by Susan Stoker
Blade got up and moved closer to Jackson. The boy stiffened, but Blade ignored that. He kneeled on the floor at his feet and looked up at him. “I know I fucked up. I’ve been trying to get ahold of her to beg for her forgiveness ever since.”
“Is your car broken?”
“What?”
“Your Jeep. Is it broken down?”
“No.”
“Then you could’ve come to her. You know where she works. You know where she lives. It’s not like she’s been hiding from you. I know for a fact that even though she blocked your number, she still hoped you’d show up. Every day that’s gone by and you haven’t, the light in her eyes has died a little more. I’m pissed at you, Aspen. You made my sister so happy, then you killed the happiness faster than that.” Jackson snapped his fingers to make his point.
“Things have been…tense…at work,” Blade said, knowing that didn’t make the fact he hadn’t gone looking for Wendy any better. He should’ve.
“Whatever. What could’ve been so harsh on an Army base?”
In that moment, Blade realized that Wendy hadn’t told her brother what he did, who he was. She’d kept his secret even though he’d hurt her in the worst possible way.
“Me and my friends are Delta Force,” he told Jackson evenly. He had no qualms in telling the teenager who and what he was. The boy was going to be his brother-in-law. There was no way he was going to let Wendy get away now that he’d heard her deep dark secrets. Besides, Jackson obviously knew how to keep a secret as well. Had been keeping them his entire life.
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Damn! Are you going to have to go off somewhere right now?”
Blade shook his head. “Luckily, no. It was touch and go for a while, but we were called off this afternoon.”
Jackson stood, and Blade did as well. “Okay. Well, I’m going to go. I just wanted to set the record straight.”
“I’m glad you did.”
Jackson nodded and turned to go.
“I’m sorry about your parents, and I’m sorry about what you went through. But you should know, I’m also proud of you.”
At that, Jackson turned back to face him, one brow arched.
“Wendy needs a champion, and you might be younger than her, and still in high school, but you’re one hell of a champion. And you’re right. I was an asshole. I fucked up. But I’m going to make it right. For both of you.”
Jackson eyed him for so long, Blade was sure he was going to tell him not to bother, then eventually, he said, “I like you, Aspen. But you not only hurt my sister, but me too.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t say that enough. I’ve worried about you all week. About that situation with Lars and his asshole friends. I finally heard back from my commander and it looks like their parents were stationed here at Fort Hood, but most of them have moved. Chuck’s parents are the only ones still working on post. Lars was enrolled at the local community college but dropped out earlier this year. His parents probably think he’s still taking classes. He lives in an apartment near the college with two of those assholes who hang around with him.”
“Losers,” Jackson murmured.
“Exactly. The commander is going to touch base with Chuck’s parents, but because the others don’t have anyone living on the Army post, there’s not much the authorities there can do.”
Jackson nodded. “They haven’t been around much this week. I only saw them once, and they didn’t even approach me. I’m thinking you scared them away.”
Blade wasn’t sure he agreed, but kept his mouth shut about it for now. “You’re going to continue to let me help you with those self-defense classes, aren’t you?”
“Are you going to make things right with my sister?”
“Absolutely.”
“And if she tells you to fuck off?”
Blade chuckled. “I actually expect her to. I was a dick. But I’ll just keep trying. I won’t give up on her. I love her.”
“And if she’s arrested for kidnapping?”
“I have a feeling that’s not going to happen, but we’ll deal with it if it does,” Blade said.
Jackson shook his head. “That’s what she thinks is going to happen. That once I’m eighteen and get my license and generally put my info out there into cyberspace more, someone from California will track her down and she’ll be put into custody.”
“But she has a driver’s license. And I’m assuming she’s not working for cash at the retirement home. Isn’t her info already out there? Does she pay taxes?”
Jackson furrowed his brow. “Yes, but I guess so far, she’s just been lucky. We’ve both been lucky.”
Blade shook his head. “I think it’s more than that. Jackson, she was a minor when that happened. That doesn’t mean she’ll get away scot-free, but I think there were enough extenuating circumstances that if anything, she’ll just get a slap on the wrist. Besides, if someone does find out where she is, I have friends who can help her.”
Jackson looked unsure. “Really? You’re not just saying you think she’ll be off the hook to try to get on my good side?”
“I wouldn’t do that to you, or her,” Blade said.
Nodding, as if he’d come to a decision, Jackson said, “She’s working at the call center tonight, but tomorrow I have a robotics competition. It’s at the school gym. It starts at eleven. She’ll be there.”
“Do you mind if I bring a couple friends?”
“You haven’t introduced her to all of them yet, have you?” Jackson asked with uncanny insight.
Blade chuckled. “Nope. And I might need reinforcements to help tell your sister that I might fuck up sometimes, but I’m not a bad guy.”
“Good luck. You’re going to need it.”
Blade held out his hand. “I appreciate you coming over, Jackson. And looking out for your sister.”
Jackson shook his hand and said, “You don’t have to thank me for that. I’ll always look out for her. We only have each other.”
“You only had each other. Now you have me, my team, and their wives and girlfriends. You guys aren’t alone anymore.”
Jackson looked surprised for a moment, then nodded and dropped his hand. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Make sure to wear your groveling shoes,” Jackson quipped as he opened the front door and grinned at him.
“Will do,” Blade said and watched over the teenager until he reached a four-door Honda Civic. He kept watch until the car disappeared around a corner after leaving the parking lot. Only then did he close the door and lean his head against it.
The story Jackson told him broke his heart. He could just imagine Wendy as a teenager, sneaking out of her foster home so she could be with her brother. And to know they’d been homeless? And that she’d sacrificed so much for her brother? It only made him love her more. And made him more upset with himself for treating her as badly as he had.
All the comments Jackson had made in the past about his sister protecting him and doing what she needed to do made a lot more sense. Blade didn’t know why the authorities hadn’t knocked on her door before now. She was using her social security number to pay taxes, and she’d obviously given it to human resources at her job. And she had a driver’s license. She wasn’t exactly hiding.
But the more he thought about it, the more he realized Wendy thought she was hiding. She was acting as if she was some big bad criminal. No friends, flying under the radar, keeping mum on basic details about her and her brother.
What she didn’t seem to realize was that she hadn’t been caught because it was likely that no one was looking. Thousands of kids are missing around the country. Too many for any specific state to focus on looking for just one without just a good reason. Their entire fight was based on a false assumption on her part—that if someone knew where she was, they’d come and arrest her and take Jackson away.
Blade didn’t know how, but he was going to do
everything he could to fix this for her.
But first, he’d apologize. Then apologize again. He’d keep doing it as long as he needed to until she accepted that he was sincerely sorry for what he’d said and done. There was no other option than for her to forgive him because he couldn’t live without her. Didn’t want to. He loved her. Totally and all-encompassing.
Chapter Fourteen
Wendy wearily climbed into the bleachers at the high school gym. She was exhausted. Her schedule wasn’t any different than it usually was, but working two jobs this week totally kicked her butt.
She knew it was because she didn’t have Aspen to talk to. She’d gotten so used to decompressing every night by talking to him on the phone, that not having that was affecting her more than she was comfortable with.
She missed him.
He’d been a dick to her, but then again, she’d been less than honest with him.
She understood why he was so upset. He’d taken a risk and told her about his job as a Delta Force soldier, and she wouldn’t even tell him how old she was. But she’d been hiding it for so long now, it was second nature. Besides, the last thing she wanted to do was drag him into her mess. If the authorities found out he knew her secrets, they’d punish him too.
She was more sad about the entire situation than anything else. She wanted to go to his condo and apologize, but he’d been so mad. Wendy wasn’t sure he’d even open the door once he found out she was standing on the other side.
She didn’t do conflict well, something Jackson was always telling her she needed to work on. When Aspen started to get mad at her, she’d just frozen up. She’d wanted to tell him that she was protecting her brother, and him, but she couldn’t get the words out. Then he’d turned cold and had left the room.
Settling on the highest bench in the gym, Wendy put her elbows on her legs and rested her chin on her hands, staring down at the setup for the robotics demonstration. Today was more for fun than an actual competition. Four different teams were there, and their robots had a series of about ten tasks to perform. They started out easy and progressively got more and more difficult. Jackson was convinced the robot his team had made would easily be able to do whatever was assigned. They were still working on the robotic arm they’d been constructing, but the competition for that wasn’t for another few months.
Thinking about the prosthetic arm made her sad all over again, because she realized that Aspen’s friend, Fish, was supposed to be in town soon. She couldn’t remember exactly when it was Aspen said he’d be there. But he wouldn’t be coming to the school to speak to the robotics club anymore. Not when she and Aspen weren’t even talking. That sucked. Jackson had been so excited too.
Wendy wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings and was startled when someone sat down in front of her. At first, she was irritated; there were plenty of empty seats—but then she looked at who was sitting there.
It was a man. A very big man.
She jerked in surprise when another man sat next to her.
For a moment, she panicked slightly, but when neither of the men did anything aggressive or otherwise threatened her, she took another look at them.
The one in front of her had turned so he was straddling the bench. He was extremely tall. She figured he was probably about a foot taller than she was. He had short dark hair and his skin was also dark, as if he had some sort of exotic background in his lineage. He gave her a slight chin lift in greeting—and suddenly she realized that he had to be one of Aspen’s friends. He carried himself in the same way. He seemed very alert, and she had no doubt he knew exactly who was sitting where in the large gym.
The man sitting next to her wasn’t as tall, but he exuded the same sort of competence as the other one. When she glanced at him, he had his eyes on her, as if she was the only person in the room. It was a little unnerving, but she’d seen Aspen do the exact same thing. He was also muscular and had brown hair and dark eyes.
Both men were good-looking, but she definitely wasn’t in the market for a man, and therefore didn’t care much what they looked like.
“Um…hi?” she said tentatively.
The man next to her held out his hand. “Hi, Wendy. I’m Ghost. And that’s Coach. We’re friends with Blade.”
“Yeah, I figured,” Wendy said as she shook his hand.
When he didn’t say anything else, she asked, “What are you doing here?”
“We’re here to watch Jackson’s thing,” Coach said.
Wendy’s brows drew down. “But you don’t know him.”
“Sure we do,” Ghost said. “We helped Blade out when he was teaching him how to defend himself and his girlfriend.”
“Oh.” Wendy wasn’t sure what to say to that. She’d heard Jackson talking about Aspen’s friends who had shown up to train with them, but hadn’t paid much attention.
A thought struck her—these guys must be Special Forces soldiers too. Suddenly she felt nervous. She wasn’t sure what to say or do. She didn’t want to blab anything she wasn’t supposed to, but she didn’t want to be rude either.
“Relax, Wendy,” Coach said as he turned and leaned his elbows back on the bench beside her, looking down at the course set up on the gym floor. “We aren’t here to cause any problems.”
She wanted to ask why they were really there, but wasn’t brave enough. Maybe they didn’t know she and Aspen had broken up? Crap.
After an awkward silence, Ghost leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees and said, “Blade fucked up. He knows it, we know it, and you know it. The question is, are you going to continue to make both of you suffer for it, or are you going to talk to him about what happened?”
Wendy flinched. That answered the question of whether they knew they’d had a fight. It was bad enough that she knew she’d overreacted, but it was even worse that Aspen had talked to his friends about what had happened.
“He didn’t tell us anything,” Ghost said, as if he could read her mind. “That’s not the kind of man he is. He admitted that he’d said some shit he didn’t mean and wished he could take back, and you were pissed at him. Rightly so. That’s it. But believe me, when I tell you, he’s devastated about it.”
Wendy looked at him in shock.
Ghost went on. “I’m his friend, but I’m also his team leader. His head hasn’t been in his work this week. He’s lagged behind on our runs, he doesn’t banter back and forth with us like usual, and when we were on standby to head out for a mission, he was distracted and not ‘present’ when we discussed possible scenarios as to what might happen.”
“You were on standby for a mission?” Wendy asked quietly.
“Yeah. Just got the word yesterday that we weren’t going…this time. But then again, we could get a call ten minutes from now that the situation has changed and we’d be wheels up within the hour.”
Wendy thought about that and cringed. She obviously hadn’t really understood what being a Delta Force soldier meant. Of course they could be called up at a moment’s notice. If someone was kidnapped, if there was an uprising, or a terrorist needed to be taken out…she assumed that was the kind of thing Aspen and his friends did.
She’d been naïve, thinking only about the fact he was in the Army, not the specifics of what that meant. Aspen and the men in front of her put their lives on the line every single time they were sent on a mission.
It made her refusal to tell him how old she was seem silly now.
“Here’s the thing,” Coach said quietly. “Blade likes you. A hell of a lot. He wants to apologize. To talk to you. That’s all you need to do. Talk. If you guys can’t work out whatever happened, okay. But as his friend—one who has seen how much he’s suffered this week—I’m asking if you’ll please give him a chance to tell you how sorry he is.”
Wendy swallowed, then said, “He was really upset with me, and I can’t blame him. But I don’t do well with conflict. He got mad and it was as if I literally couldn’t talk. If he starts yelling at me, I’m going t
o react the same way.”
Ghost reached out and put his hand on her knee. It didn’t feel sexual in the least. He was treating her as a friend.
“He’s not going to get mad. He’d like to talk to you right now. Here. If you want, we can sit nearby. Not near enough to hear what you’re talking about, but we’ll be able to read your body language. We can intervene if we think it’s not going well.”
Wendy wasn’t sure she was ready to talk to Aspen, but really, here and now was a good solution. Besides, they both needed to move on. Good or bad. She needed to know if they could salvage things between them or if they might as well call it quits for good. “Okay. Should I call him?”
“No need,” Ghost said and gestured to the door of the gym.
Wendy looked up and saw Aspen standing just inside the door. He was staring at where she was sitting with his friends. His hands were in his pockets, and he looked as unsure as she’d ever seen him.
“Ready?” Coach asked softly.
Wendy looked down at the gym. Jackson’s team wasn’t up yet. They were going to go last. She had time to talk to Aspen before it was his turn. She nodded nervously.
Ghost lifted a hand and gave Aspen some sort of signal and he immediately pushed off from the wall and headed up the bleachers toward them.
Ghost and Coach stood and moved to the side.
Within moments, Aspen was there.
“We’ll be over here,” Ghost said, gesturing to the right.
Wendy took a deep breath and nodded.
Aspen sat next to her, leaving at least two feet of space between them. She appreciated him not crowding her, but hated the distance at the same time. God, she was a mess.
“Hi, Wen,” he said softly.
“Hey.” She had absolutely no idea where to start or what to say.
She needn’t have worried.
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “I was a dick and shouldn’t have pushed you so hard. We’d had the most amazing afternoon ever, then I went and ruined it.”