by Megan Crane
Though she could have made some assumptions about the kinds of things they did.
Isaac had brought her replacements for the contaminated items that had been confiscated from her back at that farmhouse, not that she’d been foolish enough to try to use a smartphone in her debriefing sessions. But once the Pentagon was finished with her, she started to call in to the command center back in Alaska to report in.
Then stopped herself. She was in Washington, D.C., which happened rarely. And when she’d thought she was dying, one of her final thoughts had been a wish that she’d been better to her family.
So instead of heading home, she called her parents and went out to their place in Virginia.
“Are you well, dear?” Birdie asked when she arrived, faintly creasing her brow over the window box of tulips she was fiddling with, out in what she called her mudroom. “You look a bit peaked.”
“I had a little cold,” Bethan told her. “No big deal.”
Birdie’s brows rose, but she didn’t argue. After all, Bethan thought, her mother had been a military spouse longer than Bethan had been alive. She knew when—and when not—to ask questions.
That night at dinner, she and her father eyed each other over their plates. Bethan suspected he knew exactly what she’d been up to lately, but he didn’t ask. And she didn’t volunteer it, because officially, none of it had ever happened.
Instead, she found herself talking about her favorite sports teams.
And maybe because she no longer felt like she had anything to prove, it was the most fun she could remember having at dinner with her parents. Possibly ever.
This is your second chance at your life, she told herself that night when she climbed into bed in what had once been her childhood bedroom, though it had long since been upgraded. You get to do it right this time.
All told, it was a solid month before she finally found herself landing in Fool’s Cove again.
Finally, she thought, as the little seaplane came in for a bouncy landing.
She climbed out of the plane, waved off the pilot, and took a moment to appreciate the way her feet felt as they hit the wooden dock. She followed the straight line of the dock toward the stairs that led up to the lodge, breathing in deep as she moved.
Because she was finally home.
It was low tide, and she could smell the rich scent of the sea all around her. Woodsmoke and pine. Though it was May now, it was still colder here than it had been back East. It looked as if it had rained earlier, but the sun was putting on a little bit of a show up there above the mountain. It filtered down through the evergreens, lighting up all the cabins hidden away there on that hill.
Everything was precisely the way she remembered it. And while Bethan’s heart might hurt a whole lot more than it had when she’d left here, because she already knew how Jonas would handle her saving him all over again, she still felt that same pull she had felt the first day she’d arrived.
She’d known from the start that this was the right place for her.
Her bones told her it still was, regardless of the state of her heart.
Bethan ran up the steep stairs. And as she got to the top, she heard a chorus of gruff male voices, welcoming her back.
They all stood there outside the big lodge doors. Her friends and colleagues, as close to emotional as any of them ever got, welcoming her back like . . . Well. Like family.
Bethan was terrified for a moment that she might disgrace herself by crying.
They’d all come out to greet her. To slap her on the shoulder, which was their version of a hug. To shuffle their feet and mutter things in their deep voices that were nothing much in and of themselves. But added up all the same to something like, About time you showed up. You almost died. That was not okay.
“Didn’t think you were coming back at all,” Templeton drawled, his voice booming loud enough to disturb a few seabirds perched on the railing some distance down the walkway. “Figured you’d cut and run.”
“Army Rangers lead the way, Templeton,” she replied, grinning wide. Because, of course, he’d been an Army Ranger, too. A real one, to her way of thinking, since he’d actually gotten to serve in the 75th Ranger Regiment.
“All the way,” he replied.
And the way he looked at her made her stand a little straighter. It let her know, in no uncertain terms, that as far as he was concerned, they were the same.
She held on to that. Especially when Jonas didn’t make an appearance.
Once again, Bethan didn’t ask after him, because she knew better. She’d spent the time since Grand Central trying to talk herself into the reality she knew would be waiting for her here. When the greeting party was finished and she felt unduly pleased with her teammates, she headed for her cabin.
Reminding herself fiercely all the way that what truly mattered was the work. The job. Getting to do it in company like this, where she was not only valued but cared for, was a dream come true.
She did not intend to let one man color that because she’d been foolish enough to save him.
Again.
Even if she was desperately, foolishly in love with him.
Bethan had survived that before. She would again.
She let herself into her cabin, shivering as she got the fire going. Then she stood there for a moment as the flames started to warm the place. Waiting for her return to this private space to soothe her. To ease whatever pain she brought with her. To help her leave it at the door.
But it didn’t work.
Because the last time she’d spent the night here, Jonas had been with her. And it was as if all she could see was him now. How easily he’d fit into a space that had only ever been hers.
“This is exactly why you never let anyone in here before,” she muttered at herself.
There was something about how loud her voice was in the quiet of the cabin. How loud she felt, personally, after all this time spent out there in the Lower 48, mixed up in all that noise and commotion.
This was her sanctuary, and she would reclaim it. But she was done with secrets.
She’d risked death too many times to count, but what she had not done was see it come at her the way it had that day in New York. The deaths she’d risked in the past had always allowed her to fight back, one way or another. But SuperThrax had been relentless. Irrevocable. Fighting the onslaught of the toxins in her body had been entirely hopeless.
But she’d survived. Bethan had been given a wake-up call, and this was her second chance. She was going to do it right this time.
She picked up her phone and shot off some texts she should have sent years ago.
And by the time they all arrived, she was ready. She’d liberated what she needed from the lodge. She’d cooked a simple dinner, pulled out a few bottles of wine, and when the first knock came on her door, she stood back. Then let her friends in.
“I knew it,” Everly said, crossing the threshold and grinning widely as she looked around at all the softness and candlelight. “Underneath, you’re just like us.”
The old Bethan would have argued that point. But then, the old Bethan would never have let Everly through the door in the first place.
“Let’s not get carried away,” she said.
“One of us! One of us!” Everly chanted lightly, drifting farther inside as if summoned by the soft, deep couch.
“This is downright cozy,” Mariah drawled when she arrived, sweeping in like a cloud of perfect hair and cashmere. “I’m not going to lie, I was expecting a CrossFit gym.”
“I wasn’t aware that you knew what a CrossFit gym was, Mariah,” Bethan replied. “But since you do—”
“Don’t even bother, sugar.” Mariah grinned. “I will never run all over Isaac’s beach, slinging tires around, or whatever it is you all do. Never.”
Caradine came next, smirking as she car
ted in two heavy tote bags. She slung them on the counter, crossed her arms, and aimed that smirk directly at Bethan. “I brought dessert.”
“You’ve become so domestic, haven’t you,” Bethan couldn’t seem to keep herself from murmuring, even though she knew that was risking Caradine’s famous temper. No wise person did that more than once.
But Caradine was different these days, too, and she only laughed. Then indicated the cabin. “Says the woman who lives in shades of pink.”
Which Bethan had to take, because it was true.
Kate came last, her usual cop’s smile turning into something much wider and more real as she came inside and looked around.
By this point, everyone had found a place to sit in the living space of the cabin. On the cozy couch, the inviting chair, and even the soft, cushy rug on the floor.
Bethan handed Kate a glass of wine without asking if she wanted it. She knew Kate did.
“Yes, it’s pink,” she said. “And cozy. And yes, I hid here this whole time, only soft in private.”
Kate looked faintly appalled. “Where else are you supposed to be soft?”
Bethan beckoned for Kate to go sit and followed after her. And then, there they all were. Her four friends, who she never would have met if she hadn’t come here. Who wouldn’t have met her if they hadn’t come here for their own reasons. They would be connected by Alaska Force no matter what, she supposed, but they’d made their own connections, too.
She might have had the bad luck to fall in love with a man who couldn’t handle it, or her, but no life was ever perfect. And looking around at her friends as they sat in her home and prepared to eat her food, laugh and tell stories, and share this life no matter what it looked like, she knew that no matter how imperfect it was, it would be okay.
She was going to be okay.
“Welcome to my soft, pink underbelly,” she said, lifting her glass. “Which, yes, I’ve deliberately concealed from you since I got here.”
Her friends lifted their glasses, then clicked them together.
“To not dying at the hands of assorted madmen, criminal malcontents, and your average homicidal dirtbags,” Caradine said, and maybe it was the candlelight that made her smirk look almost friendly. But Bethan thought it was probably the same thing that had her grinning so wide herself.
“I’ll drink to that,” Mariah said with a laugh. “Long and deep.”
“Here’s to the Alaska Force Survivors’ Club,” Everly said, and they drank to that, too.
Bethan knew what Kate was going to say even before she lifted her glass, her eyes gleaming.
“And to Bethan’s favorite thing,” Kate said merrily.
“Don’t say it,” Bethan warned, though she knew it would do no good.
And it didn’t. “Intimate friend time,” Kate intoned, and that sent them all laughing.
It was a theme that continued throughout the evening.
Hours later, when Bethan was full of sugar, pasta, wine, and friends, the cabin felt right again. Not a secret anymore, but a safe space all the same. Because she could be herself with her friends, within and without these four walls, and that made all the difference.
She finished straightening up so she wouldn’t have to face it when she got up before dawn the next morning, then settled down onto her couch while the fire crackled happily.
“Home sweet home,” she said to herself, sighing.
And then, somehow, managed not to jump out of her skin when the door to the cabin was slammed open.
Jonas stood there, grim and dark.
It was raining out there, and he looked as damp as he did furious. She was fairly certain she could see the steam coming off him.
He didn’t wait for an invitation.
Jonas stormed inside, slamming the door behind him and heading toward her with a look on his face so starkly ferocious that if she hadn’t already been sitting down, she thought she might have lost the use of her knees.
Her heart, always excitable when he was around, began to pound. Hard and dangerously slow.
“Hi, Jonas,” she said, pleased that she managed to sound perfectly calm when she wasn’t. “How nice to see you when neither one of us is being poisoned to death.”
But that only seemed to enrage him.
“Three days,” he belted out at her.
And as he came closer, she could see that there wasn’t a trace of the usual stark, austere chill that she associated with him. His gaze was a black fire. His expression was . . . something she couldn’t identify. Something she’d never seen before.
Her stomach twisted, and then, below, she could feel the pulse of it—of him—between her legs.
“What?” was all she could manage to get out.
“Three days,” he repeated, sounding even darker and more menacing. “That was the deal. If we survived. If we even made it to three days.”
She remembered that conversation in the lab. She remembered everything.
“You don’t like it when I save your life,” she replied as coolly as she could. And there was a part of her that wanted to surge to her feet. Fight him. Fight something, anyway, because that was better than accepting reality. But she didn’t have it in her. Not tonight. Not with him. “I’ve already played this game once.”
“This isn’t a game,” Jonas growled at her. “Did you really think that after all of that I would just . . .”
He didn’t finish. Bethan was glad she’d put her wineglass down, because her hands were trembling. Maybe she was trembling, now that she considered it. She couldn’t seem to pull her gaze away from his.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “That’s exactly what I expected you to do.”
He was standing in front of her then. She couldn’t seem to breathe as she looked up at his beautiful face. That face that she’d never been able to get enough of. That face that she’d loved so long now, and knew so well, that she would know it by touch even if she were blind.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Bethan,” he told her darkly. “But I can’t go back to that.”
And when he was right there before her, she expected him to do something. Something physical, some explosion of his strength, some mighty noise to remind her what he was capable of—
But instead, Jonas Crow sank down on his knees.
Twenty-six
Jonas had expected Bethan to come find him.
She hadn’t.
He’d come back to Alaska after quarantine and a round of Pentagon games. He’d ignored his friends’ good-natured ribbing. He’d dedicated himself to regaining his lost fitness levels and had almost managed to convince himself that he wasn’t just killing time.
But then she’d come back.
He hadn’t joined in her impromptu welcome party, but he’d watched it from higher on the hill. He’d told himself that what really mattered wasn’t whether she came looking for him but that she was alive.
That was all that mattered.
But deep down, he’d still expected her to come find him. Instead, she’d invited all her friends over for a party.
He was coming out of his skin.
“I can’t function,” he told her, not sure if he was angry at her, angry at himself, or just so filled with whatever this heavy, panicked thing was inside him that he’d lost any ability to determine his own state. “I’m a menace to myself and others.”
He expected her to spark at him. Bite back. Like all the times before.
But instead, her lips moved into a soft smile. “You always are. It’s part of what makes you beautiful.”
He wanted to reach for her, but it was as if he didn’t know how to operate his own limbs any longer.
And he made himself say it.
“If you only thought you loved me because you knew you were dying, I understand,” he gritted out.
Jonas hadn’t known he could feel at all, much less the cascade of feelings inside him then, each more acutely painful than the last.
Bethan’s jaw actually dropped. Her eyes got wet, though no tears spilled over. She shifted forward, reaching out and grabbing his hands. Then holding them tightly.
Fiercely.
“I didn’t think I loved you because I knew I was dying, Jonas.” She held his gaze, and each word she said was deliberate. As if she knew she was speaking to parts of him he’d never let out before. Parts he didn’t know himself. “I’ve loved you for years, and I never intended to tell you, because it never occurred to me you were willing to hear it. That’s the only thing knowing I was about to die changed. But not my heart, Jonas. Never my heart. That’s been yours for years.”
Her hands in his were a miracle. He remembered walking through Midtown Manhattan, their fingers laced together. He had thought they were both doomed, and still, he’d been happy. Happier than he’d ever been before.
“You make me want to live,” he told her, as if this were an altar and these were his vows. “You make me want to grow things, not only destroy them. You make me happy. You make me believe in things I thought were lies when I was a kid, things I dismissed a lifetime ago. You make my heart beat when I thought it was dead. You make me imagine that somewhere inside, I’m a regular man.”
Her eyes were so bright then. Her voice was so thick. “I love you, too,” she whispered.
“You make me want to be human.” And Jonas didn’t have it in him to be horrified by the sound of his own voice cracking. Not with Bethan. “You make me imagine it’s possible. For you. Only for you.”
“Jonas,” she said, coming even closer so she could take his face between her hands. “You always have been human. Always.”
And then she showed him.
She leaned forward and she kissed him, as if she were turning him from stone into living flesh. She kissed him as if it were all a foregone conclusion, life and happiness. Bright and reckless and almost too beautiful to bear.
