Find A Way Or Make One

by Kelley, E. C.

  Find a Way or Make One

  By

  E. C. Kelley

  © 2014 E. Christanna Kelley

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book may not be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of E. Christanna Kelley, except for the use of brief quotations in articles and or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, locations, businesses and plot are all products of the author’s imagination and meant to be used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or actual events throughout the story are purely coincidental. The author acknowledges trademark owners and trademarked status of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication and use of these trademarks is not authorized, sponsored, or associated by or with the trademark owners.

  The following story contains violence, sexual situations, and strong language. It is intended for a mature audience.

  Cover Photo by Shutterstock

  Dedication

  There have been countless people in my life who have helped me become who I am today. I want to mention four of them.

  First, my seventh grade English teacher, Pam Honeycutt. Thank you for everything you taught me. Misanthropic is still one of my favorite words.

  My godmother, Sharon Holbrook. I will never be able to stand in a crowd without thinking of you and smiling. I will always love and miss you.

  My god-sister, Shonna Kiser. You were who I wanted to be as a little girl, and you will always be the best big sister a girl could ask for.

  Finally, my husband, Jonah. I know how lucky I am; many people search their whole life and never find either their Wyatt or their Toby. I found them both in the same man. Thank you so very much for being in my life.

  Table of Contents

  4 Years Ago

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  One Year Later

  Playlist

  4 years ago

  “Either find a way or make one”

  ~Hannibal~

  Kye

  As the sun set and its warm rays were replaced by the chilly mist of twilight, I brushed the tears off my cheeks and pushed myself up off the cold hard ground. Toby was my best friend and had helped me through the darkness…twice. He gave me a chance to have the life, and more importantly the family, that I thought I would never have. Well, except for those six months in Quantico. During those brief six months a couple of years ago when I had thought…NO! I will not go there, I made my peace with the past and I knew that it had all just been a lie. At least for him it had been a lie. I stared blindly at the mound of dirt covering Toby’s coffin. I closed my eyes, listening to the wind rustle the leaves, wishing I could wake up to find this had all been a sick, twisted dream. As the air whipping around me suddenly changed and the birds became instantly quiet. I tensed and became instantly alert.

  “I hate to bother you, but I was told to bring you this. TB told me that you would…”

  I spun around with my arms braced for a fight. Toby’s friends and squad members always called Toby TB, but that voice didn’t belong to one of them. As my heart rate returned to normal, I quickly assessed the tall young man, no boy really, that stood in front of me.

  At just three and a half inches above five feet, I am by no means tall. But even with my lack of stature, I could tell that the boy’s perceived height was not a trick of comparing his height to mine. I would guess that he was five or six inches above six feet. While the boy was not overly muscular in that “I spend all my time in the gym” kind of way, his strength was readily apparent. His ink black hair and olive skin tone verified my instant belief that his accent was Hispanic.

  Based on his height and build alone, it would be easy to mistake the boy as a young man of nineteen or twenty. When I looked closer at the boy I soon saw the truth. He had smooth yet unshaven face and lingering boyish roundness of his cheeks, making the fact that he had not completely passed through puberty undeniable. I guessed he was close to fifteen, sixteen tops.

  The frustrated grunt that passed through the boy’s lips startled me out of the mental evaluation of the boy and caused me to look into the boy’s ebony eyes. The tension in his stance was almost completely replicated in the eyes that narrowed as they took me in. His lips flattened into a thin line and I could tell that he was beyond frustrated. “Look lady, TB told me you would take care of the kid. He even gave me this letter.”

  At the mention of a child, my gaze instantly roamed over the boy and our surroundings. When I saw the object sitting at the boy’s feet, my eyes flew back up to the boy’s face in surprise. Beside his feet, was a baby carrier that had most certainly seen better days, maybe even better decades? Whatever or whoever was in the carrier was covered by an old ratty blue towel. I lowered my arms and tried to find that oh so peaceful, serene, and fake smile that I would have to use from now on with the guys. They would be worried about me and Seamus. I would have to find some way for them to believe that I was ok.

  Taking a deep breath I relaxed my stance and lowered my arms. As he took in my smile, I cocked my eyebrow and simply said, “Yes?”

  “Here, read the letter and decide if you can take care of the kid,” he said as he jerked the rumpled letter out of his back pocket and thrust it in my face, barely missing my nose.

  I looked down at the envelope. The heavy, dark slashes once again brought a tear to my eye. My name was on the envelope in Toby’s handwriting. Taking a deep breath, I slowly opened the envelope and pulled out the letter to begin reading.

  Kye,

  Hey babe, if you are reading this, I guess the mission didn’t end well. There are so many things that I am sorry for, I don’t know where to start. I am sorry I won’t get to watch my boy grow up, and be the man that I know you will help him become. I am sorry that we never really got the chance to see where this, whatever it is between us, would go. I know you were leery of us stepping out of the friend zone, but I got to say, I really think we could have made it. Not only are you my best friend, but you are what I measure all women by, and all that I have seen so far are sadly lacking. Even Seamus’ mother fell short. I liked her and tried to love her, but she just never seemed to light any spark in my soul. I am sorry that she died, but I know that we wouldn’t have been together now if she had survived Seamus’ birth.

  Even though the circumstances we were under were completely shitty, it seems that from the first day I met you I knew how important you were going to be to me. Why else would I have chucked the mission like I did to get you out of there? I know you, and I know that you are thinking to yourself that I did it just because I am a good guy. Well baby, I hate to tell you this, but I ain’t that good. From that first moment that I saw you I knew that you were going to be somethin
g special in my life and I just knew I couldn’t let anything else happen to you.

  We may have always danced around what was between us up until a few months ago, but I always knew deep down that if I ever got lucky enough to have you give me a chance, I would never take it or you for granted. I would never and could never hurt you like you have been hurt in the past. If I had made it back, we would have been for keeps.

  But while I do have my regrets, there are plenty of things that I am not and cannot be sorry for. Even if we never got to see what could be between us, I have always felt honored to have you as a friend. You have always been there for me, and you have and always will be there for OUR son. I know that you will continue to be the best mother for Seamus, and I thank God every day that he has you in his life.

  I know that you have always wanted a big family, and I had hoped and planned on being the one to give you one. Well, this may not be the way I had planned to do it, but never let it be said that Tobias O’Quinn Murphy leaves any project unfinished. The baby needs a strong, loving mother and the boy needs the same, even if he doesn’t know it yet. I want you to always remember: Either find a way or make one. Well, I FOUND a way to help you MAKE a family, even if I am not there to share it with you.

  Damn that sucks. You know, me, not being there to be part of it, now THAT is my biggest regret.

  Remember me and raise our boys to be strong!

  All my love,

  Toby

  The tears streamed down my face as a sad smile touched my lips. Taking a deep breath, I looked up to the sky. “Thank you Toby,” I said as slowly folded the letter. As the sun finished sinking below the horizon, I turned to go to the family that Toby had given me.

  1

  Kye’s Rules to Live By

  When you love, love with all your heart.

  When it’s over it’s over. No take backs and NO SECOND CHANCES!!!

  Kye

  “Alright boys, same stakes as always?” I asked the four men standing around the boxing/MMA ring in the back of the warehouse turned gym. They were each like brothers to me. As I approached the ring, I hastily pulled the dark brown hair that just reached my shoulders into a sloppy ponytail. As I stretched, my shiny black boxing shorts glistened in the glaring florescent light, and my white tank/sports bra seemed to glow.

  Groaning, Cale a 31 year old man of Scotch-Irish and Cherokee descent, pushed off the wall he had been leaning on to say, “Why should we even step in the ring with you when all it is going to mean is that one of us goes to the club tonight dressed like some trainee hooker?”

  Ken looked at me a moment and shook his head while he laughed at me. “Kye, just because they asked you to come out of retirement to help us on this assignment because you are the goddess of foreign languages, and can kick most men’s asses within ten seconds, doesn’t mean we are going to go back to letting you kick our asses and making us look like complete tools.”

  There might be a little more to it; like I was one of the few people who could identify Zandoville’s, a Peruvian drug lord, with plans to control the cocaine market in Europe, operational maneuvers. Zandoville’s cartel always finds someone, either in business or in politics, that they can use to make the shipping of their product smooth and easy. Typically it is a man, but on a few occasions it has been a woman, that can be easily swayed. These individuals are always killed before we can talk to them, but there are certain characteristics that they all have that are easily recognizable, and this time both the U.S. and the E.U. want to find out who the target before he or she is turned and ultimately killed.

  My friends knew I had a history with Zandoville, and I know they wouldn’t like me taking on an assignment dealing with him, even if it is only gathering operational recon. That is why they don’t know about the gathering recon part of this assignment; only the training.

  I am a little apprehensive myself. However, knowing Zandoville and how he operates like I do, I know that he won’t be in Europe to lay the initial ground work; he has his minions do that. He doesn’t show until his operation has control over the business or government that they are trying to use. In fact, I am so sure that he is not here right now that I have brought my sons with me on this trip, and using this “vacation” as a chance for them to become closer to my mother, stepfather, and brothers.

  I let out a short laugh. I had missed working with these guys since I had retired from the DEA four years ago, a few months before I turned twenty-four. After shaking my head, I put on my most pitiful, pouty face and whined, “Come on, today could always be somebody’s lucky day! And you guys know that Rashid is bringing Seamus and Cian back Sunday. This will be the last time I get to go out. Please, please, PLEASE?”

  Cale stood up and started shaking his finger at me, “Little girl, don’t you even try to act like you aren’t chomping at the bit to see your boys again. We all know the truth. I bet you have called them every night. That is if they don’t get the call in to you first.”

  What can I say? I love all my boys and I wouldn’t change having them in my life for a minute, but sometimes I miss the people I used to work with and the antics we used to pull. Sometimes I feel like I am forty-eight or fifty-eight, not soon to be twenty-eight.

  Crow, a tall lanky guy with bright red hair laughed and spoke up, “Alright, it has been a while since she handed me my ass, I guess I will take one for the team!”

  “Don’t try to feed us that bullshit, we all know you are only offering yourself up like that because you hope she will take pity on you and maybe one day give you Shana’s number!” laughed Sunny, a dark skinned black man.

  Crow batted his eyes innocently; well, as innocently as he could I guess. “Was I that obvious?” After a quick wink, Crow put his arm around my shoulders, pulled me into his side, then he mockingly shook his head, “The only reason I am after Shana is because Kye here has stuck me in the perpetual friend zone with no possibility of parole,” Crow whined.

  They were all really just too much! These guys had become really good friends, and while I didn’t want anything romantic, I knew that I would always need them as friends. Fighting side by side has a way to build strong bonds real quick. “As soon as you grow up and get over the all-consuming need to nail each and every person with a vagina you see, I will give you her number. And be glad I want you as a friend because you know my rules. And I don’t offer exceptions for anyone!” I had bent my rule one time, and one time was enough.

  Stepping into the ring, Crow starts to mimic me with a voice that is way, way, way too girly. “Yeah, yeah ‘when it’s over it’s over. No take backs and NO SECOND CHANCES. Did you ever think that I could make it worth it?”

  Shit! Where did this come from? I quickly rush to smooth things over with him. “Nah, experience has taught me that a run in the sack, no matter how long or wondrous it may be doesn’t exactly measure up to having a good friend. Besides, I would miss your cute mug in a mini skirt too much!” After a quick knock of wrapped knuckles, we began to dance.

  After ten minutes, Crow was beginning to show signs of wear. After a quick drop kick, I wasted no time in putting Crow into a Rear Naked Choke, with my legs firmly around his so he couldn’t kick out. Crow knew that he could never get out of this hold and was about to tap, when a deep voice dripping with Texas drawl rang out from the other side of the makeshift training center. “Hey, I heard that there were some drunk, washed up old toy soldiers trying to pass themselves off as SEALS in here?” I knew that voice, as memories assaulted me my hold on Crow went lack. Crow quickly swung out of my hold and pulled my arm behind me and planted my face in the mat. Even though I knew I was going to lose and have to pay my dues tonight, my memories wouldn’t let me go from the strangle hold that those memories had on me; body, heart, and soul.

  I had just left my study group and was headed to the coffee shop down the street when I heard a loud clap of thunder. Suddenly, the skies opened, the rain began. Looking down at my white V neck tee
I was wearing. As I could start to make out the outline of my bra, I couldn’t suppress the groan that escaped my lips. “Shitake mushrooms! Why does stuff like this always have to happen to me?” I shook my head and started to run, not jog, to the Starbucks at the end of the street.

  After I got there, I shook the rain from my hair and reached for the door. Just as I touched the door handle a large tan hand engulfed mine as a deep voice, full of Texas twang and southern charm said, “Allow me miss, can’t have a pretty little thing like you to stay out in the cold on a wet day like today can we? You might get the sniffles, and although I bet you’d make a mighty cute Rudolph, I can’t let you get sick, cause then you wouldn’t be able to go out with me Friday night.”

  And so began the most intense and glorious six months of my life. When I raised my eyes to see the man the voice belonged to, I was hooked, simple as that. Tall, dark, and Texan had been the simplest way to describe Wyatt Masters. Wyatt stood at about 6’3, was well muscled without being overly stocky, so tall was a given. With jet black hair that belied a Native American heritage and piercing silver eyes, dark was also a no brainer. Later, I learned that he grew up on a ranch located between Dallas and Galveston, making Texan a title he wore proudly.

  From the beginning, the simple word more instantly popped into my mind every single time I thought about Wyatt. He became more beautiful every time I looked at him or drowned in the twin silver pools of his eyes. He was more intelligent than most, proven by the fact that he had graduated high school at seventeen and finished college at the University of Texas with a BS in Electrical engineering by the age of twenty. The fact that he had then pursued a career as a Navy SEAL had proven that he was more driven than most.

  Unfortunately, after the night that the blinders had been yanked from my eyes, more still remained the adjective I used to describe him. More devious, more dishonest, more callous, and more bastardly suddenly all fit as well. As hard as I tried, I have never forgotten his cruel sneer as he had delivered the dismissal he gave me. “Look Babe, did you really think that we were going to last? I mean, you’re a good lay, but you wouldn’t really fit in with my family and friends back home.” He then turned his full attention to the blonde that was resting in his arm. It was only after that night that I looked up his family and realized that they were one of the richest families in Texas and considered the upper echelon of Texas society.