Keegan (Wounded Hero Book 1)

by Marysol James

  “OK,” she said aloud. “Kentucky it is. What the hell.”

  She had a mission now, a goal to shoot for. She also had nothing holding her back or in Denver, so she decided to just leave that night. Right away.

  What the hell.

  Trish was just heading to the stairs to pack her small suitcase when she heard the knock at the door. She froze, utterly paralyzed and terrified. Nobody knew that she was here, and nobody had any reason to come looking for her anyway.

  Well… unless Dragon and Paul had decided to twist the knife a bit more. Maybe devastating her life and humiliating her beyond belief wasn’t enough for those two sick dickheads after all.

  Then again, they’d hardly knock politely, would they?

  Unless they’re tricking me into answering.

  So maybe I don’t answer.

  Except that all the lights are on and the music is playing.

  Dammit. Dammit. Goddammit.

  Trish crept to the door and peered through the mail slot, holding her breath the whole time. She was eye level with a pair of well-worn blue jeans, and she knew those jeans as sure as she knew that she was going to collapse from shock right here and now.

  Keegan suddenly bent over and met her gaze, those amazing silver eyes steady and calm. Trish squeaked and dropped the mail slot with a sharp clang, as if that would fix this whole situation. She heard his chuckle through the door and then he knocked again.

  “Trish?”

  She closed her eyes, wildly imagining that if she couldn’t see the door in front of her, then maybe he’d just disappear. Or she would.

  Another knock. “You know that I saw you, right?”

  She bit her lip. Tasted blood.

  “Playin’ possum ain’t doin’ any good,” he said. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere anytime soon. Not until I talk to you.”

  Furious, Trish unstuck and unleashed the rage wave that was roaring up her throat. “Now you want to talk? Really? And what do you want to say? That I’ve fucked my life up beyond recognition? That you hope that I’m enjoying my triumphant return to the glamorous world of porn stardom? That you told me so?”

  “Nope. None of the above.” Keegan paused. “Could you open the door?”

  “No.”

  “Baby. Please.”

  “No, I said. I wanted to talk to you at the warehouse and you weren’t interested, I begged you to please listen. You walked out, Keegan, you walked away from me without letting me explain. Well, now I’m not interested.” Her hands went to her hips and she stared at the door. “And don’t baby me, jackass.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it.” He cleared his throat. “I just – are you OK?”

  “Am I what?” She glared at the door harder, sure that he had to feel her death gaze through the wood. “What the actual what?”

  “Are you OK? Since the video – since everythin’ showed up online?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think that you could use a friend right about now. I’d like to be a friend, if you’d let me.”

  “Yeah. No.” She turned, determined to pack and go within the next twenty minutes; anything to get space and time between her and Keegan. “Now go choke on some of your damn cookies and drop dead.”

  “Trish.”

  Hearing her name said that way, in that voice… oh, God help her. It threw Trish back to all those hours in bed, back to when he made her feel so safe and seen and cherished. He’d whispered her name that way when kissing the length of her aching, needy body, while plunging deep inside her slick core, after it was all over and she was lying in his arms and trembling against that amazing strong chest.

  Nobody had ever said her name that way in the whole of her hard, sad life – and as she’d just discovered, it was her personal goddamn kryptonite.

  Without much thought, dimly aware that she was actually moving at all, she watched her hand reach out and slide the deadbolt at the top of the door, then the deadbolt at the bottom, then the twist-lock at the center next to the handle. She turned the handle, watched the door swing away and open and there he was.

  Tall and gorgeous and smoldering sexy in jeans and dark blue t-shirt and leather jacket. Silver eyes flashing at her under a tumble of black hair, cheekbones covered in stubble, full lips parted and tempting.

  More of my personal goddamn kryptonite. A truckload, actually.

  She opened her mouth and was shocked when what came out was: “Fuck you, Keegan.”

  He didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink. “Totally fair statement, sugar, and no arguments from me.” He caught her glare. “You said not to call you baby, you said nothin’ about sugar. And now that you’ve said what’s on your mind, can I come in?”

  Without a word, Trish turned her back on him, stalked over to the armchair. She sat and watched as he lowered that huge, hulking body to the sofa opposite. She waited because no way was she saying one more sentence, even one that consisted solely of ‘f’ bombs. Let him do the running this time.

  “Uh,” he began, looking awkward but game. “I’m sorry.”

  She cocked her head at him, crossed her arms.

  “Yeah, OK.” He ran his hand through his hair. “That ain’t good enough for you, and it sure as hell ain’t good enough for me.”

  Trish perked up with more interest now. Frankly, she’d never heard an I’m sorry from any guy that she’d ever dated, so Keegan was already way ahead of the game. And he had more to say? Intriguing.

  “OK, here it is, Trish. The whole ugly truth, huh?”

  She shrugged as if she didn’t care one way or another. Which she maybe didn’t.

  Liar. You care.

  “I held out on you about as much as you held out on me,” Keegan said without preamble. “I straight up lied to you about somethin’, and the fact that I didn’t know that I was lyin’ doesn’t excuse it. Doesn’t make it OK.”

  “You lied to me?” she asked him, suddenly interested despite herself. “About what?”

  “I said that I was OK with my leg bein’ gone,” he said bluntly. “I said that I was past it.”

  “But you’re not?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “I – I don’t understand.” She shook her head. “I mean – you seem to be in a good place. A great one, even.”

  “And I really thought that I was. I promise, when I said that I’d done all my hard work over the past four years, I totally believed it. I swear that I have no trouble lookin’ at myself in the mirror and runnin’ my business. I have my shit together in so many ways, and that’s all the truth.”

  “So where’s the lie about your leg?”

  “Turns out, I was half-expectin’ you to step out on me, so when I saw you with those assholes in that warehouse full of porn stuff, and they told me how long you’d been in contact with ‘em, I – well. I believed it.”

  “Oh, really?” Her anger flared up again; now she definitely didn’t care what he had to say. “So you expected me to cheat on you, huh? Because I’m a stupid slut who screwed carloads of guys for a living not so long ago, so why the hell would I be interested in being faithful to one guy? Once a whore, always a whore and old habits die hard and all that?”

  “Jesus, no!” He looked horrified. “No. I half-expected you to leave me ‘cause I ain’t whole, and you deserve a man who ain’t broken.”

  She sat stunned, torn between incredulity and anger. “What did you just say, Keegan?”

  “I – ah, shit.” He stood up now, took two steps and without a word, he fell to his knees on the floor in front of her, the movement somehow both strong and beseeching. “Deep inside, so deep that I didn’t even really know that’s what I was thinkin’, I thought that a woman like you deserved better than me. I kept lookin’ at you and thinkin’ that you could have anyone that you wanted anytime you wanted ‘em. Snap your fingers and they’d come runnin’ from down the mountains thankin’ Christ for the chance the whole way, you know?”

  “But I never –” />
  “Please. Trish, please. Let me finish.”

  She fell silent as he invoked that damn verbal kryptonite once more.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I just – I really need to tell you the truth. And the truth is that it’s one thing to stare at myself missin’ a limb and be OK with it, and it’s somethin’ completely different when I know you’re lookin’ at me with missin’ pieces. A part of me is strugglin’ hard to understand why you find me…” He paused, remembered Meredith’s words that freaked him out so much. “… strong and attractive and… and sexy,” he finished the sentence at a gallop.

  Trish stared at him some more, then she said, “Are you being serious right now?”

  “Dead serious.”

  She shook her head. “You’re such an idiot. If there was an Idiot Olympics, you’d get gold without even showing up, just by reputation.”

  “I know it,” Keegan said. “I really do. I am totally and fully aware that I’m the biggest idiot in the state because I had you, and you thought that I was attractive enough to want to see naked.”

  “I did, yeah.”

  “And then I totally messed it all up, all the while tellin’ you how much I love honesty and expectin’ it from you, and thinkin’ that I was bein’ honest while I wasn’t.” He smiled at her, touched her hand briefly. “It’s why I’ve got no business bein’ mad at you anymore. I can’t be pissed about you keepin’ stuff from me when I was doin’ the same thing.”

  Trish’s head was starting to spin from the conversational circles that he was going around and around in. “OK, well… I get you not being honest by accident, like you had no idea how you felt. But what I did – I wasn’t honest on purpose. I – well. I kept a lot from you, and I made that choice. I knew that I was hiding things, and meeting that asshole in secret to give him money, and not telling you any of it. Lying about my whereabouts.” She gazed at him hopelessly. “How is it anything like what you did? How is it even in the same universe?”

  “Because.” Keegan gently stroked her cheek and she shut her eyes at the sweet pressure. “I always said that you’d tell me everythin’ when you felt ready, and that I respected the time you needed. I’m thinkin’ now that you just hadn’t felt ready to tell me what was goin’ on and I took that personally at first.”

  “But now you don’t?” she whispered.

  “Now I don’t.” His fingers moved under her chin, tilted her head up to meet his gaze. “It ain’t all about me and my damn ego. Right, sugar?”

  She bit her lip, her thoughts and feelings down a wild see-sawing thing inside of her: all of those words that she’d held back and pushed down were screaming to be released, and she was tired of fighting them.

  It’s time. Hell, he knows pretty much everything anyway.

  So she told him how many times she’d wanted to tell him about the video and the blackmail: how it had been on the tip of her tongue on their first date over dinner, again in his kitchen the night she told him about her parents and time in L.A., again at Open Skies before making love, and every single damn time after they’d made love ever since, every time she saw his name pop up on her cell phone, every time she looked at him baking or drinking coffee or brushing his teeth. It was something that she’d thought about almost obsessively, dreamed about even, but had never found the courage to get out of her mouth.

  Keegan shook his head, looking sad. “You thought I wouldn’t understand?”

  “No,” she said, astonished at him taking her crap decision on himself. “I felt like… like if I told you, then it was real. Like, more real than it was already I mean, when the only person who knew was me. I’d separated all that shit with Paul and Dragon from my life with Meredith and work and you – and I just knew that if I told you, that separation wouldn’t exist anymore, it would all be erased. I just couldn’t – I wasn’t ready for that line between my worlds to completely disappear.” She shrugged: that was it, that was the truth. “I wanted to have one whole life where their filth hadn’t touched it. Call it denial or being a chicken-shit, whatever… but the fact is that I was selfish. I didn’t want to lose my safe little bubble, even if it meant that I was keeping things from you and lying to you every day. I’m sorry. I’m – I’m more sorry than you’ll ever know.”

  “So,” he said softly. “You’re sorry, I’m sorry. That’s a fact. But the thing about bein’ truly sorry is that we’re actually lookin’ to be forgiven.”

  “True.”

  “You forgive me, Trish? ‘Cause let me say from the get-go that you don’t need to ask me. I forgave you before I knocked on that door tonight.”

  “You’re forgiven,” she whispered around the aching lump in her throat. “You didn’t have to ask, either.”

  Keegan and Trish stared at each other, dusky purple sky held in thrall by silver moonlight. The world around them hummed and shrank, just became more silent and smaller and still, until there was nobody on the whole planet except for them and nothing to be seen except each other’s face, eyes, lips. There was just their hearts beating in time, their chests rising and falling in shared breath. There was just them.

  “I’m sorry,” Keegan rasped. “Sorry for not listenin’, sorry for walkin’ out on you, sorry for leavin’ you all alone with this internet shit-storm, sorry for not bein’ the man that you thought I was and who I so fuckin’ badly want to be. I’m sorry, sugar.”

  Tears prickled her eyes, but Trish was smiling, smiling for the first time since she’d left Keegan’s house that day to walk into the ambush at the warehouse. She opened her mouth to tell him that they could figure out how to start again, how to move on and be better than they had been the first time around… when it happened.

  The words I love you were on her lips when their perfect little world was shattered.

  Chapter 17

  Trish was less than one-half of a heartbeat away from telling this amazing, gorgeous man kneeling in front of her that she loved him – when an explosion of what sounded like glass behind her made her heart jump in her chest.

  Startled, but not more than that, Trish started to turn to where the sound had come from. Before she could so much as swivel her head, Keegan was on her and then she was on the floor under him, rolling and rolling again, looking up in bemused confusion.

  “Keegan,” she began. “What –”

  Another sound now, this one from outside – sharper, louder, somehow more surprising for being closer – and more glass exploding in the room. This time Trish ducked her head instinctively, even as Keegan’s massive hands covered her face. He swore under his breath, his face tense and pale, and that was when Trish began to feel afraid.

  “Keegan,” she said again and she heard the tremor in her voice. “I don’t –”

  “Shhhh.” He lowered his mouth to hers, tightened his grip around her body. “They’re outside, baby.”

  “Who –”

  When the sound rang out for the third time and the framed picture on the wall above them shattered into a thousand pieces, Trish’s brain finally registered what it was:

  Is that – gunfire? Is someone shooting at us?

  Even as the thought crystalized and finally solidified into certainty, there were more shots, then more again. She felt nothing but sheer, blinding panic now and she stared at Keegan’s face, wondering how he could look so damn calm. Then she remembered: he’d been trained for this and he’d lived this, day in and day out, for years. He was a man who had been under fire before – literally and constantly – and even as she had this thought, she saw his face change. Like a switch inside had been flipped to the ‘darkness’ setting, or a mask of ice had been put on, or he was listening to a dispassionate voice in his head giving instructions… he looked cool and distant and in total control.

  “Keegan,” Trish whispered, almost afraid of the man who was looming over her like an avenging angel. “What do we do?”

  He gazed at her, this stranger who looked like he could kill without a flicker of conscience, then his e
yes softened, became human again and Trish knew him once more. He raised his hand to her face again, just gently resting it there this time, and Trish felt his steadiness. Keegan had always radiated calm and strength – and she suddenly understood that if he could keep hold of it in this mess then it was who he was, all the way down to his core.

  Her fear didn’t lessen one iota but she felt her confidence build. If Trish was holding Keegan’s hand and standing by his side, she’d be able to face whoever or whatever was standing outside in the darkness, blowing the hell out of this remote farmhouse. Maybe she’d even have a prayer at walking away in one piece.

  In the ringing, deafening silence that had fallen, Keegan lowered his face to hers, his lips caressing her ear as he whispered: “Listen to me, baby… I’m gonna get us out of this. You hearin’ me? We’re leavin’ here safe and whole, no matter what I have to do to make that happen. I don’t have time to explain right now, but we ain’t alone. There’s help not far away and I know they can hear what’s goin’ on over here. The guys will be on their way to help right now – we just have to trust ‘em and we have to trust each other.” He paused, stared down at her hard. “You trust me, Trish? Really trust me? Even after it all?”

  The word flew from her mouth honest and strong and true, before she’d even thought what she was saying: “Yes.”

  “That’s my girl.” He kissed her, his lips fire on her icy cheek. “Stay here now behind the sofa. You don’t so much as poke your head around no matter what happens, you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  She lowered her cheek to the floor and peered under the sofa as Keegan pulled himself low across the floor with strong movements. She held her breath as he got close to what used to be the window by the front door, held it until he disappeared from her line of sight, kept holding it until she felt dizzy. For the life of her, Trish couldn’t understand why he’d move closer to the people with guns, but she knew that he had his reasons. He had to and after all, she trusted him.

  Keegan paused by the gaping hole in the living room wall, carefully maneuvered around the piles of window glass scattered all over the floor. He peered around the curtains fluttering in the wind and squinted hard, wishing with everything in his soul that he had a gun to hand. But he didn’t and that was the way that it was: carrying a weapon just wasn’t his life anymore. He hadn’t even considered bringing a weapon to Meredith’s house earlier, nor had he thought to take one from King to just come and talk to Trish. So he was unarmed and he was the only thing standing between the amazing woman hiding behind the sofa and whatever monster lurked in the night.