by Snow, Nicole
I tug mine up quickly, muffling the world again, but I still hear the sharp sound of the safety flicking off.
Then there's nine rounds firing, booming so fast I can barely hear a pause between one shot and the next.
Riker's green eyes flash like a tiger's, stone-steady and ice-cold as he fires with perfect precision. Every bullet rips through the paper right over the target’s heart, making a cluster of holes that nearly shred it to pieces like someone punched a fist right through it.
Part of me can’t help how it makes me burn, to see Riker looking so formidable, so self-assured, this lethal beast-man protector who’s so strong and capable with such a dangerous weapon.
But the other part of me feels the sound of every gunshot shocking the pit of my stomach, and suddenly there’s a man I don’t know in front of me, his body exploding in red, his eyes blank and accusing as he collapses to the sidewalk at my feet and men with murder in their eyes aim their guns at me.
Cruel memory.
Gasping, I turn away from Riker and cover my ears. My heart beats wild, but cold and heavy, and I just want that awful sight to go away, to stop ruining my time with Riker.
But I still smell gunpowder and that makes me smell blood and I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
“—iv? Liv.”
I don’t realize Riker’s muffled voice calls my name until he’s pulled my earmuffs off and he’s wrapped around me again, pulling me against his chest and reminding me where I am, what’s real. He was right – I couldn’t be any safer than here.
Only here isn’t the gun range.
It’s in his arms.
I bury my face in his chest, huddling against him, trying to just even out my breaths. He holds me fiercely close, burying his face in my hair.
“What’s wrong?” he asks raggedly. “Talk to me. You okay?”
“I will be.” I curl up tight handfuls of his shirt, clinging, breathing in his scent and letting it chase away the smell of blood. “It's just, for a second, the gunshots...the smell...I was back there. Back in Seattle. When that man got killed.”
“Oh, sweetheart. Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t even think –”
“It’s okay!” I assure him quickly. “It is. I want this. I want to learn, and it’s a really good idea. I just wasn’t expecting I’d freakout, I’d –”
“Be human?” he finishes gently. “Trauma responses are normal, Liv. Especially when you aren’t trained for something like this. Sometimes things will trigger you, and it’s okay to need the people you care about to help you feel safe.”
Is that your way of saying you really care about me? I wonder. I’m not brave enough to ask.
Instead, I rest my cheek over his beating heart and whisper, “How'd you get to be so good with guns?”
“Lifetime of use,” he answers. “Sniper training, for one. Went through U.S. Army Sniper School and everything.”
“You’re military like Mr. Strauss and Mr. Barin?”
“Ex-military...and a generation before them.” There’s warmth in his voice, but also old pain, old bitterness, and as much as I hate that remembering hurts him, I’m grateful he’s willing to show those things to me instead of locking them down.
“They’re Afghanistan babies. I was deployed to Iraq the first time around.” He stops then, and I think he won’t say anything else until he continues, more quiet and strained, “Cover ops. Sniper missions, dark runs in Kuwait, you name it. Me and my team went in fast, went in dirty, got out.” His voice breaks.
Subtle, but it's there. “We did our jobs. But we always left a mess behind for someone else to clean up. Broken worlds. Shattered lives. All fucked up.”
I tilt my head back to look up at him. He’s looking somewhere over my head.
His gaze is trained toward the target but I think he’s seeing somewhere much farther away, maybe even somewhere that’s gone now except in his mind. I reach up to brush my fingertips to his cheek, softly asking him to come back to now, to the real world, to me.
“You don’t like remembering it, do you?” I ask.
“No.” His eyes clear and focus, turning down to me, and he catches my hand and presses a raspy kiss of stroking beard and softer lips to the center of my palm. “Don’t like remembering what it made me.”
“A kind man? A loving father? A dedicated, honorable protector?”
His eyes widen slightly. “Is that what you see?”
“You know I do, Riker. Who do you think you are?”
“Someone who used to be very dangerous,” he says bitterly. “Who might still be very dangerous. Who might kill a man like it's nothing, if there's a damn good reason.”
“Do you think Em sees you that way? Dangerous?”
He sets his jaw and looks away from me. “No. I've always shielded her.”
“Then how could you be?”
He looks almost confused as his gaze jerks back, searching me as if looking for the answer to that question inside me, instead of inside himself. “I don’t understand how you can have such faith in me.”
I smile and stretch up on my toes to steal a chaste, sweet kiss, murmuring against his lips. “I don’t understand how you can’t.”
“Liv.” For all the harshness of his self-recriminating words, his mouth is gentle on mine. When he pulls back, he asks, “Are you feeling better?”
I nod and give him my best smile. “Yeah. I think I’m ready to try on my own.” And it’s true. I had my moment, but that just means more than ever I want to learn how to defend myself so no one can ever make me feel that powerless again. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore, Riker.”
“You don’t have to be,” he says as he picks up the Ruger and presses it once more into my hand. “Not while you're mine.”
* * *
I think I just might have an author in me after all.
I just needed a little inspiration – and Riker seems perfectly happy to give me plenty every night, so that every morning for the past couple of weeks, I wake up sore as hell.
Walking on air.
Ready to whip up breakfast before waving him and Em off to work and school so I can settle on the couch with my notebook and write. At this rate, I’ll have this book completely drafted within a week, if I can just make up my mind on the ending.
I feel like I’m leaning toward that last-minute Hail Mary play for a bit of tension and then a happy ending, but I can’t deny it’s my own mood making me feel that way. I guess when I was miserable and sad I was more into the idea of tragic heroines, but with the tension gone between us, and me slipping into his bedroom every night after Em’s asleep...the giddy, lovesick fool in me wants that 'love against all odds' ending, even if it might turn out a bit cheesy.
I mean, there are lots of people who like cheesy endings. Romance too perfect for this world. All that matters is if it makes them feel good, right?
I won’t lie: I’m hoping for a happy ending that makes me feel good.
After all these weeks of playing house, pretend engaged, to the point where I’m even helping Riker pick out a long-promised Russian blue kitten for Em after a lot of hinting and outright pouting...
I want to play house for real.
More, I want to settle down into a life like this. No, not a life like this.
Just this.
This is the life I want.
It’s perfect. So perfect, it feels like every day just squeezes my heart tighter, and I don’t know how to let it go. Yet it might end up breaking. Scattering apart any day now.
Because the longer this stretches on, the more chance there is of Mr. Strauss at Enguard finding out we’re doing more than practicing self-defense behind Riker’s closed doors.
And I don’t know what I'll do if I’m the reason Riker loses his job for unprofessional conduct.
He’s too proud a man to ever let me help him in that case, or help financially.
Besides, Daddy’s money feels too dirty.
But I already owe Riker so much. My litt
le notepad is filled with pages of scribbled numbers, from grocery estimates to every last ice cream trip to the nice dinner he took me to last night at a secluded little oceanside seafood shack, intimate and soft-lit and far enough out of the way that there was little chance of anyone dangerous recognizing me.
Crap. I’ve stopped writing.
I’ve been sitting here staring at my page for hours, halted mid-sentence while I chew on my pen and wander off into thoughts of what life could be like with Riker a year, two years, ten years down the road. I take the pen out of my mouth and press the tip to the page.
Right. Back to work. Back to –
A knock rattles the door. I freeze. Even after weeks of relative safety, I can’t help how my pulse skips and lurches.
I’m here alone.
Yeah, thanks to Em’s classes, I can now flip an attacker twice my size over my head, and I know where the gun safe is, the combination, and where the bullets are, and while I can’t hit with any accuracy, I could at least scare someone off. I hope.
But it still makes me nervous, wondering who could be on the other side of that door.
“Probably nothing. Just a package or a friend of Em's or...” I swallow all the mundane possibilities, willing them to be real.
I uncurl myself from the couch and creep closer to the door, bare feet silent. I probably look like a cartoon burglar, all hunched over and tiptoeing, then stretching up to squint one eye at the peephole.
Only to slump against the door in relief.
God. I recognize the woman on the other side, even if only barely. She’s another Enguard employee.
Skylar, I remember. That's her name. Skylar Barin, Gabe's wife.
Yet, I can’t help a nagging worry in the back of my mind, that she’s showing up in the middle of the day.
What if something happened to Riker?
I pull the door open before she can knock again and flash what has to be the most manic smile in the world. “Mrs. Barin! Hi.”
She’s small and stone-faced with a sort of cynical, knowing smile and a perpetually quirked eyebrow that’s pointed at me right now as she looks me over. “Morning, Miss Holly. You can just call me Sky.”
“Oh, then, um, you should just call me Liv.” I’m still smiling like a doll in a wax museum, fixed and frozen and completely uncomfortable with anyone who isn’t Riker or Em. Being a shut-in with the same person for weeks will do that to you. “Something I can do for you? Is Riker okay?”
“Riker’s fine, besides wanting to kill some of our more unreasonable clients and a new hire or two.” She smirks. “Can I come in?”
I flush hot. Where are my manners? I mean, it’s not like this is my house so I’m not exactly stepping into the role as the lady of the house, so I really don’t have any right to –
Okay. Okay, rabbit brain. Stop, calm down, act normal.
I flash another smile, easier this time, and step back. “Sorry, of course. You just startled me, dropping by.”
She steps inside. I recognize the look she slides over the interior. It’s the same as Riker’s look any time we walk into a public space, checking for threats and avenues of escape. But she seems to find the living room safe enough. Sky relaxes subtly, her sun-browned shoulders loosening in her tank top. Her smile is warmer as she plunks herself into the easy chair and tucks her sandy brown, pixie-cut hair behind her ear.
“Sorry for catching you off guard like this. I was just in the neighborhood, running some errands, and wanted to check in with you about your sister.”
I reclaim my spot on the couch, relocating my notebook and pen to the coffee table so I can sit cross-legged with my ankles tucked under me. “My sister? What, Milah?”
“I just wanted to know if there was anything we could do to help.” Sky shrugs. “I know she’s got her own hand-picked security team now, and I think everyone at Enguard would rather drown themselves than be a part of it, but we were still there when that mess went down with her and Crown. We worry about her, and if her team’s taking the right care of her. Sometimes, she seems to forget she’s a target, too.”
“Yeah...she does that.” But even if it’s resigned, I can’t help smiling when I say it because I know my sister drives these people completely crazy, but they still care enough to want her to be okay.
I sigh, tilting my head back against the couch. “Milah and I are only halfway on speaking terms right now, but I think she’s okay. She’s doing some studio recording in L.A. right now and it’s easier for her team to keep an eye on her when she’s either in that recording booth or sound asleep.”
“Good.” Skylar watches me shrewdly. She’s a little scary, hard as nails, a small package of dynamite I don’t want exploding all over me. “Forgive me if I don’t know how to be delicate about this but...how's her health?”
I wince. I know exactly what she's hinting at. Landon must've gotten a full report from James about what went down in Vancouver.
“I don’t think she’s using right now. Even when it was bad, she'd get herself clean for recording sessions because it was hard work and she had to stay focused. Now...now, she’s promised me she’ll reach out if she’s tempted.” I smile faintly. “I’m kind of her accountability buddy. Her good luck charm.”
“Fair. And what about you, Liv? Who’s your good luck charm?”
The question hits me harder than it should, if only because I’ve been brooding so much on how I’m just a token in my father’s life, there for a purpose. And even if she doesn’t mean it that way, even if I know she loves me, Milah uses me the same way.
It’s only when I’m with Riker and Em that I feel real, and know they actually see me as that person until they know her almost better than I do.
And before I can even really think about it, I answer, “Riker.”
Just saying his name sends a flush of warmth through me. “It’s Riker, honestly. I’ve never felt safer since I met him. He’s my luck.”
“Oh,” Skylar says matter-of-factly. “You slept together.”
She could’ve hit me, and it would’ve shocked me less. The breath punches out of me, and I make a weird, wheezing sound, staring at her. “Wh-what? No!”
She snorts, mouth twitching, clearly hiding a laugh. “Don’t ever play poker, dear.”
I bury my face in my palms with a despairing moan. “Oh, God. Riker’s going to be in so much trouble. How did you know?”
“It’s not really your fault.” She chuckles. “James just isn’t as subtle as he thinks he is when he starts needling at Riker just to make him sulk. Or maybe I’ve just known them long enough to be able to read them.”
James. Oh, damn it.
I’d almost forgotten...James has this weird thing he does where he kind of vanishes in the background so you almost forget he’s there, observing everything, thinking, noticing things you might not want him to notice.
He’s almost a little creepy, but in that reassuring way that makes you glad someone like him is on your side.
Right now, though, I’m not particularly happy that he was apparently observant enough over that weekend to suss us out.
As if we weren’t being completely obvious anyway.
I rub my hands over my face, then peek at Skylar over my fingers. “Be real – how much trouble are we in?”
“None.” Those sharp eyes skewer me, but her voice isn’t unkind. “Landon’s so wrapped up in Kenna that he hasn’t even noticed. I doubt he’ll figure it out if we don’t tell him. I don’t have any intention of telling him.” She arches a brow. “Do you?”
“No. Certainly not.” I shake my head, blinking confusion. “But...if you aren’t going to tell on us, then why did you ask?”
“I just wanted to see how you’d react.” Skylar’s grin is practically wicked. “Riker’s kind of like a big brother to me. I just wanted to have a real conversation with you, since he’s so upside down over you. Plus, it's good if someone in Enguard knows this is going on. Someone you both can trust.”
My
heart does that delicious clenching thing that happens every time Riker so much as looks at me. “Upside down? Him? Over me?”
“Are you kidding? Who else? He’s spacing out at work constantly, dropping things, and he looks like he’s ready to murder someone if your name comes up just when we’re discussing the case.”
“Oh.” I shouldn’t be so euphoric, but God, I can't lie.
I’m so thoroughly, madly, stupidly in love.
I curl my hand against my chest, trying – and failing – to suppress my smile. “Sorry if I’m causing problems at work.”
“We’ll manage.” She stands, leaning over to gently grip and squeeze my shoulder. “I’m sure the two of you will manage, too. But I’ve got to get back to the office.” With a jaunty little backward wave, Skylar turns and saunters toward the door. “Later, Liv. Thanks for your honesty. Hope to be seeing more of you around.”
She lets herself out, leaving me there on the couch, hugging my arms to myself and feeling oddly warm.
I feel like I passed some kind of test. Some weird initiation rite.
It’s nice to know the people who care about Riker don’t hate me and don’t think I’m bad for him.
It's nicer knowing this thing between us isn't going to cost him his career.
It’s in that sort of dreamlike cloud where – I won’t lie, I’m thinking a little too much about happily ever afters – that I lock up the house, then slip upstairs to curl up in Riker’s bed.
Even when he’s not there, it’s comforting. The bed smells like him. It smells like us.
Even though I just washed the sheets this morning, there’s still a lingering warmth that reminds me of the way we smell together when we’re lying there, damp and overheated and catching our breath, and it’s quiet and wonderful and the only sounds between us are two beating hearts.
I drift off thinking about that, slipping into a deep and quiet sleep.
Only to snap awake, my gut tightening, the sound of a footstep creaking on a loose board in the hall.
Riker never steps on that board.
He knows where it is and navigates around it without ever thinking. So does Em. I’m the only one who ever trips it.
