Taking Liberty: The Next Generation

by Edwards, Riley

  “I didn’t walk away,” I defended.

  “Then why aren’t you at my house fixing my daughter?”

  “Because I was trying to prevent that shit,” I jabbed at my separation papers now back on the table, “from happening to her. As a commissioned officer, she doesn’t get reduction in rank, she doesn’t get restriction, she gets stripped of her commission and a fucking dismissal. I don’t need to tell you how hard she’s worked to earn her place. If Ranger school wasn’t hard enough, SF school put it to her. But she saw herself through. I was not going to let that be taken from her.

  “She doesn’t need even a hint of a blemish on her record, most especially a whisper of a sexual allegation with an NCO. I don’t need to tell you what that would do to her reputation, and as fucked as that is, Levi, you know it’s true. So while you may see it as walking away, I saw it as protecting her. And when shit came down the pike, I made damn sure I took the hit and not her. And lastly, if you think I can fix your daughter, then you don’t know Lieutenant McCoy. Because that woman is so fucking strong, she’ll fix herself. But what I will do is stand beside her and watch.”

  When I was done with my outburst, my woman’s father was staring at me smiling. Again, I didn’t see one fucking thing to smile about. I wanted this over so I could get in my truck and get to Liberty.

  “Heard she walked across that tarmac.”

  He was talking about after her rescue.

  “You heard right. Most beautiful thing I’d ever witnessed. Lieutenant McCoy, injured, bruised, and fucked-up, walking on battered feet with her chin high. She walked into battle and goddamn but she was determined to walk out. Proudest moment of my life walking beside her.”

  “Fuck.” Levi’s strangled curse sounded painful. “I’ve watched it happen twice now. Seen the look in a man’s eyes when realization dawns his daughter’s a woman and she’s found the man that will replace you. I gotta say, Hayes, thought it’d be harder than this. Thought I’d fight this feeling until the bitter end then I’d resent it. But if you’re the man I’m walking my daughter to, then I got nothing but joy and appreciation.”

  “You’ll be walking her to me,” I confirmed.

  “Then you better get your ass to Georgia. And while you’re there, you better find yourself at Triple Canopy. HR will need you to fill out some paperwork.”

  “Don’t need a job, Levi. Haven’t you heard, my future wife’s a Special Forces soldier and a lieutenant in the United States Army. I’ve heard they make a whack on hazardous duty pay.”

  Liberty’s dad made a choking sound to cover his laugh. “Right. Former SEAL turned dependapotamus. Now I’ve seen it all.”

  Former SEAL.

  Christ, that hurt. But knowing I was headed straight to Liberty lessened the agony to a dull, roaring ache.

  28

  “Can I ask you something?” Delaney asked.

  She and my mom bookended me on my parents’ couch while Quinn sat on the floor with the twins and I cuddled Emma on my lap. I’d just apologized profusely to Delaney and she’d graciously accepted. Then she told me about losing Carter’s baby and the toll it had taken on her, and how she’d pulled away and lashed out. She also shared something everyone already knew—that their relationship had been going on for years. She and Carter had thought they were sneaky.

  I gave her a no-shit-sherlock shake of my head and she busted out laughing.

  Now she and Carter were blissfully happy and their daughter Emma was icing on their cake.

  “Sure,” I answered, but I didn’t take my eyes off Emma.

  Her chubby feet were on my thighs, her tiny hands in mine, and she was bouncing herself silly.

  “What’s going on with you and Drake Hayes?”

  “Wh-what?” I stammered and set Emma’s tush on my knees before I dropped her.

  “I heard Carter talking to my dad about him,” she semi-explained.

  “And?”

  My mom giggled next to me and I turned to look at her. “What’s funny?”

  “Oh, nothing.” She smiled.

  “Seriously, why are you smiling?”

  “I’m smiling because my girl’s home on leave and this is the longest stretch of time I’ve spent with her in years.”

  Blake McCoy was a trained liar. She was good at it, the CIA had made sure of it. But right then, my mom was doing it badly.

  “I don’t believe you,” I told her.

  “You callin’ your mama a liar?” she teased.

  “Yes.”

  “I know you’re in love with Drake Hayes.” Her singsong voice hit me like a ton of bricks.

  Impossible.

  I hadn’t told anyone, not even Dr. Barlow.

  “Why would you think something like that?”

  My heartrate picked up and my palms were starting to sweat. Something that happened a lot these days. I fought the need to squirm, knowing my mom wouldn’t miss it. Not only had The Agency trained her to lie, they’d also taught her how to read people. Which, as a teenager, sucked big time. I got away with nothing. If my mom missed it, Dad hadn’t.

  “It’s in the way you talk about him.”

  “I don’t talk about Drake any sort of way. I’ve hardly said two words about him.”

  My mom laughed and looked from me to Delaney. Then her gaze took in Quinn, and finally went to the twins, Hadley and Adalynn.

  “It’s funny how all you girls forget,” my mom said.

  “Forget what, Aunt Blake?” Quinn asked.

  “That we were young once. That there was a time me, Reagan, Emily, and Lily were falling in love. And part of that is when we first met our husbands.”

  “Um, Aunt Blake? Hadley, Addy, Quinn, and I haven’t forgotten. Mom tells us all the time how hot Dad was when they met. It’s gross and I think she drones on and on about how her and Aunt Lily watched them workin’ shirtless in the backyard because she knows it’s like nails on a chalkboard.”

  My mom smiled huge. Delaney wasn’t lying, that story had been told so many times over the years we knew it by heart.

  “Right. No doubt they were and are still all good-looking men, what I’m talking about is how we felt. The butterflies, the anticipation, the need.”

  “Mom!” I snapped and my cousins groaned. “That’s worse than you telling us about our dads’ abs. Just an FYI.”

  “You’re twenty-seven years old, and while your father is still under the self-imposed illusion his daughter has never and will never have sex, I, sweet girl, am not.”

  Hadley barked out a laugh and I cut her a you-are-a-traitor glare that did nothing to make her stop giggling.

  “You think she had sex with Drake?” Laney whispered.

  “I think she’s madly in love with him and doesn’t know what to do with herself because she thinks he’s lost to her.”

  “I’m sitting right here,” I unnecessarily reminded them.

  Though I had to admit, I was happy my mom didn’t answer the sex question and instead trudged on about love.

  “Tell us about him,” Addy said, her pretty green eyes sparkling with fairytales and rainbows.

  Quinn liked to say that the twins were full of drama, but she was wrong. Addy was a dreamer, a homebody, quiet unless her twin and older siblings wouldn’t let her get a word in, then she could be loud.

  Hadley was drama. Which was funny because she had a degree in library science and for as long as I could remember, she was a bookworm who always wanted to be a librarian. Yet there was nothing shy and calm about the girl—she was so far from the stereotype it wasn’t even funny.

  So I wasn’t surprised at the way Addy was staring at me. Hadley and Quinn would ask about sex. Delaney would want to talk about feelings. But Addy would want the romance.

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  Lie.

  There was so much to tell but I couldn’t. It still hurt too bad.

  “Moira, need I remind you that I know what love looks like, but more than that, I know what a broken
heart looks like. Been there, done that. I have the t-shirt, the plaque, and the ribbon. I know the look because for years I saw it every time I caught a glimpse of myself. But what I don’t get is why you haven’t reached out to him since you’ve been home.”

  Moira. She’d pulled out the big guns.

  Using my real name told me that now that the topic had been broached, there would be no putting a lid on it.

  “He saved my life,” I told my mom.

  “I know that.”

  “He carried me to safety, he dressed me, he wouldn’t let me pull into myself, then he carried me the rest of the way to LZ. He stayed by my side when I needed him. He held me when my nightmares gripped me and wouldn’t let me go. But more than that, he trusted me, he treated me like an equal, not like I was broken.”

  “Then what’s the problem, honey?” my mom asked softly. “All of that sounds really good.”

  Emma started fussing in my lap. After a kiss to her baby-soft, black hair, I set her down on the floor wherein she promptly took off crawling in the direction of her Aunt Quinn. Suddenly my throat constricted. I’d never thought about having kids and I knew I was far away from wanting but I couldn’t stop myself from picturing a gaggle of little Drakes running around.

  “He made it clear he didn’t want anything to do with me when we came Stateside,” I confessed.

  “He said that?” Quinn huffed.

  Her disbelief almost made me smile.

  “He didn’t have to say the words for me to know.”

  The room fell quiet and I swallowed back the painful memories of Drake setting me on my feet after we were done. The gentle yet distant look in his eyes. The way he brushed his lips across my forehead. Not a word was spoken as he turned off the water, dried me off, and helped me dress. It wasn’t until we were exiting the building, him in soaking-wet ACU pants, holding his boots, did he finally speak and that was to tell me he’d see me at the TOC for debriefing.

  Cold, detached, reserved.

  He gave nothing away.

  And the debriefing was worse. He called me ma’am and referred to me as the lieutenant. Intellectually, I knew he was showing me respect in front of Wick and the battle captain, but damn if it didn’t hurt.

  And I didn’t even want to think about our painful goodbye at the airfield when he shook my hand and wished me well.

  Gah! I mean, we’d had sex—rough, dirty sex against a wall—and he shook my hand. If that wasn’t a brush-off I didn’t know what was.

  “Is there a possibility you misread the situation?”

  “No, Mom. Trust me. It was loud and clear.”

  “Honey, I think you should—”

  “No, Mom, please trust me.” I scooted over so I could look at her. I really needed her to understand how serious I was about this. Then I picked up her hand and held it in both of mine. “It hurts too bad. I feel like my heart’s been ripped from my chest. From the second I opened my eyes and saw him staring down at me. It wasn’t like some TV romance, it was actually painful like I’d been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. I brushed it off as hero worship since he saved my life, but it was just a lie I was telling myself because I knew who he was. I felt this tether or something that kept drawing me to him. I miss him so much I can’t breathe. I know I love him, and in his own way I know he cares about me, but believe me, that connection was severed and he was the one who cut it.”

  My mom’s eyes were full of unshed tears and she finally got it. Why I wasn’t going to call Drake. I wasn’t in a place where I could handle rejection.

  “You need to tell him how you feel.” I heard the hitch in Delaney’s voice but I didn’t take my eyes off my mom.

  “Laney’s right, Liberty.”

  Three words and my world shifted.

  Chills raced up my spine. My heart pounded in a crazy rhythm that made it hard for me to breathe.

  I told myself he wasn’t really there. It was an impossibility—I must’ve finally snapped and my mind had conjured him up. Those were my thoughts as I slowly turned from my mom’s now shocked expression. When my eyes landed on him, all the oxygen seemed to disappear.

  There he was.

  Drake Hayes.

  In my parents’ living room that was not small by any means, but with him standing there looking like sex on a stick next to my dad, the room suddenly felt like a shoebox. An overcrowded, suffocating, shoebox.

  “What are you doing here?” I wheezed. Then I was on my feet because there was only one thing that I could think of that would make him come down to Georgia. “Are Trey and Luke okay? Did something happen?”

  “Yeah, Liberty, something happened,” he returned, and now my heart was racing for a different reason.

  I hadn’t spoken to Trey in a few days but he’d been discharged and was back in Virginia Beach. Luke had another appointment scheduled to recheck his eyes but that wasn’t for a few days.

  “Tell me,” I demanded and braced for the worst.

  “I realized that I was all the way up in Virginia and you were down here in Georgia,” he told me and I blinked at his bizarre response. “And the more I thought on that, the less I liked it. More like I fuckin’ hated it.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe we can go somewhere and talk?” he asked, and his gaze swept the room, reminding me we had an audience.

  I glanced back at my mom who was smiling at me so wide it was splitting her face. Delaney’s expression was soft and thoughtful though she was smiling at Drake. Quinn, Hadley, and Adalynn were all looking at Drake, too, but they weren’t smiling—they were staring up at him with varying degrees of shock.

  After I was done taking in the women, my eyes locked with my dad’s. He was standing to Drake’s side but set back—watchful, alert. Pleased.

  What in the world is going on?

  “Babe?” Drake called and Adalynn’s dreamy sigh drew my attention to her.

  When she caught me staring, my crazy cousin widened her eyes, then started jerking her head toward Drake. When I kept looking at the weird faces she was making, she added hand gestures, pointing her thumb at Drake and smiling.

  Crazy girl.

  “Yeah. Um. Sure,” I stammered, sounding like a total idiot.

  When I didn’t move, mostly because my legs felt like jelly and I was still finding it hard to breathe and, yes, I was a little scared to find out what Drake wanted to talk about, he obviously lost patience. I knew this when suddenly his jeans-incased legs took him across the room. My mind was stuck on the fact that was the first time I’d seen him in something other than his uniform or cargos. My eyes landed on his feet and I was contemplating his footwear when I felt the glide of his fingers on my neck. That glide stopped under my chin and he forced me to look up at him.

  I’d missed him. Missed everything about him. But as I stared into his beautiful brown eyes, I realized just how much.

  “Baby,” he whispered, and I felt wetness gather in my eyes and I prayed it wouldn’t fall.

  My prayers went unanswered. Drake’s hand moved from my chin. His thumb brushed away the tears, then his hand slid into my hair and he pulled me to him. I did a very unladylike face plant onto his chest. And even though I was still having trouble with my breathing, I still had the good sense to take in Drake’s fresh, crisp scent. I missed that, too. Even in the field, he’d smelled good—strong, manly, virile.

  Drake’s arms wrapped around me and for the first time since I’d been home, I felt like I was home. Safe, like nothing could touch me—not even my nightmares—as long as Drake was close.

  I heard someone clear their throat and I knew it was my dad when he said, “You should go.”

  Tension coiled low in my belly when Drake nodded his agreement. I didn’t want him to go. Not yet.

  “Liberty,” he called softly but I didn’t move. “Baby, come on, we’re gonna go someplace where we can talk.”

  He didn’t wait for my response, which was good, because my throat was clogged, and I was fighting bac
k a full-blown sob-fest in front of my family.

  And without another word, he led me outside. The big, shiny, black pickup that was parked in my parents’ driveway was so Drake, I couldn’t stop my smile.

  “Pure Drake Hayes,” I mumbled.

  “What, baby?”

  “I was just thinking that your truck fits your personality.”

  “You think so?”

  “Well, I couldn’t picture you trying to fold into a Prius.”

  Drake opened the door and helped me inside and waited until I was settled before he looked up at me and smiled.

  “Right.”

  The twitch of his lips drew my attention there and the memory of how those lips felt on my neck sliced through the shock.

  I watched as he rounded the hood then climbed in and buckled up.

  Once he’d backed out and was driving, the panic started.

  He still hadn’t told me why he was in Georgia other than his cryptic remark that I was there. And I was thinking maybe I’d misread the meaning of that and was getting my hopes up only to have them crushed.

  “Why are you here?” I asked when I could no longer contain the question.

  “Give me ten minutes then I’ll answer that.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d last ten more seconds.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To my hotel.”

  A prickle of heat surged between my legs. Alone in a hotel room with Drake—yes, please. But I tamped down my racing thoughts by reminding myself he’d made it clear the night we left Golan Heights that whatever we’d shared was over.

  “How’s Trey making out at home?” I asked for no other reason than to get myself distracted.

  “Fine.” I jerked at Drake’s clipped response.

  “Fine, as in he’s making out okay? Or fine as in you don’t want to tell me something?”