And me...
It was a new day. A time to let the past go and to remember that his brothers had always had his back. The monster was dead. The war was over. Bree could go home. She and Robin would live in peace.
Inhaling one last breath of the sweet, nervous scent of the woman in his arms, Kruze went down to one knee with her. At least, he thought she went with him.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Bree couldn’t get to Kruze fast enough. Neither could his big, bulky brothers or the other giant in the room. She’d barely slipped her hand under Kruze’s head to cushion it before it hit the floor, when the stranger brushed her, Chance, and Pagan out of his way.
The blue bag he’d brought with him dropped to the floor at his side. He ripped its zipper open, pulled out a line of surgical tubing, and stuck the catheter end of it into Kruze’s forearm. Lifting two bags of blood over his head, he ordered Pagan to, “Hold these and stay the fuck out of my way.”
Had to be the medic, as adeptly as he handled Kruze. He tipped his head nearly to the floor and studied the strap belted around Kruze’s poor neck. That must be the tourniquet Senator Sullivan talked about. Didn’t look like it was working, not with blood trickling out from under it.
“How’s he doing, Jared?” Chance asked.
“Jesus Christ, he’s gone into shock and he’s bleeding, how do you think he’s doing? I told you this was a stupid idea.” Jared leaned back on his haunches, his head cocked, listening to the stethoscope on Kruze’s chest. “Don’t just stand there. I need pillows and a blanket. Now!”
It took Chance less than a minute to return with the required items. Kneeling beside Kruze, he put two pillows under his boots and floated the blanket over him.
Jared turned nasty and snapped the blanket away from Kruze’s shoulders. “Jesus. His pulse is thready. We might lose him. I need… I need…” He turned his glare on Bree. “You’re the one? You’re his Bree?”
Unable to speak, she bobbed her head.
“Well, good gawddamn, you’re the reason he’s still here then .” Jared made that sound more like an accusation than a good thing. “But you’re also the reason he’s still alive.” His voice had gentled, and that frightened Bree worse. She’d rather he barked at her. “Talk to him, ma’am. Hold onto him. He needs to hear your voice and feel your touch. Give him something to live for while I get my pilot on the line.”
She melted back to Kruze’s side, her hands soft and gentle on what she could reach of his chest. His breaths were coming farther apart now. His skin was clammy and cool. She refused to let him go. “Kruze, I’m here, honey,” she told him, her voice a quivering mess. “You saved me again. You and your brothers. Harvey Lantz is dead, and no one can hurt Robin or me or—”
Jared cut her off. “He needs more than just a news update, ma’am. Talk to him, gawddamnit. Really talk. Pretend you two are alone. Tell him what he needs to hear. For Christ’s sake, act like you love him.”
“Jesus, Jared. Back the fuck off,” Chance snarled.
“No, Chance, it’s okay. Really, it’s okay,” Bree whispered. “I do. I do love Kruze…” She bowed her head, closed her eyes, and anointed his forehead, his cheek, the tip of his nose, and lastly, his lifeless lips, with kisses and every last piece of her breaking heart. It didn’t matter who saw. It only mattered that he lived.
“You can’t leave me, not like this. Not again,” she breathed into his face. “You promised we’d do Paris again, remember? That balcony. That tiny shower. This time we’re taking Robin with us. She’s waiting for you, baby. She needs her daddy to come home and teach her how to ride her bike, the one you’re going to buy her. I’m your light, remember? You haven’t ever said that, but I know it’s true, and so do you. Your green eyes light up every time you look at me. They do. I see you, Kruze. Nobody knows you like I do, honey. Not Juliana. Not Chance or Pagan. This is our time. It’s just you, me, and Robin. Stay with us, Kruze. I’m going to marry you, damn it.”
Bree broke down. She needed this man so much. Losing him would kill her. “You’re going to pull through,” she sobbed. “You have to, and we are going to dance in Paris again. I know we are. Just stay with me. Hold onto me. I’ll keep you safe. You can do it. I have faith in you. I love you so much. Don’t you dare let me go again.”
A heavy breath huffed through his nose. She kissed his mouth again. And again. Then tipped back on her butt when Jared told her, “Sorry, hon. We have to leave,” as he slipped an oxygen mask over Kruze’s face.
A sob caught in her throat. “Am I too late?”
“No, ma’am, you’re doing everything right,” Jared replied kindly. “His heartrate is steady, but we need to move him to Loring, then get him life-flighted to the nearest hospital for emergency surgery. He needs a real doctor, not just a flyboy. My pilot’s on the horn for a specialist to meet us there. You’re coming with us. That’s an order.”
Nodding, Bree swiped a quick hand over her face. She had no idea Kruze’s brothers were kneeling so close to her until Chance tipped her into his side and said, “He’s a tough son of a bitch, Bree. He’ll pull through. You’ll see.”
She couldn’t help it. She put both hands over her face and cried, “I’m going to marry your brother if it’s the last thing I do.”
Chance pressed a kiss to her temple. “Thank God, sister. Kruze has been looking for you all his life. I am so damned glad to finally meet you in person.”
It seemed like hours before they had him in the helo. She sat on the rear bench seat with Chance and Pagan while Jared worked on Kruze. All three had headsets on if they wanted to talk. Bree didn’t. She didn’t dare take her eyes off Kruze, and she couldn’t hear the doctor Jared was speaking with. Jared was barking medical terms back and forth with the guy, then doing whatever he’d been instructed. But Bree couldn’t hear both sides of the conversation. Only Jared’s. He was angry, but so professional and capable. Like Kruze with his weapons, Jared knew precisely what he had to do to save Kruze’s life.
They were in the air when Pagan leaned into Bree and wrapped his jacket over her shoulders. “She needs her daddy?” he asked.
Bree tucked her lips inside her mouth and nodded. “He might not get the chance to tell you, but yes, Kruze has a daughter. He just found out a couple days ago.” Lord, so much had happened since he’d shared his secret about Juliana with her, when Bree had shared hers with him. What did either of those secrets get them? Nothing but grief. “It’s my fault. I should’ve told him, but…”
“Her name’s Robin?” Chance asked. “How old is she?”
Bree ran a hand over her eyes, and just like Kruze had, Pagan produced one of those travel packs of tissues out of thin air, popped the perforated top, and handed it to her. “Three years and three months,” she told Kruze’s brothers while she dabbed her tender eyes. “We were in Paris. It was July.” That romantic interlude felt like forever ago.
Chance put an arm gingerly around her. “He’s been hurting a long time, Bree. Mom was still alive then, but when he came back from Panama, it was as if someone extinguished the light in him. It was just gone. We all knew something happened on that deployment, but he kept it in. Wouldn’t share. I’m not gonna ask you what that something was, but you know, don’t you? He told you, didn’t he?”
She nodded, but bit her lip. “It’s his story to tell. I’ve shared enough, but yes, I know.”
“Thank God,” Pagan huffed. “He finally talked to someone.”
Bree took another tissue. That first one was already soaked, and she couldn’t stop crying.
“So tell us about Robin,” Chance coaxed, “if you don’t mind.”
“She adores her father,” Bree answered as quietly as she could inside the noisy helo. “And they look exactly alike. You should’ve seen Robin trying to figure him out when she met him.”
“He’s met her?” Pagan asked.
“Yes, the night before we flew to Maine. She’s in New Mexico wit
h my parents right now. Do you know Walker Judge and Persia Coltrane, his wife? They’re watching over the rest of my family.”
“No kidding,” Chance breathed. “Sure, they work for Alex Stewart. Don’t worry, sister. He only hires the best. Your parents and daughter’ll be fine.”
“I know,” Bree admitted. She’d never doubted them. “I met Walker and Persia when Kruze split us up. They’re like you guys, both very capable, and Robin was chattering like a magpie with Persia when they left, but…” Bree choked. “He has to live,” she whispered, not sure if Chance or Pagan could hear her.
“Yes, ma’am, and he will,” Pagan growled. “He’s finally got something to live for.”
Bree couldn’t speak anymore. But Lord, she hoped Pagan was right.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Kee-rist! His arms and legs were heavy as shit. Felt like they’d turned to concrete. Kruze could breathe, just couldn’t move. Not even enough to twitch his nose or lift a finger. Voices whirled around him like fog, some deep and masculine, some professional and concise, others light and feminine, almost motherly. But only one voice fell soft and lovely into the cords of his heart, more than just into the funnels of his ears. Like calligraphy, the music it created flowed with beauty, grace, and promise.
He basked in those few rare moments of her rapt attention to him. Every atom in his body responded to her sweet clarion call to return. It was so quiet, and he so dull-witted and drugged, that Kruze doubted what he heard was real. He had to be dreaming. The voice seemed otherworldly. It must belong to the same one shining a light on him, thinning the foggy darkness around him.
Deep in his psyche, he knew. He was sure. Ardently positive. Somewhere in his past, those dulcet vibrations had etched themselves into his soul. Which was why they felt familiar and why they called to him now. Why he almost, very nearly, recognized them. Like sound waves etched into the grooves of vinyl records, they were meant for him to follow. He knew!
But he was the ruined, broken, bouncing needle. Not even a diamond-tipped needle at that. Forever searching for that heavenly song from his past, yet continually skipping over its alluring, feminine soundtrack. Forever distorting the purest notes. Forever missing the point.
If only he could keep his damned eyelids cracked open long enough to see who was calling him. But every time Kruze drifted close to the warmth of that particular, so, so familiar woman, a shadow leaned over him, and back he fell, into slumber so deep, he lost the thread of her perfect music.
Yet even in the mellow, dark place where he landed, Kruze never quit trying to get back to her. He bobbed to the surface again and again, striving for that one pure note of yearning. Earnestly fighting to regain all he’d lost.
Until, at last… crisp, cool air replaced the fog.
Kruze groaned, his body pleasantly pain-free, but still too lethargic to open his eyelids. He was barely awake, but enough to notice the much smaller, more delicate hand nestled inside his callused, work-worn palm. He squeezed it very gently, in case he’d already hurt it, then was instantly offended that he might have trapped the sweet spirit now caught in his fingers. Like a delicate butterfly, it wasn’t his to keep. He had to let it—her—go.
“You’re awake,” a soft voice murmured, squeezing his fingers back.
Thank God. He hadn’t crushed her. Hadn’t thrown this one last, perfect chance away. “You,” he whispered, at least he tried. Sounded more like ten miles of a newly graveled road. But the voice was hers. Finally, he had her. He had Bree.
“Me,” she answered, the single word a sugary confection that might melt in his hand before he got it to his tongue.
Kruze tugged his one, new lifeline up to his dry, parched lips and pressed a single kiss to her knuckles. Too weak to offer anything else, he anchored her hand to his chest. Darkness still weighed heavily on him, but he’d found what he’d been searching for.
“Stay with me, sugar,” he rasped. “Please. Don’t let me go.”
“I’m never letting you go. I’ll be here when you wake up. Go back to sleep, honey.”
“Promise?” he demanded like a petulant child.
The sweetest breath whispered over his face. A soft warm kiss fluttered over his lips. “Signed. Sealed. And delivered,” Bree breathed into his mouth.
He nodded, this dream-like adventure tiring as hell. But Bree and sleep? Yeah. He could do both of them.
*****
Bree held Kruze’s hand until, at last, his fingers went limp and his breathing evened out. Only then did she smooth her palm up the inside of his arm to his elbow. There she snuggled her thumb into the crook of that muscular arm and held on, thankful he’d finally come to enough to recognize her.
To say the last few days had been stressful was like saying elephants were big and birds could fly. Even saying she’d been stressed was a phenomenal understatement, considering the frightening plane crash they’d survived, the damage that damned screwdriver had done, and Kruze’s initial injury. Then the betrayal of that despicable Damon Vick and the easy climb up those basalt columns. The tips of her fingers still hurt from the tiny cuts she’d gotten from those rocks, not that she’d complain. By the time they were both out of sight in that volcanic bubble of a basalt cave, she’d been too exhausted to care about anything but Kruze. Her cuts and scrapes were nothing compared to the serious infection he’d suffered. If only she’d known then how bad it was. How sick he was.
Yet after she’d fallen asleep, he’d still climbed down and gone after Vick, then Josephus and Berfende, all to keep her safe. Bree had Kruze’s brothers to thank for tracking Kruze and saving his life. For helping him get to her in time and for ending Harvey Lantz. The stamina of her very stubborn man amazed her. It was a miracle Kruze was still alive.
With her head on his biceps, she breathed in the slightly antiseptic scent on his skin. If she had any doubt they were meant for each other before, Bree didn’t anymore. Kruze was her drug of choice, her sweetest addiction, and her one true North. As much as she’d tried, when it came down to walking away from him, she simply had no resistance. She hadn’t in France, and she didn’t now. All he had to do was look at her, and she melted into a gooey puddle. He didn’t have to talk her into anything. Heck, he didn’t have to talk at all. They were like matching salt and pepper shakers, meant to be together. They fit. Always had, always would.
As soon as he came to, she had another secret to tell him. Wouldn’t he be surprised?
Bree startled out of a deep sleep to a soft knock. Swallowing hard, she realized she’d dozed off. A handsome, older, silver-haired man peered around the door. “You must be Brianna Banks.”
“And you must be Senator Sullivan,” she replied, her hand still snug in the crook of Kruze’s arm. “Please, come in, sir. It’s a pleasure to meet the man who talked me down from the ledge I was about to jump off a few days ago.”
“Just doing my job, ma’am. What kind of a boss would I be if I didn’t take care of my guys’ womenfolk while they’re off saving the world, where and when I send them? How’s he doing? I thought he’d be raring to get out of here by now.” Sullivan pulled the other chair in the room alongside Bree and settled in. He was a handsome man, extraordinarily tall, with a silver mustache and neatly combed gray hair. Power radiated off him, or maybe it was just his silvery-gray business suit, crisply pressed white shirt, and the red tie that gave her that impression.
Bree let go of Kruze to shake the senator’s hand. “He’s had a hard time with the infection in his side, but he’s on a super drug now. He’ll be fine. Thank you for sending that specialist from Washington, DC. Dr. Lister is now on my Christmas card list for the rest of his life.”
Senator Sullivan chuckled. “Jim’s a good man, one of the best in his field. Sure has been singing Airman Jared Lock’s praises. Jim was a PJ, too. Served in the first Iraq war, then the gawddamned second.”
“I had no idea men like them existed,” Bree admitted. “I haven’t been
around many soldiers, and the media tends to portray them all as psychotic killers. But the Sinclair brothers are… They’re…” She swallowed hard. There were no words good or big enough to describe all that Kruze, his brothers, and Jared did for their country, or who they were.
Once Bree went back to work, she intended to rectify the false image circulated by Hollywood and the biased media. She wasn’t going back to USA Timeline, either. They didn’t deserve her. World Geo had been ecstatic when she’d contacted them, had even requested an interview on all she’d gone through in Turkey. They wanted her side of the story. And they’d given her a huge signing bonus, even said she could work from home if she wanted to.
“Actually, Bree…” Sullivan tipped back in his chair, “you’ve been around a military man all your life. In fact…” The door opened behind him, and there stood Bree’s parents with Robin.
“Mommy!” Robin squealed, but instantly shushed when she saw Kruze. “Oh, I sorry,” she ducked her head into her shoulders and whispered, like the cute little scamp she was, “Mister Kruze is taking a nap like I hafta sometimes. I be very quiet. Shhhhh.”
Kruze moaned in his sleep, then stiffened and growled. But the instant Bree laced her fingers with his, he relaxed. His head tipped to his shoulder. His hair, longer on top, tumbled over his brow, making him look like an adorable, kissable, little boy. There went Bree’s heart again, thump, right at his feet. She swiped a quick hand over her eyes before Robin noticed.
But she was too late. “Mommy, you’re sad,” Robin whined, her chubby little arms held out for Bree to take her.
Bree’s father handed Robin over. Was that a tear in his eye? “Are you okay, Dad?” she asked as she set Robin on the bed beside Kruze and let her snuggle into his uninjured side.
“Yeah,” he answered, but he choked that single word out, like it had gotten stuck in his throat. “I am now.”
Sullivan kicked back in his chair and grumbled, “Tell her. If you don’t, Brandon, I sure as hell will.”
Damned (SOBs Book 4) Page 29
