could muster, he lifted her head so he could see her face. She had her eyes tightly closed and her jaw clenched, but in spite of her battle to hold everything in, tears seeped out from beneath her lashes. His throat tight, he bent his head and kissed her face.
“Let me know how you’re doing from time to time.”
Her throat worked, and she nodded once. He pulled away, dying inside. When she opened her eyes and nodded again, the shimmer of tears added a heart-wrenching vulnerability to her raw emotion.
She swiped at the tears, then said, “You better skedaddle, or you’ll miss your flight. The Navy frowns on that, I’m sure.”
He backed out of the room, and when he reached the door, he paused to gaze at her, taking in everything to hold in his mind for when he needed to remember the beautiful and strong woman he’d give his left arm for. But duty called for both of them.
After one more silent, warm, regretful look between them, he turned and left.
2-Stroke landed in LAX five hours after getting on the plane. He was out like a light after boarding and slept the whole way there. It was clear he was still recovering. He’d gone to sleep thinking about Chry and woke up thinking about her. She was a permanent fixture in his mind. But he still wanted to give her some more time. Her texts were still so minimal. When he came out of the gate, Dean was there, and 2-Stroke waved to his brother.
“Hey, man,” Dean said after they hugged. “It’s good to see you up and about. How are you doing?”
“It’s an improvement from the last time you saw me, face down in the mud, bleeding and having a hard time breathing.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t fun. Don’t do that again.”
They walked toward the parking garage to Dean’s cherry-red pickup truck. Once inside, Dean asked, “You hungry?”
“Yeah, starving.”
“Let’s get you something to eat, then you should probably rest some more. Doc said another full week, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They went to a taco joint that 2-Stroke loved when he’d lived here. After ordering, they sat down at one of the tables. 2-Stroke didn’t touch his food. “So, what did the brass say?”
Dean sighed. “I lost my team, and I’m out of the Navy. I’m going to be on administrative duty here in LA until my term is up in two months. I had planned to re-enlist, but that’s off the table. I retained my rank and trident, though, and will receive an honorable discharge. My lawyer was amazing, stating my personal reasons for disobeying orders, and got me the best deal she could.”
Clenching his jaw against the sudden thickness in his throat, 2-Stroke remained silent, absorbing the consequences of Dean’s actions. He was no longer an operator.
“It’s okay, Neo. I would do it all over again. The outcome sucks, but you’re back safe and whole. That’s all that matters to me.”
2-Stroke made no response, unsure why Dean’s words made him feel like he was ten years old again and trying not to bawl.
Dean leaned forward. “Come on. Eat. Everything will work out for the best. It always does. I don’t want you dropping on me. I don’t have time to play nursemaid to my baby brother.”
Giving in to a flicker of humor, 2-Stroke lifted one finger in a rude gesture, and Dean chuckled. There was a short pause, then Dean said, his tone mild, “When you’re up to it, we need to clean out the house. Flora died two weeks ago. I didn’t tell you because I’m pretty sure you didn’t care, and you had more pressing matters to handle.”
2-Stroke held his brother’s gaze for a moment, then closed his eyes and exhaled heavily. He had no response to Flora’s passing. She hated his guts for killing her husband, the only man she’d ever loved. He supposed that was something. “No, I don’t care that my stepmother died. I should, but I don’t.”
After a long pause, Dean said quietly, “Well, she must have had a change of heart because she left the house and assets to both of us. There’s a letter she wrote to us regarding Riley.”
“She has no right—”
“Hang on, Neo. We both know who she was, a hard-drinking, hard-talking biker chick, but something broke inside her when both Riley and Dad were killed. She only drank more to dull the pain.”
2-Stroke closed his eyes, working on putting all his anger, resentment, and hate where it belonged. In the past. He wasn’t sure if it was a result of his newfound discovery that he mattered in this life, but he could find some compassion for Flora, albeit small. She had mattered, too. To Pierce, to Riley and to Dean. She had doted on Riley, and she had lost a son. He met his brother’s thoughtful expression. “You’re right. She lost a son. I can feel sorry for her there.”
“There you go, bro,” he said quietly, then tapped 2-Stroke’s plate. “Tacos down the hatch.”
Another week passed and 2-Stroke took it easy, watching TV, reading, and beating his brother’s ass at Call of Duty. His brother’s place was a two-bedroom apartment, but he kept it neat as a pin. It was a side effect of being in the Navy with their motto of keeping everything shipshape.
After a game of Call of Duty where…yeah…he won again, Dean said, “Hey, I want to go somewhere and want you to come with me.”
“All right,” 2-Stroke
said, bored out of his mind. “Let’s go.
When they pulled up to the cemetery, 2-Stroke looked at his brother and sighed. “You could have given me a warning.”
“I didn’t want a lame-ass excuse or an argument.”
“No argument,” 2-Stroke said as he got out of the truck. He looked across the expanse of the peaceful place. He knew exactly where the headstone was. Closing the truck door, he started walking. The last time he’d been here was dark and sorrowful, but now he walked with purpose and a lighter burden. Some deaths were just out of his hands, he could accept that now. He would save the ones he could, mourn the loss of the ones he couldn’t, and move on. Not to compartmentalize those deaths, but to really let them go.
He stopped in front of the gravestone. Riley James Teller. Riley would have turned twenty-one in a month. He set his hand on the headstone remembering that kid who had been bright, funny, inquisitive, and full of life.
“He had such a capacity to love,” Dean said. “I miss him like hell every day. Maybe someday I can forgive myself for not being there for you when you needed me so much.”
“My heart is clear of any animosity toward you, Pierce, Flora…I need to let go and to move on.”
Dean reached out and they hugged for a long time as the wind picked up and 2-Stroke could almost hear the tinkling sound of his younger brother’s laughter.
Later he separated from his brother and went to his mom’s headstone. He knelt there for a long time, silently remembering, silently thanking her for being in his life, for shaping him into the man he had become. With the warmth of her love deep inside him, he rose. Family was what he made it. He and Dean were brothers, and they would both put the past to rest. It was the only way forward.
“My God, the woman was a packrat,” 2-Stroke said as he took in the house. There were antiques everywhere, enough that she could have opened a shop. They would all have to be researched, catalogued, and sold.
Then they went to the treasure trove that was the garage. Vintage bikes of every make and model filled the area along with a 1967 Mustang that still looked as pristine and tricked out as the day Pierce had restored it.
Pierce Teller had been a master mechanic, the kind that could be called a motorcycle whisperer. Dean had inherited his gift. “Why don’t you open up a motorcycle shop?” 2-Stroke suggested. “With the proceeds from all this stuff and the house, it should be enough of a down payment.”
Dean chuckled. “You looking out for me, bro?”
He was thankful that all that shit between them was now resolved. It was good to just be with his brother, talking about mundane things and trash-talking over a video game.
“What are brothers for?” he said with a grin.
Dean came up to him and wrapped his arm around his neck and squeezed. “Let’s get to cataloging all this stuff. I’ll start naming stuff off since you don’t have a clue, and you run the laptop.”
“Deal. They spent days working on the antiques first. There were so many of them, they decided to send out a mass email to antique dealers in the city for them to come and make offers. He and Dean knew what each piece should go for. But there wasn’t a minute or hour that passed that he didn’t long to see Chry. Their texts had been sparse as they both recovered. He didn’t tell her he was in LA, needing some time with his brother and working through all their family stuff. But the pressure was building, and although he didn’t want to see her prematurely, he was aching to make contact with her in so many ways.
They had a mass turnout on the day of the sale, selling everything and making a tidy profit from it.
In the living room, when he went to lift a heavy planter for a customer, he noticed a broken piece of floor and something peeking out from underneath. Frowning, he carried the planter to the guy’s truck, then came back into the almost empty house. While Dean was finishing up the last-minute sales, 2-Stroke knelt on the floor and pulled at the edge of the object he’d seen. He dragged out a crisp, dusty, one-hundred-dollar bill.
Shocked, he realized that there were more. He got a hammer and used the pronged end to pull up the wood plank. His breath caught. There were neat stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills bound together with elastic bands. He pulled up more floor and his jaw dropped. More money.
By the time he got to the middle of the room, he realized that the whole of the living room area beneath the floor was full of those bundles.
“Dean!” 2-Stroke called.
“Wha—” His brother’s jaw dropped open and his shocked eyes met 2-Stroke’s. “What the fuck?”
“I don’t know.”
“How much do you think is here?” Striker asked, bending down and grabbing one of the bundles.
“Millions?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Millions. What the hell was our father into? And where did all this money come from?”
17
The sun had barely cleared the horizon, but already Chry was restless. Not a moment passed that she didn’t think of Neo. Their texts had been so polite, and she had to wonder if he was having second thoughts about them. She paused in brushing her hair, the sick feeling of apprehension stirring within her. Closing her eyes, she tried to will away the awful sensation. They had built such a solid bond. He would come see her when he could.
The days were bearable because she could keep busy. At first it had been a lot of physical therapy, then her long walks, and talks with the agency about her future.
But the nights were something else altogether. Loneliness like she had never known haunted her, unrelenting loneliness that was compounded by a thousand regrets, even more self-castigations and uncertainties, and by the resurrection of more memories. The memories were beautiful and devastating, but the loneliness was worse, and it got so she dreaded going to bed at night.
Even though her leg was stiff, stretching and her long walks were helping immensely, as well as the yoga. She found it helped her wayward mind to quiet for a while. Her gunshot wound to the abdomen was just a twinge or two of a memory. She was going to have a dime-sized scar on her side and one on her upper thigh, but full range of motion as the outcome was well worth it.
She had been using a cane, but today after she got dressed and reached for it, she hesitated. She was going to get through the day without it.
She took the stairs with gusto and was happy that her upper thigh barely hurt. When she entered the kitchen, she glanced at the clock on the back of the stove, then turned to the cupboard to get a mug, needing her first morning jolt of caffeine. Through the window above the sink, she caught a glimpse of her gran on her hands and knees in her herb garden. That woman was still an early riser.
As soon as she got breakfast out of the way, she would go for another long walk. And as soon as she got back to the house, she would call Neo and invite him over for dinner. With her insides in knots, she poured herself a cup of coffee, unable to stop worrying her decision around and around in her head.
The door opened and her gran came inside. She always marveled at Jennifer Steele’s youthful look. She hadn’t changed much, but everyone had always called her Granny Steele, and that would stick. Chry was her spitting image right down to the premature gray hair.
“Tell me the coffee’s hot and that you would love some blueberry pancakes for breakfast.”
Dragging her mind back from her thoughts regarding Neo, Chry turned to face her gran. She managed a smile. “The coffee’s hot, and who could turn down your delicious pancakes?”
Her gran came over to the cupboard and poured herself a cup, her gray hair a tumble around her shoulders. She had on a pair of dirty overalls over a white T-shirt. Yet, in spite of their mussed look, her gran wore her clothes with a style that gave a hint of sophistication to her wholesome, long-legged naturalness.
Chry studied her gran’s profile finding very few fine lines. The woman was ageless.
Except for Chry’s amber eyes, she and her gran could be sisters.
But they weren’t, of course. This was the woma
n who had saved her from foster care when her mother died from an overdose. Chry barely remembered her mother, but the pictures on the walls of the home gran had made told the story of a bright and talented teenager who had succumbed to the wrong crowd. Married the wrong man and ended up dead at too early an age.
“You still pining over that boy?”
“I’m thinking about him. I wouldn’t call it pining.”
“You looked like you were off in outer space.”
“You aren’t that far off.” There was an undertone of wry amusement in her voice. “Should I start the pancakes?”
Her gran took a long sip of her coffee, set down the mug, and rolled her shoulders. “No, I’ll do it. Get out the fresh blueberries, would you?”
Chry bent down, glad her leg was feeling so good, and pulled out an electric griddle from the bottom cupboard, then slid it onto the counter. “I can do the bacon.”
Her gran smiled. By the time the sizzling of the bacon in the pan had stopped, her gran had the batter made and the griddle preheating. Her gran winked at her with a twinkle in her eyes, exuding an energy level that hardly ever faltered.
“What would you like for lunch? I can make you some soup. I have fresh basil.”
Chry whirled. “No, Granny, please, I beg you. No more chicken soup.” She had to take a breath and calm her breathing.
“I thought you loved my chicken soup?” Gran said with a bemused expression.
“I do, but gallons of it can get a bit old.”
She chuckled. “I take your point. I just wanted you well.” Her voice cracked a bit.
Chry was across the kitchen, wrapping her arms around her gran.
“I know. You were scared. But I’m fine. Your gallons of chicken soup worked wonders.”
He gran huffed a watery laugh and sniffed. “I was worried to my bones. I couldn’t get any answers.”
Chry still couldn’t tell her gran that she was CIA. She thought she worked for the state department, which was partially true, and that she had been kidnapped by rebels and held for ransom and 2-Stroke had saved her. She did tell her that he’d been shot.