by Sybil Bartel
“JESUS,” I MUTTERED. “WHO let you in here?” I didn’t want her seeing me lying in a fucking hospital bed.
Tyler, that prick, stuck his head around the corner and winked at me. “I did. You’re welcome.” He glanced at Brooke. “Let me know when you need a ride back.” He disappeared into the hall.
I practically growled at the idea of her getting in a car with him, pretty boy that he was. “What do you want?”
Unperturbed by my shit attitude, she pulled up a chair.
“By all means, make yourself comfortable.” I was being an asshole, but in that moment I didn’t care. The pain meds had worn off last night and I’d refused to take any more. I just wanted to get out of here.
She settled in the chair then glanced at my shoulder and arm. “How are you feeling?”
“Fucking great.” Goddamn it, I didn’t want to play this game. “How are you?”
“Good.” Her hands in her lap, she clenched them tight. It was the only sign of her uneasiness.
“Awesome,” I muttered. “Where’s Maverick?” I couldn’t fucking believe she’d named my kid Maverick.
“Talon is with him.” She almost smiled. “He’s good with kids.”
My jaw ticked and I ground my back teeth. Fucking Talon. The one asshole who was worse than Tyler when it came to flirting with women. “Terrific.”
Brooke read me like a book. “He saved your life.”
“I wasn’t dying.” I just lost a little blood. Nothing I hadn’t been through before.
“That’s not the way Sawyer tells it.”
Jesus fucking Christ. “Your friends with Sawyer now too?”
“He’s… nice. He’s kind to Mav. He and Tyler both are. But your friend Tank isn’t much of a talker. They’ve all been to the house we’re staying in. They’ve all taken a turn keeping an eye on us.”
“How fucking long have I been in this hospital bed?” It was a rhetorical question, but she answered it anyway.
“Three days.”
I knew how fucking long. I was admitted night before last and went into surgery to remove two bullets, sew up one through-and-through, and patch a graze wound. Didn’t matter. I’d been here too long. If the doc didn’t give me my walking papers today, I was checking myself out.
“So you’re here why?” I’d planned to find her when I got out. When I could move my fucking arm and I wasn’t in a damn nightgown. The last thing I wanted was her seeing me like this.
Inhaling, she straightened her shoulders. “You’re different,” she blurted.
Different from what? “You think you know me now?”
“I knew the man three years ago who tried to help a woman too lost to know better,” she admitted. “He was kind.” Her voice softened. “And caring.”
“War changes people.” So did getting robbed. And left after a night of the best fucking sex you’d ever had.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said quietly.
I hadn’t looked at her since she’d walked into my room. Not directly. But now I did. I looked her right in the eye. “What makes you think you have that kind of power over me?”
“I didn’t know I would get pregnant,” she whispered. “I thought… I thought I was on birth control.”
Did I look fucking stupid? “You either know or you don’t. It’s not a maybe kind of thing, sweetheart.” I bit out the last word.
“Look.” She dropped her blue-eyed gaze, but her tone went tough as fuck. “I get that you’re mad at me and that you have no reason to trust me, or even believe what I’m saying, but I wasn’t in a good situation.” She looked up at me. “I’m still not. So….” She cleared her throat, then spoke in a rush. “So if I go to jail, I’m hoping you’ll take Mav. I would appreciate that. He has no one else.” She abruptly got up and made for the door.
Stunned, I didn’t open my mouth until her hand was on the handle. “Sit down,” I ordered.
Her back to me, she drew in a shaky breath, but she didn’t turn around.
Goddamn it. I didn’t even know what the fuck to call her. “Turn around.”
Her shoulders hitched.
Fuck me. I forced my tone to this side of decent. “You’re right. I’m fucking mad as hell. Three goddamn years, and I’m still pissed off.” That should tell her something. “I was pissed before I even knew you had my kid. Then I went nuclear.” I scrubbed my good hand over my unshaven jaw. “So yeah, I’m pissed.” Fuck, I hated talking to her back. “But I want to know my kid. I’d never turn my back on my own.” Or her now, no matter how pissed off I was. “Not ever. Come and sit back down.”
Slow, like a turning tide, she let go of the door handle and her shoulders dropped. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “I never meant for you to get hurt.”
Jesus Christ. “Turn the fuck around and look at me, Brooke.”
She turned. Her face twisted with guilt, her eyes welled. “I didn’t mean for you to get shot.”
“Fuck, woman, I’m not dead.” I shook my head and threw the covers back on my right thigh. “And getting shot? Nothing I haven’t dealt with before. Now I got a matching set of scars.”
She burst into tears.
“Christ.” Pushing the IV pole out of the damn way, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and reached for her. “Come here.” I took her hand with my good arm and pulled. “Sit the fuck down and stop crying.” I couldn’t deal with her tears. “The woman I met three years ago didn’t strike me as someone who’d cry over this shit.”
“Yeah, well.” She pulled her hand out of mine, but she sat. “We all change, don’t we?”
I didn’t say shit.
Still with the long sleeves, she dabbed her eyes with the cuff of her T-shirt. “I heard it was you who shot Nathan.”
I stiffened. Without her eyes on me, I couldn’t read her tone. “He shot first.” At her. At my kid. My nostrils flared, and I wanted to rip out the IV and kick the fucking pole halfway down the damn hospital corridor just thinking about it. Then I wanted to kill Lewis all over again. That motherfucker deserved to die a thousand times.
She didn’t say shit.
I laid it out. “I was holding you and my kid. He knew it. He pulled that trigger anyway.”
Slowly, she nodded. “He started it, you ended it.”
“Yeah, I did.” And I’d do it again in a fucking heartbeat.
“You said you were a sniper in the Marines.” She looked up at me. “It’s easy for you to kill?”
“It’s easy for you to kiss a man who shoots at a woman holding her kid?” What the fuck?
She bit her bottom lip and dropped her head again. “He and I—it wasn’t what you think.”
Fuck. I reminded myself that he was dead. She was here, and I was being an asshole. Reining my shit in, I told myself to calm the fuck down. This was my shot to clear the bullshit between us, and I didn’t need to be a stupid ass and throw that away. And fuck me, she was so goddamn beautiful. Despite everything, I wanted her. Hell, maybe because of everything. I didn’t know anymore. It didn’t fucking matter. But I wanted her to start at the beginning and tell me everything, except I had one question first. “In Dax’s bar, that was him, wasn’t it? He pulled that shelf down on you.”
She nodded.
“Why?”
Her voice went small and quiet again. “I’d run from him. That day he’d found me again. He was mad.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” We would’ve fucking helped her. I would’ve helped her. This shit would’ve been over three years ago.
She shrugged. “Why does any woman hide abuse? There’s a thousand reasons. None of them are good.” She picked her head up, and the fearful but strong woman I’d met three years ago surfaced. “I didn’t think I had options.”
From my perspective, you always had options, but I wasn’t her. I wasn’t gonna pretend for one second I knew what the fuck it was like to be in her shoes. I was still pissed as hell at her for lying to me, but I also understood wh
at I was looking at now. She wasn’t just the mother of my kid, she’d been through hell and back and she was still standing. I respected the fuck out of that. But I also wanted her to know she didn’t have to do it alone anymore. “If you’re in trouble, I’m always an option for you.” I would never forsake her or my kid. I wasn’t gonna be like my parents.
Fucking with the cuff of her T-shirt, rolling the material between two fingers, she was silent for a long moment.
I didn’t know her, but I knew enough to know it wasn’t a good silence. “What?” I demanded.
“You said you’d be in touch. Then ten days went by. I didn’t think… I didn’t think you were coming back.”
“You told me he was my kid. You think I wouldn’t come back for that?”
She fucking shrugged.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. She needed a reality check. “Did you know who Lewis was? Did you know all the shit he was into? Who he worked for?”
With every question, she shrank smaller in her chair. “He’s…. He was a grifter. He always was.”
“He was a money launderer.” I paused for effect. “For the fucking cartel.” Luna had briefed me on what he’d found out from ATF, and it was fucked. All of it. “You’re in a safe house because we don’t know if this shit is gonna fall back on you, or if anyone he worked for is gonna come after you looking for the money.” She shouldn’t even be here at the hospital. Not until I had confirmation from Christensen’s ATF connection that she was in the clear.
“I know what he did,” she quietly admitted. “I was one of his runners.”
“I saw.” Fuck, I saw.
Her head snapped up, and she looked at me with shock.
“Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. Dry cleaners, post office box, car wash.” I rattled off her money drop schedule.
“You were watching me?”
I held her gaze. “For ten days.”
HE’D WATCHED ME?
He’d been watching me?
“Why didn’t you turn me in to the ATF?” Or FBI? Or even the cops? He could have done that and gotten full custody of Maverick.
“A boy needs his mother.”
He said it as if it were the simplest answer in the world. But it wasn’t simple. Nothing was ever going to be simple unless I confessed to all of my crimes and cleared my conscience of all of it. But then my son wouldn’t have a mother, and I’d be in jail.
I stated the obvious. “His mother is a criminal.” Garrett had to know that. I wasn’t held at gunpoint to make those drops. I did it on my own. Yes, I’d feared Nathan. But I could’ve made different choices. I could’ve gone to Garrett’s condo when I was pregnant, and I didn’t.
“Criminal or not, you love your son,” he answered like it wasn’t a big deal. “You’re a good mother.”
“You don’t know that.” I felt like I wasn’t even a good person, let alone a good parent.
Taking a deep breath and letting it out slow, he shifted his shoulder like he was uncomfortable, then his impenetrable mask slid back into place. “I know you take him to the pool every afternoon. I know you taught him to swim. He isn’t even three and he can swim.” His intense stare, the same as it was three years ago, held me captive as if no time had passed between us. “I know he laughs. I know he loves you. And I know he’s smart.” He tipped his chin. “That’s good parenting.”
My emotions in a freefall, I teared up. “Thank you.”
For a long moment, he stared at me. Then, as if he’d made some internal decision, he nodded once and leaned back in his bed. “Start at the beginning.”
Even with his entire left shoulder bandaged, IVs coming out of him and lying in a hospital with gunshot wounds, he was an imposing man. More imposing than when I’d first met him, or maybe I just hadn’t been willing to see how much of a warrior he was. Because this man in front of me, he was a warrior—in every sense of the word.
And I’d carried and given birth to his son.
A flush of heat, inappropriate and ill timed, washed over me.
“Fuck, woman,” he muttered. “Don’t look at me like that.”
My cheek flushed. “Like what?”
“Like you haven’t been laid in years,” he bluntly quipped.
My voice dropped to a whisper, and I told him the truth. “I haven’t.”
His eyes closed, and he rubbed the hand of his unbandaged arm over his face. “Fuck me,” he quietly cursed before his gaze cut back to mine. “How long?” he demanded.
It took less than a heartbeat to recall the number, and less than a second after that to decide if I should tell him. “Three years, four months, two weeks and six days.” I knew exactly how long it’d been since I’d had sex.
His nostrils flared and his chest rose with a sharp inhale, but he didn’t say anything.
Regret and embarrassment consumed me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“We’re coming back to that and we’re gonna discuss it,” he stated with absolute authority. “But first you’re gonna tell me, from the beginning, what I need to know.”
“Which is?” I hedged.
“All of it.”
I stared at my lap. I didn’t want to tell this war hero who’d gotten shot because of me that I was a bad person.
“What was on the recording?” Garrett prompted.
I tried to see it from his perspective. He had a child with me. Didn’t he deserve to know who the mother of his son was? Didn’t he need to know everything in case he was in a position where he became Maverick’s sole provider?
Inhaling, I jumped. “That night, before everything happened, Nathan came to the pool house. He was being vague and questioning me, and I should’ve realized he was up to something, because he was always up to something, but I didn’t know he was recording our conversation on his cell phone until it was too late.”
“What did he get on you?”
I looked up at Garrett and told him the truth. “Me confessing to stealing money from the restaurants where I used to work, robbing a jewelry store and stealing cars.”
His face unreadable, Garrett stared at me for a moment. “How many of those incidents were your idea?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “How many crimes did you commit on your own?”
“Does it matter?” I’d done them.
His gaze drifted over my head like he was fighting for patience. “Were you a victim?” He looked back at me. “Or are you a criminal?”
“Both.”
Looking more tired by the second, he sighed, then clipped out an order. “The beginning.”
“I should probably go. You need your rest.” And I wanted to disappear into a hole in the ground. I stood.
“Sit. Your ass. Down,” he growled. “And fucking talk to me. I’m not a goddamn judge. This isn’t a trial. I want—I need to know what the fuck I’m dealing with so I can protect you and Maverick.” He reined in his tone and tipped his chin at the chair. “So, please.” The last word cut across his lips like it hurt to speak it. “Have a seat and just fucking tell me what we’re dealing with.”
We.
What we’re dealing with.
Not me.
Not alone.
My chest constricted and my mouth opened. “My dad got sick when I was in high school. Cancer. It was only ever me and him. He started treatments, and things looked pretty good, but he was too sick to go to work and he lost his job. Then he lost his health insurance, and I was working at two fast food restaurants to pay the bills, and we were charging his treatments on a credit card, until it hit the limit. That’s when I met Nathan. He came into one of the places I worked then a few days later he came into the other one with some guys and he did a double take. He asked me if I’d lost my job at the other place, and I told him I worked both places.
“He asked why, and I told him. I was young and stupid, and I’d lost my friends because I was working so much, then I’d dropped out of school. He saw an easy mark, and he laid the groundwork. I was seventeen, and he was twenty-four
. He was what every girl dreams of for a boyfriend at first. Attentive and flattering and flirtatious.” I shook my head at the memory. I’d been so stupid.
“I fell for him,” I admitted. “Barely a month later, he was telling me his plan to hit both fast food restaurants in one day and steal the daily deposits, and how the money could help pay for my father’s treatments.”
“You didn’t get caught?” Garrett asked.
I shook my head. “He planned it on a day I worked at both places. He said as long as I was on shift, it wouldn’t come back to me. It’d just look like a string of robberies.”
“You didn’t actually steal the deposits yourself?”
I shook my head, but it didn’t matter. “I may as well have. I told Nathan who was making the deposits and what times.”
Garrett frowned and his jaw ticked. “Did he give you the money for your dad?”
“Yes. But in the end it didn’t matter. He died a few years later.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shrugged because it hurt to think about.
“The cars?” Garrett asked.
“That came after we stole the deposits.”
“He stole the deposits,” Garrett corrected.
I didn’t argue, but I was as much to blame as Nathan. “Nathan came up with a way to steal keys from valets, mostly at expensive hotels. I’d distract them, he’d take the keys from those key boxes and then he’d pass them to me, and I’d drive the cars to wherever he told me.”
“You didn’t get caught on video surveillance cameras?”
“No. We disguised ourselves, never hit the same place twice, and after a few months, Nathan had a new idea. That was how he worked, he was always looking for the next angle.”
“Jesus,” Garrett muttered. “Let me guess, the jewelry store was the next angle.”
I nodded. “He came up with an elaborate plan. I went inside the store and asked to look at rings. He paid two homeless guys to get in a fight outside the store. They threw bottles at each other. It broke the storefront window, and in the ensuing chaos, I grabbed what I could and took off. The haul turned out to be the catalyst that got him into money laundering by way of a real estate scam first.” I half shrugged. “You know the rest.” Except about the estate. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about that yet.