by Sybil Bartel
“I was twenty,” I admitted, setting my empty bottle down. “It was the night before I was deploying for the first time.” I’d never told anyone this story. The only people who knew about it had been there, but none of them heard it from my mouth.
Luna uncapped another beer and handed it to me. “What happened?”
I took the bottle. “Thanks.” Taking a long swallow, the cold carbonation going down easy, I tried to think of the last time I’d had two beers and couldn’t. “She was the girl next door. Literally. Younger than me by three years, I heard her sing before I ever laid eyes on her.” I glanced at Luna. “I’ll never forget that day.”
“I bet.” He nodded like he knew what I was talking about, but he couldn’t possibly. “Was her voice as sultry back then as it is now?”
Familiar jealousy that until yesterday had been in remission reared. Angry, I drank, but then I answered him because I was losing my fucking mind. “It was different. More powerful, but raw and unpolished. Accented.” I still dreamt about it. “She came to the States from Trinidad before she started high school.”
“I can see why you were taken with her.” Luna reached for a second beer for himself. “She’s a beautiful woman.”
“She was a beautiful girl, but she was vulnerable.” With a shit upbringing. “Which is why I waited two years to enlist.”
Luna glanced at me with surprise. “No shit?”
I nodded once. “I waited until she graduated high school because I didn’t want to deploy and leave her alone. Knowing I was putting my life on hold for her, she took extra classes and graduated a year early.” I was proud of her for that, but she’d always been determined. She deserved every ounce of success she had.
“Then you deployed?”
“Then I enlisted, went through basic and came back here before deploying. She arranged a party to send me off. Invited everyone we knew, including my brother.” My jaw ticked, and my hands fisted around the bottle. “Halfway through the party, I found her in my bedroom naked with my brother.” I drained the second beer.
“Jesucristo,” Luna muttered.
Grabbing both bottles, I stood.
Luna shook his head. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have taken Vance’s call.”
“Yes, you would have.”
He eyed me. “Trefor’s maybe. Not Vance’s.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She was in trouble. “Neither of us would have ignored the call in the end.”
“You’re probably right,” Luna agreed.
“Not probably.”
Luna stood. “The only easy day was yesterday.”
“Trefor rubbing off on you?” That was a Teams saying.
Luna snorted. “Never.”
“Thanks for the beers.”
“De nada.” Slapping me on the shoulder, he glanced at the night sky. “Storm’s coming. Tropical depression winds.” He shook his head and smiled. “Gotta love Florida.” He stepped off the boat, but then he looked back at me. “We’ll catch the pendejo.”
Instinct hit, and I glanced up the dock. Scanning the shadows, I looked for anything out of place. “Plan on it.”
His hand going to his piece, Luna followed my glance. “Trouble?”
“Don’t know about tonight.” I scanned the marina. “Definitely the coming week.”
Luna’s gaze cut to me. “I got your six.”
“I know. Ditto.”
He nodded, but then he stood there a moment.
I waited.
“That video of her, the one of her on a porch step when she was younger, singing that sexy song—you took that, didn’t you?”
I’d long since deleted any trace of myself online, but that video had never gone away.
I nodded once.
Luna asked the one pertinent question in all of this. “How’d it get out?”
I told him the truth. “I made both the biggest mistake of my life and best decision ever.” I’d sealed her fate. “I uploaded it.”
“Love.” Luna shook his head as if it were a dirty word. “Hasta mañana.”
I didn’t bother pointing out it was already tomorrow. “Oh eight hundred,” I confirmed.
Luna walked up the dock and got in his Escalade.
Unable to shake the feeling that I was being watched, I scanned the marina one last time. Seeing no one, I locked up and headed below.
My phone where I left it was buzzing with unread alerts.
I picked it up. Three texts.
Songbird: You can’t be angry forever. That is a game no one wins.
Songbird: I blame myself more than you could ever know. Every day I regret my actions, the mistakes I made.
Bullshit.
Songbird: If you don’t want to respond anymore, fine. But know the woman you used to love, not the famous singer, she is sorry.
Anger drove my thumbs across the screen.
Me: The woman I fell in love with is gone.
Her reply was almost instant.
Songbird: You wanted me to be someone I wasn’t.
Me: I wanted you to be safe.
Songbird: You never wanted me to be famous.
I could hear the accusation in her voice as if she had spoken, and I only got angrier. I was never going to hold her back. Not intentionally.
Me: No, I never wanted you to sign a contract with an asshole who would’ve taken advantage of you.
He would’ve raped her, then passed her around.
Songbird: And now we’re here.
Something about her response, her choice of words, it pricked at my conscience, but I was too pissed off to pay attention as I self-righteously typed a reply.
Me: You got what you wanted.
The whole world knew her name.
Songbird: The man I knew was never petty or cruel.
Me: Nothing petty or cruel about what I said. I stated fact. You wanted to be famous. You got there, and you would have gotten there whether you signed that exact contract ten years ago or not.
Songbird: Says the man who knows nothing about the music industry.
Me: I didn’t need to know about the industry. I believed in you.
What fucking part of that did she not understand? I couldn’t be any more clear, not now, not ten years ago when I said the exact same thing to her.
Songbird: You wanted me for yourself while you left and gave everything you had to a military that saw your life as disposable.
Tired of a decade-old argument, I tamped down my anger and typed a reply.
Me: I gave you what no one else had.
I’d given her my heart, but it hadn’t been enough.
Songbird: Promises weren’t going to keep you alive. How did I know if you were going to come home?
Me: You were my home. I was always coming back.
One way or another, I would’ve come home to her, but she was missing the point.
I’d never left her.
She still owned me as much as she did ten years ago. Not even infidelity, my horrible mistake, a war and a groundbreaking career changed what was etched into my fucking being. One look at her fourteen years ago and I’d fallen so deep, I still hadn’t surfaced.
Songbird: Alive or in a box?
Did it matter?
Me: Go to sleep, Sanaa.
She downed her third drink.
Two fucking days of rotations with all of us on edge and nothing. No notes, no suspicious activity around the hotel, no suspect passengers flying in from the UK or anywhere else, and no personnel had left the tour. Trefor even had management up the practice sessions to keep everyone engaged in London.
But there’d been no movement.
No movement except the dance Sanaa and my brother did around each other.
Two hours into my first post when Vance had come and gone out of her suite three times to argue with her behind closed doors, I resigned myself to the fact that they fed off each other.
Then I’d shut everything down except the mission.
She ha
dn’t sent any more late-night texts, and I hadn’t spoken to her unless absolutely necessary. Vance kept a watchful eye on her, she stared at me, and I kept the perimeter secure.
Luna came and went. Trefor had left yesterday, and Ty, Harm, Tyler and I rotated on twelve-hour shifts. Except for today. We were all onsite because she had the bullshit meeting with some executives about a charity concert that she’d used as the excuse for coming to the States. The meeting was taking place downstairs in one of the hotel’s event rooms, and even though I’d protested at the stupidity of her showing her face downstairs, she was going through with it. And Vance and Trefor had agreed with her. They wanted her seen at least once in the hotel.
Dangling her as bait made me fucking irate, and I never would’ve allowed it, but I wasn’t in charge of this shitshow.
Holding her tumbler, Sanaa pointed at me. “You should relax. Take a seat.”
I hated her drunk.
Not bothering to reply, I stared straight ahead. An hour ago, when I’d heard her hit the bottle in her suite, I moved from my post in the hall to just inside the door where I could monitor her.
Steady on her heels despite the scotch, she sauntered up to me and the offending finger landed on my chest. “What’s your problem? You used to be laid-back.”
I was never laid-back.
Vance was.
My gaze locked over her shoulder, knowing I shouldn’t, I spoke. “You’re mistaking me for my brother.” Again.
She snorted out a laugh. “Wouldn’t be the first time.” Her speech quick and lilting, the accent she usually held back came out. “But that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it?”
His attention on his cell, Vance strode into the room. “We’re all set, love. Hotel security has been briefed, and Luna’s men are all in position. The meeting’s a go. You ready?” He looked up.
Sanaa watched me glance at Vance, then leaned in closer to me. “Told you.”
Vance’s gaze shot between me and Sanaa, and he frowned. “Little early, pet, don’t you think?”
“What I think…” Sanaa spun dramatically. Holding her glass out toward Vance, the offending finger still pointing, she made a sweep from him to me. “Is that nothing’s changed.”
When neither of us reacted, she snorted.
“And there it is.” Glancing at her empty glass and sneering in disgust, she dumped the tumbler on the bar. “The great Conlon brothers. Two halves of the same whole.”
Furious, I let my gaze cut to hers.
Leaning toward me again, her dark eyes bright with anger, she lowered her voice. “You’re both cold bastards.”
Vance chuckled. “Come now, love. I think you’ve had one too many.” He reached for her arm. “Let’s get you sorted before the meeting.”
The shy seventeen-year-old I once knew, the one who could make a grown man cry when she sang, that girl was gone. The fire in front of me swept her arm up in a calculated maneuver only someone with martial arts training would know. Blocking Vance as if she’d done it a hundred times before, she didn’t even blink before both her hands landed on my chest.
She shoved with determined strength.
I held my ground, but Vance moved.
Pinning one arm behind her, his other hand went to her throat. Holding her against his chest, bringing his mouth to her ear, he spoke in a lethally calm tone. “Not the time or place,” he warned.
Nostrils flaring, eyes on me, she grabbed the tumbler. “Yes, it is.”
“Do you need me to work this out in front of him?” Vance tightened his hold on her. “Because I will.” Dropping his voice, his expression turned lethal. “Without hesitation.”
Still glaring at me, she growled.
She fucking growled.
“Do you?” Vance barked, shaking her once.
The drunken mess in front of me flinched, but then she shuddered as if a full-body shiver was sweeping up her spine. “Let go,” she rasped.
“Drop the glass,” Vance warned.
“No.”
Leveraging her arm higher, Vance spared me a warning glance. “Leave.”
Disgusted, enraged that I’d allowed any emotions to be provoked, I turned toward the door. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“Perfect,” Sanaa spat at my back. “Walk away.”
As I reached for the handle the tumbler hit the solid wood door next to my head and shattered.
A split second later, her grunt filled the suite before the sound of two bodies colliding with a piece of furniture echoed off the walls.
Opening the door, refusing to look back, I walked out with controlled movements.
The door shut behind me, then shook as if a body hit it from the inside right before her muffled scream traveled down the carpeted hotel corridor.
My hands fisted.
Vance barked out an order. “Get up.”
My jaw clenched.
“Make me,” she taunted.
Furniture crashed.
I walked to the elevator.
“Do it,” I demanded, holding the bottle of scotch like a weapon.
Vance’s smile was leering. “Oh, don’t think I won’t, pet.”
“I’m not your fucking pet.”
He raised his left eyebrow as he circled me. “Aren’t you now?”
“No.” Every hour I spent in Ronan’s presence made me hate this game more and more, but I stupidly couldn’t let it go. “Make your move.”
His back straightening as sure as if he’d stepped off the mat, Vance grinned. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I have a meeting to get to. Speed it up.” Despite the meeting originally planned as a ruse to get visibility in a semi-public space, I cared about the charity concert. It’d benefit recent victims of a hurricane that’d blown through Trinidad and Tobago. I could sing one more time for that.
Vance smirked as he picked up a bottled water from the bar and poured it into a glass just to stall for time. “Nothing will start without you present.” He casually took a sip, then nodded at the bottle still in my hand. “You going to use that as a weapon or are you simply drinking to dull the pain?”
“I’m not in pain.” I was angry. At him. At Ronan. At myself. At the bomber that needed to show his face so I could get off this carnival ride that had become my life.
Vance made a noncommittal sound low in his throat as he drank again.
“Come on,” I demanded, making a come-here gesture with my free hand.
Glancing at an overturned dining chair and the coffee table that was askew, he smirked. “I think we’ve already covered our bases for today, love.”
My neck was sore where he’d gotten a hold of me before I could block him. My shins were smarting from my own stupid mistake of running into the coffee table, and I hadn’t been able to take him down in two days. We were nowhere near done.
I calculated the distance between us.
He chuckled. “Oh, I do love a good tell, sweetheart.” He set his glass down. “But really, do you actually think you can take me down in your state?”
“I’m not in a state.” I was so far past that.
“No?”
I hated his superior attitude. “No.”
His eye still colored from when Ronan had hit him, he gave me the sign. Holding his hands up in surrender, the stupid gesture he’d insisted on us having early on, he gave me our version of a safe word.
I growled in frustration. “I’m not finished.”
Approaching me with dominant authority, he took the bottle from my hand and set it on the coffee table. Then he did what I hated. He wrapped his arms around me.
“You’re okay,” he whispered.
I didn’t hug him back. “I hate you.”
“I know.” He squeezed me tighter. “But you can stop fighting anytime, love.”
“Don’t call me that.” I hated it. I hated that it was him saying it. I hated that his exact color eyes didn’t look like his brother’s.
I hated everything about any
thing.
But I really, really hated that his brother wouldn’t look at me.
So I fought.
Because it was the only outlet that made sense anymore.
It was the only time I felt safe.
Not the kind of safe when I had seven overly muscled bodyguards surrounding me, but the kind of safe in my head that said everything would be okay. The kind of safe I hadn’t had in ten years. The kind of safe that Ronan always made me feel.
“I’ll make you a deal.” Pulling back, Vance tucked my hair behind my ear.
“I don’t want a deal.” I’d had ten years of deals.
Smoothing my wrinkled dress over my shoulder, he smiled down at me. “This is a good deal.”
For a second, I swore I saw something in his eyes. Something I didn’t usually see. The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. “Why aren’t you trying to have sex with me?”
Flawless and perfect and with zero emotion attached to it, his smile spread across his face. “Should I?”
I didn’t answer. I stared at him.
I liked how I wasn’t Sanaa the famous singer with him. I liked how he treated me as not only an equal but as a real person. I even liked how he used fake charm to hide a streak in him that wasn’t one hundred percent ethical or well-intentioned.
But I didn’t actually like him.
“Right.” He chuckled softly and broke eye contact for a moment as he rubbed his hands down my arms. Then, lacing his fingers in mine as if he had a right to the intimate gesture, Vance brought his gaze back to me. “Are you ready for the deal?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“You’re too good for me, and I’m not your type.”
He was both wrong and right, but I didn’t argue. “What’s the deal?”
He gave me a cheeky grin. “No protest on that last statement?”
“No.”
His expression sobered. “Take the meeting and stick to the plan.”
I already was. “And?” I knew him enough to know that wasn’t all of it.
“Stop fighting with me and start fighting for what you really want.”
“I have more than enough money for a hundred lifetimes.” Suddenly uncomfortable, I pulled out of his grasp. “What could I possibly want?”
He grasped my chin. “You know exactly what you want.”
