Butterfly Ops

by Jen Doyle

  Unfortunately, rather than give him a little room, all that statement did was give her an opening. She took a step towards him; he had no choice but to look at her again as he took a step back.

  “Hard to concentrate on what?” she asked.

  On figuring out the best way to cut his losses when all he really wanted to do was grab her, lift her up against this storefront window, and—

  “So you are breaking up with me,” she said, sounding more, well, irritated about it than upset. Then her eyes narrowed. He knew he was in trouble before his mind even registered that she’d taken another step closer, put one hand against his chest, the other at the back of his neck. She wasted no time on explanation, just kissed him.

  Holy…

  He took another step back, coming smack up against the building. He reached out to steady himself, pulled her up against him in the process.

  Hell. He should not be thinking about how perfectly she fit in his arms—how warm she felt, how sweet she tasted. And yet he couldn’t help but close his eyes and take it all in. Once he told her he couldn’t answer her question about Abby, he figured there wouldn’t be many more moments like this.

  Him breaking up with her, though? No. That wasn’t what he wanted at all.

  “Well, aren’t you?” she said, pulling back a little but not slipping out of his arms. “Or, at least, trying to?”

  “No… I just…” He ran his hand through his hair.

  She looked up at him. “You ‘just’ what?”

  Just figured that if she’d essentially said she needed to know only one thing—if he loved Abby more than he loved her—and if that was the one thing on earth he could never tell her, then it brought them to the kind of standstill that it was hard to get past.

  He edged out and away from her. This was hard enough to navigate without her being in his arms.

  “So then you do love me,” she said, watching him with that narrow-eyed look again.

  “I, uh…” Shit. Slippery slope, Ian; slippery slope. This was that whole part where they started treading on dangerous territory, the whole reason he needed to disengage himself entirely. Turning away from her, he finally answered, “Yes.” And then, in a kind of mumbled way, he dug himself a bigger hole by saying, “I always did.”

  She let that sit there for a minute before quietly saying, “But not enough to marry me.”

  Damn it. “Lyndsey, I—”

  “No,” she snapped, fire back in her eyes as she came towards him again. “You don’t get to do that again. You don’t get to be cute and conflicted and feeling sorry for me. Just tell me—” She cut herself off abruptly when a catch appeared in her voice. As he took a step forward she held her hands up in a don’t-even-try-it gesture.

  “What happened that night?” she asked, defiant and yet hesitant at the same time.

  What? he thought, almost doing a double-take. That wasn’t the question he expected her to ask.

  ‘That’ night?

  He supposed he could prolong things by asking her to clarify which night she meant, but he knew as well as she did that only one night in their entire history mattered so much. And since it had happened before Abby even came into the picture he felt on much surer ground, to the extent of going-on-the-offensive. “The night you turned your back on me? When I came to find you at Zachary’s?”

  As opposed to the night one year later when he’d actually found her with Zachary.

  He had no interest in bringing that up, however.

  Okay. Now she was just flat-out angry. “Yes,” she spat out. Not backing down in the least, she took a step towards him. “The night you walked out on me.”

  “Walked out on you?” Seriously? He took a step closer, too. He had no problem being up in her face for this part of the conversation. “I was deployed. It wasn’t exactly a choice. And I asked you to come with me.” Which, by the way, wasn’t done at all. That’s how desperate he had been at the time. “I’m pretty sure your response went along the lines of ‘get the fuck out of my life,’ give or take.”

  From the sudden pulling back in her stance, it was pretty clear she remembered it just as clearly. Yet she seemed surprised that he might have a little anger there, too.

  “That wasn’t what I said,” she mumbled.

  He glared at her. It was what she’d meant; there hadn’t really been any question of interpretation on that one.

  “I tried to get you to talk to me for three weeks,” he snapped, even though he’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t go there. “Three weeks. What the hell else was I supposed to do?”

  Whatever retreat there might have been on her part disappeared. She was back at him again, right up in front of him. “You were supposed to love me for who I was. You were supposed to not be ashamed of me.”

  His mouth dropped open. He was practically speechless. All he could get out was, “You got that idea how?”

  For the first time, she seemed unsure of herself. She took a step back. “The Halloween party; before you left. When I showed up at your room.” Although she wasn’t coming at him with quite as much conviction now, her eyes were still flashing with anger. “I just wanted…” She shifted her gaze to the ground. “I just wanted to go to a party with my boyfriend. Like a normal girl. But you pulled me into your room so fast it was like you could barely even stand to be seen with me.”

  Hell, yes, he’d pulled her inside right away. “Normal?” he asked, a sharp laugh escaping. “Try fantasy-come-to-life-for-every-straight-guy-in-a-fifty-mile-radius.” Christ. Knee-high red boots and a skirt that barely skimmed the top of her thighs? He’d had sleepless nights for weeks thanks to that outfit. “My bosses had pretty much just declared war on my girlfriend,” he said, “so, yeah—seeing you standing there like a fanboy’s wet dream…?”

  Ashamed?

  That hadn’t even been in the ballpark of what he’d been thinking about at that moment. Hell, he’d been living in a house with forty highly trained killers and had just found out he couldn’t trust a single one of them. Beyond that—and the fact that the costume she was wearing would grab their attention faster than a flashing, blaring beacon—he couldn’t have cared less what they thought about Lyndsey or how he felt about her.

  He took a few steps away from her. “I had no idea which of the guys I lived with knew Command had declared you were expendable,” he said, “and which ones had the actual okay to kill you. I couldn’t…” Turning back to her, he knew he sounded emotional. He couldn’t help it. “All I could think of was to get you out of their line of sight. Just get you away from them.”

  She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “It wasn’t like they declared war that day.”

  “Yeah, well…” Ian put his hands in his pockets. “I have no idea when they decided that’s how things were going to go. All I know is that was the day I found out about it.”

  Her head jerked up. He could practically see the blood drain from her face; a look of horror came into her eyes. “That’s what…” Her hands flew to her mouth. She took a few steps backward; came up against a lamppost. “I…” Her hand going behind her to steady herself against the lamppost, she slowly sank down to the curb.

  He was completely thrown by her reaction. “Lyndsey?” His instinct was to go to her. But when he took a step towards her, she held up her hand in a very clear stay-away-from-me gesture.

  After a few seconds, she said, “Tell me why.” Her voice had an odd tinniness to it; she sounded like she was very far away.

  Ian had no idea what she was asking about. Confused, Ian asked, “Why they declared—?”

  “No,” she said, cutting him off. “You and Abby,” she answered, throwing him once again. “Getting married.”

  They were back to Abby again?

  At least she didn’t seem to be pushing the Abby vs. Lyndsey question; she just wanted to know about why they’d gotten married. An explanation wasn’t a betrayal, right? He could at least give her that.

  And yet he still found himse
lf stalling, not quite ready to go into it. He clasped his hands behind his head and walked a few more steps away. Maybe if he just clarified the question… “Why I said yes?” He wasn’t really interested in sharing the details of the proposal; it wasn’t exactly one of his proudest moments.

  Except it seemed he might not need to come up with anything right away as Lyndsey seemed even more affected by that answer. “Why you…?” She jumped to her feet and, now agitated, she was the one walking the other way. Then she turned to him, arms wrapped around herself in a tight clasp. “Why who said yes? You weren’t the one who asked?”

  Uh… “No. Does that matter?”

  “Does that matter?” Her arms dropped to her sides. She seemed to have recovered from being upset and was now just exasperated. Maybe even angry again. “Yes, it matters.” Then her gaze shifted a little. “It wasn’t your idea?”

  “No.” He almost laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of that statement. “I wasn’t exactly thinking marriage was my next step back then.”

  Lyndsey closed her eyes. “Then… So you didn’t…” She stopped again, choking up, but now looking straight at him. “Yes,” she whispered. “Why did you say yes?”

  15

  Right. Why had he said yes to a marriage proposal when he couldn’t even imagine having a future, much less sharing it with someone else?

  Now it was Ian’s turn to fight off emotion. He might not have loved Abby back then; not in the way he’d loved Lyndsey, at least. But that didn’t mean there was nothing there. “She made me smile,” he said, remembering how monumental something as simple as that in itself had been. Back in those days, anything even remotely signaling happiness seemed impossible; he’d only been barely managing to get out of bed every morning. Hell, he’d still been at the stage of practically flipping a coin about whether he should just go all the way with one of the vampires and get himself turned so someone on his squad could stake him and be done with it.

  “She made me want to. It seemed too soon after you. Like it couldn’t possibly be real—not again. I just…” He looked up to see Lyndsey watching him. “I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.”

  For a few long seconds, Lyndsey just stood there staring at him, looking somewhat stunned. Then she squeezed her eyes shut. It took her a minute before she opened them and quietly said, “So if I had been the one to ask, would you have said yes to me too?”

  Even after spending nearly the entire day thinking about what she’d said on the tarmac and what it meant, he still couldn’t grasp it. It just didn’t seem like enough of an actual possibility for him to truly contemplate. But looking into her eyes…

  Well, it wasn’t like it was a tough call. If she’d actually come out and said any of this back then? If she’d actually let him talk to her?

  “Without hesitation,” he said, unexpectedly gruffly. He would have married her in a second. If she hadn’t handed him his hat, he might even have asked her himself.

  Lyndsey stared at him. Hard. Then she looked away suddenly, emitting a sound that sounded half like a hiccup and half like a, well, sob.

  “Lyn,” he said, once again trying to go to her and once again being held off.

  Before he could think of what else he could say, she quietly asked, “What’s the thing you’re not telling me?”

  “The, um…” Damn it, he thought. He’d gotten a little too eager. Forgot there was still a whole other landmine they had to come back to. “Uh… What thing?”

  Her arms went back around her sides. She hugged herself tightly as tears streamed down her face. The fact that she didn’t even try to stop them bothered him almost as much as the tears themselves. “The thing about why you don’t want to be with me.”

  “What?” His jaw dropped open. He had no idea where she’d come up with something like that. She couldn’t possibly be serious. “I never said—”

  “I can tell, you know,” she said, cutting him off, “that it’s not the same. That you don’t feel the way you used to.” Looking down at the ground, she wiped her tears away. “And I get it. I’m not her; I’m not Abby. And everyone in the world knows how much you loved Abby.” She gestured back at the restaurant, which Ian figured was her way of saying that everyone meant the guys on the team. “So, fine,” she continued, even though it obviously wasn’t. “Whatever. You don’t need to love me like that. I screwed up; I know I don’t get to ask that from you again. I just…”

  She snapped her mouth shut and closed her eyes. When she spoke again, it was almost too soft for Ian to hear. “I just don’t understand why you don’t even want to try.”

  Ian was stunned; there was no other way to describe it. He had no idea that’s how she would read him, no idea that was the vibe he was giving off. “I don’t…” he started to say, about to try and put her off. It wouldn’t have been that hard; it was clear she was expecting it. And it would have been the safest way out.

  But that was what it came down to, wasn’t it? That he was trying to play it safe—that he’d been trying to play it safe all day. All week. Because he was so Goddamned scared he’d been right way back when, that she hadn’t ever loved him. That that’s how this would all play out again.

  Except everything she’d said today proved how wrong he’d been.

  Before he could even begin to think about how to articulate any of that, though, she said, “I’m sorry. So incredibly sorry. I…” She was standing a good ten feet away from him, her head down. “You were the only man I’d ever met—the only person other than Tessa or Rob—who loved me even after you knew what I was. Every day I fell a little more in love with you—and every day I waited for you to break my heart.”

  Her eyes glistened as she looked up at him. She’d obviously mistaken his silence as something other than stunned disbelief. He wanted to stop her—to tell her he didn’t need her to lay herself out on the line like this. And yet he was dumbfounded. Physically incapable of speech.

  “I thought you set me up,” she was saying. “The night you left Sausalito. I thought it was your guilt talking. That you knew what the Study was about all along, you just hadn’t realized they were actually planning to…” Her voice caught and tripped her up for a few seconds. “That they wanted to kill me.”

  “I didn’t—” he started to say, but she just spoke over him.

  “I know. I figured that part out after you left; I never could have trusted Matt otherwise.” She smiled sadly. “But I couldn’t figure out you. For sixteen years, I couldn’t figure you out. Because even though I’d spent that whole year we were together expecting you to let me down, I’d actually started to believe you loved me. And that we might…”

  That we might what? he wanted to yell when her voice trailed off. But she shifted gears on him again.

  She looked back down at the ground. “I shouldn’t have turned my back on you that night; I should have let you explain. And I know you have absolutely no reason to trust me when I say this. But…” She looked back up at him, eyes clear. “I promise you, I won’t let us go there again.”

  Ian leaned back against the brick wall, watching her watch him.

  They were already well aware they’d each had the wrong idea about what had happened back then—they’d realized as much practically as soon as they’d started talking to each other that afternoon on his roof deck. But this was a whole other level of misunderstanding; one that had clearly had earth-shattering repercussions throughout each of their lives.

  Sixteen years.

  Sixteen years of thinking she hadn’t loved him.

  Sixteen years of her thinking the same about him.

  And now she thought he didn’t want her. She couldn’t have been further from the truth if she’d tried.

  He wanted to go to her; wanted to pull her to him and kiss her until the sun came up. But it was his turn; this couldn’t just be her. She’d already gone farther than he could ever have asked.

  He stuck his hands in his pockets and took a deep breath. “You sc
are the hell out of me,” he said. Almost whispered it, in fact. It wasn’t the kind of thing he was comfortable admitting. It wasn’t something he’d ever said to anyone—ever felt about anyone—before. “I don’t want to want you as much as I do. I’ve spent almost half my life trying to get past that and it still hasn’t gone away.”

  “I…” Lyndsey’s eyes filled up all over again. “What?”

  Right. Because she had no idea what she’d done to him the night she turned her back. She saw it as the night he left her; he saw it as the night his whole world was stolen away.

  Still looking like she hadn’t quite heard him right, Lyndsey mumbled, “But… Abby. You and… Abby.”

  Now it was Ian’s turn to look away. The ironic thing was, in the question of Lyndsey vs. Abby, Lyndsey clearly thought she’d come out on the short end of that stick.

  And she should have.

  His answer should be Abby. It should unequivocally, 100% be the woman he’d married, the woman he’d spent the last fifteen years loving and mourning. But for as much as he’d avoided pondering the question, he knew that actually coming to a conclusion wasn’t something he could bring himself to do. He was afraid to allow himself to fully go there.

  What he was sure of, though, was that if he did think it all the way through and if Lyndsey was the one who came out on top…?

  That was his line in the sand. The thing he wasn’t saying—the thing he couldn’t ever say. Even if it meant losing Lyndsey forever.

  He had to look away. “Just…” He had to stop for a minute; get control of his voice. “Just don’t ask me to choose,” he managed to say, knowing that in itself might blow apart whatever it was they’d managed to rebuild. “I can’t… Please don’t make me choose.”

  She looked up at him, and, for the full minute it took for her to respond he had no idea at all whether she would walk away. But then her tears spilled over and her hands went up to her mouth as she laughed a little—that hiccupy, tear-choked laugh—the relief so clear on her face it nearly brought him to his knees.