She lifted her hands to cover his and gave his fingers a squeeze before backing out of his grasp. “You’re very paranoid.”
“Paranoia keeps you alive.”
“And alone.”
The verbal blow struck home and he sucked in a breath. “I’m good with alone.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“And you shouldn’t be here,” he shot back. She was hitting too close to the exposed nerve that ran right through the center of his being. “You should be in some nice suburb back home with a couple redheaded kids and a husband who adores you. Your biggest decision should be what to have for dinner tonight.”
Phoebe laughed softly. “I don’t want that life.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I’m needed here. Someone has to tell these girls’ stories or nobody will ever hear them.”
“And those stories are important enough to risk your life?”
Something flickered behind her eyes—guilt?—and she glanced toward the dining room as the musical notes of girls’ laughter drifted out. “Everyone has sins to atone for. I once believed that if I exposed the horrors of the world, if I saved enough women and girls by making people aware of what’s happening to them, I could make up for mine.” She shook her head, her curls bouncing. When she looked at him again, her smile was a little sad. “So, yes. Staying here and telling their stories is absolutely important enough to risk my life.”
“Jesus. There’s no karmic scale that lets you balance out bad deeds with good.”
She raised a brow. “Isn’t that what you’re trying to do by coming back here?”
Another direct hit. She sure knew where to aim those sharp words. “No.”
“And neither am I. I know I’ll never do enough good to make up for the hurt I’ve caused.”
How come he got the feeling those words were meant specifically for him? Considering they had only known each other a little more than a day, that made no sense. Probably his paranoia talking again. “I can’t picture you hurting many people.”
“You’d be surprised. And, yes, when I started on this path, I did see it as a way to redeem myself. But now? I’ll gladly risk my life to stand up for these girls solely because if I don’t, nobody else will.”
“You can’t save everyone, Phoebe.”
“I can try.”
Amazing. Foolish as all hell and probably a downright suicidal way to think—but, yeah, amazing. In all honesty, he didn’t think he’d ever met anyone quite like Phoebe Leighton. He wanted to touch her, wanted to feel the softness of her skin under his fingertips. “You can’t save me.”
The expression on her face said she intended to do just that, and there was another uncomfortable sensation deep in the frozen recesses of his chest that he didn’t want to name or explore. He turned back to the door. “I need to go.”
“You need to eat,” she corrected, grabbed his arm, and pulled with enough force that she caught him completely off guard. He hadn’t been braced for it and stumbled after her.
The buzz of conversation and clink of dishware got louder. Inside the dining room, under Zina’s gentle direction, several of the older girls twittered around, serving up plates of naan, a flatbread, and bowls of soup to the team. The men sat around the table, visibly uncomfortable with the service but trying to be polite.
Every eye in the room swung his way when Phoebe dragged him through the door, and the scent of the food hit him full force. A tremble worked through him, tap-dancing on something dark and twisted at his core. He wanted to punch someone. He didn’t know why and fuck if he was going to analyze the source of the intense rage, but he wanted to pummel something until his knuckles bled and swelled and the buzzing inside his skull stopped.
Which meant he should go. He wasn’t fit for public consumption right now.
He broke from Phoebe’s grasp and backed away from the table. In his peripheral vision, he saw Ian’s lip curl in disgust.
“Too good to eat with us, Hero? Or are you having another pansy-ass panic attack?”
That. Was. Fucking. It.
Before he realized he’d moved, he had his hands around Ian’s throat. “Don’t fucking call me Hero.”
Girls screamed. Men shouted. Hands dragged at his arms, his shoulders, but he held on and watched the face in front of him morph into one he recognized and yet didn’t quite remember. One of his torturers come back to life. The one he’d nicknamed Devil. The one who had gotten a kick out of alternately starving him, then forcing him to eat until he vomited and making him eat that, too.
Fear clawed up his throat and he tightened his grip. He wasn’t going to be force-fed by this bastard. Not again. Never again.
Devil’s features blurred and changed to Ian’s, then back to Devil’s, and Ian’s again until he could no longer tell the difference between past and present. Ian. His torturer. They were one and the same and he had to make the pain stop.
Just. Make. It. Stop.
…
Chairs scattered as the men jumped up to contain the fight. Soup splattered across the floor, naan was smashed under several pairs of boots. The table scraped across the floor, shoved against the kitchen door by all the jostling bodies. Trapped in the kitchen, Zina pounded on the door and shouted. Several girls huddled in the corner out of fear.
Phoebe crossed to them first, shushing and consoling them as best she could.
Ian’s face was turning bright red. Jesse and Quinn tried to pull Seth back while Jean-Luc and Marcus worked at freeing Ian. Gabe used his bulk to shove his way into the brawl, drew back his fist, and slammed into Seth’s jaw.
“No!” Phoebe dove toward Seth as his legs gave out and he crumpled, but she didn’t make it before he hit the floor. Going down on her knees beside him, she lifted his head and cradled it in her lap. His lip was split and bleeding. He stared up at her with dazed blue eyes—the gaze of a man who had no idea what was happening or why.
Jesse knelt down, but she shoved him away. “Don’t touch him! I think you all have hurt him enough.”
“He’s hurting?” Ian croaked and straightened unsteadily, rubbing at the bright-red marks around his throat. “Lady, he just fucking tried to kill me.”
“And you asked for it, didn’t you?”
His jaw tightened.
“Yeah, I saw you poking at him all day long. All of you do it, in little ways, here and there, but Ian’s the worst. And guess what? You poke at a snake long enough and the snake’s going to bite back. I swear to God, I don’t know how you plan on rescuing anyone when you can’t even pull together for dinner without bickering and bloodshed.”
She felt a tug on her hand and glanced down, surprised to see Seth squeezing her hand. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“They should be apologizing, not you.” She nailed the men with a glare and most of them had the grace to look ashamed. Ian, on the other hand, didn’t appear to have a repentant bone in his body. He growled, shaking soup off his jacket. How anyone on the team managed to trust him enough to put their lives in his volatile hands, she had no idea.
On the other side of the room, Zina finally managed to open the blocked kitchen door with one powerful shove that moved the table several inches. She took one look at the scene before her, ducked under the table, and came up with her eyes spitting anger. “Get. Out.”
Dammit. Phoebe tried to stand to go put out this newest fire, but Seth still had a hold of her hand like he didn’t plan on letting go any time in the next fifty years.
Okay. She’d talk everyone back from the ledge while sitting on the floor. No problem. Just call her Wonder Woman.
“Get out!” Zina shouted when nobody moved, and her hair tumbled from its neat chignon. “I allowed you to stay in my home with my girls against my better judgment. Now you proved I should have listened to my instincts. Get out.”
“Zina.” She tried to get up again—but nope, not happening. Seth stared up at her, transfixed, much the same way he had this morning, as if he wa
nted to memorize every detail of her features.
And she had to focus on the situation. Not on his gorgeous, sad blue eyes.
“Zina,” she tried again. “Stop and think what you’re throwing away. A hundred thousand dollars will do tremendous things for the shelter. For your girls. You only have to put up with them for a few days and this will not happen again, will it, boys?”
She got an emphatic, “No, ma’am,” from everyone but Ian. And Seth, who was still staring at her.
“See? They’ll behave.”
As though to prove her point, Gabe ordered his men to start cleaning up the mess and everyone—including Ian this time—pitched in to right chairs and mop up spilled soup.
Interesting that Ian listened to Gabe and even seemed to respect his commander. Maybe that was why he was on the team.
Zina watched them, still trembling with anger. Then she glared at Phoebe. “Why do you trust them so much?”
Good question. One she didn’t have an answer for.
Seth saved her from trying to come up with one. As if suddenly realizing he still lay with his head in her lap, he bolted to his feet and strode from the room without speaking a word to anyone.
She hesitated, glancing from Zina to the men, and then at the hallway Seth had disappeared down. She wanted to follow him, but would Zina try to kick the guys out again if she left?
“It’s fine.” Zina waved a hand. “Go after him. I know you want to.”
That was all the encouragement she needed. She climbed to her feet, followed the path he’d taken through the classroom wing of the building, and found him standing in the back courtyard, a lone figure silhouetted by silver moonlight. His shoulders moved with a heavy sigh and the hood of his sweatshirt fell as he scrubbed his hands over his head, then knelt down in the dirt. She started toward him.
The man was so freaking lonely. How could the members of his team not see how much he needed someone? A friend. A confidant. Maybe even a shoulder to cry on.
But that shoulder could never be hers, she realized with a sharp stab of guilt, and froze. If he knew what she’d done, he wouldn’t want to see her, not to mention confide in her. He needed a friend who hadn’t already betrayed him.
Phoebe took a step backward, fully intending to leave and maintain what little distance still lay between them, but her heel crunched in the gravel. His shoulders tensed.
Crap. Now he knew she was behind him and she had to say…something. Anything.
Chapter Sixteen
“You shouldn’t be back here.”
Seth tensed at Phoebe’s soft voice, so close behind him he could probably turn around and pull her into his arms, kiss her, and lose himself in the sheer goodness that made up Phoebe Leighton until all of his bad half memories disappeared.
He didn’t.
Instead, he climbed to his feet and put more distance between them before facing her. “I’m not allowed in the courtyard?”
“No. I mean, yes, of course you are. But Afghanistan. You shouldn’t have come back.”
His gut twisted. No doubt she was right. His latest shrink even told him she didn’t recommend exposure therapy for his PTSD treatment. He was too damaged.
And yet…
“I have to be here,” he said. He wished he could better explain the deep-seated need, but there were no words, except for the same ones she’d given him in the foyer.
“Why? For those men in there?” She pointed toward the house. “They don’t respect you. They don’t trust you.”
“Not them,” he said softly.
“The team you lost?” When he couldn’t manage a reply, she sighed. “Oh, Seth. That’s it, isn’t it? You think you’re doing this for the men you lost.”
He flinched. “Yes. For them.”
“Do you think you’re honoring them in some way by being here?” she asked and shook her head in answer to her own question. “You’re not. You’re just pouring salt into your wounds and for what? What are you trying to prove, Seth?”
Her words struck a painful vein of truth that she had no business digging into. “You can’t understand.”
“Maybe not. I didn’t know your men, but if they were good friends, they’d hate to see you tormenting yourself like this.”
She was right. Cordero had been big on forgiving and forgetting, and Bowie had always advocated living in the moment, looking forward, and not dwelling on the past. They’d probably both be kicking his ass all the way back to the States right now.
When he didn’t reply, Phoebe took a step backward like she planned to leave, and a jolt of alarm rattled him to his core. He didn’t want her to go. He didn’t want to be alone.
He reached out and grasped her hand. “Thank you.”
Her brow furrowed. “For what?”
She was staring up at him, the moon bathing her features in soft white light. Or maybe that was her internal light, shining so pure and bright. A beacon for a drowning man like him.
Awed, his hand lifted of its own volition and almost touched her cheek before he caught himself, his fingers so close, he felt the heat radiating off her skin in the cool night.
Her lashes fused and anticipation hummed from her. So many impossible possibilities charged the air between them.
Seth dropped his hand. Maybe he was a fucking coward after all, because right then, he feared touching her more than anything else.
Phoebe sucked in a breath and drew away. “Um, you still haven’t told me what you thanked me for.”
Backing up a step, he tilted his head. Indicated the door to the house. “You stood up for me in there.”
“Of course I did,” she said as if it was a given. “Someone had to.”
“Not many people do.”
“Well. Ian’s a bully and if there’s one thing I can’t tolerate, it’s bullies.” Her expression softened. “But you were in the wrong, too. Answering a bully with violence only feeds the part of him that’s broken. He keeps picking at you because he wants you to snap. Maybe to prove you’re more damaged than he is or maybe even because he wants you to fight back, attack him, hurt him. Either way, you can’t give him what he wants.”
“Sounds like you know a thing or two about bullies.”
“I do.” A small smile tipped the corner of her mouth. “I was the nerdy girl in high school. Glasses, braces, frizzy hair—the whole stereotypical nerd package. Always had my nose in a book, didn’t particularly care about how I looked, participated in things like chess club and debate team.”
Her description put an image in his mind of a younger, awkward Phoebe with all the same spunk and even less tact. A light, foreign sensation overrode all of the poisonous emotions swilling inside him. It almost tickled at the center of his chest. Was it…amusement? It had been so long since he’d last experienced anything close, he had trouble placing it. But yes. Amusement.
He wanted to hang on to the feeling, extend this moment into forever, and searched for something to say to keep the conversation going. “I bet you killed at debate.”
“As a matter of fact.” Her chin lifted with a smug kind of pride he found adorable. “My team took the Massachusetts state debate championship three years running.”
At some point during their conversation—he wasn’t exactly sure when—they’d started walking, strolling around inside the walls of the shelter’s property.
Seth spotted a ragged soccer ball on the ground and bent to scoop it up. He tossed it from hand to hand. “I was a jock in high school. Wasn’t a sport I couldn’t conquer.”
“I know. You wouldn’t have looked twice at me.”
Unfortunately, she was probably right. But gazing at her now with her springy curls rioting around her head and her blue eyes full of amusement at the memory of her high school self, he couldn’t see how he’d not notice her. “I don’t know about that.”
“Oh, please,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I bet you were the rich kid, quarterback, prom king, and had the prom queen slash head cheerlea
der on your arm. You wouldn’t have talked to me unless you needed to buy an English paper off me.”
Seth’s jaw tightened at the reference to his ex-fiancée, but he refused to let the memory of Emma ruin…whatever this was. The first moment of light, easy conversation he’d had in a long time.
He hefted the ball and shot it in her direction. “I’ll have you know, I had an A average in English.”
She caught it easily and lobbed it back. “So you’re the rare breed of smart jock? Aren’t you on the endangered species list?”
“We’re about as endangered as the nerd who can handle a ball.” He tossed it down and kicked it.
“Oh, I know how to handle all kinds of balls.” She stopped it with her foot and grinned. “Let’s just say college changed things for me.”
He froze as a long-forgotten heat fired his blood and filled areas of his anatomy that had no business being filled.
Was she insinuating…?
No. Couldn’t be. He had to be reading her wrong. Her smile was all sweet innocence and, really, why the fuck would she want someone as mentally and physically scarred as he was?
As he stood there debating, the ball rolled past.
Phoebe planted her hands on her hips. “Not a sport you can’t conquer, huh?”
He fumbled for a response. “I was distracted.”
“Oh yeah? By what?”
You, he wanted to say, but couldn’t force the word past his lips. Everything about her was distracting. Entrancing. Gorgeous.
Christ, this woman.
Everybody had handled him with kid gloves since he’d returned to the States. Save for Ian, even the guys on the team treated him differently, walked on eggshells around him, which put him on edge as much as it did them. How many times had he wanted to shout at them to treat him just like a normal teammate? For fuck’s sake, he wasn’t going to break down if someone cracked a morbid joke, but all forms of joking always ceased whenever he entered the room.
But this woman. She didn’t handle him like he’d break. She acknowledged his issues and let him deal, but she treated him like…like a human being. It was such a refreshing change from everyone else in his life these past two years, he could kiss her for it.
Honor Reclaimed Page 11